Art of War Read online

Mitchell Hogan

  From atop the battlements, Heikir reached for another arrow and launched it into the teeming horde below. The feral stench rising from the besieging jukari was so pungent it seemed to have substance, and it made him retch. Metal clanged as weapons struck primitive shields, and he could hear snatches of the guttural chant the creatures screamed throughout their assault. Torches held in their clawed hands cast lurid orange glows, which seethed as the creatures moved. Howls of bloodlust and anger broached the night, from both sides.

  Another arrow. Nock. Loose.

  And another.

  His fingers were rubbed raw, even calloused as they were from weeks of fighting.

  The fortress of Kascunir’s first line of defense was the wall of Skaitha, composed of seamed granite forty yards high. It snaked for almost two miles across the entrance of the Soras Pass, which the fortress blocked. Skaitha had been lost the first day of the siege, jukari swarming over stone that had been untouched by nonhuman hands until now. Truula, the second wall, two hundred yards distant, had fallen shortly after due to the sheer weight of jukari numbers and corrosive vormag sorcery.

  During the years of peace, a city had grown up around the citadel and between the first and second walls. The screams of those who’d made their homes there had lasted long into the night and through the next day. The jukari were worse than animals, and the dead were a source of food.

  That left only another two hundred yards of clear killing ground between the third wall of Angem, and then the citadel of Kascunir itself.

  Heikir and his squad of archers had heard rumors the lord commander had abandoned his plan to retake the second wall. Clearly, there was a limit to what his sorcerers could do, so it was also said, and here on the border of the Desolate Lands you had to work with what you were given—or what you took with blood and sweat and death.

  Makeshift ladders of branches and stripped timbers thudded against the wall. Jukari scrambled over each other to reach the top, where they were cut down by swords and pierced by spears. The creatures were a full yard taller than a grown man, with skin of mottled gray and heads covered with thick black hair. Slanted yellow eyes peered out above beak-like noses.

  Tortured wails reached Heikir’s ears as on the wall far to his left archers and soldiers writhed in agony. Arcane concussions hammered bodies, tore their own sorcerers shields to smoke. Coruscating fire slicked across the battlements, igniting flesh and breaking bones like straw, before the defenders’ sorcerers repulsed the attack.

  Horrified, Heikir tore his gaze from the charred corpses littering the gutted section of wall.

  There were murmurs from behind as a sorcerer walked along the wall, dispensing crafted arrows with red feather fletching. Heikir turned to grab three, and as he did, a black-shafted arrow slammed into Rafnar beside him. The young man grunted and staggered back, blood oozing from the wound in his chest. His mouth opened, frothed crimson, and he dropped to the stones. Hands dragged the archer away and another stepped forward to take his place, a too-young boy with wide eyes and trembling hands.

  A lucky shot for the jukari, not so lucky for Rafnar. But then again, the defenders had fought for so long, even the unlucky incidents seemed a regular occurrence.

  Heikir nocked one of the red-fletched arrows and waited for the command to loose. When it came, his joined a few dozen others, trailing incandescent lines of sorcerous power.

  They exploded where they struck, throwing up chunks of earth and hurling jukari from their feet. The concussive impact blasts reached Heikir’s ears a moment later.

  Another red arrow. Nock. Loose.

  More sorcerous fire enveloped the attacking creatures, and agonized howls split the night.

  Whimpering like beaten dogs, the jukari retreated.

  But lingering behind were smaller, darker figures cloaked in arcane shields upon which dazzling motes erupted when struck by arrows. These creatures had survived the sorcerous onslaught and stood unmoved. Vormag. Sorcerers in their own right.

  Unbowed.

  Uncowed.

  Heikir stared in revulsion at the morsel of charred rat-meat Bersi handed him. Although it was stringy and rank, he shoved it into his mouth and chewed. His empty stomach had ceased growling weeks ago, as if it had given up hope of ever being full again.

  “There’s no seconds,” joked Bersi, drawing a guffaw from Ulrik, another of their squad of archers.

  Outside, a cold rain tumbled from a gray sky. Drops plinked into the pots and pans the soldiers had set out to catch what they could to drink. Ulrik made a round and poured a portion into everyone’s cup.

  Heikir sipped his slowly. They collected enough to drink, but not to bathe with. He knew he must have reeked as much as everyone else, and his head was constantly itchy from lice.

  Bersi used a wooden spoon to stir a pot atop a small cookfire that gave off too much smoke and struggled to bring the gruel to a boil. Heikir wasn’t sure what was simmering inside, but it wasn’t likely to be substantial. Only the spiders in their corner webs were getting fatter—from the flies the jukari bought with them.

  What he wouldn’t give to be back on his farm and eating his fill while his wife, Svea, bustled about their kitchen. By the ancestors, how he ached for her. He wished he’d never seen the soldiers who came to his farm and conscripted him to help defend Kascunir.

  “It’s all right,” he’d told Svea, not knowing, believing the soldiers’ lie that he’d be home in a few weeks once the threat was over.

  He’d been a fool.

  With nothing solid to sustain the archers, even their shit had become watery and foul. Sores crusted their lips, and their skin was unhealthily dull, broken only by eruptions of red spots. Heikir worried at a loose tooth that hadn’t been moving at the beginning of the siege. He wanted to stand and take in some night air, but his body and limbs ached, and he couldn’t be bothered.

  Their squad of archers huddled on the ground floor of one of the towers close by the main gate of Angem. The rest of the archers were billeted somewhere close by as they were the first to the walls whenever the jukari attacked. Lord Commander Adryan had given a speech when the monstrous horde first approached, declaring that the creatures would soon tire and leave them alone.

  That had been fifty-three days ago.

  Inside the unprepared fortress, supplies had been exhausted quickly. The frequent riots were quelled violently by the lord commander’s black-clad soldiers—his supposedly elite force named the Steel Fist. So far, Heikir hadn’t seen them fight the jukari.

  “Where’s Rafnar?” Heikir asked. “Is he alive?”

  “They took him into the citadel and he hasn’t come out,” said Bersi.

  Heikir glanced at Bersi, but the cobbler remained tight-lipped. “Why are they taking all the wounded inside? Treat them out here, I say. No point dragging them all over the place.”

  The rest of the squad remained silent, staring into the meager fire.

  Heikir, Bersi, and Ulrik lifted the wagon tongue and struggled to drag the wagon toward the others blocking this side of Angem’s gates. A horse or a mule would have made their task a breeze, but those had been the first to be eaten once it was clear the jukari weren’t leaving. The gates were constructed of massive timbers with metal plates nailed to the outside to render them immune to fire and some sorcery. A single sorcerer sat a little way off, staring at the crack in the center of the double gate. Was it slightly wider than yesterday? Her eyes were blank and sweat dripped from her brow.

  Ulrik slipped, and the weight of the wagon caused both Heikir and Bersi to lose their grip. The wooden tongue crashed to the cobbles, and a squad leader shouted at them to stop messing about and get it up against the others.

  “Sorry,” said Ulrik. “I’m tired.”

  “We all are,” Heikir said. “Come on. Wouldn’t want these soldiers to break a sweat by coming to scold us in this heat.”

  They picked up the tongue again and, this time, made it to the gate without incide
nt. As best they could, they jammed the cart against the others and dusted their hands while they took a breather.

  Heikir glanced at the sorcerer, but she hadn’t moved. She wouldn’t until someone came from the citadel to relieve her. Violet tendrils latched to the outside of the gate like tentacles: Vormag sorcerers were attempting to thrust the entrance open. The lord commander had ordered wagons and barrels of oil and timbers to be stacked against the gate to lend it added weight, and if the vormag managed to force the gates, then the defenders could ignite the pile and set it burning for days.

  Heikir noted the sorcerer’s clean hair bound in braids, her clear skin, physique plump and in sharp contrast to the emaciated appearance of the archers and the common soldiers.

  A hand squeezed his shoulder. Bersi.

  “Don’t think about it,” the man said. “They’re protecting us.”

  “We’re all dying.”

  “Maybe the jukari will give up.”

  Heikir laughed. “Would you? We’re on our last legs. Suffer until we’re dead, is that our lot?”

  “Would you rather die fighting? I thought you were a farmer, not a warrior.”

  “I’m just a normal man. But I know injustice when I see it. I know when we’re being used.”

  “Forget it, and don’t let them catch you spreading dissent.”

  “Or what?”

  “Maybe you’ll follow Ossur.”

  Ossur had been an archer in a squad stationed on the next tower over. He’d been a big, belligerent lad, and too quick to mouth off. He’d spread rumors about the nobles and sorcerers surviving off the dead soldiers, and one night he’d disappeared. Vanished as if he’d never existed.

  A notice was posted that he’d deserted, but where to? There was nowhere to go.

  In Heikir’s mind, Ossur’s disappearance had solidified the rumors into more than gossip. Hoarding provisions was one thing, but fallen soldiers—their comrades—supplementing the nobles’ meals?

  Heikir felt his gorge rise at the very thought and swallowed sour spit. Now, no one spoke of the possibility except in hushed whispers in the dead of night.

  The fallen soldiers were supposedly interred in the catacombs beneath the citadel. The lord commander claimed it was the best that could be managed considering the jukari had overrun the cemetery outside the walls.

  If he hadn’t seen with his own eyes that the nobles and sorcerers weren’t exactly starving, he’d have been inclined to believe the story. It rankled him, how those that did the fighting suffered deprivation while their betters lacked for nothing. His arms were thinner already, and his bow became harder to draw every day. Soon, he wouldn’t be able to shoot arrows as far. Already, a couple in his squad were struggling, and for what? To fight and die and be devoured by monsters from either side?

  Jukari or noble seemed the same to Heikir at that moment.

  And while the creatures outside the walls persisted, there would be no respite.

  No victory for the defenders.

  “You going back to farming after this?” asked Bersi, who was repairing one of Heikir’s boots with cobbling tools he’d brought along with him.

  Heikir looked up from his bow, which he was rubbing with wax to protect it from moisture. “I don’t know anything else. And it’s a good life. Will be hard work for a while though. My wife, she—” his throat closed for a moment, and he coughed to clear it, “she can’t do the hard work after she lost the baby. The physiker said she mightn’t be able to have another…but we’re trying.”

  “Trying is the best part! My wife should keep my business running. She’s as good a cobbler as me. Ouch!” He sucked on his thumb, which he’d pricked on a needle. With a wry smile, he continued, “Better, actually, but don’t you tell anyone I said that! It’ll be good to get back. To make something, rather than…this.” He rose and handed Heikir his boot back.

  “How much do I owe you?”

  “A couple of cabbages and some carrots when we get discharged. A dozen eggs, too, if you don’t mind.”

  Heikir laughed, but the thought of his farm overwhelmed him, and his mirth turned to tears. Bersi squeezed his shoulder as Heikir hid his shameful weeping behind a hand.

  Ulrik shifted from his position by the tower doorway. He lay on a pile of rags he used as a bed when they weren’t fighting or laboring. “I get to go back to being an apprentice bricklayer. It’s boring work, but once I finish my apprenticeship, the pay’s good. One day, I’ll build my own house.”

  “Or maybe you can join the rat-catchers’ guild,” quipped Bersi. “You’ve learned a lot about the vermin here!”

  Heikir smiled. “He still can’t catch the fat ones.”

  “There ain’t any!” Ulrik laughed.

  After their laughter died away, none of them spoke, as if breaking the companionable silence would bring the horrible reality of their situation crashing back down. Ulrik stirred himself and brought a pan of rainwater around to top up their cups.

  “Ancestors, Heikir!” blurted Ulrik. “You’ve got a red fletch in your quiver. You’re supposed to hand the leftovers back.”

  “I know. I always do.” Heikir checked his quiver to find Ulrik was correct. Among the standard arrows, whose quality was deteriorating as quickly as the defenders’ strength, stood one with red feathers.

  “Don’t touch it! It might explode.”

  “Don’t be stupid. They need a sorcerer to—”

  “Then why are the crafting runes on the shaft glowing?”

  Heikir leaped to his feet, the gleaming shaft cradled in his hands. He ran a few steps and then stopped. What should he do with it?

  Laughter from the others made Heikir realize he’d been had.

  “Right, I’m taking it back now.”

  “And get a whipping?” said Bersi. “Your back will be bloody, and then what’ll happen? You think you can heal on the rations we get? You’ll join the other corpses in the catacombs.”

  Heikir clenched his jaw and ground his teeth. “They ain’t going to eat—”

  “Shh! Fool.”

  Heikir woke to the sound of Ulrik coughing, a coarse bark torn from his lungs and throat. Pale light filtered through the doorway, indicating dawn was already here. It seemed like Heikir had only just lain down.

  Ulrik hacked into a rag, then stared at the cloth. “There’s blood,” he said dully.

  “Shit,” said Bersi.

  “You’ll be all right,” Heiki said, with as much conviction as he could muster. He wouldn’t be. A soldier they hadn’t known had begun coughing two days ago and been taken into the citadel for treatment. So far, he hadn’t returned.

  “They ain’t taking me,” said Ulrik. “I won’t go.”

  “You can still draw a bow,” Heikir agreed. “We’ll tell them that.”

  The captain’s morning inspection would happen soon. If Ulrik coughed when she was doing her rounds…

  They drank some water, and Bersi passed around chunks of cheese covered with a fuzzy layer of green mold.

  “Eat up,” he said, “that’s the last of it.”

  Heikir looked at the furry chunk, and then gagged at the wet dirt taste as he chewed. A few mouthfuls of water and he felt better, but only just. Some swore the mold helped prevent sickness, but he wasn’t so sure. He’d probably be dead before finding out.

  Svea. He missed the sight of her brown hair, her touch, the way she dusted her hands of flour and smiled at him when making bread. He wished there was a way to get his wife a message. To let her know he was all right and not to worry. It wasn’t the truth, but it might ease her pain until she found out he wasn’t ever coming home.

  A sharp pain erupted in Heikir’s bowels, and he staggered from the tower clutching his sides. He barely made it to the jakes they’d set up in a nearby building, and almost tripped over his own feet when he dropped his trousers.

  It was a good half an hourglass before he made it back to his squad. His innards burned like fire and his watery waste had made h
im retch.

  “You all right?” asked Bersi when he returned.

  “Never better,” managed Heikir with a wan smile.

  “Don’t give in to despair, Heikir. We’ll get through this. You’ll see. You owe me them cabbages and carrots, remember. And don’t forget the eggs. You’re not getting out of it that easily.”

  He didn’t reply, though was grateful for Bersi’s words. He needed to get out of here. Wanted to go somewhere far away. Take his beloved Svea with him. Sell the farm and move. This fighting, the horror of it, had beaten him down. He’d do anything to end it.

  It was said the immortal god-emperor had died a few months ago defeating a great evil, saving the empire he’d created. Perhaps that was why the jukari were here: they sensed weakness.

  The jukari attacked again that night.

  Heikir, Bersi, Ulrik and the remainder of their squad manned the walls, pressed up against the battlements and ducking under the fierce assault of black jukari shafts, which descended like sleeting rain.

  During a lull in the fighting, Heikir went below with Ulrik to bring up bundles of arrows. They were on their second trip when Ulrik stopped at the top of the stair in full view of the jukari and broke into a fit of coughing. His eyes bulged, and he clutched at a wall to steady himself. A black shaft struck the ground beside him, sparks skittering from the impact, and the arrow ricocheted off over the wall and into the street below.

  “Get down!” said Bersi.

  Heikir dropped his bundles of arrows and dove for the protection of the battlements. Ulrik took a step, then doubled over as another cough racked his thin frame.

  There was a sickening thump as a jukari shaft hammered into Ulrik’s side and penetrated deep into his chest. He collapsed, blood leaking onto the stone.

  Heikir stood to help him, but Bersi pulled him down just as another three shafts struck sparks from the stone around Ulrik’s lifeless form.

  “Archers ready!” came the command.

  Heikir tore his eyes from Ulrik and looked toward his discarded bow beside Bersi. He picked the weapon up with trembling hands.