There was something faintly horrifying about a tipple while men marched to their deaths. Epic disaster as light entertainment. “At a time like this?” asked Orso.
Officers glanced at one another, raised their brows, shrugged as if to say, What better time could there be?
Orso sighed. “I’ll take a sherry. Sherry, Master Sulfur?”
“Not for me, Your Majesty.”
“Of course, I forgot. Your highly specific diet…” And Orso winced as he looked back towards the battlefield.
Some of the better-disciplined formations had reached the orchards and apparently vanished. Others had scarcely moved at all, or were stuck at some hedgerow, some house, some stand of trees. Still others appeared to have twisted, drifted apart, become tangled with each other. Orso and his royal entourage watched in silence, sipping their drinks, while the movement of the great clock marked the passage of time with its steady tick, tick, tick beneath their feet.
“The forces of the Open Council appear to be in some confusion,” someone said.
Orso laughed so hard he snorted sherry out of his nose, had to submit to a dabbing down by his footman while he continued to helplessly giggle.
Hoff looked at him as though he had lost his reason. Perhaps he had. “Your Majesty?”
“Oh, you know. Good old Open Council. You can always count on them to act with total disunity, disloyalty and incompetence.”
“What are they doing?” muttered Savine, clenching her swollen fists so tight they trembled. “What the hell are they doing?”
She was no soldier, but it hardly took Stolicus himself to tell things had not started well. From the chaos over there, anyone would have thought the Open Council were fully engaged with the enemy rather than with some orchards and a slow-flowing tributary of the river.
“Seems your rebellion’s coming apart already.” Lord Steebling lifted his gouty leg onto a stool then sat back, grinning up at her with smug satisfaction.
“I wouldn’t count us out just yet,” she said, turning her back on him and stepping away.
The man was an utter shit, but Leo had insisted he be treated with every courtesy. They were here to uphold the rights of Union citizens, after all, and it was Steebling’s land they were fighting on, Steebling’s house they were using as their headquarters, Steebling’s bed they had been clumsily coupling in last night. The memory made her feel faintly and entirely inappropriately aroused. Faintly aroused and badly in need of a piss both at once.
The great wagons carrying the cannon had been held up on the clogged roads and were only now arriving. Teams of men and horses were struggling to shift them onto their trestles and get them pointed roughly towards the enemy. Savine grimly shook her head at the thought of what each of those had cost to make. At this rate, they would be set up just in time to fire a salute to King Orso’s victory.
Leo was not far away, dragging his horse impatiently back and forth, swarmed by a constantly shifting crowd of officers, messengers and panicked hangers-on. She wanted desperately to be down there with him. Being a powerless observer by no means suited her. But she knew no one would listen to her. No one was listening to anyone. Leo caught one man in the deep blue uniform of Isher’s soldiers and near dragged him from his saddle.
“What the hell is going on over there?”
“Your Grace, it seems someone tampered with the bridges—”
“Tampered?”
“When the first units tried to cross the river, they collapsed—”
“No one thought to check?” Leo grabbed Antaup by the shoulder, stabbing towards the orchards with a finger. “Get over there! I don’t care if they have to raft men across. I don’t care if they have to build new bloody bridges! Get over there and make sure those bastards move!”
“Best stay back, Lady Savine.” Broad stepped carefully in front of her as Antaup thundered past, teeth gritted. Zuri slipped a hand around her elbow and guided her ever so gently away from the milling horses, to a clear spot on the hillside.
“Shall I have Haroon bring you a chair?” she asked.
“How could I sit through this?” snapped Savine, standing with jaw, fists and bladder clenched in a paralysis of helpless fury.
Isher, Barezin and the rest were making an utter turd of it. She had been so worried about their loyalty she had not given nearly enough attention to their competence. She tore open the button at her collar. She could not get a proper breath.
“Calm,” she whispered. “Calm, calm—”
She jumped at an almighty crash. Someone dived aside with a despairing cry as a cannon slid from its wagon and thudded to the turf, rolling down the hill and leaving a trail of wreckage, a tangle of ropes and pulleys dragged through a campfire after it.
Somewhere behind her, over the madness, she could hear Lord Steebling’s laughter.
“Now, Arch Lector?” asked the chief engineer, breathless.
Pike gazed down towards the orchards. He couldn’t have been calmer if he’d been timing an egg. “A little longer.” He leaned over to murmur to Vick, “I sent a few men down to the river last night to chisel the keystones from the bridges. I do admire a skilled mason, don’t you?”
Vick had nothing to say. Her appreciation for stonework felt rather beside the point.
“I doubt they’ll take the weight of more than a few men,” said Pike. “A company of soldiers trying to cross will soon find themselves swimming. I was a quartermaster in my inglorious youth, and I can tell you for a fact that armies run on details. Without the keystones, those bridges come apart. Without the bridges, their whole plan comes apart. So much of failure is a failure to consider the details.”
The military chorus came oddly distorted over the distance, sounding now close, now far away. Farting bugles and bumbling drums. Voices echoed up so clearly at times Vick could hear the words, then faded to a witless burble as the wind changed.
The chief engineer glanced beseechingly at Vick, sweat glistening on his forehead. “Now, Arch Lector?”
Pike thoughtfully narrowed his eyes. The wind picked up, whipping streams of smoke from the slow-burning match-cords in the hands of the nervous boys beside each cannon. “Not quite yet.”
“How long’ll he wait?” whispered Tallow, voice squeaky with fear.
Vick silently shook her head. From where they stood, she could just see the top of the clock tower. Hard to believe how little time had passed since the Open Council’s troops began to move. The trees on the far bank were swarming with soldiers now, their order entirely gone, columns crowding haphazardly in from behind to add their weight to the confusion. But the near bank still looked as peaceful as it had at dawn.
“Now, Arch Lector?” begged the engineer. Not so much that he wanted to do it, as that he couldn’t stand the tension of waiting.
Pike paused, considering the chaos around the river, hands clasped behind his back. “Now,” he said.
The man looked taken aback, as though he’d only just realised what he’d been asking for the last half-hour. He licked his lips, then turned unsteadily towards the north.
“Cannon will fire in order from my right,” he roared, holding up his fist, “and continue firing until the order is given to cease!”
The aproned engineers, the burly men who handled the shot and powder, the boys who held the poles and sponges, all started to screw pellets of rag into their ears. Pike was doing the same.