Darksoul. Anna Stephens

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СКАЧАТЬ into our lands, using our distraction against us. If the Legion can summon enough numbers, General Tariq won’t risk leaving the northern border open …

       We’re on our own.

      Durdil watched two men help a third into the stairwell, no doubt headed to the nearest hospital. It sparked a memory and he sighed, added checking on the numbers of wounded to the bottomless list of things he needed to do today. So many demands on his time, from appointing a new major into dead Wheeler’s position to combating the food hoarding, managing the production of replacement arms, and navigating the bloody council of bloody nobles and their endless, bloody stupid demands.

      A figure erupted out of the stairwell leading down into the gatehouse and shouldered men aside, clouds of dust drifting from his beard and his enormous shoulders. Renik and Vaunt, Durdil’s surviving majors, spun to face him, hands on sword hilts, squinting up at the giant.

      ‘Commander Koridam, sir? Commander, it’s me, Merle Stonemason,’ the huge man said, in case anyone could mistake him for someone who didn’t haul blocks of stone around all day. ‘You got a problem, Commander. So we’ve all got a problem.’

      ‘Merle Stonemason, what news then?’ Durdil asked heavily. ‘I do hope it’s not a big problem. We’ve already got rather a lot of those.’ Flippancy didn’t work on Merle, or on Durdil for that matter, and a cold weight settled into his stomach as the honest brow of the stonemason crinkled.

      ‘Me and a couple of the lads checked the wall this morning as per your orders, sir, like we done every morning. She’s been taking more of a pounding than a two-copper whore since this siege began and …’

      Durdil bit hard on the inside of his cheek. ‘And?’ he asked, straining for calm. He could feel sweat gathering at his hairline.

      Merle stroked his beard, loosing a small drift of dust and stone chips to patter down his shirt. He brushed them away and shifted, uneasy. ‘And like said lady of easy affections, the wall’s well and truly fucked, Commander.’

      Durdil went very still, blood tingling in every limb as something screamed at him to run, run anywhere, just away. ‘Wall’s what?’ he croaked, resisting the urge to press a hand to the slowly tightening band around his chest. Now was really not the time for another heart twinge.

      ‘We done some digging around, Commander, on the wall and in the guildhouse. Those repairs you ordered three years ago?’ He pointed to Second Last, the end that the East Rank had been bombarding ever since they’d arrived. Durdil nodded, dumb.

      ‘Didn’t happen. Oh, they did some superficial work down past Second Tower just to make it look like everything was going to plan, but it’s a veneer of good stone over rotten stone that should’ve been chipped out and replaced. You weaken that wall enough, it’s coming down, sir. Ain’t nothing there to stop it. And …’ He paused, awkward, and Durdil’s chest tightened a little more, ‘far as we can tell from the paperwork, well, the order to make good rather than mend come from the palace, sir.’

      Durdil inhaled through his nostrils with a squeak. His majors were silent statues of denial. It was testament to Durdil’s desperation that he got hold of Merle with one hand and dragged him to the outer edge of the wall, the huge man bobbing along behind him like a cork on a stream. Durdil leant between two merlons and jerked a finger across and downwards.

      ‘You telling me this wall will crumble? When? How long can it stand?’

      Merle didn’t protest being manhandled, probably too surprised someone had managed it to take umbrage. ‘Gatehouse is always the weakest point, Commander, on account of the huge fucking tunnel cut through it. But having walked the length of this wall this morning, and done what tests I can without alerting suspicion, I can tell you the section between Second Tower and Last Bastion is just as weak, where the repairs were supposed to get done and weren’t. She ain’t cracking yet, but when she does …’

      ‘They knew this,’ Durdil hissed, pointing at the trebuchets and the army behind them. ‘Rivil and that one-eyed shit Galtas knew those repairs hadn’t been made. Have they really been planning this for three years?’

      ‘Couldn’t say, Commander,’ Merle said as though the question hadn’t been rhetorical. Together they watched as one of the trebuchets unwound and unleashed a rock the size of a carthorse. It tumbled end over end towards the wall between Second Tower and Last Bastion, smashing into the stone with a jarring impact they could feel from the gatehouse. Merle leant dangerously far out over the wall and squinted along its length, as though he could see the damage from here.

      Then he stood back and rubbed his palms hissing together. He smelt of smashed rock and sweat. ‘If they’re not stopped, Commander, and emergency repairs aren’t made, I reckon they could get through there in a few more weeks. Same with the gatehouse, if they put their minds to it.’

      ‘I’m not liking this conversation, Merle,’ Durdil said, amazed at the steadiness of his voice. Bile coated his teeth.

      ‘Me neither, sir,’ the big man said, ‘but them’s the facts.’

      Major Renik was pale as snow and clutching at the healing wound in his side as though Merle’s words had reopened it. Major Vaunt had turned to a pair of runners and sent them for Durdil’s colonels, Yarrow and Edris.

       Three weeks to full breach and no reinforcements. Nothing from Mace and the West Rank, nothing from Tariq in the north.

       Three weeks until there’re Mireces and heathens killing door to door and raping anything that moves.

      Durdil bit down on the surge of nausea, sucked in air and tried to think. Merle was watching him with much the same expression as an ox facing the poleaxe. Durdil wanted to punch the merlons but knew it’d not only hurt his knuckles but, if Merle was to be believed, might actually bring the bloody wall down.

      ‘How many good masons do you have, Merle?’ he asked, working hard at maintaining a neutral tone.

      ‘Eight.’

      ‘Is that enough?’

      ‘For what I think you’re suggesting? No. But I can muster a dozen skilled apprentices for the carrying and the labour once we’ve chipped out the worst stone. O’course, we’re weakening the wall further by doing that. You need to get those trebuchets off us for a day at the least. Mortar’ll take time to set. Day and night’d be preferable, two days and a night ideal.’

      ‘Impossible,’ Vaunt murmured, ‘not unless we send a suicide mission out there in the middle of the night to disable the engines.’

      ‘Right now, there isn’t an idea I’m not prepared to consider, suicide missions included,’ Durdil snapped.

      Colonels Edris and Yarrow appeared on the top of the gatehouse and Renik moved towards them, speaking quickly and quietly, giving them the latest. Both men swore and then crowded close to Durdil to listen.

      ‘Get your masons and get on it. I want the stone ready and waiting to be put in as soon as the old stuff is removed. But I don’t want you doing that until you hear from me.’ Durdil glanced past Merle at his officers. They nodded, grim-faced. ‘I can guarantee each one of the masons a lordship and ten gold kings to the apprentices if the wall holds,’ Durdil added, wondering if he could.

      Merle looked affronted. ‘I don’t want so much as a copper СКАЧАТЬ