‘Maybe twelve hundred paces, if they stay out of the river.’
She grunted. ‘Two hundred extra steps won’t kill them. All right, Beak, north it is. Lead on.’
Aye, Captain. We can use the old walkway.’
She laughed then. Beak had no idea why.
There was a sound in war that came during sieges, moments before an assault on the walls. The massed onagers, ballistae and catapults were let loose in a single salvo. The huge missiles striking the stone walls, the fortifications and the buildings raised a chaotic chorus of exploding stone and brick, shattered tiles and collapsing rooftops. The air itself seemed to shiver, as if recoiling from the violence.
Sergeant Cord stood on the promontory, leaning into the fierce, icy wind, and thought of that sound as he stared across at the churning bergs of ice warring across the strait. Like a city tumbling down, enormous sections looming over where Fent Reach used to be were splitting away, in momentary silence, until the waves of concussion rolled over the choppy waves of the sea, arriving in thunder. Roiling silver clouds, gouts of foamy water-
A mountain range in its death-throes,’ muttered Ebron at his side.
‘War machines pounding a city wall,’ Cord countered.
‘A frozen storm,’ said Limp behind them.
‘You all have it wrong,’ interjected Crump through chattering teeth. ‘It’s like big pieces of ice… falling down.’
‘That’s… simply stunning, Crump,’ said Corporal Shard. ‘You’re a Hood-damned poet. I cannot believe the Mott Irregulars ever let you get away. No, truly, Crump. I cannot believe it.’
‘Well, it’s not like they had any choice,’ the tall, knock-kneed sapper said, rubbing vigorously at both sides of his jaw before adding, ‘I mean, I left when no-one was looking. I used a fish spine to pick the manacles-you can’t arrest a High Marshal anyhow. I kept telling them. You can’t. It’s not allowed.’
Cord turned to his corporal. ‘Any better luck at talking to your sister? Is she getting tired holding all this back? We can’t tell. Widdershins doesn’t even know how she’s doing it in the first place, so he can’t help.’
‘Got no answers for you, Sergeant. She doesn’t talk to me either. I don’t know-she doesn’t look tired, but she hardly sleeps any more anyway. There’s not much I recognize in Sinn these days. Not since Y’Ghatan.’
Cord thought about this for a time, then he nodded. ‘I’m sending Widdershins back. The Adjunct should be landing in the Fort by now.’