Half-naked children scampered across the battlements, their voices cutting sharp through the clatter and groan from the main gate, where the masons were repairing yesterday’s damage. A watch was turning over and the High Fist listened to commands snapping like flags behind him. He blinked sweat and grit from his eyes and leaned, with some caution, on the eroded merlon, his narrowed gaze scanning the well-ordered enemy camp spread out along the valley floor.
From the rooftop platform of the square tower on his right a child of no more than nine or ten years was struggling with what had once been a signal kite, straining to hold it overhead, until with thudding wing-flaps the tattered silk dragon lifted suddenly into the air, spinning and wheeling. Ganoes Paran squinted up at it. The dragon’s long tail flashed silver in the midday sunlight. The same tail, he recalled, that had been in the sky above the stronghold the day of the conquest.
What had the defenders been signalling then?
Distress. Help .
He stared up at the kite, watched it climb ever higher. Until the wind-spun smoke devoured it.
Hearing a familiar curse, he turned to see the Host’s High Mage struggling past a knot of children at the top of the stairs, his face twisted in disgust as if navigating a mob of lepers. The fish spine clenched between his teeth jerking up and down in agitation, he strode up to the High Fist.
‘I swear there’re more of them than yesterday, and how is that possible? They don’t leap out of someone’s hip already half grown, do they?’
‘Still creeping out from the caves,’ Ganoes Paran said, fixing his attention on the enemy ranks once more.
Noto Boil grunted. ‘And that’s another thing. Whoever thought a cave was a decent place to live? Rank, dripping, crawling with vermin. There will be disease, mark my words, High Fist, and the Host has had quite enough of that.’
‘Instruct Fist Bude to assemble a clean-up crew,’ Paran said. ‘Which squads got into the rum store?’
‘Seventh, Tenth and Third, Second Company.’
‘Captain Sweetcreek’s sappers.’
Noto Boil plucked the spine from his mouth and examined the pink point. He then leaned over the wall and spat something red. ‘Aye, sir. Hers.’
Paran smiled. ‘Well then.’
‘Aye, serves them right. So, if they stir up more vermin—’
‘They are children, mage, not rats. Orphaned children.’
‘Really? Those white bony ones make my skin crawl, that’s all I’m saying, sir.’ He reinserted the spine and it went up and down. ‘Tell me again how this is better than Aren.’
‘Noto Boil, as High Fist I answer only to the Empress.’
The mage snorted. ‘Only she’s dead.’
‘Which means I answer to no one, not even you.’
‘And that’s the problem, nailed straight to the tree, sir. Nailed to the tree.’ Seemingly satisfied with that statement, he pointed with a nod and jab of the fish spine in his mouth. ‘Lots of scurrying about over there. Another attack coming?’
Paran shrugged. ‘They’re still … upset.’
‘You know, if they ever decide to call our bluff—’
‘Who says I’m bluffing, Boil?’
The man bit something that made him wince. ‘What I mean is, sir, no one’s denying you got talents and such, but those two commanders over there, well, if they get tired of throwing Watered and Shriven against us – if they just up and march themselves over here, in person, well … that’s what I meant, sir.’
‘I believe I gave you a command a short while ago.’
Noto scowled. ‘Fist Bude, aye. The caves.’ He turned to leave and then paused and looked back. ‘They see you, you know. Standing here day after day. Taunting them.’
‘I wonder,’ Paran mused as he returned his attention to the enemy camp.
‘Sir?’
‘The Siege of Pale. Moon’s Spawn just sat over the city. Months, years. Its lord never showed himself, until the day Tayschrenn decided he was ready to try him. But here’s the thing, what if he had? What if, every damned day, he’d stepped out on to that ledge? So Onearm and all the rest could pause, look up, and see him standing there? Silver hair blowing, Dragnipur a black god-shitting stain spreading out behind him.’
Noto Boil worked his pick for a moment, and then said, ‘What if he had, sir?’
‘Fear, High Mage, takes time. Real fear, the kind that eats your courage, weakens your legs.’ He shook his head and glanced at Noto Boil. ‘Anyway, that was never his style, was it? I miss him, you know.’ He grunted. ‘Imagine that.’