Chapter 72 #3
They push forwards. They’ve dented Thell’s advance force, but at what cost?
Of those ash-covered ambushers, less than a tenth make it back alive.
That’s not the end of it though. As they run back under the shadow of the mountain, Thell’s battered troops reform their lines.
The great gates open, and fresh bodies come forth, two hundred more, at least. And as their shields lock, the battlements above let loose in earnest.
Slickwalker’s seen spears fall before, but never in these numbers or with this precision. The sky hisses with the speed of their descent.
He watches his army cower in response, throwing themselves into the outbuildings, or behind the humps of barrows.
For those not quick enough, death is sudden, at least as spears punch through shields, skewering the men behind, one or two deep.
Others are caught by the thigh or arm, nailed screaming to the earth as their comrades scramble to pull them free.
An army is greeted like a disease, the old salt’s voice hisses in his head. Sharp metal pierces the most threatening points. Blood flows forth.
Slickwalker spits reflexively in disgust. Fully three hundred dead in a minute or less. There’s something dishonourable about it, something deeply unfair. So much lost.
The blue sky holds metal like rain. The people of Astic are a harrowed earth below.
It doesn’t stop them, somehow. The survivors harden, scab over with shields and leather.
He can see commanders reforming their ragged lines, driving them forwards, shields upraised.
Some marked with the split tree of Vantage, others slashed with white paint in the shape of a crow’s wings.
In response, Thell’s vanguard closes ranks as they push through the cairns, a solid block of warriors moving out now from the main gate.
Maybe three hundred strong, in a wedge at first, then folding into smaller phalanxes to intercept each approaching group.
The gates seem impossibly far. But Slickwalker’s counted the breaths to the mountain. They can make it. He knows they can make it. And when they get there, the shivers will let them in.
On the battlements, the remainder of Thell’s army set shields, their arms wrapped in bright metal, and beneath that, geometrics – red and black and red again.
Slickwalker scans the line for targets, for someone worth more than another common soldier.
Nothing yet. Crowkisser hasn’t tipped her hand, so neither will they.
Instead, more of those damned spears rise and fall.
Astic’s army are prepared this time. Their grey bodies peel off into huddles, shields upraised, keeping their hands on billhooks, flat-blades, boarding spikes, drawing closer to those phalanxes at the gate.
They weather the rain from above with arms around shoulders and waists, those grips getting slicker and slicker as they are torn apart.
At this rate, there won’t be enough of them to take the gate.
Twenty companies had set out for the gate, two hundred men in each, little coveys forging forwards against the storm.
Only a ragged stretch are still standing, and some of those just barely, winnowed down to half their number.
The Barrowlands are hollow with the sound of chopped meat.
Their screams drift up to Slickwalker’s vantage.
He grips the gun, sights, pulls the trigger, again and again and again, cursing with every shot.
A body pinwheels over the battlements, spun by a slug to the shoulder.
Another loses its throwing arm, the spear clattering to the ground.
Still they come, flaying his people with steel, over and over again.
Despite the carnage they’re causing, Thell’s warriors are almost silent.
They move metal with precision, adjusting shields and lobbing spears with quiet efficiency.
The only sounds are breath, harness, sky, pierced with the occasional satisfying scream.
It’s then that Slickwalker finds his target – Kinghammer, standing in the center of his troops, hands tight upon the battlements.
Can’t get to him yet though. Too many bodies around him.
When he goes down, it needs to be clean.
Slickwalker wants everyone to see him die.
The big bastard nods as metal rises and falls.
He taps a rhythm on the haft of his hammer, raises a spear in his other hand, throws.
Down on the ground, Sandsinger watches a young girl take that spear in the eye.
Her hands don’t even have time to flail at the socket before she’s driven back into the earth, carried down on six foot of wood and steel.
Sandsinger’s sprats are in bad shape. So’s the rest of their army, from what she can tell.
Their shields aren’t enough. They weren’t prepared for the sheer force of these things hammering through the air.
The only thing that saves them is the dying. She’s not sure who has the idea first, but suddenly, they’re moving forwards again, their shield-wall strung with the bodies of their friends.
She ducks as another rain of metal clatters off the cairns, wrenches the dead girl free of the spear and levers her to the front, listing wildly.
Their whole front line sprouts the dead, their bodies growing spears like a forest. Sandsinger flinches with every impact.
She’s almost frozen with fear. Every step is a conscious effort.
The boys and girls next to her are shaking something fierce.
One of them’s saying the old prayers, but he can’t find the names, and he’s choking on the words.
The girl to his left is slick with sweat and blood, her eyes white in a red mask.
Every time she moves, she half-falls against Sandsinger, who holds her straight and steady, like a tired animal.
Their shield-wall heaves with one ragged breath, all of them straining together. As they shamble forwards again a spear-point splits the body in front of Sandsinger, and stops just shy of her chest.
Somewhere in that chest, Sandsinger starts singing.
Snatches of songs she knows well, quiet shanties that grow and swell and die, and grow again, old songs of the old sea.
The survivors pick it up, ragged and thin as curlews on the moor, at first. Punctuated with screams and cries, but Sandsinger hears her voice growing stronger, and she hears other voices rising next to her.
She leans into the sister on her left and the brother on her right and staggers onwards.
Along their whole line, the ragged army of Astic lurches towards the mountain, shielded by their dead.
The gate, somehow, grows nearer. Its guardians tip spears in response, the phalanxes of Thell’s vanguard barely a hundred feet away.
Near five hundred terrified boys and girls pulling through the Barrowland in ragged clots of ten and twenty, cowering beneath the rain of spears, then lurching forwards in the lulls.
Above their heads Slickwalker’s gun rings out again and again, its scorched cat-scream crashing into the howls of the dead and the dying, the singing, the shouts of command.
The noise of it all like a hammer beating wet on the inside of Sandsinger’s skull.
Like the breath of a hunting dog on her shoulders.
She looks up, and prays to her new god, to that strange shadowed boy to keep watch over her.
High on the edge of the mountain, he’s doing his best. People run through the gun’s sights like water.
Slickwalker’s fingers are burning, shadow eating at their tips as the rifle feeds and pulls.
Still he fires. With every shot, another of Thell’s bastard brood goes down.
Through the throat, so a mouth moves uselessly atop.
Through the shield arm and the shield, spinning bodies in pirouettes of sizzling black.
Through the guts, eating the whimpers, the flailing of desperate hands.
Slickwalker takes aim, fires again, his jaw clenching in satisfaction as another spear thrower staggers backwards, the gun devouring her skull straight from the socket.
So many of them still, at least two hundred on the battlements, spears stacked and racked enough to kill them all five times over.
They just can’t match Thell at range and he’s not enough to tip the balance.
As if his worries have found him out, the air tightens near his head, and he ducks to the side.
Too slow. The spear takes him between scapula and neck, the force of it skidding him sideways across the rock, his feet skittering in mouldering nests and rotten eggshell.
For a moment, the ground looms below him, and he panics.
He trips as he tries to steady himself, hanging for a second on the edge of the precipice, then falls.
The armies below draw closer with frightening speed, as he twists in the air.
The pain in his arm is bad, but the weight of the spear is worse, pulling him off balance. He feels the gun buck in his hand as he nearly loses his grip. It’s hard to call out to the shadow through it all, his whole body unstable, hurled by the wind and gravity.
Of course, if he doesn’t get out of this, the gates stay closed. And they all die.
Slickwalker grits his teeth, grabs the haft of the spear, and tears it loose.
The agony almost makes him pass out. The spear spirals away below him, red with stolen blood. The ground is far too close now. Close enough that he can make out individual faces.
He closes his eyes, breathes through the agony, and leans into the shadow.
It’s harder than usual. Gravity wants him, and he’s lost a lot of blood.
It almost feels like his body is tearing apart.
He screams with the effort, and dissolves into blackness, propelling himself into the pockets and hollows of the mountain which the sun never finds.