Here Shines the Sun (23 page)

Aries looked down the wall. The Kald began breaking their tidy formations as randomly placed pipes broke up through the snowpack at their feet. Each was about two-feet in diameter with a steel, pyramid-shaped cap to break through the snow and ice. Beneath that were four brass nozzles bent and pointed horizontally. The pipes rose to about three-feet and the Kald began frantically bashing at them with their weapons.

“Gas!” ordered Aries, and the sergeant bellowed the same command to his men.

The two soldiers ran from the giant wheel to a pair of steel cranks. They began spinning them.

Below, within the sunken basin, Aries could hear the hiss of gas starting and the Kald began panicking. “Light ‘em up!” she ordered.

The sergeant slammed his mechanical fist down on a large, brass button. Although from this height Aries couldn’t hear the pops and clicks of the igniters within each of the pipes going off, she did hear the rush as some four-hundred nozzles roared to life, spraying fire out in all directions. The Kald began to scream and hiss as their bodies were seared. Others moved in quickly, bashing at the nozzles, trying to bend them or break them to prevent their fiery breath from wreaking more havoc. Aries raised one of her giant, black-steel fists into the air. “Shooters, take aim!”

Braken and his thirty men all turned, revealing themselves between the crenelations. Bolt-throwers were raised and Aries could hear the clicks and clacks as safety switches were disengaged.

“Fire!” she screamed as she brought her fist down. She ducked behind her rampart and placed her enormous hands over her ears.

In unison the men fired.
JINK!
The sound of so many bolt-throwers going off at once shook the wall. There were some distant screams as Kald fell from the air. Then the shots became more erratic as the soldiers took aim and began firing at their own paces. Aries spun and took a quick peek over the wall. By now many of the pipes had been broken or damaged and only a few fires here and there posed threats. The surviving Kald were now in a frenzy and they began to move in on the wall, howling and screaming their rage.

Aries looked at her sergeant. “Lower the pipes!” As the men began cranking at the giant wheel Aries popped herself through the crenelation and pounded on the steel wall with a massive fist.
Boom! Boom!
it sounded on the wall. “Archers!” she yelled.

About ten feet below her were a number of narrow slits. Thick arrows with broad, razor-sharp tips began to poke through them. Due to the sheer height of the wall, the bows and arrows used by the archers had to be powerful. Their weapons were known as grimbows and they were metal, spring-assisted contraptions with flexible steel wire instead of string. Only the strongest men could draw them, or more typically, those with powerful, mechanical arms. Like the grimbows, the arrows they fired were large, made of thick shafts of wood. Their nasty-looking tips all began tilting downward as the archers within the wall took aim. Then, with the sharp, metallic zipping sound that only grimbows made, they all loosed their deadly payload upon the Kald clambering up the wall.

Aries looked out into the distance as Braken and his men kept taking shots at the fliers. With their numbers so dwindled many began to retreat back down the valley and she saw the armored emissaries running as well. She cursed. The Kald, like swarming insects, tended to disregard their own numbers and press attacks even when all hope had failed. Rarely did they retreat. But of course they would retreat during the one battle that she couldn’t allow them to.
Grimluck,
she thought.
Always the damned grimluck.

“Braken, take out the runners!” she yelled.

There were a few sporadic
JINK
s as bolts were fired but many of the weapons were now out of ammunition. Bolt-throwers didn’t tend to hold very many of the heavy, devastating rounds they fired.

Braken turned and yelled at his men. “Bows out!” and the men began tossing their rifles and taking the grimbows from their backs.

Bows?
thought Aries. She turned to Braken, “Why aren’t you reloading?”

Braken’s red goggles looked upon her. “We’re out.”

“I know you’re out. Reload!”

Braken shook his head. “No, I mean,
we’re
out
.”

Aries was confused.

“The storerooms.” said Braken. “There wasn’t but two-hundred bolts left. We each took six. We’re
out.
”

“Oh, you mean out-out.” she said. Her little pink lips screwed up as she silently cursed. She looked across the way to her sergeant. “Artillery!”

Within the alcove, at the side of the wall, was a small brass box. The sergeant depressed a button and shouted into it, “Artillery!”

Aries popped her head out of the crenelation and took a quick survey of the situation. Between Braken’s men and the archers within the wall, almost all of the Kald below were already dead. However, the retreating emissaries and fliers proved to be problematic. Grimbows were too slow and they’d be out of range before they got them all. “Sergeant,” yelled Aries, not taking her eyes off the retreaters. “Quickly!”

Aries could feel the steel wall vibrating beneath her. At either end of the wall massive towers were built into the very sides of the mountain where enormous hangar doors painted with orange rust stood. They creaked and squealed as they spread opened, snow and ice breaking away and tumbling down the mountainside. From each tower bay, giant, steel tracks rumbled out, protruding a good hundred or so feet out of the towers. Then, emerging from the titanic doors, rolled enormous cannons, each mounted on a steel platform with a contraption of man-sized gears and chains that allowed it to turn and swivel in all directions, including straight down should the need ever arise. Each cannon was a good thirty-feet long with a barrel ten-feet in diameter. These were bolt-throwers built to an enormous scale.

“Left-side, take out the fliers!” yelled Aries as the sergeant repeated her commands into the box. “Right side, take out the ground units! Quickly!” Normally Aries would not concern herself with retreaters, but Brandrir had made it clear that he didn’t want any escaping. Any that did would end up flanking him and his men once they came out of the Grimwalk. Worse, they might see them come out of the Grimwalk and then the secret would be out. They would have to flood the corridor with molten steel, sealing it forever.

On Aries’s left the giant cannon rumbled out to the ends of the tracks. They seemed to bend slightly under the weight and she had to admit it looked rather precarious. However, she herself had fired the monsters a few times and knew that the Jinns’ engineering was perfectly sound. The gears on the cannon’s platform screamed as it slowly turned and twisted, the barrel raising slightly as it took aim. On her right the other cannon did much the same, only its barrel pointed slightly downward. “Fire when ready!”

Aries watched in anticipation. The seconds ticked away like minutes as she watched the retreaters getting ever farther away. “Fire already!”

KA-BOOM!
went the left cannon. There was a flash of bright red and yellow light and a plume of fire from the cannon’s mouth. The wall shook violently and Aries was sure she could feel her brain rattle in her skull as a wave of heat washed over her.
KA-BOOM!
went the right cannon.

Aries punched her fists together excitedly as she watched the cloud of fliers in the distance practically explode in the air. “Yes!” she whooped. That was the longest shot she had ever seen the cannons make. The giant, steel projectile kept on sailing and a moment later it impacted the side of the canyon a few miles off. Giant fragments of stone and ice crumbled and fell. Unfortunately, there were at least a couple dozen fliers still in the air. She cursed.

Below the fliers she saw the earth burst into fragments as the second projectile hit, tossing tons of snow and dirt into the air. She could see the distant, running emissaries all skid to a halt. The shot missed. The explosion had happened at least a half-mile ahead of them. She cursed again. “Reload! Reload!” she screamed. She turned to Braken. “Can you take them out?”

The big man shook his head. “They’re way too far out of range. Even for a bolt-thrower.”

“Fuck!” she spat. She turned to her sergeant across the way. “I said reload! Hurry!”

Aries could see her sergeant take a hard swallow as he looked at her. “They’re out, milady.”

“What do you mean, out?”

He swallowed hard again.

Out-out, of course,
she thought, rolling her eyes. She dashed off down the wall toward the left cannon, her giant fists swinging as she ran. At the end of the wall was a steel door set into the very side of the mountain. She didn’t bother to open it, and instead smashed through it with one hit from her right fist. Her feet slipped and stumbled on the fallen sheet of steel and she scrambled up the steps toward the tower.

The tower was more like a hangar bay and was downright cavernous. Through the open doors the chill winds swept and blew Aries’s hair against her face as she stood in the shadow of the cannon, screaming at one of the sergeants. “Are you sure you’re out? Did you check all the stores?”

“I’m… I’m sorry, milady.” he said. “But—”

Aries pushed him aside and scrambled toward the center of the hangar where a smaller set of steel tracks came up out of the floor and followed a path out the bay doors and to the cannon. These tracks were the ones that carried the giant shells that the cannon fired. It should have at least a couple on it ready to go, but it was empty. Where the tracks disappeared into the floor was a large hole with a steel ladder leading down, but Aries simply jumped down the twenty feet. She landed on her two fists which pounded the floor with a
boom
, but saved her legs the trauma. Here there were some more soldiers standing about, all with startled faces from her unexpected entry. The tracks led to a large, empty chamber.

“There’s no more,” said one of the men, pointing.

Aries ran across the room to a giant, steel crank set into the floor. She was short, so turning the thing was difficult even with her gigantic hands. As she spun the crank, the warehouse began to spin away from the tracks as another empty room made its way around. “Fuck!” screamed Aries. She spun faster. The second room turned away, bringing into view a third, just as empty, and finally a fourth room. This warehouse, however, had a steel door in front of it. Aries spun the crank until the room was locked into place and then she scrambled over to it. She heaved up at the door and it lifted about an inch before making a loud clank and stopping. Aries heaved with all her might, the hydraulics of her arms hissing and buzzing and the tank on her back screaming as it spewed billows of steam.

“It’s locked, milady,” said one of the men. “Only Brandrir himself has the key to unlock that one.”

Aries spat a curse and looked around. The door’s locking mechanism was beneath the floor. The key slot was on the wall beside it, so there was no visible lock for her to actually smash. “Apollyon below!” she screamed.

Aries lifted at the door again, straining to break the mechanism that locked it beneath the floor. “Lift!” she screamed, and a number of the men rushed over and began heaving up at the door.

“It’s no use!”

“Lift!” she ordered. Her face was turning bright red as she strained. The gears and hydraulics of her arms groaned. She could feel something starting to give. “Lift damn it!” she grunted. She felt something bend, and then there was the terrible sound of metal crunching and gears shredding. Aries yelped as her right arm at the elbow suddenly bent backward, then fell limp.

She stumbled, falling on her back. She struggled to get up, her right arm spitting fluids and making terrible grinding noises at the elbow, but never actually moving. With her left arm she pushed herself to her feet.

“Milady…”

Aries scrambled back to the ladder and grabbed hold with her left hand, its giant grip denting the metal. She heaved with her legs and her only working arm until she was up and back into the hangar above. She tore across the room and back down the stairs and past the door she had bashed open, and back out onto the wall.

“Horses! Get the horses ready!” yelled Aries, waving her left fist at the sergeant as her right dangled uselessly at her side. He immediately ran to the small box on the wall and hastily spoke some commands. “Lifts! Get the lifts!”

“Aries,” began Braken, falling into a run beside her. “What’s wrong with your arm?”

“We gotta give chase,” she said. “There’s no more shells.”

A number of soldiers began working in teams to wheel large, steel-framed boxes toward the north-face of the wall. Each were connected by a number of heavy chains that disappeared beneath the floor of the alcoves they were stored.

“I’m coming with you.” said Braken.

“Hurry with those horses!” yelled Aries.

The soldiers slammed the metal frames against the north-face of the wall and then began working on securing them to the crenelations with heavy chains. From the opposite side of the wall ten horses were led up and out from one of the larger barracks. They were Icelandic Great-Hoofs. They were big and stark-white but for the black markings beneath their eyes and the black stripes at their ankles. A number of men worked frantically to saddle them up.

“Is that it?” asked Aries. “Ten?”

“I can get more, milady,” said the sergeant. “But they’ll have to be prepped and brought all the way up. These ten are the only ones on standby.”

Aries growled some expletives under her breath.

“I need eight good men!” yelled Braken to his soldiers.

All thirty stepped forward.

Braken would have smiled if the metal grill of his mouth allowed it. “Give me the eight strongest and best equipped among you.”

Aries ran over to one of the lifts the men had installed at the side of the wall. A soldier handed her the reins to a horse and she led it inside, followed by Braken and his horse. Eight soldiers quickly grabbed their horses and started loading into the other lifts. With a groan of steel, the men pushed the lift forward until Aries and Braken were hanging over the edge of the wall. Then, to the slow clinking of chains, the entire cage began to make a jerky descent.