High up in his command tower, General Shao had been watching the battle with a great deal of satisfaction. Their tactics had been working well. They had thinned out the advance guard of the Tao Tei with their fireballs, many of which were still burning; they had used their mirrors to prevent the Tao Tei from scaling the Wall, thus causing the creatures to mill about mindlessly at its foot; and now his Eagle Corps, Tiger Corps and Crane Corps warriors were working together with devastating effect to pick off the rest of the creatures at will.
It was almost too easy. Like spearing fish in a barrel.
But then perhaps they deserved an easy victory. They had been working tirelessly for many years to produce the most effective weapons and the most highly trained fighting force imaginable. And the Tao Tei, formidable though they were, were really nothing but mindless beasts. Perhaps they had finally met their match. Perhaps this victory would mark an end to…
Then Wang, standing beside him, drew his breath in sharply, and everything changed.
Shao looked at Wang. But Wang’s eyes were fixed on the battlefield below, where the Crane Corps were still diving and swooping. Wang, though, was not looking at their own troops. Instead he was observing the Tao Tei with narrowed eyes. General Shao followed his gaze—and then he too gasped in astonishment.
Something was happening among the Tao Tei. The mindless beasts that had been packed so tightly at the base of the Wall it was almost as if they’d been offering themselves up for slaughter, were now thinning out, pulling back—and not haphazardly but uniformly, like soldiers following orders. Indeed, General Shao saw an increasing number of the creatures lifting their massive heads and extending their surprisingly long necks, as if receiving some form of signal. The Crane Corps were still diving, but now there were fewer and fewer of the creatures left for them to kill. Almost meekly, considering how voracious, how utterly savage they were, the majority of Tao Tei were not only retreating but moving into formation, lining up in ranks.
William and Pero too were watching the Tao Tei with astonishment.
“Jesus,” William murmured. “They’re forming up.”
With nothing left to kill, the Crane Corps soldiers were leaping back up onto the battlements, detaching themselves from their sky rigs. William was relieved to see that the Crane Corps commander, whose name might or might not be Lin, was one of them. Not all the Crane Corps soldiers had made it. William had seen several flying rigs hauled back up over the battlements shattered, bloodstained and empty.
Pero was peering beyond the ranks of Tao Tei, squinting into the sun. Now he nodded to indicate the distant desert.
“Look there,” he said. “Further back.”
William looked where he was indicating, wishing he could raise his hand to shield his eyes. Some way back beyond the furthermost ranks of the Tao Tei another group of creatures had emerged from the cloud of mist that now all but shrouded the boiling river. There were around a dozen of them, similar to the Tao Tei but taller and more powerful looking. Impressive and terrifying though these new creatures were, it wasn’t they that drew the eye, however. Like a ring of bodyguards, the larger creatures were surrounding a being that was truly monstrous. Its body was massive, with dark, translucent skin and a huge, distended belly. Its eyes were a vivid green, flashing in the sun, and even though he was some distance away William sensed that a fierce, unknowable intelligence burned behind them.
As he watched, the creature raised its head and opened its vast mouth, as though chewing the air. William saw endless rows of curved, glinting, razor-sharp teeth, each of which looked as long as his forearm. Indeed, the maw itself, opened to its full capacity, looked capable of swallowing half a dozen men with a single gulp. He looked on with awe and revulsion as horn-like appendages on the creature’s head, linked by a web-like film of connective tissue, suddenly began to vibrant, and to produce a hideous, high-pitched ululating sound, which caused many of the soldiers in front of him to cover their ears with their hands. As the sound drilled into his head and seemed to set his skull vibrating, William wished he could do the same.
Watching from her perch atop the battlements, Lin Mae saw that the awful, elongated screech of sound issued by the vast creature in the distance was having a marked effect on the now eerily ordered ranks of the Tao Tei. Straightening up, row after row of them, like soldiers going into battle, they each raised their heads and let out an answering wail of their own. Then, in perfect unison, the first row charged headlong at the Wall and crashed into it with all their might.
Lin Mae tensed as she felt the stone battlement tremble beneath her feet. She knew, though, that no matter how hard they tried the Tao Tei would never smash their way through the Wall using sheer brute force. Did they honestly think they could?
Nevertheless they kept at it. After the first row had moved out of the way, seemingly none the worse for wear, the second row charged. Then the third row. The fourth. The fifth. Despite being bombarded by fireballs from the trebuchets and hails of arrows fired down from the top of the Wall by the Eagle Corps, the barrage went on and on.
It was only when the sixth or seventh wave of Tao Tei had smashed into the Wall that Lin Mae suddenly realized with horror what they were doing. They weren’t trying to smash their way through the Wall at all. They were trying to smash the mirrored surface, which had prevented them from climbing it!
And they were having a great deal of success too. Peering down between two Eagle Corps archers, who were perched on their “nests,” firing arrow after arrow into the Tao Tei ranks, she saw that the mirrored surface was already cracking, splintering, falling away. And with each successive wave of Tao Tei pounding their considerable combined weight against the Wall, she saw more and more of the smooth mirrored surface disintegrating, revealing the bare—and climbable—stone beneath.
Wang was a man who usually kept his emotions on a tight rein, but at this moment his face was etched with anxiety. Shielding his eyes with one hand, he pointed at the vast creature in the distance with the other.
“That must be their Queen. She commands them.”
General Shao diverted his gaze, peering in the direction of the Strategist’s pointing finger.
“Attack the Queen!” he bellowed. “Attack the Queen!”
Tiger Corps soldiers buzzed around the trebuchets like wasps around a nest, making alterations. Meanwhile, within the vast machine-like workings of the inner Wall, ammunition was being made ready. This time the oil-coated cannon balls were linked together and embedded with dozens of razor-sharp blades. They were lit and then propelled, burning, along the iron chutes, towards the waiting scoops of the trebuchets.
General Shao watched as the trebuchets were loaded, one by one, with their deadly cargo.
“Fire!” he yelled, and the counterweights of dozens of trebuchets were released almost in unison, the great firing arms flipping up and over. His eyes narrowed in grim satisfaction as razored fireballs flew through the air towards the distant Queen. Surely nothing could survive such a deadly barrage. Within moments the Queen would be cut to flaming ribbons and the Tao Tei would become mindless beasts once more. Then it would simply be a matter of employing their superior firepower to dispatch the creatures until there was not a single one of them left.
The razored fireballs flew up and over the main mass of Tao Tei who were still hurling themselves in ordered ranks at the mirrored surface of the Wall. Some of the fireballs, Shao saw, would fall short, whereas others would overshoot their target. More than enough, however, would reach their intended destination. He clenched his fists, knowing it would only be a matter of seconds. Already the first of the razored fireballs was beginning its downward arc.