Swords At South Gate Part 1

My first rule is leave when things go south. Rules keep you alive so most of ‘em are like that. Here we are south courtyard, watching city boys flee the harbour walls, and Carys points at the gatehouse, says we can hold ‘em off. Adina shakes her head, no way, we leave. All this while Imperial arrows hit the cobbles, even this far they’ll stick Moody Nala’s thick plate. Bloody women arguing.

     I says “Let’s quit the rain, eh?” and it’s decided mostly just by needing to get the fuck out of the courtyard.

#

     Four Imperial scouts dash from inside the gatehouse as we leg it up to the back door. I rest one of ‘em with the longbow; pull my blade for the dirty. Quick Carys gets there first, dancing that long pointy sword and warding the rest with dagger slashes. She flicks one to the next and smiles like it’s a story. Heavy Nala wades in, shield-slams the closest as Carys rests hers in the eye; the third just up and bolts back into the gatehouse through the open gate onto the harbour slope. Nala slams down the shield again and this time gets the iron edge in the last guy’s neck. Rested good and proper.

#

     Gatehouse is trounced. Three slain city guard with the heads staved in. Bossy Carys dishes the orders: “Nala, doors. We don’t want them flanking us. Auntie, check upstairs for if there’s any more of the rotten bastards.”

     “They were children,” Adina says to her niece. That reminds me. Before Nala swings the heavy doors shut I drag me in one of the scouts and get a good look at him. Tutor Herrig who does me for letters says I gotta write what I felt. Well I don’t feel nothing. Dead is as dead does. Adina’s got a point though. Not a shred of beard on his pointy face. Spent heatstones, armour all wrong worn like he’s thrown it on himself, even Carys gets Nala to tighten her straps and she only wears that padded coat. And his sword with the crossguard practically falling off. I hope they’re all this young. Then we might live.

     I says this and get no reply except: “Scatha, window. I want to know when anything comes.”

     A real shouter would’ve known they didn’t need to say the second but I listen to her anyway. Bows is my game. And this gatehouse is good for it: the windows is slits in the ochre stone raised left and right of the door with this nice little step cut into them where your arse goes. Give me a bushel of arrows and I could sit here sticking Imps all day. Fwip, squelch, thud, so on. Probably get surrounded though so I guess wait for the main force to show and then fuck off, if the girls want to stay that’s theirs and fine but coin only gets you so much. More than I planned already.

I didn’t much care for Beacon; they’d torn down all the good bits twenty years ago. The harbour used to go all the way out to Red Rock until King Luminius stopped trade with the Empire and kicked this whole thing off. With the trading stopped the jetties got rotted and that’s good for us too, the Imps can’t get off the boats all at once like they wanted so even though their rain of arrows has sent the city boys packing from the walls the Imps is stuck for a bit pulling planks from their holds to make bridges.

     Our gatehouse sits at the top of the slope leading out of the harbour and the wall it sits at the end of sweeps a mile north to where the cliffs rise up before dropping into the ocean. Blocks off the whole harbour that way.  The wall’s some eighty feet up but only the last twenty of that is worked stone, the rest of it’s all cliff. Used to be a dozen ramps led into the city so they could bring the goods up and about the only thing the city boys did right is knock down the rock traps to block the other gates.

They’ll have to come at us up that slope two by two, cliff on one side, steep drop to wave-lashed rocks on the other, because I’ll definitely turn their siege ladders to murder if they try ‘em.

     Rock traps, there’s a thought.  I tell Nala but she’s moping on about it all being pointless, they’ll overrun us, no hope. Carys, I says, Carys. Can’t get a word in. Bless her heart she’s trying to get Nala into one of her stories we can hold the line, save the city, be the heroes, so on.

     “Oi, Brightlance! Rock trap, eh?”

     Adina gets me. Guess what they say about mages having the brains is true. She says to Nala we lure them up, drop the trap, and ‘make our retreat’. That means scarper.

     “Screw the trap! I’ll fight.” That’s Carys of course.

     “How many before one gets lucky? Stormlords forbid they have any mages!”

     “She’s right, Carys. Hundreds. They’ll wipe us on the first charge.”

     “Why did you even come, Nala?”

     They don’t hear but I’m watching Nala’s lips: what she says is, to make the world safer. But she says it real sad and tired like the world’s not even worth it.

     Carys says, “It won’t be like Bolvander.”

     “I intend for it not to be. That’s why we’re going to retreat.”

     “Slope,” I says. Twenty Imps get in line and hoof it up. Their commander’s a sly dog testing us with probably green kids mostly, not swamping us right away so we panic and blow the trap. Clever. “Nala, grab us them shafts.” She brings arrows, javelins, even a throwing hammer.

#

     While we’ve been checking the gatehouse the sky’s gone dark black clouds piled up like rocks and not a shred of sun. Storm’s broke. Its pissing it down.

     They called this the Blood Gate because they’d gut the fish on the wagons throwing the guts over the steep side of the slope to splatter over those tide-smoothed rocks. The thick rain turns hard brown streaks to a sort of mush. Behind the clouds lightning flashes up the outline of huge figures fighting. The Stormlords are close. I pray to them.

     I wait till an Imp slips over and speak my bow into him, and into the one helping him up. New blood runs over old. I rest the two that stop to check and they finally get the message, they press to the wall and fall back a little ways as I speak my bow over and over down that gentle cobbled slope resting one after the next.

     The leader in the red silk hat gets his act together. As he leads the charge I rest two more before they’re banging at the gate. Old oak bound and bolted, extra bolts at the hinges, iron bound port for sallies. They can’t get through but they can see me in the slit so I step down. Carys says get back there shoot them, I offer her the bow be my guest. Credit to her she takes it but Adina grabs it out her hand.

     “The second your head makes an appearance they’ll put a dozen daggers in it.”

     True, we’d seen ‘em throw right good when they first landed.

     Carys says, “Sally port. Me and Nala. How many left Scath?”

     “Could be I got six or seven,” I says. Actually it’s eleven plus one because the gutshot lad they dragged to the door will bleed out in an hour tops. But I don’t like the sound of sally port. “Risky to go close.”

     Her eyes light up. “What’s life without a little risk?”

     “Longer,” Adina says. “No chance.”

     Nala stands up, platemail creaking. “They’ve got heat stones. They’ll burn through. We’re dead either way so we might as well.”

     “And when they start shooting again?”

     “We’ll be back in, sharpish,” Carys says.

     If more Imps charge up I’m definitely closing the door.

     But as she readies up Adina goes up to the window, smashes a white crystal against her leg so it cuts, and bloodcasts.

     “I call the hurricane!”

     Seems unnecessary to say it but I’m no mage. The blood shimmers into the air, swirls around her hand. She leans out and throws whatever it is into the Imps.

     Winds howl savage around the gatehouse and I count seven screams, seven distant splashes. Adina falls back. She’ll be weak for a quarter bell. Nala goes out the sally door, and comes back with a red sword. Carys looks pissed but it’s not because she’s got the taste for killing – I’d know if she liked it –she didn’t get to save the day. It’s getting less cute.

#

     I risk another peek out the slit. Forty now on the shore. Glance down at the body Nala left. Something bugs me. Bows, daggers, short swords. The slain city guard – Nala’s laid ‘em out and closed their eyes – all with heads staved in.

     Last I checked swords don’t do blunt force. I mean yeah a crack with the pommel will end you rightly. But not like they was rested.

     Nala looks knackered and Carys is taking the piss of her. I think she’s trying to do that jokey thing but it reeks of fear and Nala just snaps, I’m meant to be on a horse, Carys, I’m a fucking knight of the fucking Order of Emerald fucking Dragons.

     I’d heard the Order was coming to see King Luminius finally hand his rule to a council or whatever shitstain ‘good government’ the free thinkers harp on about nowadays. Nala’s not got the icons though which is interesting, means disgrace. Not as interesting as my thing:

     “Problem. No hammers on ‘em.  Guards was killed with hammers.” They stop talking, look to me, look to the rested Imp I dragged in.

     I speak my bow out of the slit but it’s well far and I only rest a couple before the ranks sprout bows and fill the air with shafts.

     “Killing their own? How could they? This is the Realm of Light!” Cary’s eyes blaze outrage.

     “Don’t be… so naïve,” Adina chides. “You’re… too old… for such childish sentiment.” Says this between heavy breaths.

     “Fuck off. You’re not my mother.”

     “You really think Empire’s worse than Beacon?” Nala says. “Everyone’s only out to get theirs.”

     “That’s a horrible viewpoint Nala but I’ll admit there’s some truth to it.”

     “Agree,” I says. Imp, city boy, both rest you just as dead you cross ‘em wrong.

     “Insightful as ever, Scath,” Carys says.

     “That hat’s stupid,” I says. It really is. Purple felt, wide brim, two silver feathers sprouting out the back of it. She bought it when she first hired me back in Phorein further down the coast. Should’ve guessed what I was in for. Last bloody stands.

#

     All through the chat it’s been  thud thud thudthudthudthudthud of arrows hitting the roof. That stops.

     The Imps come up the slope real slow, it’s the mail and the plate and the thick cone helms and the shields held up overlapped above their heads.

     “Ram,” I says.

     Nala’s shaking. “We open the sally door.”

     “Bolvander taught you nothing,” Adina says, trying to stand but she can’t.

     “Mad for sure,” I says. Rule two is leave when people get stupid.

     “They won’t use the ramp. If the whole gate comes down we’re even more dead than we are right now. I can hold the door with my shield and a stack of spears, take them on single file. Carys you go up left of the steps, get that rapier doing its thing. Scath knows his job.”

     “They’ll rip you to shreds!”

     “This plate is thrice hardened steel from the forges of Karth. Ironmaster Zalto himself hammered the rivets. If it wasn’t being worn by someone as useless as me it could win this war.”

     Can’t argue with that.

     Javelin time, and Nala smashes the sally door hinge with her pommel to make it look broke. Adina groans like we’ll all die. We actually might.

     Nala’s going to fight forty. Even one at a time that’s a rough gig, she’s getting definitely cut to ribbons. Twelve each for me and Carys is still too many. If it was anybody else I’d have scarpered there and then. But Heavy Nala straightens her gorget and sets her shield and lines up spears and puts her sword at the end of the line of spears turning her head so no one sees she’s crying.

     I still hear Ma’s voice. You find a woman, Tal, strong as stones, a woman with backbone, you stick right by ‘er and never leave.

So I break rule two.