The Last Stormlord

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Scarpen Quarter Breccia City Level 40 At sunset on the first day of the attack, Nealrith stood on the wall near the South Gate and felt a moment's brief satisfaction. He hadn't really believed the Reduners would come, but ever since Qanatend had fallen he had prepared for it anyway, and he thought they had all done well.

Considering everyone's lack of experience, not bad at all.

His gaze roved up and down, searching out any activity on the part of the besieging red warriors. Most were hidden among the bab palms of the groves or behind the buildings outside the gates, well out of range of his power to seize their water.

Mistake, that, he thought, to allow the livery stables and the smelters and so many other noisy and grimy workshops to build so close to the walls. Bad strategy for defence of a city. They should have been sited further away.

And now it was too late.

He glanced along the wall at the line of guards. Too few of them, but still, more than he'd expected. Ordinary citizens, determined to do their best, had joined them. They'd be useless under real attack, but armed with butterfly nets, they didn't do too badly against ziggers.

He allowed himself a smile. Ryka's idea, that. The nets, soaked in bab oil, were designed to catch the butterflies that came to lay eggs on the green bab fruit, but they were effective against ziggers. Once the little stinkers were caught, their soft hind wings stuck to the oil and they couldn't fly. Helpless, they were easy to squash. Breccia had not lost as many people as he had feared, even at night, when it was hard to see ziggers.

At intervals along the wall's walkway were catapults, another idea of Ryka's. Inspired by a child's toy, they provided a way of launching fireballs to illuminate what was happening beyond the walls at night, or to heave rocks during the day.

"You sent for me, Rith?"

He turned to look into the street below. Kaneth, mounted on the back of a myriapede, greeted him with a wave. Watergiver damn, but the man looked exhausted. He couldn't have had much sleep in three or four days, and he'd made a ride that would go down in history-if there was anyone left to write it after this was all over.

"Yes," he said. "Wait there; I'll come down." He turned to the overman standing next to him. "I'm going to grab a bite to eat. Let me know immediately if there's any change."

"Yes, m'lord."

By the time he was down in the street, Kaneth had dismounted. Nealrith clapped him on the back, saying, "You've got to snatch some sleep. But come and eat with me first. How are things on the north wall?"

"Quiet. I think the red bastards are sleeping. At a guess, we can expect an attack about two hours before dawn."

"Make sure you get some sleep between now and then." He guided Kaneth towards the guardroom across the street. "But you know, they need not attack at all. They could just maintain a siege and send ziggers in until there are too few of us left to defend the walls."

"They are Reduner warriors hankering after their supposedly more glorious times as nomadic raiders. They'll attack. And I bet they know a lot more about our vulnerabilities than they did before they took Qanatend."

Nealrith grimaced. "You're probably right, unfortunately. I suppose it means we don't have to worry too much about our water supply or our food stores, because those will last longer than we do. Seen Davim at all?"

"Who knows which one he is? They all look alike from up on the wall. And he's probably too damned canny to make himself a target."

"We've done well with killing their ziggers. I'm proud of the men of Breccia."

Kaneth gave a lopsided grin. "Better mention the women, too, or you'll have Ryka punching you on the nose. She's just spent the day keeping ziggers and Reduners out of the waterhall. They've been attacking through the tunnel."

Nealrith nodded. He knew they had lost both the mother cistern and the tunnel to the invaders.

When they entered the nearby guardroom, the aroma of hot food drifted from covered dishes on the table. "Sunlord above," Nealrith said, "that smells good. I don't think I've eaten today, come to think of it, which is foolish of me." He spooned some food into an empty plate. "You heard about my father, didn't you?"

"Yes. I'm sorry, and not just because he was our Cloudmaster."

"I loved the stubborn old goat. I haven't had time to take it all in yet, let alone grieve. I couldn't go to his water gifting. I haven't even seen my mother since he died. I hear she's refusing to leave the city with the others. Sunlord damn it, it's hard to take. All of it." He shook his head wearily. "Eat something, my friend. That's an order. You need it." He watched while Kaneth piled up his plate, then asked, "We are going to lose this one, aren't we? Eventually."

"I… hmm. Yes, I think so. Well, the city anyway. But as long as we get Jasper and Senya out of here safely, there's hope for… something. Jasper is special, Rith. If he stays free, the Quartern has a future."

Nealrith looked at him in surprise. "So says Kaneth the cynic, who always takes the gloomy view?"

Kaneth smiled. "Oh, I think my view is sufficiently dark to please the worst pessimist. It's not weeping likely either you or I will live to see many more sunrises. I just wish…"

"What?"

"That I could save Ryka."

"Ah." He didn't know what to say. I'm lucky, he thought. Senya and Laisa might live through this. He said, "You really love her, then?"

"Sandblast it, Rith," he burst out, "you should see her. Those bastards have been battering at the barrier into the waterhall. Every time they dislodge a brick, they send in more sodding ziggers, and she deals with them until her men get the hole covered. Ryka, who's half blind! She can scarcely see the little stinkers, yet she deals with them, and I can't even stay to help because it's more important I'm out on the walls." He was silent. Finally he threw up his hands. "Yes, I love her. How's that for a sodding joke? Kaneth the tomcat of Level Three, tamed by the edge of the sharpest mind and the barbs of the sharpest tongue in the city, hankering after a woman most men would call plain."

Nealrith was silent.

"You know what will really make you laugh?" Kaneth added, and his voice softened. "To me, she's wise, not shrewish. To me, she's the most beautiful woman in Breccia, not the plainest." He gave a laugh, half amused, half bitter. "And she hasn't let me near her in nearly half a year." Nealrith snatched a nap up on the wall, wrapped in a blanket. All too soon, one of the guards was shaking him awake.

"Highlord," he said, "There's some kind of activity out there."

Nealrith scrambled to his feet and looked over the parapet. "Pedeshit," he whispered, then roared, "Sound the alarm! Get some fireballs out there for light. Move it!"

Little could be seen in the darkness, but what he sensed heaped the terror in his soul. There was a solid line of pedes moving towards the wall. Each carried too many people for him to count. A fireball lobbed over the wall a moment later illuminated the scene. A running pede shied away from the burning ball of woven palm leaves doused in oil, but the others kept on coming, tens of animals, each packed with chalamen and bladesmen.

Nealrith bellowed for a continuous stream of fireballs. He shouted a message to his pede riders within the city to relay to the other rainlords elsewhere. Behind him, the warning drums started thrumming, the sound picked up by the drums of other levels, one after the other up through the city.

He took the water from the face of the nearest pede driver and wished he had enough power to drain the pede itself through its carapace. Useless to waste power blinding it; their eyesight was poor, anyway. They relied on their feelers, not their eyes.

Too hard to target human eyes at this distance. Faces, just grab water from their faces. That one. Another. A third. Then another. Other riders took over the reins from the affected, damn them. A fifth, sixth. That one there. He lost count.

No ziggers. Which meant they intended to scale the walls.

And then there was no more time.

The first of the packpedes leaped at the wall. Spears flew from both sides. Men scrambled. The pede dug the points of its feet into the sheer face of the wall and hauled itself upwards, a giant centipede climbing a rock. It was so huge its back segments were still on the ground when its mouthparts crunched into the top of the wall. The men it carried crawled up its body and over its head to the parapet. One part of Nealrith's mind-the cool, unruffled part that refused to listen to his fear or hear his despair-noted that they had screwed more handles than usual into the pede segments to help them climb.

Pedes all along the wall now, scrabbling to raise their enormous bodies. Living, armoured ladders. The Reduners' mode of entry into the city.

They learned a thing or two, the calm part thought, in Qanatend. Now I know how the city fell.

He used his power again and again, until he had none left. On either side of him, his men died. And were replaced. Fought. And died. Until the man next to him was a grinning Reduner and he had to use his sword to fight a red bladesman whose joy was battle. He knew before he started he was unlikely to win. But he had to try.

And not long afterwards, he was falling, falling. Off the wall. Down, his bloodied sword still in his hand and Senya calling out to him, in that cool part of his head, Don't die, Papa! Don't die! He woke into a darkness so profound he thought it was death. Pain soon told him a different truth. He hurt so much there was no way he could be dead. Something jabbed him in the genitals, sending waves of agony to drown the rest of the pain. He groaned then, and light filtered through the dark of his vision.

He was lying on his back in the street, where he had fallen. He was surrounded by men. Red faces, red clothes, red braided hair. Zigger stink. One of them was holding a spear far too close to his privates. He couldn't move. Everything ached too much and his shaken body would not respond. Waves of pain made nonsense of his thoughts.

From a long way off, he heard a voice speaking in an accent so thick he wasn't sure he understood.

"I, Sandmaster Davim the drover. You, rainlord, son of stormlord. Nealrith, your men say. My men say you no power more. Your men dead now."

His mind struggled with that-and then found an explanation he didn't like. Davim had tortured his men into identifying him and then killed them. The monstrous ache inside him prevented a reply.

"Where stormlord?"

Nealrith looked up at Davim through a haze. "Dead," he said finally. "Died even before the battle started. You'll find his body, what's left of it, in the House of the Dead. You can pay your respects there, to the man who brought you the water you drank every day of your life."

Father. I wanted to say goodbye. Oh, Mother, don't be there when the Reduners arrive! I cannot save you. Maybe Father was the lucky one.

He tried to focus on the sandmaster. Not a large man; he'd expected someone taller. But he reeked of power for all that.

Senya. She will have gone by now. Laisa, too. That was the arrangement: for them to flee the moment the walls were breached.

He tried to reach the man with his power. Tried to take his water. But he had nothing left, nothing. And maybe it wouldn't have made any difference if he'd still had power. Davim was water sensitive, surely, and must have known enough to keep his own water safe.

The withered bastard was smiling, amused.

He knows I tried. Did it tickle him, perhaps? He feels safe now, the rotting piece of shit.

"And the youth? Shale Flint?" Davim asked. His eyes glittered in the flame of a burning torch.

It was night still, then. His own eyes were behaving oddly. He couldn't focus. And his head ached. But then, so did everything else.

"Shale Flint?" The spear poked at him again.

Pedeshit, that hurt! "Jasper left the city. I sent him away."

"Where? When?"

"Sorry. Can't remember. My head hurts. I think I fell off the wall."

An upwards quirk of the lips, a flash of ire in those black eyes: they promised horrors.

Davim turned to the man with the spear and spoke in his own tongue. Then he turned back to Nealrith. "This man cut Nealrith's eye. Give to his zigger. Then number two eye. You no see. Then number one ball, then number two. You no have more children. Then he cut your pleasure stick, feed to cat. You no more pleasure women. You still no say where Shale Flint, he cut tongue. Then you no more tell anyone anything. Understand?"

"I think so. Sounds plain enough."

"Where Shale? You say, I kill you now. All finish quickly then. No hurt more."

Nealrith drifted away from the pain, then deliberately brought himself back. He battled for coherence. It seemed important, although he was no longer sure why. "I have seen all I ever wanted to see. I have the child I desired." Senya, oh, Senya. "There can be no more pleasure when my city is in your hands." Laisa, I wish you could have loved me.

He fought to stay lucid. "To help you find Jasper Bloodstone would be a greater agony. Do your damnedest, Davim the drover, and may your heart shrivel in the waterless land you'll leave behind you."

Davim unsheathed a knife and rapped out a command. Men grabbed Nealrith's arms and legs and held him hard to the ground. He didn't struggle.

No point, he thought. No point to anything now.

Davim leaned over and held the eyelid of Nealrith's left eye open with the fingers of one hand.

I must really have riled him, he thought with grim humour. He's going to do it himself.

Then Davim stuck his knife into the eyeball and cut it out. Agony lanced deep into Nealrith's brain like a stream of molten fire. He struggled then, and screamed. He hadn't known what pain was till then. Blood poured down his face and into his mouth.

Davim straightened up and pushed the eye through the bars of the zigger cage he wore at his belt.

Nealrith didn't see, and no longer cared.