Grandys raised his voice so all could hear him. “I lead the march, and the attack. We’ll head down the track until we’re just outside arrow-shot from the walls. On my signal, we charge the gates. Keep watch on me. I’ll give new orders when we’re close. March!”
They began to march out.
“That’s the entirety of the plan?” said Rix. “But they’ll see us. They’ll be ready with archers and shriek-arrows, bombasts and grenadoes and fire-flitters, and all their other chymical weaponry we can’t fight — ”
“Weren’t you listening?” said Grandys. He thumped Rix playfully on the shoulder and turned away.
This was going to go wrong. Disastrously wrong, and Rix would be stuck in the middle while a thousand poor, stupid kids were slaughtered. And he, leading the attack with Grandys, would be one of the first to die.
Marching in their ranks, they passed down the slope to the meadow and across until they were almost within range of the walls. Grandys raised his right arm. Everyone stopped.
Castle Rebroff looked even more formidable from here. It had towering granite walls, not cored with rubble but solid stone all the way through. The gates were made from many crisscrossing layers of hardwood, each layer reinforced with iron on both sides. The water in the moat was at least ten feet deep and the steep banks were bare, greasy clay that would be a nightmare to climb. How many of the men could swim? Few people in Hightspall could. And there were hundreds of guards on the walls, able to fire on the unprotected army from shelter, while Rochlis was said to have another thousand battle hardened troops inside.
“I am Axil Grandys,” Grandys bellowed at the gates. “The Five Herovians have come back from the dead. With might and magery I will take Castle Rebroff by nightfall. Surrender now or die, for I take no prisoners.”
Several of the guards on the wall laughed, though the mirth soon died into an uneasy silence. Every Cythonian had been taught about Grandys and his impossibly daring deeds in the early days of the Two Hundred and Fifty Years War. Now the man himself had come back from the dead. Back from stone.
An archer fired an arrow, which soared out towards Grandys. He watched it fall, unmoved, until it smashed against his opalised chest.
“You cannot win,” he said.
A guard let out a fearful cry. He was hastily dragged out of sight.
“No?” said Grandys. “Excellent. I hate surrenders. Charge!” He spurred his horse forward.
Rix had no choice but to go with him. The golem-like Syrten was on his left, on foot; the cadaverous Rufuss riding a long way to the right. Rix could not see Lirriam or Yulia, though he had no doubt they were there, if only to prove Grandys’ initial words.
Arrows began to fall. Rix held his shield up but it only covered part of his body and his horse not at all. Behind him, men were screaming in agony, falling, dying. He did not look back.
A bombast came spinning through the air towards them. It was the size of a large beer barrel and packed with enough alchymical material to blow down a three-foot-thick wall — or kill several hundred soldiers if it landed among them. No Hightspaller had yet mastered the basis of its shattering power. The rare bombasts that did not go off on impact were liable to explode when anyone tried to open them.
Grandys spurred across until the bombast was flying directly for him. Yet again, Rix wondered if the Herovian was insane. If it exploded, not even he could survive it.
Grandys reached up with both hands as if to catch the bombast like a football. The impact drove him backwards out of the saddle and slammed him into the ground. Rix froze. The soldiers let out a great cry of dismay. Was Grandys dead? Had he broken his neck? Was the bombast about to explode?
He rolled over, bounced to his feet, then punched his right fist through the end of the bombast. Tearing out a thick fuse like a red chuck-lash, he raised the bombast high. Evidently he had rendered it harmless.
Grandys signalled to Syrten, who went lumbering across to intercept a second bombast in one arm, and then a third with the other. Dozens of arrows were fired at him, and many hit, but none could penetrate the thick opal encrustations that had been created by Lyf’s own magery.
A fourth bombast, aimed higher, soared way over their heads and landed in the middle of the army, going off with a shattering blast and scattering men, and pieces of men, across a hundred yards of the meadow. Rix could not help himself. He looked back and the carnage was so terrible that he threw up on his saddle horn.
“On!” roared Grandys, waving Maloch above his head. “No setback can stop us. On!”
He sprang into the saddle and spurred on, holding the bombast under his left arm and Maloch with his right. Whether through sheer luck or the protective magery of Maloch, no arrow fell on him or his horse.
He calls the death of a hundred man a setback? Rix thought. He’s a monster; and I’m following him, so what does that make me? But the command spell would not let him go.
He hurtled in Grandys’ wake. No magery protected Rix now, and until a few days ago he had been Lyf’s number one enemy, so every soldier on the wall would want the credit for killing him. His shield could not protect him from a side-on shot, and he expected to die with an arrow through the head or belly at any moment.
His horse, struck by three arrows at once, stumbled and went down. Rix barely heaved his feet from the stirrups before it hit the ground and rolled. Had he been trapped in the saddle it would have broken his pelvis, if not his backbone.
He got up, aching all over, and ran. Grandys was a hundred yards ahead, approaching the moat, beyond which was the great gate. But he wasn’t stopping. He was spurring his horse on as though intending to jump the moat.
It wasn’t possible. No horse could jump that distance.
And neither could Grandys. His horse was falling towards the water when Grandys scrambled up onto the saddle, his broad feet spread, and leapt forwards. His weight pushed the unfortunate horse down and it hit the grey water with a colossal splash. When it cleared Rix saw Grandys, who had landed halfway up the greasy clay slope, dig in his heels and drive himself upwards. Arrows were raining down around him, and breaking on his chest armour, but none hit any unarmoured place.
Away to the left, Syrten was lumbering towards the moat, converging on the gate with a bombast under each arm. Dozens of arrows shattered on his encrusted skin. As many more were stuck into the bombasts, quivering with each of Syrten’s thumping footfalls. Fifty yards to the right, Rufuss was across the moat and climbing the wall like an armoured stick insect. He reached the top unharmed and began dealing death to the defenders with cold deliberation.
An arrow sliced across Rix’s right arm and blood flooded out, but if he stopped to attend it the archers would pierce him with a hundred more. He leapt over the edge of the moat, skidding on his boot soles down the slippery clay towards the water, then dropped his shield. He was a strong swimmer and could go a reasonable distance bearing the weight of his sword, but carrying a shield was out of the question.
Now Syrten was running straight down the bank of the moat. Could he swim? Would he even float? Rix could not imagine it. Syrten ran into the water and disappeared in spray, as if he were intending to pound across the bottom and up the other side.
Rix sheathed his sword and dived deep, arms out in front of him. The water was deeper than he had thought, around fifteen feet. At least, at that depth, the force of the arrows would be spent.
He swam slowly, conserving his strength. He had to burst out of the water and scramble up the greasy slope in seconds or they would shoot him dead. The water was murky and he could not see a thing. He swam ten yards to his left, so the archers could not predict his exit point, and shot out.