Rebellion

CHAPTER 76

“It’s impossible,” Rix said quietly, when the sun rose to reveal the mighty fortress that was Castle Rebroff. “It’s got every form of defence known. And what do we have?”

A thousand young, foolish men, most of whom had never picked up a sword until a few days ago. Only a thousand, because Grandys had left most of his recruits behind. None of his men had ever fought in a proper battle, and their opponent was the brilliant Cythonian general, Rochlis, who had won dozens of battles and lost none.

Grandys had marched his force the thirteen miles from Swire to Rebroff in darkness, arriving at their destination an hour before dawn. The castle was half a mile away, over the hill and down. They had to advance across a meadow that provided no cover, then pass a thirty-foot-wide moat before they could attack the walls or the gate. The attack would not happen until the mid-afternoon, for he wanted his men rested and fed. It was his only concession to the rules of warfare.

Once the camp was quiet, Rix went across to Grandys, who was perched on a boulder, his eyes glittering like black opals in the starlight. They were on the flank of a stony hill; knee-high tussocks of a coarse, sharp-bladed grass were scattered all around.

“How are we going to attack?” said Rix. “The wall or the gate? Or both at once?”

“The gate,” Grandys said impatiently, as though that were obvious. “Only divide your forces when you can delegate them to another leader as good as you are.”

“How can we breach the gate? It looks mighty strong, and we don’t have a ram.”

“I’ll think of something when we come to it.”

Had any other man said that, Rix would have known they were insane. And maybe Grandys was. Who knew what might have gone wrong inside him in all those ages he had spent petrified? Yet he exuded such arrogant self-confidence that Rix half believed him.

“What about the moat?” said Rix.

“You don’t have to worry about that.”

“Why not?”

“I’m beginning to have doubts about you, Ricinus. You obsess about every tiny detail.”

“My instructors taught me that a good leader has to know every detail of his command. And control every aspect of the battle plan.”

Grandys sneered. “Any of them ever won a battle? Or even fought one?”

“Well, no,” Rix admitted. “Until this war started, there hadn’t been one for a thousand years.”

“No wars? None at all?”

“No.”

Grandys looked incredulous. “Why didn’t somebody start one?”

“Start a war just so the men could get battle practice?” cried Rix.

“Of course. Heroism in battle is man’s highest ideal.”

Rix took a while to come to terms with that. Whenever he thought Grandys could sink no lower he revealed an even baser iniquity. “Did you start wars to get battle practice?”

“At least a dozen.”

“A lot of men must have been killed. Good men, maimed and brutalised, dying in agony.”

Grandys yawned. “But the ones who survived were all the better for the practice.”

He lay back on the snowy grass, wearing only his shirt and kilt, and did not seem to be troubled by the cold. Was that a side effect of being turned to stone?

“You can’t know every detail of your command,” said Grandys, harking back to what they had been talking about several minutes ago, “That’s your officers’ job, not yours. Nor can you control every aspect of the battle plan. There are too many imponderables, too many loose cannons, too many fingers of fate.”

“What do you see as the commander’s job?” asked Rix, fascinated despite his reservations, or because of them.

“To have a vision no one else has ever had before,” said Grandys, holding up a thick finger. He raised a second finger. “To lead by example, so forcefully that your men will follow you anywhere.” He studied his ring finger for a minute or so, then raised it as well. “To be a master of improvisation. No matter what the situation, to turn whatever is to hand to your advantage.”

“What if you can’t?”

“There’s always a way.”

“I don’t see it,” said Rix.

“Suppose you were to attack me now, while I’m unarmed. I left Maloch in my tent.”

Grandys reached out lazily, plucked a blade from one of the coarse yellow tussocks of razor grass and drew its edge across his unarmoured palm. A line of blood welled out. “With this I could sever your jugular before you realised I held a weapon.”

He tore a long spine off one of the low thorn bushes scattered around the boulders. Milky sap oozed from the base of the spine. Grandys held it up.

“You wouldn’t even see this in my hand, yet in under a second I could have it through your heart, your kidney, or any other vulnerable place that presented itself.” He reversed the spine. “If I were to dab the white sap into your eye, it would burn it out of your head.

“Weapons lie in the most innocent of objects,” Grandys went on, reflectively. “Any good general can design a battle plan. And once the plan is recognised, any good opponent can make a new plan to defeat the first. But how can they defeat an enemy who has no plan, who’s so trained to improvise that he can turn any object, and any situation, to his advantage? They can’t, and it drives them mad with frustration.”

Grandys chuckled, lay back and closed his eyes.

“Besides,” he said a few minutes later, “I thrive on being the underdog, on taking on foes with far greater armies in impregnable positions — and destroying them.”

“But even so, to attack such a mighty fortress with only a thousand raw recruits — why didn’t you bring the rest?”

“If I had, I wouldn’t be the underdog, would I?”

A minute later he was snoring as though he had not a worry in his opal-armoured head.

Rix eyed the razor grass, then Grandys’ exposed throat. The armour had gaps there, where the muscles flexed. It was tempting, but the command spell still held him and he did not think he could ever break it. Was he bound to Grandys unto death?

Grandys roused at 1 p.m. “Get the men up. We march at one-thirty.”

“You’re attacking in full daylight?” said Rix. “We’ll have no element of surprise.”

“We don’t need it,” said Grandys, impatiently. “Besides, if we don’t go now we won’t be feasting in the Great Hall by dinner time.”

He had to be insane, and there was nothing Rix could do.

He made sure the men were in their ranks, and all had their water bottles, rations, weapons, shields and helmets. You could never tell what unblooded men would leave behind, or forget to do. Grandys might not care about the little details, but Rix tried to think of everything.

Grandys raised his voice so all could hear him. “I lead the march, and the attack. We’ll head down the track until we’re just outside arrow-shot from the walls. On my signal, we charge the gates. Keep watch on me. I’ll give new orders when we’re close. March!”

They began to march out.

“That’s the entirety of the plan?” said Rix. “But they’ll see us. They’ll be ready with archers and shriek-arrows, bombasts and grenadoes and fire-flitters, and all their other chymical weaponry we can’t fight — ”

“Weren’t you listening?” said Grandys. He thumped Rix playfully on the shoulder and turned away.

This was going to go wrong. Disastrously wrong, and Rix would be stuck in the middle while a thousand poor, stupid kids were slaughtered. And he, leading the attack with Grandys, would be one of the first to die.

Marching in their ranks, they passed down the slope to the meadow and across until they were almost within range of the walls. Grandys raised his right arm. Everyone stopped.

Castle Rebroff looked even more formidable from here. It had towering granite walls, not cored with rubble but solid stone all the way through. The gates were made from many crisscrossing layers of hardwood, each layer reinforced with iron on both sides. The water in the moat was at least ten feet deep and the steep banks were bare, greasy clay that would be a nightmare to climb. How many of the men could swim? Few people in Hightspall could. And there were hundreds of guards on the walls, able to fire on the unprotected army from shelter, while Rochlis was said to have another thousand battle hardened troops inside.

“I am Axil Grandys,” Grandys bellowed at the gates. “The Five Herovians have come back from the dead. With might and magery I will take Castle Rebroff by nightfall. Surrender now or die, for I take no prisoners.”

Several of the guards on the wall laughed, though the mirth soon died into an uneasy silence. Every Cythonian had been taught about Grandys and his impossibly daring deeds in the early days of the Two Hundred and Fifty Years War. Now the man himself had come back from the dead. Back from stone.

An archer fired an arrow, which soared out towards Grandys. He watched it fall, unmoved, until it smashed against his opalised chest.

“You cannot win,” he said.

A guard let out a fearful cry. He was hastily dragged out of sight.

“No?” said Grandys. “Excellent. I hate surrenders. Charge!” He spurred his horse forward.

Rix had no choice but to go with him. The golem-like Syrten was on his left, on foot; the cadaverous Rufuss riding a long way to the right. Rix could not see Lirriam or Yulia, though he had no doubt they were there, if only to prove Grandys’ initial words.

Arrows began to fall. Rix held his shield up but it only covered part of his body and his horse not at all. Behind him, men were screaming in agony, falling, dying. He did not look back.

A bombast came spinning through the air towards them. It was the size of a large beer barrel and packed with enough alchymical material to blow down a three-foot-thick wall — or kill several hundred soldiers if it landed among them. No Hightspaller had yet mastered the basis of its shattering power. The rare bombasts that did not go off on impact were liable to explode when anyone tried to open them.

Grandys spurred across until the bombast was flying directly for him. Yet again, Rix wondered if the Herovian was insane. If it exploded, not even he could survive it.

Grandys reached up with both hands as if to catch the bombast like a football. The impact drove him backwards out of the saddle and slammed him into the ground. Rix froze. The soldiers let out a great cry of dismay. Was Grandys dead? Had he broken his neck? Was the bombast about to explode?

He rolled over, bounced to his feet, then punched his right fist through the end of the bombast. Tearing out a thick fuse like a red chuck-lash, he raised the bombast high. Evidently he had rendered it harmless.

Grandys signalled to Syrten, who went lumbering across to intercept a second bombast in one arm, and then a third with the other. Dozens of arrows were fired at him, and many hit, but none could penetrate the thick opal encrustations that had been created by Lyf’s own magery.

A fourth bombast, aimed higher, soared way over their heads and landed in the middle of the army, going off with a shattering blast and scattering men, and pieces of men, across a hundred yards of the meadow. Rix could not help himself. He looked back and the carnage was so terrible that he threw up on his saddle horn.

“On!” roared Grandys, waving Maloch above his head. “No setback can stop us. On!”

He sprang into the saddle and spurred on, holding the bombast under his left arm and Maloch with his right. Whether through sheer luck or the protective magery of Maloch, no arrow fell on him or his horse.

He calls the death of a hundred man a setback? Rix thought. He’s a monster; and I’m following him, so what does that make me? But the command spell would not let him go.

He hurtled in Grandys’ wake. No magery protected Rix now, and until a few days ago he had been Lyf’s number one enemy, so every soldier on the wall would want the credit for killing him. His shield could not protect him from a side-on shot, and he expected to die with an arrow through the head or belly at any moment.

His horse, struck by three arrows at once, stumbled and went down. Rix barely heaved his feet from the stirrups before it hit the ground and rolled. Had he been trapped in the saddle it would have broken his pelvis, if not his backbone.

He got up, aching all over, and ran. Grandys was a hundred yards ahead, approaching the moat, beyond which was the great gate. But he wasn’t stopping. He was spurring his horse on as though intending to jump the moat.

It wasn’t possible. No horse could jump that distance.

And neither could Grandys. His horse was falling towards the water when Grandys scrambled up onto the saddle, his broad feet spread, and leapt forwards. His weight pushed the unfortunate horse down and it hit the grey water with a colossal splash. When it cleared Rix saw Grandys, who had landed halfway up the greasy clay slope, dig in his heels and drive himself upwards. Arrows were raining down around him, and breaking on his chest armour, but none hit any unarmoured place.

Away to the left, Syrten was lumbering towards the moat, converging on the gate with a bombast under each arm. Dozens of arrows shattered on his encrusted skin. As many more were stuck into the bombasts, quivering with each of Syrten’s thumping footfalls. Fifty yards to the right, Rufuss was across the moat and climbing the wall like an armoured stick insect. He reached the top unharmed and began dealing death to the defenders with cold deliberation.

An arrow sliced across Rix’s right arm and blood flooded out, but if he stopped to attend it the archers would pierce him with a hundred more. He leapt over the edge of the moat, skidding on his boot soles down the slippery clay towards the water, then dropped his shield. He was a strong swimmer and could go a reasonable distance bearing the weight of his sword, but carrying a shield was out of the question.

Now Syrten was running straight down the bank of the moat. Could he swim? Would he even float? Rix could not imagine it. Syrten ran into the water and disappeared in spray, as if he were intending to pound across the bottom and up the other side.

Rix sheathed his sword and dived deep, arms out in front of him. The water was deeper than he had thought, around fifteen feet. At least, at that depth, the force of the arrows would be spent.

He swam slowly, conserving his strength. He had to burst out of the water and scramble up the greasy slope in seconds or they would shoot him dead. The water was murky and he could not see a thing. He swam ten yards to his left, so the archers could not predict his exit point, and shot out.

Syrten was immediately ahead, driving upwards, his great weight forcing his square boots deep into the slippery slope and giving him purchase. Rix scrambled up behind him, crouched low to avoid the arrows, then in a moment of inspiration, thrust his fingers through Syrten’s opaline belt.

Syrten did not appear to notice. Could he feel anything through that heavily encrusted skin? The driving thighs towed Rix up, and at the top he rolled away and ran to the shelter of the wall. Lirriam was walking calmly towards the wall, fifty yards to Rix’s left. A dozen archers were shooting at her but she must have been protecting herself with magery, for the arrows were shattering in mid-air before they reached her.

“Get the bridge down, Ricinus,” yelled Grandys, who was so close to the gate that the archers struggled to bear on him. “Syrten, here.”

Syrten ran across, gave Grandys the two bombasts, then lurched, more golem-like than ever, across to the raised moat bridge. Lirriam was on its far side. The bridge stood vertically against the wall, held there by its lifting chains. They ran from the upper end of the bridge, fifty feet above him, across the wall and down to a treadmill-driven winch on the other side. There was no way to lower the bridge from outside.

“It can’t be done,” Rix said, cursing.

Without the bridge, the troops could not cross the moat, and when they stopped on the other side they would be cut down in minutes. The archers on the walls could then pick Rix and Grandys off at their leisure, and drop a bombast on Syrten’s head if he could not be killed any other way.

“Get it down!” bellowed Grandys.

Rix ran across to the gates. Grandys was packing the bombasts against them.

“We can’t release it,” Rix panted. “The chains are out of reach.”

Grandys clouted Rix out of the way, took the red fuses from a pocket, poked one end deep into a bombast and ran towards the vertical bridge, carrying it.

Where was Syrten? Rix could not see him until the timbers of the bridge began to creak and groan, when he caught an opaline flash from the gap between the bridge and the wall. Syrten had forced his way into the gap and was pushing with his massive legs, his back against the stone wall, trying to force the gate down.

The chains clanked and tightened; from the top of the wall Rix heard someone shout a warning. Syrten let out a wrenching groan. It sounded as though the strain was tearing him apart. One of his armoured feet burst through the boards of the bridge, then the other.

“That’s not the way,” said Grandys. “Out!”

He ran back to the gate, set down the bombast, struck sparks off his armoured chest with Maloch and ignited the three red fuses. Picking up one of the bombasts, he took careful aim and hurled it high above the wall. For a few seconds Rix thought it was going to fall back on them, but it plunged down, grazed the other side of the wall and struck something inside. A monumental explosion shook stones down around them and cleared the guards off the wall for fifty yards.

It must have destroyed the winch, for suddenly the chains were running. The bridge fell outwards with Syrten, a foolish expression on his swart face, still embedded through the planking to the knees. The bridge slammed down on the other side of the moat, driving him into the planking until he was stopped by his groin. He bellowed in agony.

“Down!” roared Grandys.

Rix threw himself behind a projection of the wall and wrapped his arms around his head as the remaining two bombasts exploded, sending earth, rocks, splinters and multi-coloured fire in all directions.

“Charge!” said Grandys.

His troops charged across the bridge, swerving around Syrten, who was trying to heave himself out of the planking.

“You!” said Grandys to Rix. “Time to earn your keep. With me.”

They charged the breach together. Most of the gate was gone, just a few splintered timbers still hanging from the left-hand side, and there were no live guards to be seen. Grandys and Rix scrambled through, leaping over rubble and stone, logs and bodies. Then they were faced with a dozen of the enemy — more. They were coming from everywhere.

A guard came at Rix from the left. He cut him down with a wild sweep to the neck and kept swinging to take down the fellow next to him. On his right, Grandys was wreaking havoc with Maloch. Rix had never seen such sword work, or such bloody death at close quarters. Lirriam was directly behind, killing gleefully, protected by magery that deflected both arrows and sword blows.

They cut and hacked their way for several dozen yards until they were surrounded by enemy. Rix’s sword arm was already tiring. The butchery was horrific but if he stopped for a second he would die.

“On!” said Grandys, his eyes wild with exhilaration. “Ah, this is living!”

As if to prove the point, he hacked an enemy soldier down, then another.

The enemy counterattacked, forming an impenetrable wall ahead of them. Suddenly Grandys, struck by many weapons at once, faltered. His blows were failing to make impact; the enemy were closing in around, a dozen of them attacking him at once. Not even he could survive that.

Then Syrten was behind them, pushing between them, driving forwards on his own, bursting through the enemy’s shield wall and trampling them underfoot. Yulia came after, stone-faced, striking her opponents down with precise thrusts of a small black rapier. Rix followed Syrten, and between the four of them the enemy gave.

Grandys’ army came surging through the gap, and though few of them were a match for Rochlis’s experienced men, the Cythonians were so demoralised by the swift destruction of their unbreachable gate, by the appearance of the Five Heroes who had brought Cythe down in the first place, and their forbidden magery, that they turned and ran.

“To me,” bellowed a heavyset, broad-faced fellow in the uniform of a Cythonian general. “Drive them out the gates and into the ditch.”

“That’s Rochlis,” said Grandys. “I want him alive.”

He hurtled through the ranks of the enemy, knocking them down to right and left, and up the slope to where General Rochlis stood. Rochlis fought as bravely as any man, but he was outmatched, and Rix’s heart went out to the fellow. He’d seen enough bloodshed today, and caused enough, to last him a lifetime.

A blow from Syrten’s armoured fist brought Rochlis down. Grandys heaved the general above his head and shook him like a dog with a rat.

“It’s over! Castle Rebroff is mine.”

He dropped the general on his face and turned to Rix. “I always get what I want, Rixium. Remember that and you’ll come to no harm.”

And you don’t give a damn about Hightspall, Rix thought. You’re the most dangerous man in the world and someone has to stop you.

If any man can.