Fortress Draconis (65 page)

At the far end, standing before a tall, thronelike chair, a handsome woman beckoned them forward. Somewhere between Alexia and Orla in age, she had rich brown hair, long and unbraided, half hidden beneath a red kerchief. She was clad in a black silk blouse and silk pantaloons, and wore them much better than Wheele ever had. She smiled and waved gloved hands toward the chairs.

“Lombo, you’ll be here beside me. Your friends, around us.” Her smile smoothed out slightly. “I am, as you have surmised, Vionna.”

Each of them moved to a place, leaving two open. The seat at her right hand remained empty until a tall, slender man wearing a turquoise tunic with a webwork of black over one side came down the stairs. He paused toward the bottom of them, looking up innocently as if surprised at their presence, then gave each of them a nod.

As the man looked at him, Will’s mouth gaped, then he blushed and looked away. The mental image he’d carried for years of the Azure Spider merged with reality. Little details didn’t quite match, like the man’s dark hair being more fine than curly, but that didn’t matter. The ease of his movements, the supple grace of his lean limbs, the hint of a smile he gave Alexia and Orla, all of it provided Will with a clear understanding of why Marcus hated the man.

Will started to speak, to introduce himself as one of

Marcus’ proteges, but the words caught in his throat. Partly it was because of the sheer awe he felt being in the Azure Spider’s presence—even his having rubbed elbows with royalty had not prepared him for this meeting. Beyond that, however, he realized the Azure Spider had paused precisely for effect. As innocent as it had appeared at first, his holding his position just a heartbeat too long revealed the truth to Will.

He may have been a hero of mine, but would a true hero do that?Resolute never would, nor Crow nor Alyx or any of his companions. That revelation shook Will and slowly closed his mouth.

Oblivious to what had run through Will’s mind, the Azure Spider swept to Vionna’s side and kissed her cheek.

“Forgive me for being late.”

Vionna nodded. “This is the Azure Spider, and the reason you’re here.”

“Lombo came for ship. Lombo’s ship.”

The pirate queen shook her head. “You’ll forgive me, Lombo, but I do not believe in coincidences.”

She reached out and pulled a small silver cover off a dish at her place. Resting there on a bed of green velvet was a sapphire the size of a goose egg. Will knew his gems and knew that even discounting the gold setting, the deep blue stone was worth a king’s ransom and then some.

Vionna lifted it in her left hand and held it up so Will could see the candlelight spark a cross in it. “Yes, this is the Lakaslin portion of the DragonCrown. This is why you have come to Wruona. You might even be able to leave with it.”

Resolute’s eyes tightened. “Name a price.”

“The price is not for me to name. That’s up to you, my guests.” She nodded once, then her smile broadened. “Ah, we are complete. Now we can begin.”

Will saw something coalesce from the shadows at the top of the stairs. Slender, but not so tall, wearing a cloak

“It’s rather simple, you see. For the DragonCrown to go with thee, just outbid me.” Thesullanciri Nefrai-laysh sketched a bow, then descended. “This auction, of course, I will win, so, pray thee, let the bidding begin ”

century earlier men had fashioned the gates of Svoin /A from thick slabs of oak, overlaid and cross-braced. Long I liron bolts, set every six inches, held the wood together, while pitch had sealed it and time had stained it. Behind the gate three separate stout bars set in massive iron brackets held the gate closed. The doors had taken no damage during the Aurolani siege, since, at that time, men had opened them, believing promises of gentle treatment in exchange for cooperation.

When the ram reached the gate, the men who had been pulling it came round behind to push. The ram itself was a simple affair, little more than wheels and a framework that suspended a long log on cables. The log had been capped with iron to give it weight, and the iron had jagged teeth twisting this way and that to let it nibble into the wood. Over it all had been built a roof that already bristled with arrows and even burned in a couple of places.

The soldiers working the ram tugged back on ropes to swing the ponderous piece of wood away from the gate.

Ropes slid through rough hands as the log reached the apex of its rearward arc, then swooped forward to pound the gate hard. The blow resounded loudly, as if an ax had bit deeply into a stump. The log shivered and rebounded, with the men hauling back to aid that rearward momentum, then released it again.

The iron head slammed heavily into the gate, and the teeth did their job, exposing white wood and half-uncovered iron bolts. Again and again it bit, not terribly deeply, but as it came away splinters and wood chips littered the ground. Left alone it would gnaw its way through, though the sheer force of the blows could easily rip the gates free of the walls before its hunger had been sated.

Defenders did all they could to stop the ram, but ballistae shots made the ramparts above the gate a very dangerous place to fight from. Firecocks washed it in flames, and arrows swept away defenders. Firepots lobbed from further away seldom made it to the ram itself and arrows shot at long range did strike some soldiers, but rarely penetrated armor.

The siege towers inexorably crept closer as trebuchets and catapults flung stones high into the sky. They crashed down, splitting merlons, crushing rock, wearing away the stone walls. Adrogans knew that with so little time they could never bring the walls down fully, but he didn’t want that. Collapsed walls would be too difficult to repair in time to defend the city from any sort of counterattack. What he needed, and what by Arel it appeared he might get, was enough of a breach at the top of a wall for the defenders to have trouble opposing the men in the siege towers.

A sharp crack and the scream of metal focused Adrogans on the gate. The right side gate had begun to sag and the upper hinge had torn free. Another pounding blow, and another, widened the gap at the top. Men shouted and shifted the ram a foot or two right, concentrating on that door. Each hammering blow shivered it.

Gaps appeared between the timbers, then the weight of the doors became too much for the final hinge.

Shrieking like an eviscerated frostclaw, the hinge tore away and the gate sagged back. The other hinges held for a heartbeat, then pulled free of the stone, allowing the entire gate to flop backward. The leftmost section ground against the entryway’s side, so it never lay flat but the right side did, crushing gibberers that had been waiting behind it.

The men at the ram shoved the engine forward one more time, filling the opening. While the wheels couldn’t get up and onto the downed door, the ram itself acted as a partial plug. Some defenders squirted out around the edges, only to be cut down as soldiers brought swords to hand.

The trickle of defenders soon stopped, and Adrogans knew why. He signaled and a trumpet blared. The men at the ram pulled the siege engine aside and there, waiting at the far end of the tunnel, stood a phalanx of gibberers with shields and longknives. They clogged the furthest end of the tunnel, and slowly piled debris before them. They meant to hold up any attacking force, trapping it in the tunnel, so the warriors in the chamber above the tunnel could use the murderholes to pour arrows and boiling lead down on the attackers.

Two small ballistae had come up as the ram was pulled aside. Both shot into the tunnel, launching thick spears and sheaves of arrows. Transfixed defenders went down in droves. More appeared to fill their ranks, and the explosion of a firecock behind them did kill some, but it did not disperse them.

Adrogans drew his sword and raised it aloft.Only one thing will clear that hole. “On me, Horse Guards, form up. The liberation of Svoin is at hand.”

Beal watched as the warmages worked feverishly and their effortspaidhandsomely.Thesorcerersheated larger stones, and Zhusks created a small breeze that sent air over the stones to fill sealed silken sacks. These sacks rose, carrying with them ropes, which were attached to a length of stout cable. At the far end of the cables a Gyrkyme pulled, tugging the floating line toward Svoin.

Both cables streamed out from the top of the siege tower. That tower had never been meant to move an inch, but instead had been built in place with logs driven deep into the ground for stability. Each line was over six hundred feet in length and weighed a considerable amount in and of itself. The balloons lightened the load for the Gyrkyme, who would anchor the heavy rope in the town, then her people would take up the slack in the line.

The Blackfeathers advanced toward the wall, shortening their ranges and feathering any defender who so much as flicked an ear in the open. The trebuchet continued to loft stones, battering a section of wall in hopes of cutting off defenders. Ballistae shot and shot again, finding fewer and more elusive targets, but treating quite harshly those they did hit.

A Gyrkyme came swooping low from the city and sliced a dagger through the rope holding the first balloon to the line. As he continued cutting them loose, Beal snapped an order and her clansmen rushed to the siege tower. They took up the thick end of the line and began to pull. Their booted feet churned the ground into mud, but inch by inch the slack left the rope.

The top of the tower braces were set and the rope was tightened off. A trumpet blared then and was answered from the Svoin building into which the hostages had been gathered. Only the twitching of the line told Beal what was happening until she saw the first person sweep past a fire burning on the walls. Clinging to both ends of a rope, hanging below the strung line, a Vorquelf came sliding along to freedom with her skirts snapping and flapping out behind her.

The wooden gate just below the uppermost level of the siege tower flopped down. Two men grabbed her as she reached it, and a third freed her hands of the rope. The metal slide, which had been fashioned from a bracer, was snapped back off the line and tossed up to the top of the tower where a Gyrkyme waited to fly it back into Svoin.

Beal joined the others in laughing and shouting. The only thing the plan had going for it had been audacity, and the audacity had paid off. Clan Bravonyn had gathered the hostages in one building and the ropes had been anchored there on its roof. Because the building was taller than the walls and the tower, the slide worked. One by one, Vorquelves slid through the night to freedom.

As the Jeranese Horse Guards moved into position to strike, two catapult crews levered their machines around and loaded logs thickly swathed in oil-soaked rags. Torches ignited the missiles, then the catapults hurled them flaming into the night. Thick black smoke trailed in their wakes, obscuring stars, but the explosion of sparks marked their landings. Both hit true, bouncing off the downed gates, lodging themselves firmly in the middle of the tunnel.

Phfas came up and extended a hand toward the tunnel. A slight breeze picked up, fanning the flames and drawing from the burning rags a thick cloud of black smoke. Much of it rose to pour up through the murderholes, while the rest billowed along to fill the tunnel.

The Savarese Knights, three hundred strong, trotted forward under cover of the pall and formed up in ranks ten abreast. The first company moved to the fore and, a hundred yards from the gate, kicked their horses into a charge. Only the first rank had their lances deployed, as the ranks following could not be sure in the smoke what they would be stabbing. With visors on their helmets closed, the heavily armored Knights vanished into the smoke in a curiously echoed clatter of hooves.

Behind them came the next company, and the next, the first of three legions thrown into battle.

A Gyrkyme Warhawk swooped low from the sky and screamed that the Knights were through, but Adrogans already knew that. He felt the shock and pain of the gibberers being stabbed and thrust aside, the choking of their lungs, the stinging slashes of swords, and the ripping jolts of lances piercing flesh.

Adrogans gave his horse some heel and led his legion forward, moving into a gallop at the gate. Hoofbeats thundered as his horse raced over the gate, then a break and a sharper, harder sound as shoes met cobblestones and sparks flew. In the smoke he could see nothing to guide him, so he went by feel, directing the horse toward the center of the channel. The clatter and crash, ringing peal of steel on steel grew louder, then suddenly he was through, his eyes tearing, into the streets of Svoin.

Adrogans reined his horse left and charged down South Crescent Road, which ran inside the wall. His saber rose and fell, slashing at the few fleeing gibberers. They died obligingly and quickly, screams dwindling fast, and on he raced.

A thousand yards along the road, heading due east, he found his target. Gibberers choked the road, intent on assaulting the building from which the two ropes extended over the walls. As he approached, one gibberer managed to loop a rope over a line, which stopped a Vbrquelf’s slide to freedom. The Vbrquelf hung there as stones and sticks flew up, and an arrow pierced her thigh. She screamed. Men shouted at her from the building to hold on, but she could not. She fell into the teeming mass of Aurolani troops and they tore her apart.

Her death agony exploded in Adrogans, leaving him numb and cold as his horse plunged into the gibberkin mob. The sheer impact of a galloping horse slamming into creatures snapped spines and broke ribs. Adrogans slashed to his right, kicked to his left, even raked one gibberer’s throat with a spur. He cut at the looped rope, then yanked it free, not caring about the clawed hands scrabbling at his legs.

Then the rest of the Horse Guards hit the crowd in a wave of flesh and metal. Bodies spilled into bodies. Horses reared, lethal hooves flashing. One kick lifted a gibberer and tossed him a dozen feet backward, while his dented helmet and much of his skull went twice as far.

The Bravonyns in the building cheered as the Horse Guards lifted the siege on their position. Up on the city wall a vylaen stood, preparing a spell. He jerked as two arrows crossed in his back, punching through his chest and pitching him off the rampart.