The Tears of the Sun (7 page)

He turned his back on the wall, pulled the knot on his trews' waistband and mooned the useless scorpion; a knight's plate armor left the seat bare to grip the saddle.

Dangerous,
he thought.
But it puts fresh heart in the men.

The Gervais contingent roared and laughed and followed suit, waggling and slapping their buttocks at the wall and shouting remarks that started with
shoot this, you sheep-fuckers
and went downhill from there. The thermite charges lit with a hissing dragon's roar, and off-white smoke poured heavenward. Metal bubbled and ran, and concrete broke with a snapping crackle. Guelf yanked his trews up, pulled a new slip knot and pointed his sword west . . .

“Back! Let's help Chezzy stick it to them again!”

He led the way down the old footpath, mantlets clanking and rattling beside them. Over the rattling sound of his men double-timing in pounding unison and the banging of the mantlet's steel wheels came a sudden
wheep
, like an arrow hugely magnified.

“Hurry!” he roared.

The muffled impact came with a scream, high and pain-laden. Guelf pounded up onto 10th Street, into chaos. The men he'd sent were milling about, on the ground . . . he clenched his jaw against the welling of despair—Chezzy and Chezzy's squire, Terry Reddings, a huge bolt transfixing his body. Terry was his wife's younger brother and as like to Layella as a twin.

God! Thank you! He's facedown. I couldn't bear to see his dead face . . .
her
face—dead . . . She's
not
dead, she's not!

He laid about with the flat of his sword, banging on mail and shocking men back into sense.

“Get that mantlet set up, get us some cover!”

He turned to see Father Stanyon working on Chezzy.

“He's alive? What's happened to him?”

“Crossbow bolt in the scapular.” The doctor-priest jerked a thumb to the right. “They got a man over the wall and he sneaked up close enough to take a shot. Young Reddings is dead, and Sir Czarnecki isn't. But the bolt hit a vein; luckily not an artery. I can't budge it and we need it out to cauterize it. I have to get him back to the cars. Probably need to get him to Hermiston before we can do anything.”

Guelf nodded. “Brandon! Take three men for stretcher duty. Take Chezzy and . . . and . . . Terry, Terry's
body
, back to the rail head. Evacuate all nonessential personnel,
now
. Charlmain! Get those drums unloaded all over the bridge, spill the oil, now!”

The flat
tung
of the scorpion twanged again and everybody threw themselves flat. This one
was
properly anchored, which meant they could reload it quickly. The bolt went overhead with a tooth-grating
wheep
and then a
whunk
of impact as it buried half its length in the soil. They worked, using the mantlets as best they could to shield themselves. Another bolt hit one, and half the shaft stood through it; a man stumbled back swearing as the sharp three-sided head stopped a handsbreadth from his face, then dropped flat with a yell as crossbowmen volleyed at his suddenly exposed form.

Beyond the walls a slowly growing brabble sounded; pounding feet, equipment clanging and thumping against other men or walls and stairs, shouts loud enough to be almost comprehensible. That meant hundreds of men at least, massing in the open space just inside the walls. When there were enough of them the gates would spring open.

“They're getting ready to sortie,” he muttered to himself.

He looked up and was shocked to see the morning was gone and the sun was in the west. A squire handed him a couple of hardtack biscuits and a lump of rock-hard cheese strong enough to make you feel that it was biting you, and the sight brought on a sudden raw hunger that had nothing to do with taste and everything with fuel. He worried at both, and drank from a canteen of Umatilla water cut one-to-five with bad brandy to kill the bugs.

Then the banners of House Stavarov, a glitter of lance-points and footmen trotting behind; just far enough away to see clearly, as they reined in beside the flag of House Odell. He breathed out in relief—they might not be enough, but he
certainly
didn't have enough without them.

“Pile it all up!” he shouted. “The tents, the food, tear down those corrugated-iron sheds. There, there, there! We'll stop them in these ruined streets just north of here!”

The stink of blood, sweat, spoiling food, dust, oils and distillates was compounded by the filth three hundred men could void in a single day of hard and ceaseless work.

The last pedal cars were already pulling up on the rail line to the west, ready to take them out. Viscount Chenoweth, Thierry and Guelf met at the railhead; it was close to sundown.

“Are we 'bout ready?” Chenoweth asked.

“Yes.” Guelf answered shortly. Then, seeing anger begin to darken the other's eyes, apologized. “Too long a day and too much sun, my lord. What's the plan, now?”

To his relief, Chenoweth nodded an acceptance for the implied apology. “They're going to launch an attack soon; it must have taken this long to get enough troops up from the main battle south of town. Thierry's specialists will fire the Highway 84 bridge the moment they do, then double-time over to the Westgate Bridge and fire it with incendiary bolts from the prearranged positions. It's thick with the HD40 now. We'll all converge on the railcars.”

Constantine Stavarov's face fell. “Well, fuck your mother, don't I get to
fight
?”

“Yes, you do, Sir Constantine,” the Viscount said patiently. “You have to hit the head of their column when they come out of the city and across the bridge. Hold them. Then I hit them. Then Sir Guelf hits them in the flank. Then you withdraw, we withdraw, and we spring our little surprise on them when they're nicely stalled just where we want them. Understand, my lord?”

“Da, da. They come out and I charge them down this street here.”

The heir to Odell sighed. “Exactly. My lords, Sir Constantine and his people will hold until we get there and then take the first pedal cars off. Most of Thierry's specialists will follow in the next two cars. They won't need their reloading crews and the machines will be laid in advance.”

Guelf nodded, frowning as he looked for his squires. Brandon and Charlmain were . . .
back by the rails, arguing
? He strode back, a blistering rebuke behind his teeth. They were confronting a child of eleven. Odo Reddings, his wife's youngest brother and his youngest page.

“God's
teeth
, Odo! I sent you back to Hermiston with orders to accompany the wounded into Portland,
hours
ago!
This
is no place for a page!”

Odo looked up at his lord, his defiant, angry attitude towards the squires crumbling. “I missed the train, sir. Do I take the one with the Chehalis
menie
?”

“Brandon, detail someone to get this brat on the train with you—”

“And what is going on here?”

At the angry voice, Guelf turned, baring his teeth at Thierry. “A little bit of a snaggle. My page is still here!”

“Get your men into position, Mortimer. I'm going up.”

Guelf nodded, his cheeks burning with embarrassment.
And Odo's butt is going to burn!

“Brandon, Charlmain; back to your position. Sir Thierry, the padre will be at your orders. I'll see you at the rendezvous.”

Guelf and his squires double-timed it to the formation point in the tangle of dead streets. As Guelf strode up the line, checking his men's readiness, he saw many reach for their scapular or the saint's medal they wore around their necks, murmur a brief prayer and tuck it back.

With a sour smile, he did the same. The plain gold disk dangling on a fine gold chain around his neck was set with a small piece of jasper. Unless somebody took it in hand and looked at it, they wouldn't realize his old St. Valentine medal was gone, nor what the new one signified.

The Ascended masters are
real
. So is their power.

Then a shout of: “Here they come!”

He skipped backward a few steps to get a line of sight. The city gates were open, and at least two hundred men were quickstepping out with more behind; the assault party was Pendleton city militia from the looks, wildly mismatched armor but long pikes, coming straight down the road to the bridge and heading equally straight for Constantine's banner. His position would be invisible to them . . . hopefully until too late.

“Face forward, all of you. When the signal comes we're going to run down this street, turn right—that's
right
, everyone—into the cross street and hit, in a wedge, splitting the join between the Chehalis men and the enemy. I want you all to think that you're wild Celts! Like the McClintock woodsrunners from the far south, fangs out and hair on fire. We have to hit them like a sledgehammer; it's our asses if we don't. Charlmain, you're there! Brandon, there!”

He took his place at the head of the lines, spearmen and men-at-arms with their shields forward, the lighter-armed crossbowmen on the flanks.

“Nobody look back! Everybody, eyes front! You'll follow me!”

He turned his head over his right shoulder, waiting for the flash of red, stamping his feet rhythmically and hearing the whole
menie
take it up as they jogged in place. Just a few feet forward was the entrance to the north-south alley they had numbered
two.
He could hear the fight struggling back and forth, like the sound of sea surf in storm as a bristle of long Pendleton pikes slammed up against the County Chehalis men-at-arms and spearmen. Chenoweth was at the other end, though he couldn't see him. Thierry's flag signal would synchronize the attack.

Thierry's squire swung the red flag from his position on top of the post and Guelf lifted his sword and knocked down his visor. The world shrank to a bright slit, and he put his left fist four inches below his chin. The shield covered him from face to knee, and he tucked his shoulder into it, making his armored body into a battering ram. Then he filled his lungs and screamed the order:

“With me,
forward.
”

Everyone stepped off together, synchronized by their stamping unison. He moved at a trot, building momentum and speed as his
menie
came behind him in a thick wedge of muscle and bone and steel and wood and leather, a harsh stink of sweat and oiled metal like a wave moving with them, a crashing rhythm of hobnailed boots and clattering steel. Voices echoed, muffled by the visors and booming from the curved inner surfaces of the big kite-shaped shields:

“Forward for Portland! Haro!
Face Gervais, face Death!
St. Valentine protect us!
Haro!
”

Ahead the clatter and thump of close-quarter combat, the unmusical crash of steel on steel, like scrap falling on a stone floor. The grunting and panting of the heaving shoving match, shield against point or shield, men crushed forward by the weight at their backs and forced into the enemy ahead. Shocked screams of pain as steel bit home, shrieks of animal rage and fear, the patterned bellow of war shouts from the men of County Odell:

“Dismas, Dismas, Saint Dismas protect! Odell, Odell,
Odell!
Haro! Haro!”

They hit the enemy force locked with the Odell and Chehalis men, and the sound turned shrill as they realized they were being flanked and the crossbow volleys struck home. He rammed his shield into a pikeman's unguarded right side with an impact that knocked into all his joints and the small of his back, smashed him off his feet and into the press of stamping boots below and thrust over and down into a man's neck above the breastplate. The points of spears and gisarmes slammed past him from behind, thudding home in faces and guts or screeching off armor with tooth-grating tortured squeals.

Odell's oliphants were sounding
retreat
. Guelf kept his head moving as he fought; you had no peripheral vision with a visor down, but he could feel the Pendleton men crumbling. He could also see Constantine Stavarov, shieldless, his visor knocked away, with blood spattered across his flushed high-cheeked, snub-nosed face and the white showing all around his eyes as he swung a two-handed war hammer with a thick spike on the other side in a blur of smashing, stabbing motion.

He was either laughing or just giving a bestial roar of joy, mouth like a red-and-white cavern. It was impossible to hear him in the tumult, but it was utterly obvious he wasn't going to obey any trumpet-call to retreat and probably hadn't even heard it. Two of his squires grabbed him neatly in what was obviously a rehearsed maneuver, each throwing an arm about him to pin his arms to his sides, pushing their shields forward to guard all three as they backed up with their lord's feet almost off the ground as he screamed and struggled wildly.

Stavarov's
menie
turned and ran west, to the waiting railcars and retreat. Viscount Chenoweth's men and Guelf's plugged the hole at the intersection, holding the enemy at bay while Thierry's siege engineers and artillerists worked behind them in a ratcheting clack and clatter of machinery.

Smoke billowed upward as the bridge was fired, black and oily and rank with a scent of burning petroleum seldom smelled these days. The Pendleton men crumbled away, but behind them were ranks of oval hemispherical shields like sections of tower wall, each marked alike with an eagle and thunderbolts. The grim faces behind the low domed helmets and faceguards looked completely unfazed by being cut off from reinforcements by the fire. They moved in a unison like the bristle of a porcupine's quills around an eagle standard, and the points of long javelins cocked backward with a ripple on brawny thick-muscled arms.