"Yes, I know," said Arthur. "Will that telephone work there?"
"I believe it will work anywhere within the Maze," said Dusk as they emerged out into the fresh air onto a high catwalk that linked two of the second-line bastions. "Provided it is cranked at exactly the right speed. Fortunately Captain Drury is an expert."
"I'll call Dame Primus again and hurry –"
His words were lost in a titanic boom and blast of air, and a rumbling underfoot that shook the catwalk and made several of the officers lose their balance.
"What was that?" asked Arthur.
"A mine," said Dusk grimly. He looked back at the outer line of bastions. The southwest bastion was no longer visible, hidden beneath a plume of dust and smoke that coiled up several hundred feet and billowed out horizontally as well. "They must have tunnelled under in the last few days … and they have no shortage of Nothing-powder."
Beyond the giant, dark cloud, the sound of the drums increased in tempo and volume.
"They're assaulting through the breach!" said Dusk. "We must hurry!"
He led the way at a run, with Arthur close behind. The cloud of smoke and dust quickly overtook them, shrouding them in its choking mass as they were admitted into the second defence line.
Behind them, the surviving bastions of the first line threw down their bridges, closed all connecting gates and doors, and prepared for the onslaught of seventy-five thousand New Nithling soldiers.
Twenty-nine
"THERE IS NO answer, sir," said the Operator. "We cannot raise anyone in the Dayroom of the Lower House." Arthur handed the telephone back to Captain Drury and shook his head.
"No answer! I can't understand what's happening. There should be someone there. And we should have had help arrive by now!"
Marshal Dusk did not say anything. They were in the third-line central-west bastion now. There were still individual bastions holding out in the first and second lines, but the defences had been breached in numerous places, all in the space of an hour.
"Is it going to get worse at night?" asked Arthur, with a glance at the setting sun. "Or better?"
"I fear it will make no difference," said Dusk. "The moon will be bright, and there are fires enough to light their way."
There were many fires burning below them. The New Nithlings had brought a new weapon to bear, a tube that squirted something like super-concentrated firewash in a tight stream. They had used this "incandescent lance" – as it was quickly dubbed – to burn through thick stone walls as well as gates. The only thing that had saved the third defence line thus far was that the enemy appeared to have used up all their supplies of these tubes, which could only be used once.
"Has that runner come back from the Star Fort?" Arthur asked.
"No, sir," replied one of the staff officers. His head was bandaged, the result of the last attempted escalade by the Nithlings against the central bastion. Their ladders had seemed too short up until the last moment, when they had thrown them against the wall and activated some mechanism that extended both ends by several yards. Arthur himself had fought in the effort to turn back that attack, an intense and horrible few minutes where New Nithlings seemed to be pouring over the walls like water.
Arthur's soldiers had repulsed the attack, but the New Nithlings were massing once more below. Thousands and thousands of them, filling all the space between the defence lines, safe now because the defenders had run out of fire-wash and even easily procured debris to throw at them.
"They're forming up!" warned Dusk. "Stand ready!"
His order was echoed all around the walls of the bastion and out across to the bastions on either side, picked up and repeated by officers and NCOs.
"You had best get to the Star Fort now, sir," said Dusk. He spoke very quietly, close to Arthur's ear. "I do not think we will hold them this time."
"I'm not going," said Arthur. He looked at the crocodile ring on his finger and thought of his home and family. They all seemed so distant now, so far away. He could not easily even summon up their faces or voices in his memory. "I will use the Key against them. We will prevail."
He held up the baton and it caught the last light of the sun, transforming not into the unwieldy sword of Sir Thursday but a slim, needle-sharp rapier that caught the sunlight and reflected it back in a coruscation of beams that lit up all the bastions with a clean brilliance that cut through all smoke and dust.
"The Army and Sir Arthur!" shouted Dusk. Once again, his cry was picked up across the bastions, but it was louder now, more heartfelt.
"Sir Arthur! Sir Arthur!"
The Nithlings below answered with their drums and their shouts. Rank after rank began to march towards the bastions, all abristle with ladders and hooked lines and smoking firepots to hurl.
"Sir Arthur!"
It was not a war cry. Captain Drury was tugging at his elbow. But he was not holding the phone. He was pointing to the far west, where the disk of the sun had finally disappeared, though some of its light still lingered in the upper sky.
"Sir! Look!"
Arthur blinked and blinked again. Through the drifting smoke, in the dim twilight, he couldn't at first make out what Drury was pointing at. Then he saw it. The sky-line had changed. There was a mountain range immediately to the west, perhaps three miles distant.
A cheer rose up amid the shouts of "Sir Arthur", the wild cheer of unexpected hope.
"The spike," said Marshal Dusk. "Sir Thursday lied. He did destroy it."
"No," said Arthur. "I think maybe I did … I threw a sorcerous pocket in it."
"A what?" asked Dusk.
"Never mind," said Arthur. For a moment, he savoured an intense feeling of relief. The pocket was destroyed and the Skinless Boy with it. His family was safe. But the relief was very brief. Arthur looked out the embrasure and, though he had not held much hope, was unsurprised to see that the New Nithlings, though they might have lost some of their reinforcements to tectonic strategy when the tiles moved, were unfazed.
I wonder what I can do with the Key, Arthur thought as he looked out at the solid tidal wave of New Nithlings. I suppose I can use it to make me stronger and quicker and tougher than any Nithling or Denizen. But there's just so many of them, it won't make a difference in the end. They just keep coming … it is like being in a natural disaster. There's just nothing that can be done … and those New Nithlings just want to be farmers, it's all so crazy –
A hand suddenly jerked Arthur back behind the merlon.
"Pardon," said a familiar voice. It was followed a moment later by the sight of a barrel flying over the battlements, two burning fuses trailing sparks as it went past. Four seconds later, there was a huge explosion near the base of the wall.
"A grenado," said Sunscorch, Wednesday's Noon, with a wide grin. "Biggest we could make. And there's plenty more where that came from."
"Sunscorch!" exclaimed Arthur. "You came!"
"Aye, me and a few others," said Sunscorch.
Arthur sat up as more explosions boomed beyond the walls. The bastion was suddenly packed with Denizens. There were blue-jacketed sailors lighting fuses on barrels of Nothing-powder and firing them out of squat wooden mortars they'd set up at the back. There were Commissionaire Sergeants and Metal Commissionaires forming up in ranks alongside the soldiers. Midnight Visitors flew overhead, raining long metal darts down on the New Nithlings.
A crowd of buff-coated Artillerists rushed past, wheel-barrowing smaller barrels of powder and piles of canister shot, discussing how low they could depress the bastion's cannons, ecstatic that they could once again use their weapons.
"Dame Primus is preparing to sally below," said Sunscorch. "She's going to use the Keys, and she's got the Monday superior Denizens and Wednesday's Dawn and old Scamandros and everybody we could bring who's ever fought a Nithling or who says they have. About five thousand, all told, though they're still coming through."