“Once the stairwells are open,” Dockson said quietly, “I want each of you to go to your battalion. Tindwyl, you have Tin Gate, in the north by Keep Venture. I might need your advice, but for now, stay with those boys. They’ll listen to you—they respect Terrismen. Breeze, you have one of your Soothers in each of battalions four through twelve?”
Breeze nodded. “They aren’t much, though. …”
“Just have them keep those boys fighting!” Dockson said. “Don’t let our men break!”
“A thousand men are far too many for one Soother to handle, my friend,” Breeze said.
“Have them do the best they can,” Dockson said. “You and Ham take Pewter Gate and Zinc Gate—looks like the koloss are going to hit here first. Clubs should bring in reinforcements.”
The two men nodded; then Dockson looked at Sazed. “You know where to go?”
“Yes … yes, I think so,” Sazed said, gripping the wall. In the air, flakes of ash began to fall from the sky.
“Go, then!” Dockson said as one final squad of archers made its way out of the stairwell.
“My lord Venture!”
Straff turned. With some stimulants, he was able to remain strong enough to stay atop his saddle—though he wouldn’t have dared to fight. Of course, he wouldn’t have fought anyway. That wasn’t his way. One brought armies to do such things.
He turned his animal as the messenger approached. The man puffed, putting hands on knees as he stopped beside Straff’s mount, bits of ash swirling on the ground at his feet.
“My lord,” the man said. “The koloss army has attacked Luthadel!”
Just as you said, Zane, Straff thought in wonder.
“The koloss, attacking?” Lord Janarle asked, moving his horse up beside Straff’s. The handsome lord frowned, then eyed Straff. “You expected this, my lord?”
“Of course,” Straff said, smiling.
Janarle looked impressed.
“Pass an order to the men, Janarle,” Straff said. “I want this column turned back toward Luthadel.”
“We can be there in an hour, my lord!” Janarle said.
“No,” Straff said. “Let’s take our time. We wouldn’t want to overwork our troops, would we?”
Janarle smiled. “Of course not, my lord.”
Arrows seemed to have little effect on the koloss.
Sazed stood, transfixed and appalled, atop his gate’s watchtower. He wasn’t officially in charge of the men, so he didn’t have any orders to give. He simply stood with the scouts and messengers, waiting to see if he was needed or not.
That left him plenty of time to watch the horror unfolding. The koloss weren’t charging his section of the wall yet, thankfully, and his men stood watching tensely as the creatures barreled toward Tin Gate and Pewter Gate in the distance.
Even far away—the tower letting him see over a section of the city to where Tin Gate lay—Sazed could see the koloss running straight through hailstorms of arrows. Some of the smaller ones appeared to fall dead or wounded, but most just continued to charge. Men murmured on the tower near him.
We aren’t ready for this, Sazed thought. Even with months to plan and anticipate, we aren’t ready.
This is what we get, being ruled over by a god for a thousand years. A thousand years of peace—tyrannical peace, but peace nonetheless. We don’t have generals, we have men who know how to order a bath drawn. We don’t have tacticians, we have bureaucrats. We don’t have warriors, we have boys with sticks.
Even as he watched the oncoming doom, his scholar’s mind was analytical. Tapping sight, he could see that many of the distant creatures—especially the larger ones—carried small uprooted trees. They were ready, in their own way, to break into the city. The trees wouldn’t be as effective as real battering rams—but then, the city gates weren’t built to withstand a real battering in the first place.
Those koloss are smarter than we give them credit for, he thought. They can recognize the abstract value of coins, even if they don’t have an economy. They can see that they’ll need tools to break down our doors, even if they don’t know how to make those tools.
The first koloss wave reached the wall. Men began to toss down rocks and other items. Sazed’s own section had similar piles, one just next to the gate arch, beside which he stood. But arrows had almost no effect; what good would a few rocks do? Koloss clumped around the base of the wall, like the water of a dammed-up river. Distant thumps sounded as the creatures began to beat against the gates.
“Battalion sixteen!” a messenger called from below, riding up to Sazed’s gate. “Lord Culee!”
“Here!” a man called from the wall top beside Sazed’s tower.
“Pewter Gate needs reinforcements immediately! Lord Penrod commands you to bring six companies and follow me!”
Lord Culee began to give the orders. Six companies … Sazed thought. Six hundred of our thousand. Clubs’s words from earlier returned to him: Twenty thousand men might seem like a lot, until one saw how thinly they had to be stretched.
The six companies marched away, leaving the courtyard before Sazed’s gate disturbingly empty. The four hundred remaining men—three hundred in the courtyard, one hundred on the wall—shuffled quietly.
Sazed closed his eyes and tapped his hearing tinmind. He could hear … wood beating on wood. Screams. Human screams. He released the tinmind quickly, then tapped eyesight again, leaning out and looking toward the section of the wall where the battle was being fought. The koloss were throwing back the fallen rocks—and they were far more accurate than the defenders. Sazed jumped as he saw a young soldier’s face crushed, his body thrown back off the wall top by the rock’s force. Sazed released his tinmind, breathing quickly.
“Be firm, men!” called one of the soldiers on the wall. He was barely a youth—a nobleman, but he couldn’t be more than sixteen. Of course, a lot of the men in the army were that age.
“Stand firm …” the young commander repeated. His voice sounded uncertain, and it trailed off as he noticed something in the distance. Sazed turned, following the man’s gaze.
The koloss had gotten tired of standing around, piling up at a single gate. They were moving to surround the city, large groups of them breaking up, fording the River Channerel toward other gates.
Gates like Sazed’s.
Vin landed directly in the middle of the camp. She tossed a handful of pewter dust into the firepit, then Pushed, blowing coals, soot, and smoke across a pair of surprised guards, who had been fixing breakfast. She reached out and Pulled out the stakes of the three small tents.
All three collapsed. One was unoccupied, but cries came from the other two. The canvas outlined struggling, confused figures—one inside the larger tent, two inside the smaller one.
The guards scrambled back, raising their arms to protect their eyes from the soot and sparks, their hands reaching for swords. Vin raised a fist toward them—and, as they blinked their eyes clear, she let a single coin drop to the ground.
The guards froze, then took their hands off their swords. Vin eyed the tents. The person in charge would be inside the larger one—and he was the man she would need to deal with. Probably one of Straff’s captains, though the guards didn’t wear Venture heraldry. Perhaps—