I could see terror on the faces of the men at the wall above as they struggled to get the two heavy cauldrons in place. No single man would be able to lift either, and with dozens of gallons of fire-oil and tar inside the four men who could fit around each were hard-pressed to position them.
Just below the guards battling the cauldrons’ weight a sea of dead men surged, howling, washing up around the ramp of broken stone, broken timber, broken bodies. The scaffold of human corpses reached to within a yard of the wall top, hundreds in the construction, dozens more clambering up, screaming their awful hunger. And out beyond that scaffold, stepping through the dead horde, crushing some, knocking others aside, came the monsters, the tripods, raw, bloody, scuttling like spiders. And yet the wall guard held their ground. Those old men I’d doubted, they kept their place, bound by their oath and by their duty, where I would have run.
“Yes!” Darin, Barras, in fact every man around me calling out, as two torches were set to the mouths of the cauldrons and each began to tip.
Twin streams of fire started to splash down onto the pyramid of dead, flattened against the wall. A cheer went up from all the guards. And yet the dead men below held tight even as they burned, their skin withering before the heat, hair and clothes burned away, flesh sizzling.
The first of the great three-legged monstrosities began its climb, anchoring its legs into the burning corpse-tower and scuttling up toward the wall. A wave of blazing oil broke across it but still the thing came on, new dead men ascending in its wake. The tower scorpions could no longer target the thing, so close to the guards, and with a last lunge it hooked two of its legs over the lip of the wall. Burning dead men scrambled over its back, howling, and threw themselves at the cauldron crews, who fell back in panic. The remains of the fire-oil spilled from the dropped cauldrons, setting the parapet afire.
“Get more men down there! Now!” I waved my sword unnecessarily. “Sound the breach!”
Trumpets blared, an alarm that no one alive in Vermillion had ever heard except in wall-drills. The city had been breached.
FIFTEEN
For half an hour it looked as if we might hold the Dead King’s forces on the wall, and perhaps even beat them back once the soldiers of the Seventh reached the fray to relieve the old men of the guard. On the narrow parapet the dead could come at the wall guard only two or three abreast. They threw themselves forward with alarming speed, accepting the thrust of sword or spear to close on their opponents and lock hands around a man’s throat.
“It’s always strangling with these dead men. What’s the point of it?” I couldn’t see it was a very efficient way to kill anyone, especially in the midst of a pitched battle.
“What other options do they have?” Darin asked.
“Thumbs in eyeballs? Head smashed against the wall?” I’d spent entirely too much time with Snorri.
“And there’s that too!” Barras pointed to another pair struggling, the attacker a young woman, seared with fire-oil and still smouldering, now with a spear through her guts. She grappled the guardsman who speared her and both pitched off the walkway, a twenty-five foot drop headlong onto the cobbles below.
We watched from the tower as the fighting progressed. Given the narrowness of the battlefront there wasn’t much else to do. In those first moments the breach had seemed a complete disaster but ten minutes later the dead had pushed the wall guard back maybe twenty yards on each side for the loss of scores of their own number.
“They throttle them because an undamaged corpse is easier to stand up again,” Darin said. On cue back along the parapet two gauntleted hands reached up over the wall and a guardsman stood up, his neck livid and the dead-scream bursting from his lungs.
“They’ve no intelligence though,” Barras said. “Look. Half of them just fall straight off the other side as soon as they scramble over the wall. It must be a bloody mess down there.”
I watched for a moment. He was right. The stream of corpses, on climbing their blackened and smoking scaffold of dead, lunged over the wall as if expecting immediately to find someone to grapple with. At least half of them failed to arrest themselves on the oily stonework before reaching the edge of the parapet and plunging to their doom.
“Shit!” My blood ran cold. “Follow me!” It would have taken too long to explain or issue orders. I snatched one of the oil-rush torches by the scorpion and hurried down the spiral stair that led through the tower. “Follow, damn you!”
Hundreds of citizens watched from the streets behind the gates, fifty yards back or so, huddled in nervous crowds. Young men mostly, carrying spears, butcher knives, the occasional sword, whatever they could arm themselves with, but there were older men too, and boys, even young women and grey-haired mothers, all drawn by the thought of spectacle. They say people are dying to be entertained and here stood an audience who seemed ready to do just that. Hawkers walked among them, bearing lanterns to display their wares, pastries and sausage, sweet candy and sour apples. I doubt they had much business, what with the stench of death, the wafting smoke, and the stomach-turning death howl. The fact the crowds were still here stood testimony to their faith in our walls but if any of them truly understood what waited on the other side they would have been running for their homes screaming for God’s mercy.
“What?” Darin caught up with me at the base of the tower.
I looked back to check we weren’t alone. Renprow, Barras, and now a steady stream of guardsmen emerged behind us, two more bearing torches. “All those dead men falling . . .” I said. “Do you hear them landing?” I led the way into the utter darkness along the base of the wall, then slowed so that guardsmen overtook us. I’d no intention of being in the front rank. “Renprow! Get more men down here. And send for Martus’s reinforcements.” I felt sure I’d already ordered them forward to the wall. “And where are the palace guard, damn it?”
“But why are we down here?” Darin repeated.
“The dead from the wall. Can you hear them hitting the ground?” I asked, eyes roaming the darkness, wishing I had Aslaug here to help me.
“Can’t hear anything but you shouting,” Barras said, clanking along in his fine tourney mail.
It was there though, beneath the din of men fighting and dying, beneath the death-howl, a dull thudding, with no rhythm to it, like the first heavy raindrops presaging a downpour.
“What’s got you spooked?” Darin held his long blade before him, catching the torchlight. “It’s nearly a thirty-foot drop onto hard ground. That’s more than broken ankles, its broken shins, knees, hips, the lot. I don’t care if they don’t die—they won’t be chasing anyone.” He stepped slowly, despite his words, as if he didn’t trust the flagstones not to bite.
“It was thirty foot onto hard ground for the first dozen. We’ve seen more than a hundred go over. By now they’re landing on a nice soft pile of broken bodies.”
We could hear it clearly now, a rapid and irregular beat, flesh thudding into flesh, an erratic heartbeat in the dark behind the wall.
The torchlight showed figures up ahead. Lots of figures, standing there in the blind dark, unspeaking. A few steps closer and the shadows yielded still more. They looked up as one, eyes catching the flames and returning them. Then they charged. And the screaming started.