Anoike touched his arm. “The little pults the meien been using, they worth shit so far, but Kole he got to be expecting the Dom here to try anything he can. Make a lot of fuss getting them moved, I expecting Kole he don’t notice us here and there fussin with the launchers.”
Hern clicked his fingers against the glass, then nodded. “That should do it.”
Yael-mri sighed. “There’s more bad news, Dom. My sensitives say there are Sleykynin in the valley.”
“I thought you’d blocked that.”
“Apparently bands on both sides of the valley have been working round through the mountains toward the southern narrows. The ones we killed peeled off the main parties, testing us, I think. As far as I can tell, they came down beyond the sensitives’ reach and have been creeping toward us the past two days.” She sighed. “I hate to ask it, dom Hern, but I need hunting parties and guard shifts. I know we don’t have the fighters. I know everyone’s needed on the wall, but how much good will holding the wall do if the Sleykynin break the Shawar? How long would the wall stand then?” She looked at her hands again. When she spoke it was in a whisper as if she feared to hear what she was saying. “How much good even those will do, I don’t know. I just don’t know. Sleykynin are old hands at games we meien have never played.
The launchers were slipped onto the wall in the midst of the contrived confusion Anoike had suggested. The three launchers they had were trained upon the three towers, the rockets nested in them. Overhead the traxim whirled about, thick black flocks of demon spies, but they took no special notice of three small knots of purpose in the larger flow. In the tower Hern scanned the army; it was late afternoon, a heavily overcast day that spread a cold gray gloom over the plain outside the wall and the foothills beyond. He could find no trace of Nekaz Kole, but did locate his tent, its fine waterproof silk walls lit from within by lamps and perhaps a charcoal brazier to keep the army’s master warm. He murmured into the teletalk, reporting his observations to Anoike, adding that he saw no point in waiting longer. He flicked to the second channel, glanced down at the scale etched into the stone of the slit, spoke again. “Kole’s tent. Ten degrees west of second tower, estimate this point. Comment?” He listened. “Right. Ready. On three. One. Two. Three.”
Diminishing hiss, exhaust clouds glowing in gray light. Rockets whispering from the launchers, exploding with no appreciable interval between launch and hit, so close are the towers, three blasts that open out the gloom with sound and glare. The exiles handling the launchers muscle them around, change their aim and shoot off a second flight about two heartbeats after the first.
Hern grunted with satisfaction as the towers flew into splinters, shifted his gaze to the tents as the next flight converged on them and struck, throwing fire, dirt and stone in a wide circle about the place where the tents had been, the stone and shards from the rocket casing slicing like knives through the surrounding Ogogehians, sending even those hardened mercenaries into a panic flight. He lifted the teletalk, spoke into it. “Go. Get whatever you can.”
More of the rockets streaked out, their flights diverging from the center. Though Sankoise and Ogogehian and Majilarni fled the terrible things that flew at them with paralyzing swiftness and slew by hundreds, not one by one, only the lucky survived. The first flight hit among the Sankoise, slaying many, wounding more. The second sprayed through the orderly camps of the mercenaries, but the third flight veered suddenly upward, curled to the east and exploded some minutes later among the mountain tops, almost too far off to see or hear. Hern cursed fervently, spoke again into the teletalk. “Shut down. No use wasting more of those. That should hold them a while.”
9
Nekaz Kole wasn’t in his tent, but sitting at a shaman’s fire in a Majilarni shaman’s hutch dealing with a potential rebellion. The Majilarni were tired of this interminable siege that was getting them killed without any of the usual pleasures of war. Other times they could hear the moans of the wounded and the dying, could see the city behind the wall begin to suffer, other times they could race their rambuts around the walls and yell mocking things at the defenders, boast what they’d do to them when the city fell, howl with laughter at their stupidity when they tried sending out embassies to cut deals with the shaman and the elders, other times they could play with sorties and smugglers and savor the growing desperation behind the walls. Other times they could ride off more or less when they chose, loaded down with loot and slaves when the city finally capitulated. They could see no profit in this business. The wall was too thick, too high, too long; the defenders were too deadly with their shafts and those tiny pellets that dug right through you and maybe wounded your mount too, that sought you out impossibly far from the wall. That wasn’t fair. You died and you didn’t even get to call your curses on your killer because she was too far to hear you. And that was another thing. They were fighting women. Oh, they’d seen some men’s faces now and then, but they knew what this place was: it was where they trained those abominations that played at being men. How could a man gain honor fighting women? The Majilarni fighters were turning ugly. The shaman was getting nervous. Clans had turned on their shamans before. If he was negligent about bringing them to game and graze, or milking water into dry wells, or if he got them beaten too badly in contests with enemy clans, if he led them to defeat before the walled cities too often, then the shaman got roasted over a slow fire, fed to the herd chini and his apprentice set in his place. That is, if the apprentice stuck around long enough to get caught, in which case he wasn’t much of a shaman, and would soon follow his master into chinin bellies. The shaman squatting across the fire from Nekaz Kole knew the smell of revolt; he cursed the day he’d let ambition trap him into this business. Though he feared the Nearga nor, he was on the point of leading his folk away, to take them on raids up through the mijloc and across Assurtilas in hopes that loot and proper fighting would put them into a better mood.
The talk went on for a while more, but Kole wasn’t a man to dribble away his authority in futile argument. He cut off the discussion and ducked out of the hutch; before he could get to his mount, the rockets hit the walking towers, then his tents, then started ravaging his army. The Nor at his side cursed, then spoke a WORD that shivered the air about him. The last of the flaming missiles curved up and away, exploding somewhere among the mountain tops behind them. Kole watched that, then scowled across the slopes at the devastation where his tent had been. Being that close to losing his life shook him, not because it was a brush with death, but because even the Nor wouldn’t have saved him if they’d both been in that tent; there wouldn’t have been time for him to act. Chance had saved him this time. Another time it might destroy him. He had no control over that sort of event. Luck. The idea disturbed him. He strode to his gold rambut, swung into the saddle and rode at a slow walk toward the heart of his army to look over the damage to his veterans, the Nor silent, riding a half-length behind him. There was one aspect of the destruction he was quietly applauding. Floarin was gone; he’d left her huddling over a fire after listening for an hour to her querulous demands for information and for quick action to end the war. She was puffed to ash now or blown into shreds of charred flesh. He’d deferred to her since she was provisioner and nominal paymaster, but he knew well enough where the real power lay. She’d developed into an irritant impossible to ignore, equally impossible to endure. And she’d started getting ideas about him, hovered around him as much as she could, constantly touching him, pressing against him, even trying to force her way into his tent. That she disgusted him and the thought of coupling with her turned his stomach he kept to himself. He evaded her during the day, put guards around his tent at night. In Ogogehia there are spiders that grow as broad as a man’s hand, ghastly, hairy bags of ooze able to leap higher than a man’s head and poisonous enough to make a strong man deathly sick. The females are the big ones, males are elusive, shy and smooth-skinned, dinner for the females once the mating is over. In his eyes Floarin was as disgusting as one of those spiders, feeding on her husband, feeding any male that got close enough for her to inject her poison. He smiled at the scattered embers of the tents and felt a strong relief flood through him, with the result that he silently promised those inside the wall as generous a settlement as he could wring out of the Nearga Nor. He watched the embers dying to black, heard the wounded groaning, and coveted those weapons. Where Hern had got hold of them was something he was going to be very interested in discovering. With them in his arsenal, well, there would be very little he couldn’t have for the asking. Once this was over. He bent forward and patted the neck of his nervously sidling rambut. Time for Vuurvis. He swept his eyes along the wall, scowled at the gate towers. Start loading the melons tomorrow. Hit the walls first, then the towers, get rid of spotters, then burn through the gates. Once he got enough inside the wall, it was over. He kneed the rambut into a faster walk. The majilarni were lost but he didn’t need them. Vuurvis was enough.