She Is The Darkness

28

I was an afrit buzzing behind Mogaba’s shoulder. He and his captains were rattled.

Longshadow exhorted them to stop embarrassing his warrior empire.

“Somebody pour mud in that idiot’s mouth,” one of Mogaba’s few loyal Nar growled. “What a cretin.”

I agreed.

A cretin with a hearing impairment, apparently. He did not respond to the most direct provocation I had yet heard from any of those who served him.

Mogaba pretended to hear nothing himself. He watched the cliffs. Vicious, incessant fighting continued there. Our troops worked the attack in shifts. Mogaba’s men were unable to do so themselves. He had almost no reserves. There was little hope in his eyes as he sent his commanders back to their units. But he was a soldier’s soldier. He would fight until he fell.

Just like he had tried to do at Dejagore.

He had us by the short hairs if his troops went to eating each other in order to outlast us.

Our siege towers crept forward like tall, slow ships. Our elephants and surviving camp followers pulled them using cables passed through blocks attached to the steel spikes the elephants had planted earlier. When the towers finally stopped soldiers brought mantlets up to fill the gaps between. Protected by the mantlets engineers began erecting a wooden wall.

Missiles left the towers in swarms.

Mogaba had no engine powerful enough to penetrate the coverings on the towers. He had to do something.

The Shadowmaster forbid his doing the one thing that would have helped. Longshadow was worse than any spoiled child, stubborn as a rock. Things were going to be done his way and that was that. Mogaba was not going to take one step forward.

Mogaba was very near his limit but not yet ready to defy Longshadow. He was aware that Lady was over on our side just waiting for a chance to make his life miserable. That would happen seconds after the Shadowmaster took his toys and went home.

If he could not attack, Mogaba decided, he would pull back, leaving his forward works manned by minimal forces. They were to withdraw in such a way that we should not notice them moving out of harm’s way.

But I was watching.

Mogaba told Howler, “You’d better keep your carpet ready. I’m doing this with both hands tied. I won’t last long.”

Longshadow turned. If looks could kill.

Howler’s stance turned ugly, too. He did not want to be labeled a coward in front of witnesses.

A sudden uproar exploded on the far side of the pass. I darted over to the Deceiver camp. And there was Uncle Doj with Ash Wand, butchering Stranglers wholesale. Nasty old Mother Gota covered his back, moving about as slickly as he did.

Not bad for an old gal who practiced only when she could not duck out of it.

How had they gotten over there?

Then the real shit splashed down.

The Prahbrindrah Drah finally launched the attack the Old Man had dropped into his lap.

A dozen war elephants spearheaded the Prince’s assault.

Shadowlander troops rushed to man their forward works. Arrows fell in sheets.

Mogaba showed us. He jelled his defense. He murdered our elephants. His men showed their superior discipline. They sent the Prince staggering back with losses as appalling as those I had anticipated before we saw any of the Captain’s trickeries.

Mogaba launched a vicious counterattack he claimed was just a heavy pursuit. The wooden walls between our siege towers held until Longshadow recognized what Mogaba was doing and ordered him to pull back.

Immediately, as though he knew what was happening even without any reports, Croaker launched an attack on his flank. Only minutes later Lady attacked on the left.

Fighting on the heights grew even more savage. I lost track of my feisty in-laws. Narayan Singh and the Daughter of Night fled the Deceiver encampment and went into hiding beneath Mogaba’s watchtower.

There were no surprises from our side. Our divisions took turns attacking. Mogaba’s men repelled them but had to come out into the missile storm to do it. Workmen edged the towers forward again, inch by inch. Longshadow persisted in his irrational behavior. He began to look not only a lackwit but actively suicidal. He kept poor Mogaba operating with his hands tied and his ankles in chains, yet dumped buckets of blame on him because it looked like he was going to fail.

And the heights were aflame.

That facet of the fighting was almost over.