The ground shook with the force of an earthquake, rattling Patrick’s teeth. He slipped off the rock he sat on, whacking his elbow on the ground. His wineskin slipped from his grasp and spilled across the grass. Preston and the Turncloaks, who were with him around the fire, similarly lost their balance. Little Flick even teetered into the flames, scalding his meaty hand in the process. All around them, the defenders of the wall broke into panic.
“What the fuck?” Patrick shouted, turning his eyes upward, toward the wall and dark purple sky looming above him. Another massive thud then sounded, ringing in his ears. Bits of rock and dust misted down from the top of the wall.
“They’re attacking!” said Preston’s son Edward.
“They can’t be!” Joffrey Goldenrod said. “They haven’t finished their towers!”
“Climb the wall and see then!” shouted Tristan Valeson.
Patrick heard an odd whining sound and threw his arms around the closest man to him. “No, you dumb shits!” he said, collapsing on top of young Ragnar Ender. “Get down!”
A massive black shape soared over the wall, crashing against the upper parapets and sending large chunks of brick and stone careening to the earth. It was like a deadly rain pounding all around them. The black shape continued its flight, dropping ever lower until it smashed down a hundred feet away, right atop a small gathering of confused people, crushing bodies and hurling chunks of dirt into the air. Now unmoving and in the light of their fires, Patrick saw it was a boulder the size of a small hut, gray and craggy. Screams of pain erupted, filling the early evening with terror.
“The catapults!” Preston shouted. “They’re using the catapults!”
Of course they are, thought Patrick. He should have known this was coming. It had been almost five weeks since the first failed assault on Mordeina’s walls, and the people within were beginning to grow careless. Since that day they had done nothing but watch from afar as the besieging army busied themselves with building engines of war. By last count, they had a dozen working catapults and four siege towers. Master Warden Ahaesarus surmised they would not bring an offensive until the entirety of their force was ready. After the last failed attempt, Patrick had thought Karak would just wait them out until their depleted food stores ran out completely.
They were wrong.
Patrick rolled to the side, grabbed his discarded helm, and threw it on his head. Luckily they had just finished supping and he hadn’t yet removed his mismatched armor. He hurried to his feet and spun around in search of Winterbone. The dragonglass crystal adorning its hilt sparkled in the light of the flying embers, and he snatched the huge, trusty sword in his mitts. This time, he wasn’t getting caught without his blade.
He could hear wailing in the background as he slung Winterbone’s scabbard over his shoulder and began to make for the wall steps, followed by the Turncloaks, the newly trained archers, and a large cadre of Wardens. The Drake spellcasters were nowhere to be found. Patrick’s insides rumbled, the wine he’d drunk jostling about in his belly. The scent of rot was much stronger than it had been five weeks ago, making bile rise in the back of his throat. It’s only a reaction-I’m not truly sick, he thought. Many had fallen ill from drinking the city’s water, despite Azariah’s best efforts to keep it clean. There were thousands of sick, filling each day and night with the sound of puking and shitting. It became a full-time effort for the healers, which now included Warden Azariah’s ever-growing army of students, to cure their sickness. Even so, there were many who succumbed to dysentery before having the chance to be healed. Their bodies were stashed in a small space to the right of the inner gate, heaped atop those who had died during previous assaults, to keep the settlement relatively free of further rot and disease. With every square inch of space required to keep so many people housed and fed, there was nowhere to bury the corpses. They would have to wait.
Ignore it, Patrick told himself. Think of Nessa instead of your stomach.
He did, and anger gradually cured his ills.
Still more heavy impacts rumbled as Patrick reached the bottom of the stairwell. Ahaesarus stood there, handing out bows to those who required them. Their eyes met and Ahaesarus nodded to him, as if he could see the fury burning behind his eyes. Patrick passed him by and led the charge up the stairs, his muscles not aching this time, though he could still feel a dull throb in his knees. Even the vibrations brought on by the collisions couldn’t shake him. Ever since that first assault, he’d dedicated himself to running up and down these stairs five to six times a day, getting his body used to it. Now it was easy, though his mismatched legs would always offer him at least a little discomfort.
Another boulder soared overhead while he was halfway up the stairs, this time missing the parapets and instead snapping off one of the rock-hard branches of Celestia’s tree a few yards to the left. The branch thumped off stone before falling into the narrow space between the inner and outer walls. More screaming reached his ears from down below, and a moment later he heard a sickening thud and elongated crunch. He wondered how many had perished this time, how many bodies they would have to clean up in the aftermath.
Too many if you don’t move your ass.
He fully scaled the stairs and dashed along the wall walk, weaving around the casks of purified water that had been placed along the wall for those whose duty it was to watch the distant army. Countless others followed on his heels. By then he had counted sixteen impacts. Patrick sprinted past the smashed merlons and ducked down, peering between the stones at the army beyond. Now at the top, with a cold wind blowing in his face, he could hear the shouts and chants coming from Karak’s followers, those fifteen thousand strong separated by nothing but a mile of dead, brown earth. Another dark and spinning object cut across the purple sky, forcing Patrick to duck once more.
“Incoming!” he cried.
The new boulder struck the wall, and he heard a loud crack. The distant army roared.
Keeping his head down, Patrick counted to sixty before chancing to peer between the merlons again. He squinted, trying to force his eyes to adjust to the ever-deepening darkness. A strange sound came to his ears, like an infant’s rattle combined with countless twigs being snapped consecutively. He braced himself and stood in the nook between the two merlons for a better vantage point, but it was no use. All he could see was a black, shadowy blur on the horizon. No more boulders careened through the air.
Something isn’t right here.
The Turncloaks had taken their places to his right, three Wardens to his left. Behind him men and Wardens alike rushed about, some carrying thick lengths of rope, others lugging between them oaken barrels filled with pitch, while the archers took their places along the rear of the wall. We could still use some spellcasters. Patrick looked to his left and saw that the gangplank connecting the inner and outer walls was still intact. For a moment he considered dashing across it to get a better look.
A strong hand grabbed his shoulder, halting him in place. Patrick looked up into Judarius’s face.
“Best not,” the Warden said.
“Why? What do your fine eyes see that mine don’t?”
“Glowing red eyes, a hundred feet from our wall,” Judarius said. “It is the First Man. There are a great many soldiers alongside him.” The Warden scowled, then pointed toward Celestia’s tree. “And there, black shadows climbing along the outer wall, where tree meets stone.”
Jacob. That bastard.
“Give me fire!” Patrick shouted. One of the torchbearers came over to him, panting, fear making his eyes glisten. The youngster held the torch out to him. Patrick grabbed it and hopped off the wall, heading down the line until he reached the tree, ducking beneath branches hard as iron. Judarius and the Turncloaks followed behind him.