Ecko Endgame (29 page)

The archer commander called again. “In your own time. Loose!”

A Fhaveon archer could put twenty shafts in a fist-sized target in less time than it took to tell, but the riders were close now, almost upon them. They were huge in the morning, walls of plunging muscle; their horses’ eyes were ringed with the demented white of madness.

As the archers began to shoot again, picking their targets, the Bard desperately scanned the courtyard, the rising ruin.

Hot tension pricked in his throat, behind his eyes.
Where are you?
He aimed the thought at Nivrotar, though she couldn’t hear him.
Where have you gone?

A final look, a very last shred of hope…

You must have come!

You must!

And then there they were – their dark armour and their black aperios banners…

Amos had come after all.

As he saw them, his breath escaped in a cry. He let the beaters fall, the great kettledrum silence. He watched them run from walls and cover, knew the fighting style as well as he knew his own.

As the exhausted Fhaveon troops held defiant shield and spear, so three ranks of foot-soldiers ran across to close in front of them, snapping to a spear-bristling rigidity even as the surge of cavalry came on. Behind them and to their flanks, the archers had reinforcements now – all along the tops of the walls there stood figures, silhouettes against the sky. They were not all in Amos colours – some of them bore the road-ragged garments of Varchinde freemen, increasing their numbers.

They outnumbered the incoming cavalry, now, more than two to one.

Yes!
Elation rang through him.
By the Gods, we will do this!

The Bard saw the arrows that ripped across the morning and came down like black hail, devastating. Riders screamed and fell, others tore the shafts from their shoulders and kept coming – but the charge was faltering, now, stumbling in the dirt.

He heard Mostak shout again, heard the Commander’s note of savage defiance, of utter relief.

And then the Bard heard something else.

The rushing of fabric. The creaking of ropes. The rumble of stone.

Amos had brought artillery.

And
levers.

Tusien’s outer walls were towering huge; they climbed into the sky as if nothing could touch them. But the ruin had statues, loose walls, room walls, rearing creatures of stone – and all of it was ammunition.

Stunned, the Bard watched as one of the statues tumbled, hit the overgrown paving and shattered, its face broken in half, its blank grey eyes open. The tan were upon it in a moment, but behind them, the covers had been pulled from the engines and the cups were already loaded.

The commander barked a single word, her voice like a whip.

Pegs were knocked from their housing.

And two huge arms swung, up and over, crashed hard into their stops.

Both cups were laden with a scatter of smaller stone pieces – fragments of the Varchinde’s past now used to secure its future. They soared overhead, shadows scudding, and the scattershot came down on the centre of the cavalry advance.

There was a thunder of rock hitting terhnwood, screams of both humans and horses. Riders and mounts fell. The Bard watched as the arms were creaked back, the cups refilled with the broken fragments of Tusien herself.

Mostak’s voice came across the morning. “Wait! They’re too close now! Hold your shooting!”

Roderick heard the command, “Brace!”

The surviving enemy cavalry, bruised as it was, hit the shieldwall with a detonation like the side of a mountain coming down.

The shieldwall staggered, shattered under impact. Belatedly, the Bard picked up the beaters, began to thunder again at the great kettledrum. He found he was shouting, his steel throat raw as flesh. Under him, his horse thumped a forehoof on the old cobbles, shook his mane almost as if he wanted to go join the melee – but the wall of shields had crumbled now, and the cavalry were through…

Dear Gods.

From his mounted vantage, Roderick could see that the second wave of the assault was coming up the slope – this inhuman, a wave of monstrosities. But the archers had seen it too and the volley-shooting began again, two cities unified, showering shafts onto the incoming creatures. The catapults shifted aim, scattered more shots.

But the next wave was not upon them – not yet.

In the courtyard of the ruin itself, chaos ebbed and roared as the incoming horsemen rode rampage through the defenders. The shieldwall had scattered and the warriors had formed into small, round units, defending themselves and each other with a shield and spear at every side. The cavalry had responded, viciously, turning in tight circles, jabbing and harassing.

Soldiers fell, screamed, bled, ran.

Then Mostak’s voice bellowed, and the drum sounded sharp – the Bard echoed the rhythm, galvanising the order.

From the back of the courtyard, the second rank, formed up of warriors of Fhaveon, advanced on the wheeling enemy horses.

They did so at a rhythmic stamp, their rage and homelessness and fear and elation all crystallised now into action. They hammered spear-shafts on shield-rims and chanted defiance, they pushed the horsemen back towards the slope. Mostak sounded the drums again and from the Amos archers, high on the wall, came a single, sharp command.

The next shots came straight down, hard, and at savagely close range.

Screams sounded – pain and fury. They echoed from the wall above. Hooves thudded hard on the overgrown slabs. Riderless now, the horses wheeled and stamped. The last few cavalry, still mounted, wheeled and fled.

Their first attack had failed.

The rush of the first fight over, Ecko sat like
The Thinker
in miniature, bored and pissed off. He was worse than useless in the middle of all this – didn’t have the training to fight with a unit, and had no fucking desire to be in the centre of the melee. Unwilling to stick his head above the walltop with all the shit going down, he’d cased the artillery instead, curious about the first pieces of engineering he’d seen.

They were onagers, he reckoned, basic – but they did an impressive job.

Now the fighting was over, Operation Homestead had kicked into high gear. Orders rang from damp stonework, soldiers shouted, feet ran, hooves stamped. Barracks were being set up in neat squares and rows; at their centres, rocklights lit tidy piles of kit. There were no fires – not yet – they had too little fuel, and the cold was bitter. The sky had clouded to grey and the ruin’s walls were moist and drear. Old buttresses curved over part of it, like giant broken ribs against the sky.

A scatter of rain made him shiver.

Lost amid the fused reeks of righteousness and testosterone, he felt both tiny and inept. He had about as much chance of kicking Big Boss Butt stuck in here as he did of growing a prop out his ass and learning to fly.

Chrissakes.

And to add to
that
, he was cold.

First his clothes, now his insulation? What next, was someone gonna peel off his fucking
skin
? More layers, more stuff lost.

It wasn’t
fair.

His adrenal glands kicked, bringing him to his feet. He booted sulkily at a nearby statue’s ankle, and when it didn’t go Talos on him, he booted it again. Irritably, he flicked his oculars, and scanned the ruin: the silent siege engines, the expanding camp, the various patterned flags…

Yeah, this is one helluva vacation spot. Lemme just get a thingy of rock and a souvenir keychain.

His gaze took in the walltops, targetters idly crossing on the patrols. The archers’ spans were limited by the state of the ruin – there were huge, unsafe stretches of wall that they didn’t dare tread. Yeah, like he could fucking show
them
how it was done—

And then, of course, he had an idea.

Well okay, so the idea wasn’t new – but fuck it, he was bored, and he was restless, and he was feeling kinda useless in the middle of all this shit. And hell, it wasn’t like it didn’t need doing.

Grinning now, he shed his overcloak and clumsy footwear, and he left the mouldering Talos to his own devices. Fuck the cold; adrenaline and anticipation were warming him already, giving him a much-needed sense of purpose. His oculars scanned corners, seeking the ubiquitous secret doors, but they found only more stone. Apparently, the long-dead sage, whatever the hell his name’d been, hadn’t read the gaming manual.

Gleefully, he slipped across the overgrown cobbles of the courtyard and found the long side wall of the ruin. He passed the remains of the vast stone fireplace, ancient soot stains still visible. He passed the green and slippery innards of what must’ve been the well – Nivvy had despatched crews of scrubbers to reach down to the water. They’d probably find tunnels, seething with restless undead – hell, he was almost tempted to wait.

But no, that wasn’t why he was here.

At his shoulder now, the wall was cold and slippery, growing a reddish lichen, like rust. He eased along its length, his adrenaline thrumming and warming him through – Mostak’s silent guards had no fucking clue he was there.

Yeah, I can so still do this.

He reached the front of the defences without being seen.

So, whatcha got for us, Mistress Control Program?

Have a look, my Ecko
, she said, though it could’ve been just his head.
Tell me what you see…

Beside him, frost crept like death up the dark stone. He crouched at the ruin’s outermost edge and tuned his telos to the army below, scanning length by length until he’d seen everything they had to offer.

Come on then, fucker. No surprises, now.

There – the tumbledown curtain-wall halfway down the hillside, the ragged stone length that protected Vahl’s force. There – the Lord’s command tent, sigils and all, flanked by the horned and hooved vialer. There – the paddocks of the cavalry, the racks of carts and animal cages. There – one, lone stores tent pitched a sizeable distance from the rest of the site. And there – the endless, untidy sprawl of bedrolls that was the homeless people of the city, driven beyond—

No, that wasn’t right.

Now, just you hang on a fucking second…

Telos focusing, he looked closer.

It’d taken Mostak’s force everything they had to cross the plains – and they were trained soldiers, almost to the last man and woman. They’d also brought no baggage train – their supplies had come from Amos.

Which was why they’d been able to move so fast.

Ecko was no tactician, but he wasn’t dumb as he was asshole-looking. Lumbering carts and cannon-fodder-foot simply did
not
shift their butts that quickly. Even the cavalry, armoured as they were…

What the hell? Daemonic magick? Portal power? They’ve invented the combustion engine? Oh, come on…

And he saw two things.

The first one, he clocked almost by accident, and he had to stop and think – to remember.

He could see the vialer, the beasties-in-charge, and he could see a large glut of Amal’s crafted monsters – but he’d swear on his right bollock that their numbers had fallen since he’d seen them in Fhaveon.

And stuff was missing. Where were all the stone things? The golems that had torn themselves from Fhaveon’s walls?

He wondered if they were sneaking round the back route, or had gone in through the ubiquitous underground tunnels – but he had a feeling he knew exactly where they were. They’d chased down under Fhaveon and were gleefully stomping the city’s population. Amethea had told them this much.

But what about the centaurs? They didn’t fit down fucking tunnels. Where the hell were they?

And, more importantly, why would Ythalla split her force like that? Fighting a war on two fronts was fucking stupid enough – but a war on
three
?

What the hell was she doing?

That, though, wasn’t even the biggest problem.

As Ecko looked over the lurking force, carefully studying, he found he could see a peculiar, distinctive difference in the faces of the people – cavalry and foot alike. They had a darkness, now, an elation, a seething steam that rose from shoulders and gazes and foreheads. They had a burning sense of purpose, and a sheer, savage glee in what they were doing.

They no longer looked human.

They looked… visionary, somehow, like they were about to experience full-on Rapture. Like their Gods had come for them, descending in tongues of flame or whatever the hell it was; like they were rocking out to bad Norwegian metal as they found the true heart of Satan.

The Kas, whatever they were, had come.

But even that wasn’t what caught his attention, wasn’t the thing that froze him to his vantage, struggling to breathe.

Holy shit.

He backed up, rubbing his eyes, but it was still there – the image seared on his forebrain like some mental brand. There was the camp – if that’s what you’d call it – of the city’s jumbled homeless; the scattered bedrolls, the mess and the poverty. The place where the children had been gathered.

It was significantly smaller than it had been.

And sitting there, in the heart of the muck and the cold, there were the shivering huddles of those who remained – those who had once been the young people of Fhaveon.

Ecko had seen their eyes, their expressions.

Those that were left were old men and women, frail and drained, their lined and shrunken faces hypnotised by the blacklight of the Kas.

* * *

Nivrotar, Lord of Amos, stood austere in the light of her command tent, perfect and carved in monochrome. She wore soft, blackened leathers and a long knife across her belt, neither of them, Amethea suspected, remotely ornamental. Her expression was severe and her hair in a tight and shining-cold braid.

Flanking her, Rhan had his forehead in one hand, was rubbing his skin as if it hurt. Mostak paced back and forth before the pair of them like he’d never again be still. His outsize lamellar armour rattled and his hands twitched, as if reaching for a weapon – or a throat.