City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [170]
Into the Citadel and towards one of the broad arches surrounding the quadrangle. Lupus dismounted, helped her down, handed his horse over to a comrade. He lowered her onto a chair in a side room and wrapped her carefully in a blanket.
Beami was febrile and tears drenched her face, though she had stopped crying now.
‘Beami, I’m stunned by what you did,’ he whispered, his tone full of admiration.
But his words, like all other sounds, seemed so thick and distant.
As they strolled along the street, crowds of soldiers brushing past them, Abaris clasped the hand of his long-term lover, Ramon.
‘We are at war now, my dear,’ Abaris informed him. Above the helmeted heads of soldiers from the Regiment of Foot, he could see the metal hulls of the invading fleet. ‘Are you ready to work your hoodoo?’
Ramon reached under his vast black cloak to where, fastened on his left hip, were two animation relics he had designed himself. They were like hand-held metal dream-catchers, each consisting of a brass circular rim about a handspan across, filled with fine webbing and decorative muscovite mica. They were called Eigi, and one in each hand would suffice for these numbers. Abaris looked for a vantage point, and gestured to Ramon that they should climb the external steps of a three-storey whitewashed building just up ahead.
They proceeded slowly through the mass of soldiers, and then upwards, to the flat roof, where they enjoyed a spectacular view of the potential battleground. Extending out among the roofs either side of them were dozens of archers garbed in the green and brown uniform of the Dragoons, and they were firing remorselessly downwards. Now and then a runner would come by to dump a fully stocked quiver beside them, collecting the empty ones for refilling.
The rows of houses just in front had collapsed where that marvellous Beami woman had been at work. Most impressive, Abaris concluded, to be able to have such an impact. Such a wonderful use of cultism with Brenna-based devices to disassemble the natural world. He was not one for that side of their business, but could appreciate a well-devised relic when he saw one.
Below, the battle surged, violently loud. In thick trails of metal-covered flesh, the Empire’s regiments pooled into the streets heaped with rubble and debris from earlier. The two forces clashed awkwardly over such terrain. The grey ships – constructed from no element Abaris knew of – loomed vast and smooth and featureless. The so-called Okun came clambering out of the large holds, but struggled to achieve mass due to the destruction all around. And Abaris noted there were rumel following – red-skinned warriors with black armour, stepping more cautiously over the pulp of the dead.
The dead . . .
Foot soldiers piled in, thick rows of bodies that seemed too close together to manoeuvre – and the front lines were downed, men ripped apart by sabre or shredded by claw. More filled in behind – this was like a well of the future dead. At the rear came several lines of Dragoons on horseback, equipped with lances and maces – an odd tactic to use them so early, Abaris thought. They soon found themselves at the front, and fared fractionally better, the animals trampling down Okun, maces smashing the shells and cracking them open. Troop movements were fluid. Horses began to fall in that horrific silent manner. Abaris seemed so detached from it all up here, viewing the theatre of war from this distance. Dying screams and bellowed commands blurred into incoherency. People were dying without any context. Both cultists were familiar enough with death, but on this scale, it was something else, and they had to wait long enough for there to be sufficient numbers of dead to make what they intended to do worthwhile.
‘Let us begin, dear,’ Abaris declared, and Ramon held up the two Eigi.
Abaris reached beneath his cloak to retrieve the chargers, and slotted them into the handles of the devices Ramon was carrying. He took one of the