The Black Prism

Chapter 86

When Gavin heard the explosion, he knew immediately what it was. He was almost back to the wall on his way from the docks, where he’d been using the first light to help draft boats for the refugees. The evacuation was entirely possible if people would be reasonable. Gavin had told the city’s elders that nobles could bring three chests, armorers and apothecaries could bring three as well, rich merchants could bring two, and everyone else could only bring what they could carry.

It was a simple rationale, if a hard one. The fleeing Tyreans would need medicine, and they didn’t want to leave any arms that King Garadul could use to arm his troops and spread his aggression. And though it stuck in Gavin’s throat to help the rich more than the poor, the rich would bring their riches out of the city. Those riches, if left, would again be used by King Garadul and would help him kill others. If people did everything according to orders, there would still be room for everyone to escape who wanted to.

Except, of course, everyone cheated. Everyone. Nobles brought six chests. Rich merchants brought five. Others lied and claimed to be armorers or apothecaries who were not.

Gavin put a local guild head in charge, went to draft on the barges, and when he came back found the man letting his own guild members bring extra baggage. Gavin drafted a scaffold off the side of the pier in five seconds, and had the man strangling on it in ten. He put someone else in charge before the first man was dead.

“Make decisions fast and as justly as you can,” Gavin told the deeply frowning, pockmarked cooper he was putting in charge. “And my whole authority is behind you, even if you make mistakes. Take one bribe, and I’ll take my time making your death as much worse than this as I can imagine.” Then he left. He didn’t have time for this.

He was at the base of the wall when he heard the explosion. It was exactly what he’d been afraid of. It had been why he’d drafted Brightwater Wall in the first place. With all the homes and shops built directly against the city wall, it was hard to defend from enemies outside, but impossible to defend from enemies within. Anyone who owned a shop could be given barrels of black powder, tunnel under the wall a little bit, and set a charge. They could work in full privacy, uninterrupted—could, and had.

Blackguards in tow, Gavin dug his heels into his horse’s flanks. But he didn’t head for the gap. A hole in the wall was a prize, of course, but it would immediately attract defenders, and it might not be big enough for the army to come through. It might become a choke point, a killing zone. Better to use the distraction of a breach in the walls to open a gate elsewhere.

Gavin dispatched messengers to the Hag’s Gate and the Lover’s Gate and headed toward the Mother’s Gate. At the top of the wall, he ran into General Corvan Danavis with his entourage. Doubtless, Corvan was going to direct the defense at the breach in the wall personally.

Corvan paused only to say, “They’re holding back their drafters and color wights. I don’t know why. But if we lose a gate in the next twenty minutes, we won’t make it until noon.” That was Corvan, condensing the information to the absolutely vital.

“If it falls,” Gavin said, “be at the ships an hour before noon.”

Corvan nodded his head. No fighting to the death. Gavin clapped Corvan’s shoulder. Then the general was gone.

At the top of the gate, Gavin looked over the teeming mass on the other side. Hardly anyone was firing at the invaders from the wall anymore, but the army pushed forward like a blind beast, black fingertips reaching up to grab the wall.

Many of the homes outside the wall had been demolished in just a few hours, but of those that remained, the army had found which places were easiest to scale. At half a dozen places, a slow trickle of men were clambering up onto the wall itself and engaging the few defenders.

Farther out, King Garadul’s men were setting up their mortars. Too late, really. There was no point in them bombarding the city at all, and doing so now would probably kill as many of their own as it would kill defenders. Nonetheless, they were already loading the mortars. Gavin had found that lots of men liked to be safe from the fighting, but they wanted to be able to say they’d taken part. Those idiots would fire some rounds and later brag how they’d turned the battle.

Good to see that King Garadul’s got discipline problems too.

And where was the king?

From the gate’s highest point, looking back into the city, Gavin spied him despite the mists. King Garadul had pressed into the city himself. Idiot! Sure, Gavin had done the same more than once, but he was armed like few others. Gavin’s presence on a battlefield wasn’t simple morale-boosting. King Garadul was leading the attack, surrounded by perhaps a hundred Mirrormen. As Gavin caught sight of him, he saw the king yelling at some messenger, gesticulating angrily.

He wants his drafters.

And why isn’t he getting them?

Gavin moved to the front of the Mother’s spear, stared out to the hill, some five hundred paces away. On the crown of the hill there were banners and a crowd. He drafted lenses, adjusted the distance necessary between the two to get the focus right, and studied the image above the low-hanging mists. A multicolored man was lifting a musket, pointing it right at him. Insanity. No musket could fire so—

The musket fired—a huge charge from the cloud of black smoke. Gavin couldn’t hear it over the rest of the sounds of battle, of course. One of the mortars fired. Gavin continued to study the man. He drafted the two lenses together to keep the focus steady. A polychrome wight. Probably a full polychrome, or at least pretending to be one, from all the colors he’d drafted into his own body. Curious. The man was studying him too.

Around Lord Omnichrome, there were not just the usual complement of generals and lackeys, but dozens of drafters. They were clearly not going anywhere.

Someone handed the musket back to Lord Omnichrome. Lord Omnichrome took the musket, aimed quickly, and fired. A second later, something hit the Mother’s spear two paces above Gavin’s head and exploded, taking a chunk out of the rock. Luxin projectiles? From five hundred paces? Gavin was still thinking about it as the Blackguards pulled him away and to the back of the spear.

Lord Omnichrome wanted King Garadul dead. So simple, so bold. He probably had even egged on King Garadul at Brightwater Wall, daring him to be a promachos, getting the young king to lead from the front, hoping he’d get killed.

If your enemy wants it, deny it.

Gavin drafted a small yellow tablet, making it read, “Capture Garadul, not kill. At all costs.” He covered it in blue and liquid yellow luxin and shot it into the path where he believed Corvan was going.

But Gavin’s intuition told him the main strike was going to happen elsewhere, while the defenders focused their efforts here. “To the Hag’s Gate,” he told his Blackguards. “We run!”