Prince Thief

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The air was rich with tension. No one on either side seemed quite certain what had just happened. Were we fighting? No blow had been struck. Words had been exchanged, and they’d been sharp to be sure, but the Pasaedans were soldiers; they fought for orders, not insults.

Yet it was clear they could hardly let us go. Already the ranks ahead were drawing together, tightening like the neck of a drawstring bag. Behind, Panchessa had disappeared from view, shielded from our tiny band by row upon row of protectors. Ahead, the Suburbs seemed infinitely more distant than they had a minute before. Alvantes was still leading us forward, but his steps were halting. What would happen when someone finally tried to stop him?

There came a noise from behind me: a silvery chime that turned straight away into a metallic rasp, and ended viscous and wet. Any sound would have been shocking just then, but there was something particularly awful about this one.

The sight was worse. I turned to see one of Kalyxis’s bodyguards flailing his enormous scimitar, sending Pasaedans tumbling aside; it would have been alarming enough even without the great gash in his side, which had all but opened him entirely. He had no right to be standing, let alone moving — and as I watched, he realised as much himself. Still swinging, he pitched forward. He chopped at chest height, at thighs and then at ankles, and managed one savage stroke towards the churned muck of the ground before the last strength left him.

Who had struck first? Had someone moved upon Kalyxis, or had her protector simply lost his fragile calm? I’d never know, and nobody else seemed certain either. Even as the barbarian twitched out the dregs of his life in the mud, a vestige of our tenuous peace held: a moment’s sizing up of opponents, of calculating odds, considering positions.

This time it was Alvantes who broke the stillness — and for all that I thought I’d grown used to his unorthodox strategies, his command was still the last thing I expected. “Charge!” he roared.

I doubted the Pasaedans had seen it coming either. When Alvantes flung himself forward, a few even struggled to get out of the way. Immediately Mounteban was there to fill the briefly opened gap — and as he pressed forward, sword sweeping, I saw him draw something from his belt. When he put it to his lips, I recognised it for a horn, hardly bigger than his hand. The note it produced was shrill, improbably loud. Mounteban gave two more quick blasts and then let it slip from his fingers, as he dodged to counter a blow aimed at his off side. Even as he swept the opposing blade away, Alvantes had lashed to cut down the man wielding it.

“Push back! Keep close!” someone called to my right, and glancing back I recognised Gueverro, one of Alvantes’s sub-captains. He had taken command of our small entourage, forming them into a tight-clustered oval.

Whatever outcome Alvantes had hoped for, he’d planned for the worst. Probably only half of those under Gueverro’s command were guardsmen, but I could tell that the remainder had been carefully chosen. Men who until recently had been on opposite sides of Altapasaedan law covered each others’ backs like seasoned soldiers, keeping pace despite the fact that most were moving sideways or even backwards.

They’d drawn bucklers from under their cloaks, and were already fending off a hail of blows. The small shields were worthless against arrows, but just then our enemies’ numbers were working more to our benefit than theirs. Disorganised, fighting without order or instruction, the Pasaedans were pressing too close; any archer fool enough to fire was as likely to skewer one of his own side.

The clamour was deafening. I felt as if I was at the centre of the fiercest of storms, fenced in by lightning and hammered by thunder. Panic was rising in my gullet, and I had no argument to talk it down. The Pasaedans were so close; everywhere I looked, hard faces glowered back. It was impossible to imagine that our thin line of Altapasaedans could be holding them back.

I went for my knives, realised that in the excitement I’d forgotten to recover them from outside Panchessa’s tent. Well, maybe it was for the best; I couldn’t have hoped to defend against a sword, so why attract attention? Then again, there were fifty of us, hundreds of them. Attention was going to find me soon, whether I was armed or not.

Even as I thought it, someone stumbled hard against me. I caught a fragmentary look at his face, streaked in red, saw enough of his uniform to recognise him for one of ours, before he landed in a tangle at my feet. Backing up, I jarred the man behind, heard him curse revoltingly. Ahead, our line had already clenched to fill the gap — but only in time for another Altapasaedan to be cut down, this one with blood coursing prodigiously from his stomach.

I danced aside as well as I could, desperate to keep up with Alvantes and our advancing front. Only now, we weren’t advancing; our momentum was lost, and not even Alvantes could regain it. It was all he could do to hold the ground he’d already made. In fact, it was probably all he could do to stay alive, for I’d never seen him fight so desperately. Alone, even that might not have been enough, but I was astonished to note how Mounteban was risking himself to shield Alvantes’s left side, compensating for his old enemy’s one-handedness.

Meanwhile, despite both their efforts to keep her back, Estrada had joined the front line. At that moment, she was fencing expertly with a soldier fully a head taller than her. Close by, Kalyxis had her peculiar long knife in hand. As I watched, she stepped to where her surviving bodyguard was clashing with three Pasaedans and dug it halfway to the hilt in the nearest man’s side. He hardly had time to look at her with wide-eyed horror before her bodyguard had sheared his head from his body, sending his corpse tottering into the other two.

Was I the only one not fighting? But the question had hardly crossed my mind before a colossal Pasaedan smashed with a roar past the men ahead and charged straight for me. Giants aside, I’d never seen such a monster; his neck alone was wide as my waist. My only thought was to get out of the way. I ducked, drove my weight left, felt my ankle catch on something I only recognised for a corpse as I stumbled over it. The bullish Pasaedan struck my leg with such force that I thought he’d take it with him. What little balance I had vanished and I went flying, as he plunged on, to crash into his own side with another bellow and the force of an avalanche.

I was halfway back to my feet when a sword whistled close over my head. Giving up standing for a bad idea, I tried instead to roll into a ball, but someone’s heel smashed hard into my ribs and I flopped with a sob onto my back. I had a moment’s dizzying, inverted view of the battle raging: swords whirling and men clashing and everywhere very much blood, with the sky an incredible, untainted blue above.

Then a Pasaedan fell towards me, using both hands and his last breath to try to hold his own guts in place, and that was enough to get me back on my feet. However, there was little enough room left to stand in; I couldn’t so much as edge in any direction without meeting someone’s back. Our small circle was shrinking fast.

“Hold! Hold the line!” cried Gueverro, at once swiping his sword towards a Pasaedan and dashing first one strike and then another aside with his buckler. Then he jerked hard to the left, as though someone had yanked him by the hair. He just barely kept his balance and tried to look round, seemed puzzled that he couldn’t.

I hadn’t seen where the arrow had come from; only a lunatic would have fired in the midst of that dense combat. Yet there it was, jutting from Gueverro’s neck, half of its length sunk inside him. I thought he was trying to say something, but of course there was no way he could. Understanding dawned in his eyes, as terrible a sight as I’d seen. Then Gueverro hurled himself forward, thrashing his sword about as though trying to beat out a fire. The Pasaedan lines opened for him, closed, and he was gone.

I’d already watched many strangers die that day, but Gueverro had been the first whose name I’d known. I’d spoken to him; in so much as I’d considered it, I’d liked him. And there came over me then something deeper than fear. It might have been resignation, or merely understanding. What it told me was that I was going to end up face down here, bleeding my life out in the mud. We weren’t moving, we were being cut down, and the Suburbs were far too far away.

Only… wasn’t there one slender hope? I’d already guessed that Mounteban’s horn was a summons for aid, prearranged for just such an emergency as this. I hadn’t expected it to help. Yet, though it was barely possible to make out anything over the tempest of shouts, metal chiming on metal, cries of pain and feet slopping in mud, I was aware that somewhere beyond those sounds was another, rising out of the distance. It had to be Mounteban’s relief.

I was hardly keeping count, but I thought that at least half our number were gone, dead or curled in the muck nursing awful wounds. Probably they’d each taken their share of Pasaedans with them, for these men were the best Altapasaeda had to offer, but what difference did that make? If they each killed ten, or twenty, or fifty, it would never be enough. Even if our tiny troop were invulnerable, they could hack and slash all day and never reach an end of the Pasaedan numbers.

Yet the horses — as I felt sure now they must be — were getting closer. I could make out the pound of hooves, the rattle of gear, the scrape of metal on leather. Nor was I the only one listening; if the fighting hadn’t stopped, its tempo had slowed, some of the savagery gone from it. Glimpsing Pasaedan faces, I could see that they were asking the same questions I was. What was coming? Was it a few reinforcements or the entire Altapasaedan strength? Was this a rescue attempt — or the beginning of the final battle for the city?

Then, as the approaching racket gained the precise tone and volume of a rockslide tumbling towards us, the fighting really did slow to a halt. The Pasaedans, without any sign of unanimity or instruction, backed off to create a perimeter around us.

Without the imminent threat of a sword through my innards, I dared to focus on the nearest exit from the Suburbs, a plank-lined way that seemed to be source for the greatest concentration of noise. Whatever happened in the next moments would decide our fate. If Mounteban had planned a paltry rescue force, they might buy us a few minutes before they were cut down, and we with them. If he’d summoned every man, woman and child in Altapasaeda capable of holding a sword, we’d probably still be dead before sunset — but at least we’d have a chance.

I stared at that skewed alleyway so hard that my eyes watered. How many men were making that cacophony? How many horses?

Then they plunged into view — and it wasn’t horses. It was giants.

But I could easily see how I’d been mistaken, for they were dressed like no giants I’d seen. They wore makeshift armour, as during the fight for the northwestern gate. This time, however, the emphasis was different; their torsos were scantily defended, while their arms and legs were buried in a patchwork of metal and leather. The explanation for that lay in the final detail of their outfits: colossal rectangular shields lashed to their arms and each almost as high as its bearer, planks that must have exhausted entire trees bound together by bands of iron.

These giants were familiar, too — the same ones who’d defended the gate. Was this a resumption of that day’s violence, or could it be some sort of penance? Because I couldn’t help but recognise their leader as well: even if I hadn’t learned those lumpish features by long acquaintance, I’d have known the glinting circlet hung once more around his neck.

I didn’t want to believe it. It was one thing to accept that Saltlick was on his feet, even running in armour — and the raw cuts lacing his flesh, the bandages still tight around his arms and thighs and waist, and the way that he still favoured his good leg, all testified to what the exertion must be costing him. But I knew Saltlick was brave beyond reason; that he’d wade through fire to save his friends if need be. That he would fight, though, against his most ingrained beliefs? Even to save Estrada, let alone myself? No, I wouldn’t accept that. In fact, I realised I’d sooner die myself than watch him draw blood in my defence.

Only — he wasn’t fighting. He was drawing nothing but confused stares. All he was doing — in fact all any of the giants were doing — was moving. And that might not have meant much were it not for the fact that they were giants. They were armoured, they were shielded, and their strength was prodigious. Their gentlest effort was enough to drive the Pasaedans back — for who was about to plant himself in their way, to try to halt their relentless progress? They might only be moving, but moving was enough.

Before them, the Pasaedan lines were in disarray. Yet at first it seemed that all Saltlick would achieve was to herd our enemies over us, so that I’d die in a stampede rather than at sword point. However, Alvantes had recognised the danger, drawn our survivors into a narrow wedge. The fleeing Pasaedans flurried around us, like gale-driven snow about a stubborn crag — and in their wake came the giants, visible now only as a solid, moving barrier of wood and iron.

For a terrifying moment, it seemed that we too would be swept before those colossal shields. Only at the last instant did the giants raise them, and we scrabbled hastily into the space they’d cleared. It was an outpost in the heart of enemy territory; through every chink, I could see the Pasaedans gathered beyond the shield wall. It was a fort — except that its ramparts were made as much from meat and muscle as from metal and timber.

Suddenly I wanted urgently to know what Saltlick was doing here. It had to have been Mounteban’s doing, had to relate to their mysterious meeting — but how? “Saltlick,” I bellowed. “Saltlick!”

But either he didn’t hear me or he chose not to answer.

“All right,” cried Mounteban. “Back, now… quick as you can.”

A moving fort. I couldn’t begin to guess how Mounteban had persuaded Saltlick to go along with this, to pitch himself and his fellow giants into such hopeless danger. Yet there was no denying it was a brilliant plan — and this time, Saltlick did respond. I heard him utter one harsh syllable of giantish and the giants were in motion again, edging back towards the border of the Suburbs with their shields ploughing before them.

A gap had already cleared around the giants, leaving a circle of ground churned into waves by the passage of so many feet. Beyond it, however, the Pasaedans were regrouping. If the appearance of the giants had thrown them, it was a temporary disruption at best. They’d faced this threat before, after all, and I had no doubt that the story of how Saltlick had been cut down had been bandied round night after night over the campfires. Now, every man knew that the giants could be hurt by weight of numbers — and without risk of retribution.

I looked towards the Suburbs. There too we’d been cut off. The giant-sized shields were impressive, but what would a battering ram do to those hastily bound planks? How well could they stand up against catapults or ballistae? And even if the Pasaedans chose against such dramatic shows of force, there were other ways to halt our creeping progress.

“Archers!” someone roared; I thought I recognised the steel-edged voice as Ludovoco’s. “Archers, forward. Make ready!”

It seemed I’d considered nothing our enemies hadn’t. The giants’ armour was piecemeal, concentrated towards their fronts; the Pasaedans need only fire over their heads. One arrow might be like a thorn prick to a giant, but a hundred at once?

I looked once more to the Suburbs. I could have run the remaining distance in less than a minute. At our current pace it might take ten times as long — and it was time we’d never be allowed. The enemy were clustered thickly in the gap now. No doubt they’d guessed what I knew for a fact, that Saltlick would order a halt before he’d risk hurting a single one of them.

“Archers…” I had just time to decide that it was definitely Ludovoco’s voice before the next word came: “Fire!”

I flung myself forward, pressed into the gap between the nearest giant’s feet and huddled close. I had no idea how it would protect me, but there was nowhere else to go. I scrunched myself small as I could, closed my eyes and hoped that death might at least be quick.

Perhaps it would have been better to look, though. To do nothing but hear — the relentless swish of arrows cutting the air, the dry thunks where they struck the earth, the wetter sounds where they found flesh and the occasional, horrible sobs and gasps of pain — was almost unbearable. It seemed as if it would never end, and through every moment I felt certain I’d be next.

But in the end, the rain did slacken — and, finally, did stop. While it might have been a concession to mercy, I thought it had more to do with the need to reload. In the silence, I could hear a gurgling sound, weird and unfamiliar. Though I knew my hiding place hadn’t done a thing to protect me — the three arrows spaced haphazardly up the giant’s leg were ample testament to that — I didn’t want to leave it. Even an illusion of safety seemed better than none, and I was sure I was better off not knowing what made that odd, unsettling noise.

Then again, it was moving nearer. Maybe ignorance wasn’t so beneficial after all. I untucked my head from beneath my arm and dared a glance.

There was no question of where to look. At least a dozen of our small troop had been hit, but where their wounds had left them alive, they were expressing their anguish with familiar and very human cries and groans. I had to turn my eyes higher — to where one of the giants had stepped back from the circle, barely avoiding the survivors he’d been trying to protect. He turned slowly around, and at the same time crumpled to his knees, a wheeze escaping his blubbery lips — as if there was nothing but air holding him up and it was all escaping now.

There were any number of arrows in him, embedded into his back and thighs and shoulders. But I was sure it was the one rooted up to the fletching in his eye that had done for him. When he had no lower to sink, he toppled forward, and with a last, tectonic twitch, lay still.

The remaining giants, perhaps too stunned to move, made no attempt to close the gap in their ranks. Therefore I could see the Pasaedan lines clearly beyond them, the rows upon rows of archers each readying another arrow. And there, towards their front, I recognised the man who’d given the order that had just killed a creature out of legend. The smile upon Ludovoco’s lips was almost worse, in its smug cruelty, than the horror I’d just witnessed.

I wasn’t the only one to have seen him. Stepping quickly into the breach, Alvantes barked at the very top of his lungs, “Ludovoco! Will you end this with a massacre? Have you no honour?”

The archers were almost ready for another volley. In unison, they were raising their bows, angling to fire once more over the giants’ shields. They weren’t hurrying — and why should they? They could keep this up all day, which was more than could be said for us.

When at the last moment Ludovoco raised his hand, I didn’t believe the motion could possibly be enough to hold back the coming tempest. Yet as one, the archers dipped their bows — and all of them watched him a little curiously.

Ludovoco took a few casual steps towards Alvantes. By the time he came to a halt, he was almost as close to our side as his own. “What do you propose?” he asked, his tone amused. “That we let you leave now, and go through all the trouble of breaking down your gates to kill you later?”

“We began a duel, all those days ago,” replied Alvantes. “Would you care to see how it would have ended?”

“I know how it would have ended,” replied Ludovoco. “And I know how it would end now. You never stood a chance then; now, you can barely stand. Will you really be so obvious, Captain? A last, noble sacrifice to buy the lives of your friends?”

“A sacrifice?” Alvantes smiled — not a reassuring expression on his granite, blood-spattered face. “Why don’t we find out?”

“So,” said Ludovoco. “It’s clear what you gain if you kill me. I promise to let you leave, yes? And our army has one less commander, of course. But what can you possibly offer me?”

Alvantes didn’t hesitate. “Not a thing, Ludovoco. I’d promise you our surrender, but everyone in Altapasaeda knows what you’ll do to them if you get inside those walls. All I can offer is the pleasure of killing me by your own hand, rather than standing by and watching like a coward.”

I’d heard better offers. If I’d been in Ludovoco’s place, I’d have ordered another volley without hesitation, and probably gone for a cup of wine, far enough away that I wouldn’t be bothered by the sound of our dying screams.

But Ludovoco wasn’t me, of course. And something told me that the possibility of getting his hands bloody might just be the best news he’d had all day. “Yes,” he said. “I think that will do nicely.”