"Deliver your message quickly." Marcus pulls out a blade and casually polishes it. "I'm already wondering if I should change my mind."
"My brother warlocks and I demand that you give up the city of Antium. If you do so immediately, your elderly will be exiled instead of executed, your fighting men enslaved instead of tortured and put to the pyre, and your women and daughters taken to wife and converted instead of raped and debased. If you do not give up the city, we will take it by the Grain Moon. This I vow to you on the blood of my mother and father and unborn children."
Avitas and I exchange a glance. The Grain Moon--again.
"How do you plan to take the city?" I say. "You have no siege machines."
"Silence, heathen. I speak to your master." Grimarr keeps his attention on Marcus even as my hand itches for my war hammer. "Your answer, my lord?"
"You and your corpse-stroking warlocks can take your terms with you to the hells--where we will shortly send you."
"Very well." Grimarr shrugs, as if he expected no less, and wheels his horse away.
When we are back within the city, Marcus turns to Keris and me. "They will strike within the hour."
"My Lord Emperor," Keris says, "how--"
"They will strike, and we must be ready, for it will be swift and hard." Marcus is distracted, head tilted as he listens to whatever secrets his brother's ghost whispers. "I will command the men at the western gate. Keris, the Shrike will inform you of your duties."
His cape whips behind him as he walks away, and I turn to Keris. "Take the eastern wall," I say. "The defense is weakest near the central gate. Hold it, or the first level will be overrun."
The Commandant salutes, and though her face is carefully neutral I can sense the smugness rolling off of her. What the bleeding hells is she up to now?
"Keris." Perhaps this is a lost cause, but I say it anyway. "I know this was you," I say. "All of it. I assume you believe you can hold off the Karkauns long enough to rid yourself of Marcus and Livia. Long enough to rid yourself of me."
She merely watches me.
"I know what you desire," I say. "And this siege you've brought upon the city tells me how badly you wish for it. But there are hundreds of thousands of Martials--"
"You don't know what I want," Keris says softly. "But you will. Soon."
She turns and stalks away, the Plebeians nearby cheering her name as she passes.
"What the bleeding hells is that supposed to mean?" I turn to Avitas, who is at my back. My hand is slick, clenched around the hilt of my dagger. My every instinct screams that something is wrong. That I have irrevocably underestimated Keris. "She wants the Empire," I say to Avitas. "What else could she possibly be after?"
He doesn't get a chance to answer. Panicked shouts rise from the wall. When Avitas and I reach the walkway that runs along the massive structure, I understand why.
The sky is illuminated by the light of scores of pyres. Skies only know how Grimarr disguised them, because I'd have sworn those pyres weren't there moments ago. Now they dominate the field, their flames shooting high into the sky.
Grimarr circles the largest pyre, muttering incantations. From this distance I should not be able to hear him. Yet the malice of his magic taints the very air, the words snaking beneath my skin.
"Ready the catapults." I give Dex the order. "Ready the archers. The Emperor was right. They're making their move."
Down in the Karkaun camp, bound figures are brought toward the pyres, twisting in panic. At first, I think they are animals, part of some sort of ritual sacrifice.
Howls fill the air. And I realize it is a sacrifice.
"Bleeding hells," Dex says. "Are those--"
"Women." My stomach churns. "And . . . children."
Their screams echo across the Karkaun camp, and when one of my men retches over the wall, I cannot blame him. Even from here, I can smell burned flesh. Grimarr chants and the Karkauns echo him, soon accompanied by the steady, deep beat of a drum.
The Martials on the wall are well and truly rattled now, but I walk back and forth among them. "Courage in the face of their barbaric ways," I shout. "Courage, lest they bring their darkness upon us all."
The chanting slows, each word drawn out longer until it is one unending low hum that seems to arise from the earth itself.
A distant howl tears through the air, high-pitched, like the screams of those on the pyres but with an unearthly tinge that raises the hair on my arms. The pyres go out. The sudden darkness is blinding. As my eyes adjust, I realize the humming has stopped. Scraps of white rise from the pyres, looking for all the world like--
"Ghosts," Harper says. "They're summoning ghosts."
From the Karkaun camp, screams arise from the men as the ghosts turn on them and plunge into the army, disappearing. Some of the men appear unchanged. Others jerk as if battling something none of us can see, their unnatural movements visible even from here.
Silence descends. Then the thunder of feet, thousands upon thousands of people moving at once.
"They're rushing the walls," I say disbelievingly. "Why would they--"
"Look at them, Shrike," Harper whispers. "Look at how they're moving."
The Karkauns are indeed rushing the walls. But they run with inhuman speed. When they reach the forest of pikes poking out of the ground two hundred yards from Antium, instead of impaling themselves the Karkauns leap over them with unnatural strength.
Shouts of alarm sound from the Martials as the Karkauns come closer. Even from a distance, their eyes glow a startling, pure white. They're possessed by the ghosts raised by their warlocks.
"Avitas," I say so quietly that no one else can hear. "The evacuation plan. It is ready? All are in place? You have cleared the way?"
"Yes, Shrike." Harper turns from the approaching horde. "All is prepared."
"Then see it done."
He hesitates, about to launch a protest. But I am already moving.
"Catapults!" I call to the drummer, who pounds out the message. "Fire at will!"
&nbs
p; Within seconds, the catapults rumble and flaming projectiles fly over the walls toward the possessed Karkauns. Many go down--but more dodge the projectiles, moving with that eerie speed.
"Archers!" I shout. "Fire at will!" With breathtaking swiftness, Grimarr's possessed soldiers have blown past the markers we set out on the field.
A hail of flaming arrows rains down on the Karkauns. It hardly slows them. I order the archers to fire again and again. Some of the Karkauns fall, but not enough. No wonder they didn't have any bleeding siege machines.
An alarm goes up from the men, and less than a hundred yards away, a group of possessed Karkauns lift massive glowing missiles, seemingly unbothered by their flames, and fling them at Antium.
"It's--it's not possible," I whisper. "How can they--"
The missiles fly into the city, smashing into buildings and soldiers and watchtowers. The drummers immediately issue a call for the water brigades. The archers fire volley after volley, and legionnaires reload the catapults as fast as they can.
As the Karkauns close on the walls, I hear their hungry, beast-like snarls. Too quickly, they are past the trenches, past the secondary forest of pikes planted at the base of the walls to deflect a human army.
We have no defense now. In the space of minutes, the battle will go from strategy and tactics thought up in a distant room to the short, desperate strokes of men fighting for their next breath.
So be it. The Karkauns begin to scale the wall, brandishing their weapons as if they are possessed by demons of the hells. I draw my war hammer.
And then I roar the attack.
XLVII: Laia
The soldier's uniform is far too big, and there's an unpleasant wetness across the small of my back. The previous owner must have taken a blow to the kidney. And he must have spent a long time dying.
Fortunately, the uniform is black, so no one notices the blood as I move through the lines of soldiers along the southern wall of Antium, doling out dippers of water. My hair is tucked tightly into a helm, and I have gloves on to hide my hands. I slump my shoulders beneath the yoke across my back and shuffle my feet. But, tired as they are, the soldiers hardly notice me. I could probably strip down to skivvies and run up and down the wall screaming, "I burned down Blackcliff!" and they wouldn't care.