Amber gave a start as the deep horns were sounded. He had not expected any troops to be put in the firing line. The horns were followed a moment later by the heavy thump of Menin war drums. Two teams of drummers working in unison, shirtless despite the cold weather, were clustered around the eight-foot high drums carried by massive ox-like beasts from the Waste. He felt a shudder run through his body at the hypnotic rhythm, the insistent background to all his years of fighting.
On his left he saw Captain Hain, grinning even wider than before.
'Put that broken tooth away,' Amber advised quietly as the Bloodsworn trotted off at a canter. He was unsurprised to see his own troops held position; even with Major Darn to command them it was unthinkable that he'd be excluded from their ranks in battle.
The two men looked out towards Tor Salan, straining to catch sight of movement there as the Menin cavalry regiments answered the call to advance and started out towards the city. In less than a minute there came from the city an answering call, a reply to their challenge.
'Here comes your instruction,' Ayel spat. 'Mark it well!'
Amber saw a flicker of irritation cross Styrax's face, a rare thing, and enough to warn those who knew the white-eye lord. In the blink of an eye Lord Styrax had taken a long stride back, drawn Kobra, his broadsword, turned with blinding speed and lunged forward, all in one smooth movement.
Captain Hain was unable to stifle a gasp at his lord's unnatural speed, but no one moved as Lord Styrax stood with his arm fully extended over the high priest's shoulder…
Then Ayel reeled away, clutching his head, and a girlish shriek cut the air as he fell to his knees. Amber looked at his lord's sword: there, caught between the hand-length fangs at the sword's point, was the high priest's ear, severed as cleanly as if by a surgeon.
'Kohrad,' growled Lord Styrax to his son, 'pick him up and explain a few things to him, would you?' A practised flick sent the ear bouncing over the scrappy tufts of grass; what little blood remained on the magical blade was swiftly and greedily absorbed by the metal.
The younger white-eye bounded forwards and grabbed Ayel by the scruff of the neck and hauled him to his feet. He proceeded to slap the man around the face until his cries of pain quietened into sobs. 'That you are still alive is a gesture of goodwill towards your lord,' Kohrad snarled, his face barely three inches from Ayel's, 'but I promise you, if I ever see you again after you've carried our message to Afasin, I'll feed you to the minotaurs.
'Now, stand up and bear witness to what happens here today so that you may report every detail faithfully. Perhaps this will teach you about underestimating the Menin. You think we're savages because we crossed the Waste? You think we're fools, just because we're not natives of these parts?'
Amber caught some garbled words of protest, some begging, but it was cut short when Kohrad smashed a mailed fist into the High Priest's gut.
'Heard of Eraliave? The Elven general? No? Some say he was even better than Aryn Bwr, because he survived to old age.'
Amber could see the burning intensity in Kohrad's eyes. When Amber had left the Menin Army to travel north last summer, surgeons and mages had been trying to remove the magical armour that had been driving Kohrad insane with bloodlust. Amber had heard the experience had left Kohrad a shadow of his former self, but he saw now a spark still remained.
'In that old age, Eraliave wrote the classic treaties on warfare,' Kohrad continued, hauling Ayel forward to a good vantage point. 'One of his favourite sayings is particularly appropriate for this current situation: "A good general identifies his enemy's weakest point and attacks it; a genius identifies his enemy's strongest point and destroys it."'
'The very words Lord Styrax spoke to me,' whispered Hain beside Amber, 'the day he gave me the assignment.'
'The idea was yours?'
Hain gave a small shake of the head. T wish I could claim it, but he led me to it by his words. Only a fool wouldn't have worked it out.'
And so begin the lessons on how to think like more than a soldier, Amber thought wryly. I remember them well! Sadly, you won't enjoy all of them quite so much.
And further conversation was precluded by a new sound coming from the city. There were faint stirrings of movement on each of the hills. This far away it was hard to make out any detail, but because of what he had heard of Tor Salan's defences, Amber had a good idea what was happening.
Curled up on the ground was an enormous hinged arm of steel, stone and brass, fifty feet long. The 'shoulder' of this arm was connected to a rampart of reinforced stonework, from which ran four narrow passages, like gutters. A throne-like seat of stone was set into the front, where the lead mage would sit facing the plain beyond. There were a dozen more mages in each of the channels, all feeding their power into the lead man, who focused it and used it to animate the arm. As blistering trails of magic ran up and down the arm's brass rods, so the gigantic fingers would begin to twitch, then rise and flex as the arm itself rose up into the air. Within moments it would be ready to start grabbing rocks from the piles stacked untidily around the position and lob them with uncanny accuracy into any approaching army. The Giants' hands would quickly decimate the troops; total destruction would not be far behind.
'Look; there's the first, far right,' Hain whispered.
Amber saw the jerk of movement as one of the arms lifted into the air. From where they stood it looked like a stalk of corn shooting up in a field. No, Amber corrected himself, nothing so meek; a dog raising its hackles, perhaps, or a porcupine its spines.
In quick succession the other Hands rose jerkily into position. Amber couldn't begin to estimate the amount of magic required to lift such weights; he guessed every one of the mages would be stretched to their utmost limits.
As the cavalry regiments cantered towards the Giants' Hands in neat formation, the men in grey bearing their banner of negotiation had reached the halfway point. They were riding hard, as if desperate to keep ahead of the soldiers.
Let's hope the dog doesn't get nervous and snap at the first hand it sees, Amber thought.
The enormous weapons twitched as the grey men passed the range markers and continued. Several dipped, moving with remarkable speed and grace to grasp boulders and twist back into a throwing position, knuckles resting on the ground so the mages didn't have to hold the weight indefinitely.
'Come on, you bastards,' breathed Hain, craning forward, 'wait for your orders before firing, I don't want to have to explain that to Lord Styrax.'
Despite himself, Amber grinned. Seconds passed and Hain's prayers were answered as the group in grey passed unharmed, no hail of enormous bits of rubble filling the sky.
The Bloodsworn and the cavalrymen were still well short of the thousand-yard marker, and they would stop before they reached it, for they were only a feint. The battle — and the siege — would be won by that handful of men in grey cloaks. Amber found himself holding his breath as the delegation reached a safe point and stopped, supposedly waiting for emissaries from the city to come out and negotiate with them one final time.
But before Tor Salan's mercenary captains could organise an official reception, the men in grey produced horns from under their cloaks and began to sound a crisp series of notes. Amber was too far away to hear the tune clearly, but he didn't need to: he'd heard the same notes as they'd marched on Thoteclass="underline" Chetse army orders, played on the long horns that curled around a man's body.
The call to arms was played twice in quick succession, and in the silence that followed the men threw off their cloaks. For a moment nothing happened, then the horsemen turned and advanced on the nearest Hand. The Land held its breath with Amber, waiting for the tipping point — which came in the form of a sudden flurry of activity around the Giants' Hands as the ranks of infantry defending the mages formed up in protective wedges.