A Matter of Time
To Arch Lector Sult,
head of his Majesty’s Inquisition.
Your Eminence,
Six weeks now, we have held the Gurkish back. Each morning they brave our murderous fire to tip earth and stone into our ditch, each night we lower men from the walls to try and dig it out. In spite of all our efforts, they have finally succeeded in filling the channel in two places. Daily, now, scaling parties rush forward from the Gurkish lines and set their ladders, sometimes making it onto the walls themselves, only to be bloodily repulsed.
Meanwhile the bombardment by catapults continues, and several sections of the walls are dangerously weakened. They have been shored up, but it might not be long before the Gurkish have a practicable breach. Barricades have been raised on the inside to contain them should they make it through into the Lower City. Our defences are tested to the limit, but no man entertains a thought of surrender. We will fight on.
As always, your Eminence, I serve and obey.
Sand dan Glokta
Superior of Dagoska.
Glokta held his breath, licking at his gums as he watched the dust clouds settling across the roofs of the slums through his eye-glass. The last crashes and clatters of falling stones faded, and Dagoska, for that one moment, was strangely silent. The world holds its breath.
Then the distant screaming reached him on his balcony, thrust out from the wall of the Citadel, high above the city. A screaming he remembered well from battlefields both old and new. And hardly happy memories. The Gurkish war cry. The enemy are coming. Now, he knew, they were charging across the open ground before the walls, as they had done so many times these past weeks. But this time they have a breach.
He watched the tiny shapes of soldiers moving on the dust-coated walls and towers to either side of the gap. He moved his eye-glass down to take in the wide half-circle of barricades, the triple ranks of men squatting behind them, waiting for the Gurkish to come. Glokta frowned and worked his numb left foot inside his boot. A meagre-seeming defence, indeed. But all we have.
Now Gurkish soldiers began to pour through the yawning breach like black ants swarming from a nest; a crowd of jostling men, twinkling steel, waving banners, emerging from the clouds of brown dust, scrambling down the great heap of fallen masonry and straight into a furious hail of flatbow bolts. First through the breach. An unenviable position. The front ranks were mown down as they came on, tiny shapes falling and tumbling down the hill of rubble behind the walls. Many fell, but there were always more, pressing in over the bodies of their comrades, struggling forward over the mass of broken stones and shattered timbers, and into the city.
Now another cry floated up, and Glokta saw the defenders charge from behind their barricades. Union soldiers, mercenaries, Dagoskans, all hurled themselves towards the breach. At this distance it all seemed to move with absurd slowness. A stream of oil and a stream of water dribbling towards one another. They met, and it became impossible to tell one side from the other. A flowing mass, punctuated by glittering metal, rippling and surging like the sea, a colourful flag or two hanging limp above.
The cries and screams hung over the city, echoing, shifting with the breeze. The far off swell of pain and fury, the clatter and din of combat. Sometimes it sounded like a distant storm, incomprehensible. Sometimes a single cry or word would float to Glokta’s ear with surprising clarity. It reminded him of the sound of the crowd at the Contest. Except the blades are not blunted now. Both sides are in deadly earnest. How many already dead this morning, I wonder? He turned to General Vissbruck, sweating beside him in his immaculate uniform.
“Have you ever fought in a melee like that, General? A straight fight, toe to toe, at push of pike, as they say?”
Vissbruck did not pause for a moment from squinting eagerly through his own eye-glass. “No. I have not.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it. I have only done it once and I am not keen to repeat the experience.” He shifted the handle of his cane in his sweaty palm. Not that that’s terribly likely now, of course. “I fought on horseback often enough. Charged small bodies of infantry, broke and pursued them. A noble business, cutting men down as they run, I earned all kinds of praise for it. I soon discovered a battle on foot is a different matter. The crush is so tight you can hardly take a breath, let alone perform acts of heroism. The heroes are the ones lucky enough to live through it.” He snorted with joyless laughter. “I remember being pushed up against a Gurkish officer, as close to each other as lovers, neither one of us able to strike, or do anything but snarl at each other. Spear-points digging everywhere, at random. Men pushed onto the weapons of their own side, or crushed underfoot. More killed by mishap than design.” The whole business is one giant mishap.
“An ugly affair,” muttered Vissbruck, “but it has to be done.”
“So it does. So it does.” Glokta could see a Gurkish standard waving around above the boiling throng, silk flapping, tattered and stained. Stones flung from the broken walls above began to crash down amongst them. Men pressed in helpless, shoulder to shoulder, unable to move. A great vat of boiling water was upended into their midst from high above. The Gurkish had lost all semblance of order as they came through the breach, and now the formless mass of men began to waver. The defenders pressed in on them from all sides, relentless, shoving with pike and shield, hacking with sword and axe, trampling the fallen under their boots.
“We’re driving them back!” came Vissbruck’s voice.
“Yes,” muttered Glokta, peering through his eye-glass at the desperate fighting. “So it would seem.” And my joy is limitless.
The Gurkish assault had been surrounded and men were falling fast, stumbling back up the hill of rubble towards the breach. Gradually the survivors were driven out and down into the no-man’s-land behind, flatbows on the walls firing into the mass of men as they fled, spreading panic and murder. The vague sound of the defenders cheering filtered up to them on the walls of the citadel.
One more assault defeated. Scores of Gurkish killed, but there are always more. If they break through the barricades, and into the Lower City, we are finished. They can keep coming as often as they like. We need only lose once, and the game is done.
“It would seem the day is ours. This one, at least.” Glokta limped to the corner of the balcony and peered southwards through his eye-glass, down into the bay and the Southern Sea beyond. There was nothing but calm water, glittering bright to the flat horizon. “And still no sign of any Gurkish ships.”
Vissbruck cleared his throat. “With the greatest of respect…” Meaning none, I suppose. “The Gurkish have never been sailors. Is there any reason to suppose that they have ships now?”
Only that an old black wizard appeared in my chambers in the dead of night, and told me to watch out for some. “Simply because we fail to see a thing, it does not mean it is not there. The Emperor has us on the rack as it is. Perhaps he keeps his fleet in reserve, waiting for a better time, refusing to show his whole hand until he needs to.”
“But with ships, he could blockade us, starve us out, get around our defences! He need not have squandered all those soldiers—”
“If the Emperor of Gurkhul has one thing in abundance, General, it is more soldiers. They have made a workable breach.” Glokta scanned along the walls until he came to the other weak spot. He could see the great cracks in the masonry on the inside, shored up with heavy beams, with heaped-up rubble, but still bowing inwards, more each day. “And they will soon have another. They have filled the ditch in four places. Meanwhile our numbers dwindle, our morale falters. They don’t need ships.”