Darksoul. Anna Stephens

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СКАЧАТЬ weeks ago allowed fucking thousands of South Rankers into the city to reinforce the defenders. What if they’ve sent for the rest?’

      ‘Sire, we are doing all that we can. Progress is steady. Yesterday we held a bridgehead for the better part of three hours,’ Skerris added.

      ‘What do you want, a fucking medal?’ Rivil shouted. ‘We’re running out of artillery for the trebs and a bridgehead is not a bridgehead unless it accomplishes something other than the deaths of our men.’

      ‘Standard divide and conquer, Sire, and the same tactics will apply if the remainder of the South Rank does come. It may not look like it, but we’re doing well. We’re winning.’

      It was probably the worst thing Skerris could have said. Rivil’s face purpled and saliva flew. ‘Winning? Does this look like fucking winning to you, fat man? We’re living in tents and shitting in fields while they live off the provisions of an entire city. They have months of supplies in there, hospitals, armouries, inns and cooks and clean clothes …’

      Rivil stopped talking, and neither Galtas nor Skerris moved to fill the silence. Rivil’s temper had been shortening by the hour this last week. He faced the city again just as the lead trebuchet unloaded its stone at the wall. The ground in front was littered with spent boulders and giant slabs of rock that had been cracked off the outer face, all of which further hindered the ladder teams and siege towers.

      ‘Skerris, send the men, ours and the Mireces. Full assault. Galtas, you’re going with them.’

      Galtas sputtered a laugh. Go into the city? As part of a ladder assault? ‘Sire, I’m not Rank-trained. I’ll be too slow up the ladder. I could better serve—’

      ‘The gods will watch over you,’ Rivil interrupted. ‘So you need not be afraid. If the Mireces have the balls for it, I’m sure you do too. I want you in Rilporin and I want definitive proof that my father is dead. These bastards are too motivated for my liking; the king clinging to life might be enough for them. Then I want you to do something to get us in, either frontal assault or a quiet infiltration. Either will suit.’

      ‘Do something?’ Galtas echoed. ‘Such as?’

      Rivil snarled at him: ‘Improvise.’

      Galtas’s face was wooden, unresponsive, but he managed a bow and plastered an insincere smile across his mouth. ‘As you command, Sire,’ he said stiffly. ‘I’ll see to the orders immediately. General, shall we?’

      He stalked across the field towards the half of the Third Thousand whose turn it was to die today, his ears straining behind him for Rivil’s voice telling him he was joking. It didn’t come. Galtas would be running up the inside of a siege tower and out across a gangplank on to the wall while archers loosed shaft after shaft at him, or he’d be scaling a ladder along with the Rankers, up into enemy territory with arrows, rocks and boiling oil being poured down on his head, to roll on to the allure and face a thousand defenders.

      Galtas was going to die.

      ‘His Highness is getting a little fractious, eh, milord?’ Skerris said as they marched towards the assault teams. On his right, Galtas could see a swarming mass of blue-clad Mireces readying themselves, their second siege tower, this one covered in fire-proof animal skins, already rumbling towards the wall.

      ‘Fractious?’ Galtas said, and then bit down on his response and chose other, less volatile, words. ‘He chafes at the delay. He is of course too valuable to risk at the wall, and so there is little he can do until we have forced an entry. He wishes to fight alongside his men, to lead them in battle.’

      Galtas suspected Rivil wanted no such bloody thing, but he couldn’t exactly put forward his theory that Rivil just wanted the big chair and the shiny crown and someone else to do all the actual governing for him.

      ‘If it is the Lady’s will, he will get that chance,’ Skerris rumbled. ‘As for you, what’s your preference? Tower or ladder?’

      ‘I suppose a quiet way in through a gate is out of the question?’ Galtas quipped and Skerris laughed, slapped him on the back and knocked him off balance. ‘I would value your opinion on this one. Which is more likely to get me killed? And of course, there’s the matter of my disguise for once I’m in the city.’

      ‘Disguise?’

      Galtas tapped his arm, the blue of his shirt visible between the half-sleeve of his mail and the thick leather vambrace. ‘Not sure I’ll get access to the king’s quarters or anywhere else dressed like this.’

      ‘What did you have in mind?’

      ‘I’ll need the shirt off one of your corpses,’ Galtas said. ‘Clean, preferably.’

      Skerris nodded slowly. ‘I understand. As for the way in, if you’re quick and the gods love you, the ladder’s your friend.’

      I suspect the ladder’s my death, Galtas thought sourly. Still. The Lady’s will.

       THE BLESSED ONE

       Fourth moon, morning, day twenty-two of the siege

       Mireces encampment, outside Rilporin, Wheat Lands

      There was a crackle to the air, and the fine hairs on the nape of Lanta’s neck and along her forearms stood erect. The gods were so close now, ever-present, like the scent of a lover on skin. She didn’t need to be in a sacred space to hear Them now; Their voices were everywhere and Their commands were simple: take the city, slaughter the inhabitants, burn the temples. Kill or convert, but leave no one alive who held the Dancer and the Fox God in their hearts.

      Commands that filled Lanta with joy and holy fire. There would be thousands for sacrifice once the city fell, thousands whose blood would wet earth dedicated to the Dark Lady and Gosfath, God of Blood.

      ‘Your will, Red Ones. All this to your glory, all this in your names. Rilporin will fall and your children will rise in its place. Gilgoras will be yours.’ Lanta knelt in the grass of a spring morning, surrounded by the stink of thousands of warriors waiting their turn to fight and die.

      No cave-temple rock walls lit with fire watched her prayers, no cold stone dug into her knees, witness to her ritual pain. Lanta knelt in the light of the world and the gods were there with her, in a country from which They’d been forced a millennium before. A shiver ran across her skin. They were under the same sun as her, no longer separated by an impenetrable veil but merely its tattered remnants. Gilgoras trembled beneath Their presence and Their vengeance would be terrible and beautiful in its glory.

      She waited, but the Dark Lady did not summon her. Lanta’s disappointment was keen but she could understand the gods’ delight in being back in Gilgoras, free to roam Rilpor, Listre and Krike and visit those pockets of true believers that Lanta was convinced must still exist. The gods would speak when They needed to. They came when They chose, not when Lanta wished it. A lesson hard learned many years before. Until then, the children of the Dark Path knew what they had to do.

      The Blessed One finished praying and eased herself to her feet, the sun warm on her scalp and the breeze gentle across her cheek. The gods may not have spoken, but still They hovered close, Their bloody wings outstretched across the army, СКАЧАТЬ