The Thunder King (Bell Mountain) (32 page)

They had no way to get over the walls. Their only hope was the rams with which to batter down the gates. The claw machines would overturn most of the rams, and the city’s archers and crossbowmen would slaughter the men like sheep. What were the enemy commanders thinking? Was there to be one last, supreme effort before the cold weather came? Did they hope to achieve by blind bravery what only ladders and machines could do? It was magnificent, Gwyll thought, but it was not war.

On they came, hordes of them, waving torches, howling like a wounded bear who sought only to kill once more before he died. Gwyll could see them now. And from the walls, arrows began to fly in thick swarms. Men dropped by the hundreds, to be trampled by those who came after them. Some were crushed under the rams.

The rams had just come within reach of the claws over the gates when a panting courier stumbled up the steps of the fort.

“General! Lord Gwyll! There’s fire in the Temple!”

“Where are the fire-fighting crews?” Gwyll said.

“They’re trying, General—but there are Heathen warriors in the Temple, and they’re coming out and killing them!”

And Gwyll, who knew how cities fall, knew instantly that his city was betrayed; and now it would be the devil’s own job to save it.

“I can’t leave the walls,” he said. “Tell my colonel to commit the reserves to the Temple—all of them!”

“Yes sir! Sir, Lord Davensay is already fighting there with a troop of men he found somewhere.”

In spite of the horror of the situation, Gwyll grinned. Davensay the popinjay, in all his ridiculous and gaudy armor!

“God save Lord Davensay!” he said. “Now run, boy—he’s going to need help!”

The boy saluted and hurried back down the way he’d come up. Gwyll turned toward the Temple and was appalled by what he saw. The fire had already set its fangs deep into the Temple, and bright flames danced against the night sky.

Although he had no reciter there to lead him in a prayer, Lord Gwyll offered up a prayer of his own devising. “Father God, see this your city through this night!” he prayed. “And let me match Lord Davensay in courage.”

Up in the hills, Helki and the chieftains saw fire break out inside the city.

“It’s the Temple, if I’m any judge,” said Hennen. “The Temple of the Lord is burning.”

“How can that be?” Shaffur said. “They have machines that throw fire, but they aren’t using them.”

“It’s the Temple, sure enough,” said Nanny. “That’s where the Temple stands, where all that fire is. My poor Lord Gwyll!” And then she slumped against her cushions and said no more.

What they could not see from the hills, and what neither Lord Gwyll nor any of his officers did not yet know, was that Heathen in Obannese dress had fanned out from the Temple and were now opening some of the city’s lesser gates, having surprised and killed the guards. But the Heathen commanders outside the walls knew it, and had been waiting for it, and were now directing warriors into the city.

Nor could they see Lord Davensay, with some two dozen men, trying to fight his way up the Great Steps of the Temple, only to be driven back down by sheer weight of numbers. They perished in the Presters’ Square before the steps, cut down before the reinforcements could arrive.

“‘Heavy is the hand of God in judgment,’” said Obst, quoting from the Prophet Roki. “Men and brothers, we are witnessing the death of Obann’s greatest city and God’s judgment on the Temple.”

“Witnessing, but not doing anything,” said Spider.

“Wait,” Obst said.

Once the lesser gates were opened, and there were Heathen horsemen in the city clattering up and down the streets and throwing torches everywhere, the defenders’ discipline broke down.

Gwyll ordered units off the walls to shut the gates; but once men saw others leaving their posts, not knowing it was by command, some of them fled, too. Gwyll’s trumpeters blew themselves hoarse. But all the soldiers saw the Temple burning, the archers and the claw crews were distracted, and before anyone could stop it, one of the surviving rams smashed open the Durmurot Gate. Heathen poured into the city from the west. Defenders poured down from the walls, frantic to save their homes and families. Hardly fifteen minutes later, the North Gate fell, too.

“The end!” thought Gwyll. “Undone by treachery—whose, I’ll never know. God’s curse on them!”

A soldier who hadn’t left his post cried out, “What do we do now, General?”

Gwyll looked him in the eye, drew his sword, and saluted him.

“Die bravely, son, as soldiers should,” he said. “Will you come down to the gate with me? There ought to be good fighting there.”

The young man grinned at him. “It’ll be my pleasure, sir!” he said.

The two of them climbed down from the fort, followed by all the rest who hadn’t yet deserted.

“Good-bye, Rhianna, my wife and my love!” Lord Gwyll said under his breath. “We should have listened to old Nanny.”

Splash! Cavall jumped back into the river; and a moment later the beast was climbing out of the water, Ryons still clinging to its back.

Lightning flashed. Now thunder rolled. They were a distance west of the city, and now Ryons could see what he couldn’t see before—the whole plain swarming with warriors, Heathen hordes pressing to get into the city.

From somewhere inside the walls, flames leaped into the night. Horns blared. Thousands and thousands of men roared together; but you couldn’t hear them when it thundered. Great, splitting thunderclaps, livid streaks of lightning: a storm was breaking on Obann.

Unfazed, the great beast stretched out its neck and strode straight for the center of the battle. Ryons hung on for dear life. Cavall, he knew, was somewhere down there in the dark; but there was nothing he could do for him. He couldn’t see him, couldn’t even hear him. There was too much noise.

“Go, beast, go!” he cried. “Chase them away from the city—chase them off the edge of the world!”

“What in God’s name is that?” said Helki.

“It moves,” said Zekelesh. “But is it alive, or is it some machine?”

Helki watched, seeing this marvel in short bursts of lightning. Yes, it was alive. It moved across the plain on four legs, making for the west gate of the city and the throngs of Heathen.

But what was it? There was no animal he knew that was of such a size. Comparing it to the nearby city walls, he could see it was a giant. Where had it come from? Was it some undreamed-of monster called up from the river’s depths by the din of battle?

A brighter flash of lightning revealed more. The monster walked on four huge legs with a long, thick neck thrust out ahead of it.

“Look! The Heathen see it now!” cried Spider. “And there’s a rider on its back, I think.”

The mass of men outside the western wall was breaking up, dissolving like a stream bank washed away by flood.

“Arise, you soldiers of the Lord! Your king has returned to you!”

It was Nanny. She stood up in her cart. Her white hair had come undone and was blowing in the wind, all around her face. She stretched out her hands.

“Behold your king, the servant of the Lord! He rides upon the steed provided by the Lord his God, to make war upon the nations! It is the Lord who conquers; it is the Lord who is their judge.

“Arise, you men of God! Go down and join your king, and follow him wherever God should lead him. Go, rejoice, the Lord is with you!”

The army cried out with one voice. Obst, who had the gift of languages, knew without being told that God had for the moment given the same gift to His prophetess. All the men in Ryons’ army heard her speech in their own languages.

Helki could not have held them back now if he’d wanted to. The Ghols, King Ryons’ bodyguard, spurred their horses, and with shrill cries galloped down the hill. The Wallekki horsemen followed, an avalanche of hoofbeats; and then, on foot, Abnaks and Fazzan and Attakotts, Hennen’s mail-clad spearmen, Lintum foresters, Griffs, and men of several other nations. Chief Spider howled ecstatically and ran after his men. Subchief Uduqu was among them, brandishing the giant’s sword on high.

“Look after Nanny, Obst,” Helki said; and with a whoosh of his staff in an arc above his head and a hoarse Abnak war-whoop, he too ran down the hill.

Four thousand men roared out their war cry, the line they’d adopted from the Sacred Songs and made their own: “His mercy endureth forever!”

They were down the hill in the blink of an eye, running on the flat ground of the plain—in no semblance of order, but an army nonetheless. They ran to catch their king, to follow him. As yet they hadn’t seen him clearly, but they could see the beast he rode. Because it was his, and because he was their king and they were his men, and all of them were the Lord’s, they had no fear of the beast and no fear at all of the enemy: four thousand men running as fast as they could to fight against a host ten times their number.

Obst sighed and turned to Nanny, but she lay fast asleep on her cushions.

Thunder crashed and lightning flashed. Obst raised his face and hands to heaven.

“Behold,” he said, “the salvation of the Lord!”

The Temple burned like a torch, lighting the whole city and the fields around it. A thousand years’ worth of treasure, rich tapestries and woven hangings, hand-carved wooden furniture, wooden ceilings, wooden floors, untold thousands of books and scrolls and papers—it was a rich feast for a fire.