City of Ruin

F ORTY-SIX

The invasion force ate further into the city, and Brynd despaired. Four hundred yards deep, huge enclaves of Villiren were being thieved from them. All the way from the seemingly distant rubble of Port Nostalgia, right into the heart of the city, and they now occupied streets in the Shanties and way down the western flank of the Wastelands.

In a few hours, Brynd estimated that over a thousand lives would vanish.

The Seventh Dragoons were now a shattered force, and the remnants filtered in among the troops of the Second and Fourth. The Regiments of Foot had felt the brunt of the attacks, losing ten thousand warriors so far. Garudas reported simply that more of the enemy were coming, via ship, but ultimately through the gates.

As night settled across the city, a strange calm could be felt. It seemed as if this new race and their red-skinned rumel allies did not want to operate without daylight. He knew already how the captive Okun had been sensitive to changes in light, so perhaps they were somehow dependent upon the sun.

Reports from the city:

Soldiers stood now in silence, under a cold, star-filled sky, waiting and watching the edges of buildings for movement, just in case. But darkness also meant respite, a chance to rebuild on both sides. It was also a chance to release the souls of the dead, and pyres sprouted everywhere, bright and morose blossoms, offering the stench of burning flesh to the sky.

But at some point in the night Brynd accepted that the Imperial front line would fall back further the next day. More of the invasion fleet would arrive – they seemed endless – and of the garudas dispatched with relics, only a few might return. He still knew so little about the enemy, about their strategies and their weaknesses.

And people were whispering throughout the city that the elite force was needed.

He summoned Nelum to the obsidian room, where they conversed in the half-light. 'Lieutenant Valore, I believe we require a second level of augmentation,' Brynd suggested. 'The cultists believe it will enable us to be an indestructible force. Your thoughts on the risk?'

'Would we simply become stronger, with greater prowess, or would such a level of artificial enhancement kill us?' the lieutenant enquired. 'I argue that we fight initially without this second reinforcement, to see how we fare, but for the cultists to prepare the enhancements just in case. Power isn't everything. Integrity and good morality goes a long way.'

*

A clear day for once, and the fighting resumed as the first red rays of the sun hit the city. More warships came, breaking a path through the sea, bringing with them the same kind of hell. Brynd issued tactical briefings to the Night Guard as noise spilled up from below the Citadel, which shuddered as they looked down from their crenellated sanctuary. Within a few minutes of the recommencement of combat, two key defence positions were lost near Scarhouse. Scouts later told him how rumel had poured into the district in great numbers, slaughtering every soldier in their path. Then they trampled over the dead to kill yet more.

In instant retaliation, Brynd summoned the garudas.

*

Erupting out of the morning sky, they soared over the northern streets of the city, then showered their replenished munitions on the main advancing units of the invaders, exploding flesh and rubble with equal intensity.

Enemy forces staggered back under the flash-flames that ripped through the narrow lanes till only a few Okun survived. Had there been an endless supply of Brenna relics to deploy in this way, Brynd might have had some cause for optimism. But the reality left him as morose in spirit as ever. And worse still, the mute bombs launched from the ships cramming into the harbour kept picking off the garudas in mid-flight, so that they tumbled towards the streets, exploding in a shower of feathers and flesh across the rooftops.

*

More industrious weapons were released. There was enough sheer bulk of the enemy now that the Empire's forces deemed it appropriate to utilize catapults. Normally reserved for sieges, the Ninth and Tenth Regiments of Foot deployed trebuchets and mangonels from behind their front lines. On the Citadel Brynd watched these great constructs, the length of five horses, being wheeled into position, like slow-moving beasts, their tops breaching the rooftops.

Soon they were busy launching colossal chunks of broken masonry at the mass of invaders. Boulder-sized debris also shattered the surrounding buildings, disabling the progress of the enemy and making their ability to reinforce key positions more difficult. They were fast destroying much of the city, Brynd realized, but this had to be done to save the rest of it.

The last sight that Brynd witnessed, before he departed the Citadel, was of rumel and Okun corpses being slung back towards the enemy.

But he then gave an order for these machines of war to hold fire.

Now was the hour of the Night Guard.

*

They lined up, twenty elite fighters, garbed in shadowy darkness. All were mounted on black horses that stood motionless despite the commotion going on around them. Brynd withdrew his sabre and watched faint flickers of cultist technology skim and shimmer across its metal surface. Well armed, and well protected by contoured body armour, they headed east along the wide boulevards, past onlookers from the civilian militia. Brynd felt the heavy weight of expectation, as smoke began to blow back from the Brenna bombs.

Only minutes from the front line.

He was disturbed by the numbers of civilians that had stayed put here – refusing to abandon their homes right in the warzone – and had not evacuated themselves through the tunnels as instructed. A woman in rags ran screaming towards the soldiers, and gripped Nelum's feet. She screamed for them to stop the fighting, shrieked that four of her sons had died in the first wave of attacks. Brynd nodded to his lieutenant, who pushed her gently away, and she collapsed to the floor sobbing, as the Night Guard continued past.

This war would be an endless, thankless task.

He took a deep breath and felt the thunder in his heart. To Brynd, these minutes seemed like the longest in his life.

Some missile collapsed the corner of a building about fifty yards away, and rubble clattered across the plaza. Frustratingly, at any given point, Brynd couldn't see what was firing the mute bombs.

Suddenly, another one connected with a nearby store, but the expected explosion didn't follow. And stranger still was how it fell to the ground – so slowly, and almost changing shape.

A nearby Dragoon moved his horse over to investigate. Brynd ordered for Lupus to ride with him in pursuit of the soldier.

The terrain was littered with minor debris and large chunks of masonry, so they dismounted, and hitched their horses to a railing outside a decimated tavern, then marched across the plaza. Old men and women, unable to fight, were loitering in doorways, and some residents prised apart their boarded-up windows to see what was going on outside.

Brynd and Lupus halted next to the bomb.

'What do you think it is, sir?' The young Dragoon stepped back, clearly nervous at the presence of the commander.

The fallen object was writhing back and forth in the snow, with tiny arms flailing. About the size of a human baby, its skin was grey and blighted with scale, and its grim, gargoyle-like face was peering back up at them.

It was a living creature.

Suddenly its legs fizzed into flame and it emitted a high-pitched, manic laugh.

'Get away!' Brynd shouted.

The other two soldiers dived instinctively to one side, while Brynd managed to cover his mouth with his cloak. Just then there was a scream and the ground trembled under a deep explosion, and fragments of stone rattled across the plaza.

Brynd looked up to assess the damage, and felt a small shard of glass had cut his knee. He brushed aside the injury and realized Lupus was standing right next to him, looking stunned. They went back to where the creature had detonated, and saw that the Dragoon was dead. His arms and much of his upper torso had been blown away, and his face was unrecognizable – a consequence, perhaps, of possessing no augmentations.

Brynd staggered away from the corpse, brushing cold sweat from his forehead.

'The hell was that thing?' Lupus muttered, still dazed.

'You held your breath, then.' Brynd adjusted his belt and straightened his sabre. 'I think it was… well, some outlandish grey reptile. A living bomb? Sounds ridiculous. I don't understand how it could just explode.'

'Maybe with those wings, it flew at high speed.'

'That would certainly explain why we can't see where it was launched from.'

'It didn't seem to mind killing itself,' Lupus observed. 'In fact, we both saw it laughing just before it detonated, so perhaps it's not sophisticated technology, just some species we don't yet understand. Which, to my mind, makes our military objectives seem a lot more attainable.'

Brynd nodded at this rare heartening thought.

The other Night Guard soldiers arrived, and Nelum slid off his horse to assess the scene.

Brynd related to the others what had happened.

'Suicide bombs?' Nelum muttered, examining the ground, the corpse, Lupus. 'How can such beings exist?'

'It's not that many stages removed from dying for your own nation, is it?' Lupus observed. 'In fact – the motivation is the same.'

'No, I don't agree!' Nelum snapped. 'It is execrable if you ask me. There is no dignity in it, no honour.'

'We'll have time to assess such things later,' Brynd interrupted, noting the expression on Nelum's face. 'Now, to the front line.'

*

As the Night Guard pushed on towards the front line, commandere issued along the ranks to allow the legendary regiment through. Men in Jamur uniforms were carried back, dead or dying, and Brynold himself not to look.

They stationed themselves behind the Sixth Dragoons, the best part of a hundred men blocking this main thoroughfare leading west into the Scarhouse district. Featureless walls towered on either side, sandstone structures, and here the street was about sixty paces wide.

As the noise level increased, reports were passed to him: so far, an estimated nine or ten thousand Imperial soldiers had been killed. This figure shocked Brynd, as there had never been so many casualties in living memory, especially so early into a conflict. The city had become a trauma factory.

Jamur longbow archers were stationed on rooftops, firing deep towards the harbour and into Scarhouse, while closer to the front there were men with shorter bows, sniper units to pick out individuals from amidst the throng. Many of them glanced down and saluted the Night Guard as they deployed. Brynd knew that the very presence of his warriors brought momentary hope to those around them.

A line of soldiers moved forward, their armour rattling as they shifted into line. This was a time to face the facts. There was only a unit of the Regiment of Foot in front of the Sixth Dragoons, and that formed the line of battle. Buildings had collapsed three streets across to either side, leaving only this gaping avenue into which the aggression of both sides was funnelled.

Brynd gave his unit the orders to secure helms and armour and, through the slits of his visor, he watched the men in front begin to move.

Beami stood at a window overlooking an empty street, a visual echo in her mind of the last time she had seen Lupus. In a wood-panelled room behind her, three other cultists were examining their aggregated relics, deciding how they could best be used. A fire raged in the corner, and one of the others told her to close the window to keep the warmth in. She did as she was asked, reluctantly.

What will become of Lupus? she wondered. Is he already dead?

The thought of him going to war left her quite numb, even though at the very start she had been involved in the fighting. And now it was Lupus's turn to prove himself. Beami was so happy that they had rediscovered their love, even if only for such a short time. They had shared only the briefest of goodbyes at the Citadel gates, very aware of the other soldiers present, but in her mind it had seemed he would certainly return shortly.

Only now… now she wasn't so sure.

'Are you going to help us or what?' one of the cultists called out to her, distracting her from gloomy thoughts.

She moved back to the table with its heap of technology, and focused her attention instead on finding a way to help the city.

*

A row of soldiers moved forward.

They watched as the Sixth Dragoons surged forward in organized lines, closing the gap quickly, then their horses went ramming into a unit of Okun positioned at the far end of the street, leaving nothing in front of the Night Guard now except cobbles and blood and snow.

Brynd looked on grimly as the ranks of Dragoons fought within the narrow urban spaces. Horses were speared, ripped open by the claws of the Okun, riders tumbling on to the ground. They rejoined the fray, on foot, only to be hacked apart again. And all the time, arrows continued raining from above, selectively picking off the enemy.

Soldier after soldier fell. The collapse of their unit was rapid, yet a small core of them burst through the opposite ranks, vanishing out of sight, and all Brynd could do was hope for their survival.

There was a brief pause, as the depleted enemy ranks drew up together. Not a single Jamur soldier stood between them and the Night Guard.

A line of rumel, garbed in dull-grey armour, hesitated at the far end of the street as if they could smell cultist trickery on the Imperial weapons. As Okun joined them, they combined into one line with an alarming symmetry, as if they were separate components from one alien entity.

Brynd wondered at the sentience that united them while the enemy staggered forward, with swords raised, every move in sync.

The Night Guard waited, then Brynd delivered some short, sharp commands, his words reverberating among the empty buildings.

They rode straight for the enemy, eating up the intervening distance, first a hundred yards, sixty, thirty, twenty, Brynd kept speeding towards them, constantly thinking Don't look at the dead, don't look at the dead. They barged into the enemy lines, their horses rearing up and savagely trampling the first row of rumel. Bodies crumpled under the impact; heads exploded on the cobbles, then Brynd slipped off sideways from his saddle, as his horse collapsed on the blood-slick streets. The animal struggled to its feet, skidding desperately on the ice, then bolted away to safety.

Other Night Guard had merged into the mass of bodies and relentless screams filled his ears, and then something scraped against Brynd's arm, ripping his uniform, drawing blood. Confident in his augmentations, Brynd stepped aside and lashed out again and again, striking left and right, reacting solely on instinct, while thinking Fuck I can barely see a thing.

Okun armour split like eggshells as his blade impacted, and he cleaved an arm here an arm there. Grotesque faces flashed in and out of focus, but there were also rumel almost identical to the ones of the world he was so familiar with, and suddenly this alien army became distressingly real. He recognized the fear in them, too, and the sudden hopelessness, but he parried and chopped-spun-blocked his way through.

A pause to try to assess the scene: whereupon he called out for various tactical routines. In response, his soldiers filed in around him on horseback, pushing forwards, and sweeping past. They continued the slaughter, feeding his body the adrenalin he needed. His relic-doctored sword sliced so easily through armour. A blade in, blood out, then rip the creature's spine. Something turned, a weapon narrowly missed his head. He ripped into it, wrenched sideways, spilling offal on to his arm.

By now he could feel his face covered with sweat and blood.

Don't look at the dead.

A street packed with bodies, grunts, metal clanging on stone. Exhaustion.

The constant blur of motion removed any coherency from the scene, but very quickly he saw that he was at the rear of the skirmish. Most importantly, up ahead the Night Guard was forcing the enemy line back efficiently and quickly. They were decimating the columns of the foe.

Air support arrived suddenly, and began attacking the invading forces further back with Brenna relics. Intense fireballs rolled towards him from the explosions ignited between the distant buildings, flames billowing and licking their way upwards. And nearest the drop zone he could see the churning silhouettes of enemy soldiers.

Snipers based on rooftops continued their onslaught relentlessly till hundreds of red-skinned rumel and Okun lay dead on the ground, and any still showing signs of life were picked off one by one.

Combat edged away. The density of enemy bodies decreased. The Night Guard finally halted and moved aside. Barricades were instantly hauled into place, ordinary soldiers sprinting forward into position.

A calm settled over the scene. This storm had passed, and Brynd collapsed breathless to his knees on the freezing street. Feeling totally disconnected from the reality of what had just occurred, he flipped up the visor of his helmet.

After a moment's respite he was able to assess the damage to his unit – amounting to just a single casualty. The dead man was Brox, only thirty years old; his neck was savagely gashed and his body had been trampled.

The street looked as if it had been spliced straight out of hell and into Villiren. Body segments and discarded armour littered the place. Walls in the distance were charred with flame damage. One of the Dragoons had descended into shock, and was huddling shivering against a wall; blood was splashed against pale stonework behind him.

There were several injuries to his soldiers, but the rest of his team had survived. The lighter wounds were already beginning to heal before his eyes and the medics could soon see to the others. Every one of them should be ready to fight again soon. He eyed sadly the remains of four of the black horses, then gave the orders for them to be added to the nearest funeral pyre.

In the uncanny silence, a battle line had been redrawn. The mission considered a success, the Night Guard withdrew back into the city.

*

Evening arrived, and the battle front had held firm exactly where hilite troop had left. Brynd's eyes reflected the flames of a funeral pyrs he watched it carry the soul of Brox to the heavens. One of hiegiment had just informed him that the mood of the city had beeifted, that people were now feeling optimistic.

Brynd wasn't so confident himself, but now decided the enemy were not totally alien; he had raised hopes of perhaps negotiating with them. Prisoners would need to be taken from their ranks, and somehow used as bait for opening channels of communication.

Still, neither side seemed to engage in activity during the night, which was fine with Brynd because they certainly wouldn't be able to defend the city efficiently in darkness.

After retreating into the Citadel, he was alarmed to learn that yet more ships had been sighted cutting south through the waters. Was there no end to this offensive? And what the hell did they want with the city in the first place?

In the obsidian chamber, arranged around the vast table, the Night Guard held a council of war. They ate hastily provided food and someone had brought in ale, though none of them touched a drop. There were lingering silences as they nursed their bruises from earlier, all the while mourning a comrade.

Smoke, as usual, commented about the plight of the horses. Syn seemed to relish the opportunity to fight against new techniques. Brug spoke diligently about the enemy's weaknesses.

'How long can we last?' Nelum asked. 'What happens if we're eradicated? They all seem to fight as one coherent, slick organism, as if they can communicate telepathically with each other. What can be done against such a level of organization? If we fall, the city's doomed.'

'Not necessarily,' Lupus argued. 'The Dragoons have held the front since earlier.'

Then the idea of further augmentation was again mooted, and in principle everyone seemed eager to seek advantage. Towards the end of their discussion, a new report came through that civilians had been recently rounded up by the enemy and were being kept in a fishing warehouse behind the Shanties. No one knew if they were to be slaughtered, or would be taken from the city as hostages. At least a hundred had been snatched so far.