Fate Undone: A Novella

Chapter IV - Part II

The edge of the hill's top was a bright yellow, giving the illusion that the sun was coming back up from the wrong end of the sky. It made the ground in between the hill and the western edge of the city look like a black void in comparison. It was empty there, but Abraam knew it would soon be filled. The noise was still mounting, beating and booming. He could hear it all the way from Vassilios Manor. There was no give to it. It could have been the footsteps of thousands of warriors and the war drums they carried, or it could have been the earth rhythmically crumbling into itself, coming to swallow the land whole.

After the Royal Guard had finished stockpiling Vassilios Manor with enough bows, quivers, and pots of plant resin for the pitch—and after they had already secured the king and queen within their chambers on the third floor—all they could do was wait. Abraam was just one among many that looked out over the city from the manor's opened doors. Nikos and Eleni were beside him. Even though Anna was safe in the temple's crypt, he was wishing she was here, too.

Even if they get in the city, Abraam thought, she will be safer than most where she's at.

Atop the city's western wall, from behind the crenellated parapets and between each of the dozens of rounded mural towers that peaked up and protruded out from the ramparts, stood thousands of soldiers, set up like stoic dominos between basins of fire and pots of arrows soaking in oil. Some of the soldiers were war veterans; some had only raised a sword against a patchwork dummy stuffed with straw. Nonetheless, they were all clad in rings of steel and armed with swords at the hip and bows in hand. Three hundred and fifty yards out, past the wide field below, was the hill of the western watchtower. The tower, rising seventy feet in the air, was lean and tall, and it had recently been abandoned. Its job was done, after all; it had watched, and it had seen. Now it stood all on its own like an apologetic giant with those drums beating at its back.

The hill itself was half the height of the one holding up Vassilios Manor, but it was much steeper on the side that faced the city. Above it, the sky was a dark grey, but it wasn't getting darker. A light was coming, and with that light, the din of a manmade storm—rumbling thunder mounting before the final bark. But there was no bark with this storm. The thunder only rumbled. Such a sound did horrors for the nerves, taunting and teasing a steady growth but never giving.

Slowly, when the hilltop looked bright enough that it might boil over with lava, the dark silhouette of the earthen hill grew spikes. They rose like a sharp field of blades: polearms waving gently from side to side. Some of them carried dark flapping banners on their ends; some were tipped with curved axe heads. Under each one was a man, Abraam knew, but being so far and so clustered together, it only looked like a wave of cruel grass, crawling out of some child's nightmare.

The sides of the watchtower were bright now with the yellow glow emanating from the army's torches. The drums picked up, beating suddenly faster. As the front line of soldiers atop the western hill arranged themselves, new silhouettes made their climb, rising up to join the lonesome watchtower. Animalistic grunts and roars periodically shouted out at the night sky as thick obelisks were drawn closer and closer to the front of the enemy line. At first there were three of them being drawn up, then six, and then ten that stood there, spread out across the hilltop. They were of a height with the watchtower, but far thicker, especially at their bases where their massive wheels rolled.

Seeing just one siege engine here was remarkable—impossible even. To have ten lined up for the assault, pulled all the way from Eress, was simply unimaginable. In between every other one, new monsters arose, but these kinds were short with arched limbs tucked all together.

Belfries and catapults. No man could have hauled those things all the way here. Over the drumming, the beastly sounds came yet again, roaring and snapping from somewhere in the dark lines of the invading army. And then Abraam thought, Though, I suppose no man did.

"How did they get this far unnoticed?" asked Nikos. "We should have gotten some word from the towns. There's too many eyes between here and Eress for them to have gone unseen."

A grizzled guard to the left spat at his own feet and cursed. "I'll bet they crawled up from the underworld by the hand of Hades himself. This is an infernal doing."

"Spare us," said another guard from behind. "These are men of blood and bone, not soulless specters."

"Open your ears. Do they sound like men to you?"

As a third man began to chime in, Eleni said softly, "Why are they even doing this? We've respected the borders just as much as they have."

A single drummer from the hill issued out a series of high taps, and the other drumming ceased. At that, all of the guards bickering about a demonic army quieted at once. The taps came again, answered by those beasts, and the belfries began to dip down, leading the way over the dark ledge. A swelling uproar followed: cheers and gales of shouting at the base of those obelisks. One after the next, the machines descended, first creaking slowly, then picking up speed down the hillside until their wheels were howling as noisily as the things that pushed and pulled them along. The men came next—the Eressians or the demons, whatever they were—flowing over the hill with their angry spears and clattering swords.

We stay strong. Here and now; now and forever.

A horn was blown from somewhere down on the western wall, high and proud it sounded. At once, several others bellowed, too, singing their sweet siren song. Then from one of the mural towers came the flame of a single torch. Faintly, someone yelled a warning, and the first rocket shot out, screaming into the night sky with a gush of light and smoke trailing behind it.

Three others from further down launched, their screams just as piercing. Like fiery hawks, they flew straight out, crying or exulting from their sudden, chaotic departure. When the first rocket plummeted into the earth along the side of the hill, it ruptured into the soil with a brilliant burst of fire, tossing the silhouettes of screaming men back and leaving a bright hole to linger in the dark void. The others came crashing down, throwing dirt up and men to the side, as more took to the sky. One screeched and popped in the air, veering off course and blowing a line of flames over nothing but grass. Another pounded the earth right in front of a belfry's wheel, abruptly sinking the machine, tilting its towering frame forward and catching its corner on fire. The army cried in anguish and abandoned the behemoth as the Royal Guard watched and cheered.

Let them burn. Please, gods, let them all burn.

...

(Next part picks up immediately after.)

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