A messenger reached the Captain. He assembled the officers. “It’s begun. The Lady has called the Taken to the lottery.” He wore an odd expression. The main ingredient was astonishment. “We have special orders. From the Lady herself!”
Whisper-murmur-rastle-grumble, everyone shaken. She was giving us all the rough jobs. I envisioned having to anchor the first line against Rebel elite troops.
“We’re to strike camp and assemble on the pyramid.” A hundred questions buzzed like hornets. He said, “She wants us for bodyguards.”
“The Guard won’t like that,” I said. They did not like us anyway, having had to submit to the Captain’s orders at the Stair of Tear.
“Think they’ll give her a hard way to go, Croaker? Gents, the boss says go. So we go. You want to talk about it, do it while you’re breaking camp. Without the men hearing.”
For the troops this was great news. Not only would we be behind the worst fighting, we would be in a position to fall back into the Tower.
Was I that sure we were doomed? Did my negativism mirror a general attitude? Was this an army defeated before the first blow?
The comet was in the sky.
Considering that phenomenon while we moved, amidst animals being driven into the Tower, I understood why the Rebel had stalled. They had hoped to find their White Rose at the last minute, of course. And they had been waiting for the comet to attain a more auspicious aspect, its closest approach.
I grumbled to myself.
Raven, trudging beside me burdened with his own gear and a bundle belonging to Darling, grunted, “Huh?”
“They haven’t found their magic kid. They won’t have everything going their way.”
He looked at me oddly, almost suspiciously. Then, “Yet,” he said. “Yet.”
There was a big clamor as Rebel cavalry hurled javelins at sentinels on the palisade. Raven did not look back. It was just a probe.
We had a hell of a view from the pyramid, though it was crowded up there. “Hope we’re not stuck here long,” I said. And, “Going to be hell treating casualties.”
The Rebel had moved his camps to within a half mile of the stockade. They blended into one. There was constant skirmishing at the palisade. Most of our troops had taken their places on the tiers.
The first level forces consisted of those who had served in the north, fleshed out by garrison troops from cities abandoned to the Rebel. There were nine thousand of them, divided into three divisions. The center had been assigned to Stormbringer. Had I been running things, she would have been on the pyramid hurling cyclones.
The wings were commanded by Moonbiter and Bonegnasher, two Taken I’d never encountered.
Six thousand men occupied the second level, also divided into three divisions. Most were archers from the eastern armies. They were tough, and far less uncertain than the men below them. Their commanders, from left to right, were: The Faceless or Nameless Man, The Howler, and Nightcrawler. Countless racks of arrows had been provided them. I wondered how they would manage if the enemy broke the first line.
The third tier was manned by the Guard at the ballistae, Whisper on the left with fifteen hundred veterans from her own eastern army, and Shifter on the right with a thousand westerners and southerners. In the middle, below the pyramid, Soulcatcher commanded the Guard and allies from the Jewel Cities. His troops numbered twenty-five hundred.
And on the pyramid was the Black Company, one thousand strong, with banners bright and standards bold and weapons ready to hand.
So. Roughly twenty-one thousand men, against more man ten times that number. Numbers aren’t always critical. The Annals recall many moments when the Company beat the odds. But not like this. This was too static. There was no room for retreat, for maneuver, and an advance was out of the question.
The Rebel got serious. The palisade’s defenders withdrew quickly, dismantling the spans across the three trenches. The Rebel did not pursue. Instead, he began demolishing the stockade.
“They look as methodical as the Lady,” I told Elmo.
“Yep. They’ll use the timber to bridge the trenches.”
He was wrong, but we would not learn that immediately.
“Seven days till the eastern armies get here,” I muttered at sunset, glancing back at the huge, dark bulk of the Tower. The Lady had not come forth for the initial scrimmage.
“More like nine or ten,” Elmo countered. “They’ll want to get here all together.”
“Yeah. Should’ve thought of that.”
We ate dried food and slept on the earth. And in the morning we rose to the bray of Rebel trumpets.
The enemy formations stretched as far as the eye could see. A line of mantlets started forward. They had been built from timber scavenged from our palisade. They formed a moving wall stretched across the pie-slice. The heavy ballistae thumped away. Large trebuchets hurled stones and fireballs. The damage they did was inconsequential.
Rebel pioneers began bridging the first trench, using timber brought from their camps. The foundations for these were huge beams, fifty feet long, impervious to missile fire. They had to use cranes to position them. They exposed themselves while assembling and operating the devices. Well-ranged Guard engines made that expensive.
Where the palisade had stood Rebel engineers were assembling wheeled towers from which bowmen could shoot, and wheeled ramps to roll up to the first tier. Carpenters were making ladders. I saw no artillery. I guess they planned to swamp us once they crossed the trenches.
The Lieutenant knew siegework well. I went to him. “How they going to bring up those ramps and towers?”
“They’ll fill the ditches.”
He was right. As soon as they had bridges across the first, and started moving mantlets over, carts and wagons appeared, carrying earth and stone. Teamsters and animals took a beating. Many a corpse went into the fill.
The pioneers moved up to the second trench, assembled their cranes. The Circle gave them no armed support. Stormbringer sent archers to the lip of the final trench. The Guard laid down heavy fire with the ballistae. The pioneers suffered heavy casualties. The enemy command simply sent more men.
The Rebel began moving mantlets across the second trench an hour before noon. Wagons and carts crossed the first, carrying fill.
The pioneers encountered withering fire moving up to bridge the final ditch. The archers on the second tier sped their shafts high. They fell nearly straight down. The trebuchets shifted their aim, blasting mantlets into toothpicks and timbers. But the Rebel kept coming. On Moonbiter’s flank they got a set of supporting beams across.
Moonbiter attacked, crossing with a picked force. His assault was so ferocious he drove the pioneers back over the second trench. He destroyed their equipment, attacked again. Then the Rebel command brought up a strong heavy infantry column. Moonbiter withdrew, leaving the second trench bridges ruined.
Inexorably, the Rebel bridged again, moved to the final trench with soldiers to protect his workmen. Stormbringer’s snipers retreated.
The arrows from the second tier fell like flakes in a heavy winter snow, steadily and evenly. The carnage was spectacular. Rebel troops rolled into the witch’s cauldron in a flood. A river of wounded flowed out. At the last trench the pioneers began keeping to the shelter of their mantlets, praying those would not be shattered by the Guard.
Thus it stood as the sun settled, casting long shadows across the field of blood. I’d guess the Rebel lost ten thousand men without bringing us to battle.
Through that day neither the Taken nor the Circle unleashed their powers. The Lady did not venture out of the Tower.
One less day to await the armies of the east.
Hostilities ended at sunset. We ate. The Rebel brought another shift to work the trenches. The newcomers went at it with the gusto their predecessors had lost. The strategy was obvious. They would rotate fresh troops in and wear us down.