THIRTY-SIX

SIDONIUS DIDN’T SPEAK on our way back to the camp.

As soon as we reached his command tent he gathered his captains to council. He ordered my attendance, though there were no introductions to his men. He demanded every fragment of information I could dredge forth, from the depth the Turholm’s walls extended beneath the ground to the number of men under Dieter’s command, from the strength of the fortifications to the quantity of stores. It took every ounce of concentration I could muster to answer him while balancing honesty and my desire to retake the throne with keeping my court and my people safe.

When at last Sidonius had asked everything he wanted to, he dismissed me, not deigning to include me in his battle plans. I left the command tent torn between wanting the battle over and wanting it never to start, trapped like an insect in the slow seep of sap. Anger and anguish about Dieter also warred within me.

The Ilthean camp was already abuzz with preparations, the soldiers at work sharpening their blades, testing their weapons and readying stores of ammunition. Their efficiency chilled me as I hurried to my tent and ducked inside. Roshi and Sepp were waiting for me, and the three of us talked long into the night, trying to stave off fear and uncertainty.

We all had friends behind those walls, and bloodshed was the morrow’s only guarantee.

When at last we retired, I tossed and turned, unable to sleep, finally rising as dawn glimmered just beneath the horizon. Tiptoeing past Roshi and Sepp, careful not to wake them, I stepped outside.

Two soldiers guarded my tent: I still wasn’t trusted. At least this pair didn’t question me but simply fell in behind when I chose to venture into the camp. An air of tense purpose pervaded the Ilthean, the soft comings and goings of those returning from duty or heading out to their vigil lending a scatter of pale shadows to the site.

At the camp’s perimeter I stopped. Ranks of soldiers stood gathered on the skirts of the plain, a great bulk of greaved and breastplated and helmeted men. Standards pierced the earth every twenty yards, the white snake of the south winding across a crimson background.

The arrangement of the men surprised me. This was not the thin spread of an army laying siege behind ditch and fortification. This was a force readying for frontal attack.

Morning revealed a causeway of packed earth which the Iltheans had laboured at overnight. Though not yet complete, the line of its path was still clear. The ramp would rise from the ground to the top of the walls, a walkway into the Turholm. Sidonius must have had all his men working on the ramp, to have achiveved so much in a single night.

The Iltheans waited in companies a hundred strong, ignoring the causeway for the moment. Instead they brought out their machines of war: the cartwheeled onagers, their spoons resting empty against their stops; the nimble-footed catapult called the scorpion for its stinging tail; and the bulkier ballistae, complete with crossbow bolts the size of a man. My heart cramped to see the weaponry being screwed together while other men carted forward armful after armful of ammunition.

As Sidonius approached, he fired commands like volleys into those flanking him on the right, and directed questions at three weary men to his left, their faces bleary with lack of sleep.

‘Fetch Matilde,’ he commanded at one point.

Someone pointed me out, and moments later his steps crunched behind me. I didn’t turn, just kept staring at the Turholm’s walls.

‘Lady,’ he murmured, folding his arms behind his back and joining my vigil with an air of satisfaction. ‘It’ll be ours in a week, if that.’

‘You’re very confident,’ I replied, measuring the ramp and trying to guess how many days would pass before it was completed. The Turasi would not be so complacent as to let construction continue unhindered. The last spans to the top of the wall would be hard-won now.

Some force kept me guarding the secret of the bolthole through which we’d escaped the Turholm, the revelation of which would see Ilthea boil inside the walls and overtake the Turholm with ease. I was determined not to aid the serpents so completely – and they didn’t even need it.

‘Ilthea didn’t become an empire on the strength of idle boasts, lady,’ Sidonius said. His easy certainty reminded me of his reputation, the emperor’s favoured general who had never failed to conquer.

‘Is that why you serve them?’ I asked, my voice icy.

His eyes were as cold and bright as the curtain of northern lights in a winter sky. ‘No. I do it because they took me in when my people cast me out. They are a better race, a people who understand loyalty and duty. The Turasi …’

‘Yes?’ I demanded. ‘What of them?’

He shrugged. ‘The Turasi are no more than barbarians making sport in the straw they share with their swine. You will see,’ he said, fervour lighting his features. ‘When you are crowned, you will travel to Ilthea and see what a city is. You will see what civilisation means.’

‘It’s a wonder Ilthea takes an interest at all if we are so vile,’ I said.

His answering look bordered on contempt. ‘The vilest of creatures can nest above a gold mine. Or iron ore mines, as the case may be.’

I let the rebuke pass unremarked. If we’d used our resources better, perhaps it would never have come to this.

It was midday when Sidonius ordered the attack to begin with a nod which trumpeters turned into bugling cries, triggering the Iltheans to thump their spears into the ground and set up a rattling of shields.

From the Turholm, silence answered the challenge.

The onagers fired first. With a smack of wood against their stops, boulders hurtled through the blue sky. The machines kicked out when they fired, the force of their own blow almost too much for the wooden frame. Most of the stones fell short, but two shattered down over the wall, sending back screams and the shriek of tortured masonry from inside the city. The ballistae sent enormous arrows arcing after the stones, and these flew truer, all but one breaching the walls.

The Turholm would not long withstand these men, even without their earthen ramp.

‘Now, lady,’ Sidonius turned to me after yet another stone inflicted its damage inside the walls. ‘Where does the city draw its water?’

I wanted to prevaricate or delay or even deny outright any knowledge. The best I managed was vagueness. ‘There’s a well in the city, and a natural spring in the heart of the palace. And the river, of course.’

‘Drawn by hand?’ he demanded, the condescension in his tone stiffening my spine.

‘No,’ I snapped. ‘It’s siphoned off upstream, and run through pipes to a reservoir inside the walls. The rain water collects there as well. If you’re thinking to drive them to their knees through thirst –’

‘That’s exactly what I’m thinking,’ he interrupted. ‘I suggest you hold back on claiming I won’t succeed because, all things considered, you’ll look foolish when I do.’

I ached to shove my balled fist into his face. Instead I turned back to the city as the machines fired again: buckshot this time from the onagers, and stinging bolts from the scorpions.

‘Cutting off the water is a siege tactic. This,’ I said, indicating the army, the machines, the earthen ramp, ‘Isn’t a siege.’

‘I’m not interested in a protracted affair. You tell me all the drightens were present when you left, but that may well have changed by now. Even if it hasn’t, they’ll have summoned reinforcements, not to mention those demons of the northern plains. If Dieter’s not bluffing and they are riding to his aid, then I face the uncomfortable circumstance of being stuck between the walls and the oncoming hordes.’

I wanted to claim my mother’s kin wouldn’t support Dieter over me, but a mutter from Grandmother warned me not to dare it.

Again the machines fired, their missiles this time trailing yellow flame. At least one took root inside the walls and soon tongues of fire licked skyward as cries echoed faint and thin.

His enemy distracted, Sidonius signalled an officer to sound the next attack. Within minutes the Iltheans marched forward in step, helmets and interlocked shields providing little access for Turasi missiles. A rain of Ilthean arrows sang through the sky to provide extra cover.

Ravens above, would they be inside today?

‘There’s also the matter of Dieter’s creature,’ Sidonius continued.

It took an effort to drag my attention from the Turholm. ‘What of it?’

‘What’s to stop him concocting an army of the creatures? Given time, he could swell his ranks until he outnumbers me.’

An army of Clays? I shook my head, though my heart raced. ‘They need blood,’ I reasoned. ‘He’d deplete his strength at the expense of creating them.’

Sidonius glanced at me sidelong. ‘From what Achim tells me, they need only a drop. If it were me, I’d judge the price worth the return.’

Only a drop. I shuddered. How many drops did a glass vial hold? Even if Clay was dead, Dieter could send golem after golem hunting me, each of them given life by my blood, each of them tied to me.

‘I must attend to the battle, lady. You might prefer to retire to your tent,’ he added, his tone less an invitation than an order. ‘This won’t be decided today.’

With that he stalked off, summoning a team of men and giving them orders to find and stop the water supply pipes even as he left.

I watched him go with my heart in my throat. Perhaps it wouldn’t be decided today – but it would be soon.