Ships from the West

All across the floor of the valley the fighting was savage and hand-to-hand. The Almarkans were no match for the peerless heavy cavalry of Toru

Men in blue livery ru

The gallowglasses joined the line, swinging their great swords or two-handed axes. Aras saw a destrier's head cut clean from its neck by a swing from one of the huge blades. Sarius's ba

The cavalry broke off, firing their second matchlock over the rumps of their steeds as they went. There was little attempt to dress the ranks; the gallowglasses pressed them too closely for that. A formless mob of mounted men streamed away from the mounded dead of the earthworks and began a retreat up the slope to the redan where two hundred arquebusiers of the garrison were waiting to cover their return. Sarius's ba

The cavalry thundered up the incline, many two to a horse. Other unhorsed troopers hung on to tails or stirrups and were dragged along. The great guns of Gaderion began to thunder out again, the gu

Aras ran down the great stairs to the curtain wall, and became enmeshed in the fog of battle smoke. Grimy, soot-stained men were still working the guns maniacally and the air in the casemates seemed to scorch his lungs. Finally he made it out to the courtyard in the centre of the redoubt where the cavalry were still streaming in through the tall double gates.

'Where is Sarius?' he demanded of a bloody-browed officer, only to be met with a mad vacancy. The man's mind was still fighting out in the trenches.

'Where is Sarius?' he asked another, but was met with blankness again. At last he caught sight of Sarius's ba

'Where is your colonel?'

The man opened his eyes. He had lost his arm at the elbow and the stump spat and dribbled blood like a tap. 'Dead on the field,' he croaked.

Aras let the litter-bearers carry him away. The courtyard was a milling crowd of bloody men and lacerated horses. Beyond them, he heard even over the roar of the artillery the gates of Gaderion boom shut as the last of the rearguard came in. He wiped his face, and began to make his way back up to the fuming storm of the battlements.

Cartigella, like many of the Ramusian capitals, had started life as a port. The chief city of the tribal King Astar, it had fallen to the newly combined Fimbrian tribes over eight hundred years before, and Astarac, as the region about it became known, had become the first conquest of what would one day be the

Fimbrian Empire. The city rebelled against its northern con­querors within a hundred and fifty years of its fall, but was besieged and crushed by the great Elector Cariabus Narb, who had also founded Charibon. Those rebels who survived the sack scattered southwards for the most part, into the jungles of Macassar, and their descendants became the Corsairs. Some, however, kept together and under a sea captain named Gabor they sailed through the Malacar Islands, seeking some place they might live in peace, untroubled by fear of Fimbrian reprisals. They settled a large island to the south-west of Macassar, and that place became Gabrion.

It would be almost four hundred years before Astarac finally threw off the decaying Fimbrian yoke, and in those centuries the Fimbrians made of ruined Cartigella a great city. But they deliberately refused to fortify it, remembering the agonies of the year-long siege it had taken to reduce the place. So Cartigella's walls were later constructs of the Astaran monarchy - for Astar's bloodline had somehow survived the long years of vassalage - and they were perhaps not so high or formidable as they might have been, had they been con­structed by the imperial engineers.

And now Cartigella was besieged again.

The Himerian army had started out from Vol Ephrir at midwinter, and by the time the first meltwaters were begin­ning to swell the rivers tumbling out of the Malve

The Astaran army, left under the command of Mark's son Cristian, was caught completely by surprise. The Himerians advanced deep into East Astarac before they were challenged, and in a confused battle which took place in a blizzard in the Malve

The main body of the Empire's forces had not joined in the pursuit. Instead, they struck off westwards for the Malve

Outnumbered many times over by an army which em­ployed weather-working and legions of beasts, Prince Cristian nonetheless held out some hope. The sea lanes had not yet been closed, and thus Cartigella might yet be saved by re­inforcements from her ancient ally Gabrion, or perhaps even the Sea-Merduks. He sent out swift dispatch-ru

On the day of Sultan Aurungzeb's death, the first breach was made in Cartigella's defences, and fighting began to rage in the wall districts of the city. The Astarans, soldiers and civilians alike, fought with savage heroism but were pushed back from the outer fortifications by Inceptine warrior-monks leading companies of werewolves. Thousands died, and Cristian withdrew to the citadel of Cartigella itself. There the Himerian advance was halted, foiled by the impregnable fortress on its high crag which dominated the lower city. From there the Astaran gu