March to the Sea - Empire of Man Book II

CHAPTER TWENTY

"Where's the city?" the sergeant major asked. All she could see from the top of the flar-ta was walls and hills.

"Beyond the hills," Rastar said. "This is just the outer wall."

The city was on a peninsula between the ocean and a broad bay, and the peninsula narrowed to a low, very narrow neck where the wall closed it off before spreading out once more beyond it. If it hadn't been for a breakwater and some low dunes, the half-hearted waves on their left would have been washing over the road.

A fresh, onshore wind blew in from the sea, carrying away the scent of rot from the bay to their right. The shoreline on that side edged almost imperceptibly into a salt marsh, over which four-winged avians croaked and hissed. The salt marsh blended in turn into a small delta from the Selke River-more of a creek, really-which the road had paralleled all the way from the Nashtor Hills.

The wall itself was immense, the largest Kosutic had seen since Voitan. It stood at least ten meters tall and was nearly that broad. The gateway was a massive, double-turreted affair, with a dogleg and clearly evident murder holes, and massive bombards loomed from the walls at regular intervals. Either K'Vaern's Cove had common everyday enemies in plenty, or else it had entirely too much money and had needed something expensive to use it up on.

The ends of the wall were anchored by bastions, studded with more bombards, where it met the sea and the marsh, respectively. The seaward bastions apparently served double duty as lighthouses, and the wall continued back along both coasts until the land rose and became rocky enough to make a landing difficult or impossible.

"Bloody serious defenses," Kosutic muttered.

"K'Vaern's Cove has participated in numerous wars in the region, at one time or another," the Northerner prince told her. "Sometimes in alliance with the League, at other times in opposition. It's never been interested in conquest, though. Most of its wars have had to do with maintaining freedom of trade ... or pressing for it."

"Was Sindi one of the ones it fought?" the sergeant major asked. "And what is the story there? You keep referring to it, but you've never explained."

"I assume that your Ms. O'Casey is familiar with the story by now, but, in short, Tor Cant, the Despot of Sindi, was a bloated feck-beast. He was also a fool whose desires far outweighed his vision or ability, and the foremost of those desires was to be the ruler of all the land around the Tam and Chasten.

"He began his efforts by moving against the League of the North. Since we were the greatest military threat to his plans, he attempted to cause trouble between our cities in the hope that we would turn on one another and destroy ourselves for him. Then, when that plot was revealed and even he realized it was a complete failure, he sent embassies to the Boman. After much placation, some of their senior chiefs agreed to come meet with him, and he also gathered representatives from many of the Southern states who chafed at our trade taxes. The official reason for the meeting was to negotiate a treaty with the Boman, because if the Boman were no longer a threat, then the League would no longer be required. And if that happened, he reasoned, all the lands of the South would unite to rise up against our taxes.

"It became clear, however, that he had no intention of negotiating in good faith with the Boman. I said that his desires outweighed his vision, and that was probably overgenerous of me. The Boman are barbarians, but Tor Cant treated them like barbarians ... and not very important ones, either. Instead of offering concessions, he put forward demands which anyone, not just the Boman, would have considered insulting. And when the Boman chiefs rejected them, he completed his idiocy by throwing a fit and ordering them killed in his very throne room, in front of the Southern ambassadors.

"It was, I've heard, quite a scene. His guards were Southern weaklings, so the Boman chiefs and their guards nearly cut their way to the throne, despite having been taken completely by surprise. Unfortunately, they didn't quite reach it, and when word of what had happened reached the northern clans, they swore blood feud against all the 'shit-sitters' in the cities.

"They came upon the League first, and all of us had been sabotaged, one way or another, undoubtedly by agents of Sindi. In Therdan it was poison in the grain stores. Sheffan had its water supply fouled. Others had mysterious fires in their granaries, or found the fodder for their civan poisoned.

"The intent, probably, was for the League and the Boman to destroy each other. Then Sindi would move against both, coming as a savior to what remained of the League and destroying the Boman. Then the League would have been absorbed, and the warriors who were left would have been used against the other cities."

"But that's not what happened," Kosutic said.

"No," the native prince responded very quietly, gazing at the approaching walls. "Tor Cant was a fool, and he underestimated the Boman. He obviously expected them to attack us as they always had before, clan by clan and tribe by tribe, and he reasoned that, even crippled by his treachery, our cities would be able to hold long enough to bleed the barbarians and weaken them fatally before they could move further south. But the Boman were united, and their strategy was far better than it had ever been before. They came upon Therdan in a wave, for we were the chief city of the North, and their new leaders realized that if we fell, it would not only open the way south but dishearten the rest of the League, as well. They besieged us for barely a month and a half, and we took good measure of them. So long as we were able to man our defenses, we killed many of them for every warrior we lost. But in the end, we were starving, and before we lost the flower of our civan, my father had me fight my way out, with as many of the women and children as we felt we could take.

"My uncle, whom Dergal Starg spoke of ... He and his household opened the way, and we went forth over the carpet of their bodies. The youngest of the cavalry, on the best civan, with the women and children clinging to us as we ran."

"We didn't bother going to Sindi; it would have been pointless. Instead, we struck for Bastar, thinking that we might find aid there. But the Boman were before us, and behind us. We could only flee before them.

"And so, in the end, you found us. A starving band of ragged fugitives, washed up as flotsam in the mountains."

"And Therdan?" the sergeant major asked softly.

"It fell shortly afterward. And Sheffan, and Tarhal, and Crin. And D'Sley and Torth. And Sindi."

"But not, apparently, K'Vaern's Cove."

"No," the Mardukan agreed. "The Cove is impregnable."

Bistem Kar peered through the telescope at the approaching column. There had been more than sufficient time to make his way from the Citadel to the wall, for the column had been sighted before First Bell by the sentinels, but he still didn't have a clue as to who this was. It clearly wasn't the Boman horde, as he'd first assumed. In fact, the lead units appeared to be Northern League cavalry, but just what the rest of the ragtag and bobtail might be was another question. And the matter of what its purpose here might be was yet another. Assuming that those glittering points were on the ends of extremely long spears, this force was far too large and well armed to be a mere supply caravan, and, by the same token, probably wasn't another column of refugees.

He slid the device shut and made a gesture of frustration.

"It makes no sense."

"More refugees?" Tor Flain asked. The second in command of the K'Vaern Company of the Guard glanced sidelong at his commander. Kar was called "The Kren," not just for his immense size, but for his speed and cu

Kar had turned out in his habitual wear-the armored jerkin and harness of a Guardsman private, without the glittering emblems of rank to which he was entitled. It was a uniform he'd worn for many seasons, and one he was comfortable in. He would wear it to all but the most formal meetings, and in all but the most pitched battles, for it was a badge to him, and one that the Guard appreciated. Many was the time that he'd proved himself a guardsman to the very heart, fighting for the resources to keep the Company in top form, whatever it took. And everyone knew that it was only his regular, unceasing battles for a decent budget which had permitted the Guard to repulse the first assault of the Boman.

But the Boman had sworn that no city of the south would remain standing after that stupid bastard in Sindi's actions, and the fact that none of the other cities had had anything to do with Tor Cant's massacre didn't seem to matter. So now it was up to the Guard, and the rest of the capable citizenry, to make that barbarian oath fail, and the odds against that were heavy.

Kar opened the telescope back up and looked through it once more, and Tor Flain took a moment to admire the device. Dell Mir was a wizard with contraptions, but the war against the Boman had seemed to bring out the genius in him. From the device that squirted burning coal oil to changes in the smelters that had steel coming out of their ears (when they could lay their hands on raw materials, at least), the quirky inventor had proved a priceless resource to the defenses. Another example of the sort of genius the Cove seemed to produce almost spontaneously.

Tor Flain loved his city, although he, like many others, had not been born here. His parents had moved from D'Sley when he was young and started a small fish-processing business. He'd grown up with the K'Vaernian bells in his ears and worked long hours as a child and teen, gutting the daily catches and ru

And as a result of that, their daughters had married well and their sons had spread into many major positions throughout the city and its varied businesses. Positions such as that of second in command of the Company. That hadn't seemed such a good move once; now, Tor Flain's position was arguably among the ten most important ones in the entire city. And while he wasn't about to use his influence to give business to the family, it wasn't really necessary for him to. Anyone who wanted to deal with the Guard assumed that while dealing with the House of Flain wasn't a requirement, it couldn't hurt, either.