Insurgency (Tales of the Empire Book 4) Read online

  The nomad prince sneered. ‘The pair of you together could not defeat me, princeling. Before my army swarm through your palaces and rape your women, I will kill both of you. I will balance your head at my hip with your brother’s on the other. I swear it on the horse father.’

  In answer, Quintillian simply wheeled his horse, turning his back on the brute, and began to walk it slowly back towards the gate. Kiva gestured to the prefect and the honour guard turned to escort them back. The Khan’s son sat astride his horse with an unpleasant sneer plastered across his face until the imperial party reached the gate. Somewhere up in the towers, there came the sound of artillery being prepared.

  ‘No one looses a shot!’ Kiva shouted up at the battlements. ‘Leave him.’

  By the time the pair had entered the city once more and climbed to their accustomed place in the Eyrie, with its all-round excellent field of vision, Ganbaatar had gone.

  ‘That went well,’ Kiva said with an odd grin.

  ‘I didn’t think so,’ Quintillian grunted.

  ‘There are factions among the enemy, Quint. They’re only budding at the moment, but given time we might well find the Khan and his son at odds. And Aldegund never even attended. Was he invited, I wonder? The Khan never even mentioned his northern allies.’

  ‘It’s moot, Kiva. There’ll never be enough time for the enemy to fall apart. You’re the expert on reading people. Did you see the Khan’s face when you told him you thought he was uncertain about his ability to take the city?’

  Kiva shook his head. He’d been mid-speech at the time, trying to goad the man.

  ‘Well, I did. I looked into his eyes. There was no uncertainty there, Kiva. The Khan is absolutely certain of his success. No hint of doubt. And when he said he’d have us within days, he meant it. He has his next step planned. He only sought a parlay because he wants to conquer an intact city, not a ruinous heap.’

  The emperor sighed as he leaned on the damp parapet. ‘What’s next, then?’

  ‘That.’

  Kiva followed his brother’s pointing finger up to the nomad camp. It took a moment for him to realize what it was they were looking at, but when he spotted it, his spirits sank a little further. The tall shapes of the Khan’s siege engines were beginning to move.

  ‘How do we deal with them?’

  Quintillian shot him a sour look. ‘We don’t.’

  ‘What?’

  The marshal sighed. ‘Our artillery is smaller by necessity, since they’ve been constructed on towers. Even given their increased height, they won’t be effective unless the enemy bring theirs close. The Khan’s weapons, on the other hand, are designed for distance and weight, to bring down walls. They can happily sit them outside our artillery range and they’ll still be able to hit the outer walls, though maybe not the inner. Under normal siege circumstances I would order sallies of men – probably light horsemen with pitch buckets and torches – to burn the damn things. But these are not ordinary circumstances. We’ve precious few defenders as it is and the Khan has men he can just throw away, and will be willing to do so. Any sally we make is doomed to failure and will leave us even weaker. We can do nothing about them.’

  Kiva was incredulous. ‘So we just sit here and let them demolish the walls?

  ‘We don’t have much choice. There’s one hope, and that’s a combination of lack of experience and poor construction. There will be precious few trained artillerists even in Aldegund’s army, and none in the Khan’s, so there’ll be a lot of messing up, and it’ll take them a day or more to attain any real level of accuracy. And though the Khan was familiar with what he was building – presumably he’d been given designs by Aldegund – his men had never built them before. I expect that one in three or four will break or fail in some way, and the others will probably exhibit odd deficiencies. I’m willing to bet they will be able to hit the outer walls but if they want to hit the inner walls they’ll have to bring them close enough to put them in danger of our own artillery. So we should still maintain the inner walls, no matter what.’

  The two men watched in unhappy silence as the Khan’s war machines were brought forth. The range of Velutio’s artillery was easy enough to identify from the damage still visible on the greenery. The enemy did not seem inclined to collect their dead for burial and had apparently left them for the birds.

  The hours wore on and the sun climbed to its zenith as the siege machines were manoeuvred slowly across the battlefield from the nomad camp towards that of Aldegund. Kiva didn’t have to ask why. They were making for positions where they could concentrate on the ravaged sigma area. Sure enough, by early afternoon they were being loaded and prepared, just out of artillery range from the towers. The first engine loosed just as the bell in the city’s high temple of Jovinus rang out the eighth hour of the day. The stone fell dreadfully short, a good bowshot short of the moat, even. The second and third shots went equally awry. By the time every war machine had loosed at least one shot, three missiles had disappeared into the moat with a ploop sound, and the rest were scattered around the churned, muddy turf opposite, their resting places lost amid the scattered corpses from the previous day.

  By the time the same temple bell chimed the ninth hour, they were beginning to hit the already fractured stonework of the walls that flanked the sigma. From their viewpoint, Kiva watched helplessly as time and again huge boulders pounded into the defences and squared blocks, sections of parapet and pieces of wall the size of carts fell away into the moat. The enemy artillerists were not good, but the machines were numerous enough that sheer quantity was having the desired effect. The temple’s tenth bell came with the beginning of sunset. The great golden orb slid slowly down behind them, and the city walls were now throwing out huge dark shadows across the carnage-littered turf. Over the hours, Kiva had watched the machines slowly and methodically pick away at the remaining defences, and the breach at the sigma had now widened from 50 paces to around 80. Quintillian’s considered opinion was that the Khan was widening the gap to allow his army to flood the walls in force. The previous day had taught them how costly it was to try and secure the breach with only a narrow approach. The next time they would be able to send in enough men to overrun the defenders.

  But, thought Kiva, that still wouldn’t give them the inner walls, and not one stone had come that far all afternoon.

  As he watched the shadows lengthen, something new was happening in the enemy camp. Kiva leaned heavily on the rampart and peered, squinting, into the dim light of dusk. A new machine had been brought from the nomad camp and was now being dragged into position in a gap between the other onagers. He frowned. A huge barrel of what looked like iron, seemingly beautifully decorated along its length and settled amid a wooden frame on eight great wheels, it took a team of two dozen horses to heave it into position. What fresh nightmare was this?

  Even as he watched, the engine was secured in position and a cart appeared from behind. Sitting atop the cart was a huge stone sphere, almost perfectly carved. The cart was positioned in front of the machine and a ramp was carefully secured. Then, with surprising speed, a dozen men climbed onto the cart and slowly heaved the huge boulder forward inch by inch until it reached the gradient of the ramp, where it rolled, guided by grooves, into the huge tube. The clong as the stone sphere rolled to a halt in the metal cylinder was audible even at this distance.

  ‘What is that thing?’ he asked Quintillian.

  The prince was frowning. ‘I don’t know. But I remember seeing it represented on the painting in the Khan’s palace. It was on the ground behind the Khan’s father in the beheading scene. Whatever it is, it’s important and it’s old, and it’s come all the way from the lands of the Jade Emperor, just like that battering ram.’

  There was a great deal of activity around the strange device and it seemed to be jacked up at the front several times. The enemy’s siege engines fell silent suddenly, and Kiva and Quintillian looked at each other, tense.

  The boom as the weapo
n discharged echoed around the surrounding hills and valleys for some time. Initially, the brothers could do nothing but stare at the machine which, upon firing, had rolled back quite some way, apparently killing and wounding some of its own crew. The smoke pouring from it suggested that the machine had been ruined during the explosion and it took quite a while before the shouting on the walls drew their attention.

  Kiva had assumed that something had gone wrong. The Khan’s new weapon had exploded. It might even have been destroyed. But as they turned to the sigma, drawn by the calls, both men felt their hearts lurch. The weapon had not failed at all. In fact, it had been used with perfect and deadly accuracy.

  The huge, round stone had struck the high inner wall of Velutio through the gap left by the sigma with such force that it had almost brought the whole section of wall down on its own. The depression in the stonework left by the blow was the epicentre of a whole web of cracks and ruptures that spread across the surface as far as the towers to either side. The boulder itself, as far across as a big man was tall, had shattered on impact and now lay in two pieces at the foot of the wall.

  The brothers stared at the badly-damaged wall. The men atop that section were now fleeing it for the relative safety of the ramparts to either side.

  ‘Gods, what is that thing?’

  ‘Some kind of new onager, obviously,’ Quintillian breathed. ‘I knew he was up to something. The Khan was too confident for comfort at the meeting this morning.’

  ‘Do you think it broke? There was a lot of smoke.’

  ‘I don’t think so. See?’ They peered into the gathering gloom. ‘They’re readying it the same as they did when they arrived. They plan to use it again.’

  ‘I don’t see a second boulder.’

  ‘No, but they must have one, else they wouldn’t be readying it.’

  Kiva peered back at the shattered stonework of the world’s most powerful walls. ‘Will the defences survive another of those?’

  ‘Who can say? I wouldn’t place good money on it, though. And if they can fire two shots, then they’re probably prepared for more too. I can half imagine a row of those carts lined up at the back. It’s too late in the day. They won’t use it again now, as it’ll be dark in half an hour. See how a huge force of Aldegund’s men has come out to guard it. There’s not even a chance of us getting close enough to sabotage it. And I wouldn’t know how to sabotage an iron tube even if I got there.’

  ‘So we can expect it again in the morning?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. It looks disastrously like the inner walls will go tomorrow morning.’

  Kiva swallowed nervously. ‘Then we’ve lost Velutio.’

  Quintillian turned to him, a hard, determined look in his eyes. ‘We’ve lost the walls, Kiva. At this point just the walls.’

  ‘But losing the walls means losing the city?’

  Quintillian fixed him with a flinty look. ‘What makes the empire?’

  Kiva’s brow folded at the question, but slowly he began to nod his understanding. ‘The people, Quint.’

  ‘Precisely. Land can always be recovered. Walls can be rebuilt. People are the only thing that matter. As long as you save the people, you preserve the empire. And we still have to believe that Titus and Jala have succeeded – that Ashar will come. Despite everything that’s happened this year, he’s our oldest ally. Once he knows Jala is safe, he will want the head of the man responsible, and that’s Aldegund.’

  ‘So we drag it out.’

  ‘We drag it out, Kiva. We fight to the last to give our friends time to come to our aid. As long as the people survive.’

  ‘So we get the people out,’ the emperor nodded. ‘Pull them back to… to the palace?’

  ‘Yes. It’s the biggest palace in the world. And since half the population left before the enemy arrived there should be room to shelter them within it. And the palace has strong walls. Maybe not as strong as these ones, but strong enough. The Khan couldn’t possibly bring his monster or the big stone-throwers through the city. He’ll have to take the palace the hard way – by steel and sinew.’

  ‘And what happens when he does?’ Kiva asked quietly. ‘I mean, if Ashar doesn’t come in time. We both know the enemy are numerous enough to overwhelm us quickly.’

  Quintillian slapped his fist into his palm.

  ‘We make the enemy pay for every street they take. Once the wall falls we get every armed man in to pull down houses and barricade streets. We make rat traps and killing zones for the archers. We make it impossible to get horses and bolt-throwers up the streets to the top. We slow them down by making them fight hard for every alley. And while we’re doing that, the civilians begin to abandon the palace. They can leave one ship at a time through the dangerous straits to the island of Isera and the summer palace. They’ll be safe there for days. That will hopefully buy us all the time we need. Even if all of Velutio falls, Isera can hold until Ashar arrives.’

  Kiva nodded. ‘I shall instruct the officials to start pulling everyone back to the palace and to begin shipping them to Isera immediately, along with adequate food and supplies for two weeks.’

  Quintillian took a deep breath. ‘And I shall obtain a plan of the city and begin working on blockading streets and turning it into a death trap for the Khan and his allies.’

  Beyond the wall, torches began to spring to life along the line of the enemy. Now, between Aldegund’s fort to the north and the camp of the Khan to the east, the enemy war machines and their enormous military guard filled the gap, sealing off the landward approaches to the city entirely.

  Kiva peered at that huge iron tube, golden reflections of the torches dancing along its length like fireflies.

  Tomorrow, Velutio would fall.

  Chapter XXVIII

  Of Final Preparations

  The fourth day of the siege of Velutio dawned grey and miserable. Although the rain had yet to fall, the ground had been given a wet sheen by a heavy morning mist, and the air was hazy and filled with droplets. Fitting weather for the last day of an empire, in Kiva’s opinion.

  He and Quintillian had watched from the very first light as the enemy brought their ammunition carts from the rear of the camp. If the defenders had still harboured any hope of the walls holding and the city making it through another day, the sight of seven vehicles rumbling slowly into the war machine zone, each bearing a huge stone sphere, killed it. Kiva had felt a lurch of dreadful certainty then. Quintillian had said that the walls might take two more strikes but no more than that. Would the enemy, angry at the defiant city, just launch all their remaining missiles into the heart of Velutio?

  He looked along the walls. They were almost empty. A sparse scattering of soldiers remained, purely to give the illusion of barely-adequate defence. The rest had been busy through the hours of darkness, sleeping in four-hour shifts in order to best use what little time they had. The civilians were all now in the palace at the highest point of Velutio, and ships were steadily ferrying 100 people at a time, crammed among the hold, the oar benches and the narrow walkway, from palace to island. The isle of Isera had served many purposes in its time. From summer palace of the emperors to prison during the civil war, it had become a retreat of learning and academia under Kiva’s father. Now it would be a haven. Surrounded by an impenetrable ring of deadly rocks that barred all external shipping, the only access to the island was a narrow channel from the city of Velutio. Now the island was filling with citizenry, ships plying that channel back and forth time and again, despite the fact that only brave captains sailed the dangerous route even in the day, let alone during the hours of darkness.

  The people of the empire would make their last stand on Isera. And if Titus and Jala and the might of empire and god-king combined didn’t come, Isera would serve out its time in a new way: as a cemetery and a memorial to a vanished empire.

  A crash from behind made Kiva wince, and he turned to see a mushroom of dust rise above the Forum of the Bull, some two thirds of the way up the slope to
the palace. The once great Library of Carius was no more, its glorious brick and marble façade, which had been lauded by a millennium of architects, now scattered across the road as rubble, forming a barrier to the enemy. A tear formed in the corner of Kiva’s eye and he wiped it angrily away. This was no time for misplaced sentimentality, though he wondered in passing if the officer in charge there had had the foresight to remove 100 generations of learning and literature from the building before destroying it.

  Similar puffs of dust on a smaller scale were rising all over the city as street after street became a trap in the new labyrinth that was Velutio. The emperor heaved a sigh of regret and turned his back on his city to watch the activity among the siege engines. Even now a cart was being manoeuvred into position in front of the huge iron city-killer. The brothers watched from their lofty perch as a gang of men heaved the boulder down the ramp and into the tube and the cart was removed. A flurry of activity, and finally the crew stepped as far away from the dangerous weapon as they could. A pair of men stayed at the side of the tube and carried out whatever arcane procedure primed the machine. There was an ominous silence suddenly among the enemy, and an officer near the sigma breach called for the soldiers on the walls to stay where they were and be ready.

  The enormous boom once more echoed around the hills but, unlike yesterday’s first shot, this time the two sons of Darius on the parapet of the Eyrie knew what to expect. Rather than staring in befuddlement at the weapon, they watched the boulder hit the huge inner walls of Velutio. The effect was devastating. The rock hit close to the site of the previous shot, the machine not having been moved, just sunk slightly into the damp turf overnight. The impact struck the stonework about two yards below the previous indentation. Miraculously, the wall stayed up, though the top swayed alarmingly for a moment. Even from here, Kiva could see that there was a tiny fissure in the wall that went right the way through, as well as the two huge dents and the now omnipresent cracks that spidered across the surface. Kiva had been right. Another blow anywhere near centre and the wall was gone.