“Dios mio…” Pero muttered.
William gaped, but couldn’t speak. He literally couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The creatures now bursting from the smothering cloud of spray, revealed for the first time beneath the unforgiving desert sun, were not animals but monsters. They barreled en masse towards the Wall, hundreds of them, thousands of them. And as they came they screamed their terrible, wailing war cry; a sound of rage and hunger and misery. It was as if they had burst from the very depths of Hell, bringing the screams of the tormented with them.
The closer they came to the Wall, the more William and Pero could make them out. Each one of the beasts was the length of a grizzly bear, or a great ape, with a solid, muscular body that was nevertheless lithe enough to propel them across the desert sand at an incredible speed. Their skin, plated like armour, was green and crocodile-tough, with a ruff of hyena-like fur on their backs, and although it was hard to tell at a distance, each plate seemed to be marked or inscribed with a translucent pattern of swirls. Their heads were massive and shark-like, dominated by huge, blood red mouths filled with countless rows of sharp, jagged teeth. Their eyes, by contrast, were small and deep-set, and were positioned not on their heads but on either side of their wide, barrel-like chests. Although the creature William had fought and killed the previous night had reared up on two legs to attack him, these monsters were racing across the desert on all fours, impeded not in the slightest by the fact that their claws were huge, club-like, and inset with curved, black, razor-sharp talons.
A shudder of primal terror ran through William’s body, yet mixed in with that was a scintilla of admiration, even awe. In all his travels he had never seen a creature so well equipped to fight and kill. He only hoped the Wall would stand firm against what was destined to be a devastating attack, and that the many and ingenious weapons of their captors would be enough to repel the invaders.
5
Up on her sky rig, Lin Mae gripped her two long lances tightly and tried to stay calm. The wind, which she could feel blowing through her hair, brought the awful screeches of the Tao Tei, which alone would have turned an ordinary man or woman’s guts to water. But she had trained for this. She had been born for it. She took long, deep breaths and tried to find the point of stillness in the center of her body. When it came to the battle she would draw her strength and her focus from that stillness. Whatever happened today, she would not be found wanting.
Still standing on top of his command tower, Wang beside him, General Shao silently observed the oncoming horde. He was anxious, though not for himself. He feared for the city of Bianliang, which the Wall had been designed to protect, and for the one million people who lived there. If the Tao Tei breached the Wall… If they reached the city…
He quashed the thought.
The Tao Tei would not breach the Wall.
He and his troops would not fail.
He would not allow it.
He watched the Tao Tei approach. He stood silently, waiting for them to get a little closer… a little closer…
Wang looked at him anxiously, but still Shao waited.
Come on, he thought, come on…
And then suddenly he sprang into motion, startling Wang.
Wheeling first left, and then right, he bellowed the order:
“Long distance weapon!”
As the war drums quickened, and General Shao’s order was relayed quickly along the Wall in both directions, the Tiger Corps warriors, responsible for engineering and artillery, leaped to the fore. Within the machine-like workings of the inner Wall, huge cannon balls were winched carefully from cauldrons of boiling oil and placed on iron chutes. Beside the chutes waited more Tiger Corps soldiers with burning brands, who set the cannon balls aflame and then launched them, trailing flames and heat, down the metal slopes of the chutes towards their destination. The chutes passed through channels in the Wall, allowing the flaming cannon balls to roll into the iron holders of the dozens of trebuchets ranged along the battlements. As soon as the cannon balls were in place, a trigger was activated and the trebuchets fired. Once their cargos had been released the trebuchets were primed again and the action repeated.
Perched precariously on the buttress, their hands still tied behind their backs, William and Pero watched as the sky became filled with massive iron fireballs. The noise as the trebuchets, one after another, launched burning metal death towards the advancing horde of green monsters was tremendous, almost but not quite loud enough to drown out the ceaseless screeching of the creatures themselves. And the effect of the fireballs was devastating. They rained down on the horde, smashing many of the creatures into instant extinction, and creating a barrier of rising flame between the Wall and the incoming tide of attackers.
Yet unbelievably the creatures kept coming. Many dozens of them, undeterred by the rain of missiles, burst through the flames leaping up around them, as if unaffected by the blistering heat. From his perch William could see that the creatures’ advance guard had suffered serious casualties. Yet he could also see that the creatures were so numerous that in the long run the death toll they had suffered from the fireballs alone would be so small as to be virtually negligible.
Another cry went up from the black-armored General on the command tower, his stentorian voice cutting through even the screeching of the creatures and the din of battle. William glanced up and across at the General, a distant figure whose black armour glinted in the sunlight, and wondered what he had said.
Whatever it was, he hoped it would prove effective against the enemy.
The drums changed tempo in line with the General’s new order, which in turn was relayed swiftly along the length of the Wall in both directions: “Raise the mirrors! Raise the mirrors!”
Perched on the battlements at the very front of the Wall, effectively standing on the edge of a precipice and peering down at the desert far, far below, Commander Chen of the Eagle Corps gripped his crossbow and waited grimly to be called into action. If all went to plan it would not be long now. The order to raise the mirrors had been given, and already, leaning forward, he could see bricks in the Wall flipping over rapidly, to reveal that on their backs were smooth reflective surfaces that caught the sunlight and deflected it in a shimmering wave of golden light over the advancing hordes of the Tao Tei. Within moments every single brick in the Wall had flipped around, to create a smooth mirrored surface that stretched the length of the Wall. It undulated and meandered through the Painted Mountains, absorbing the blinding sunlight and casting it back as a white glare.
He braced himself on his perch as the first of the Tao Tei approached the Wall at lightning speed and then hurled itself forward. It tried to scramble up the mirrored surface, digging in its talons, but the mirrors proved every bit as effective as it had been hoped. Unable to get any traction on the smooth surface, the Tao Tei sank back to the ground, its claws making a hideous screeching sound as they slid over the glass. Immediately more of the Tao Tei hurled themselves at the Wall, but they too fell back. Soon hundreds of the creatures were packed against the base of the Wall, writhing and squirming over one another in their desperation to rend and tear and devour. Chen smiled grimly. The Tao Tei were now exactly where the Corps wanted them to be. He raised his head, looking to his left and right, and gave the order.