Hostilities

  Ormaz slept badly if he slept at all. That had always been true before a battle. Of all his many gifts, effortless sleep on the edge of high stakes was not one of them. Not sleeping didn't improve his men's morale or faith in him. It didn't improve the city's preparations. It would wear on him later in the day. And yet … how could he rest so close to a battle?

  His mirror showed him a graying, distinguished descendant of the Hadith Line. Leonide face. A full body of black fur. A wide black mane streaked with gray wisdom. His armor still fit, the polished steel breastplate a signal of his ultimate command and a warning to enemies who thought to try him. Steel was expensive to forge properly and difficult to work. It wasn't wasted on the weak. His only symbol of rank was a length of black and gold braided cord, looped five times around his right shoulder. The armor was overlaid with a cloak of black monster hide, giant panther according to his attendant, lined in spun gold cloth.

  The boy Pasha had looked him over once, without any apparent reaction, and proceeded to make his statements and demands. He was either too foolish to be awed by an old Tyrant who had survived on the throne for twenty years by wit and violence, or he saw exactly what he expected to see. He had killed Zaid and then praised him, that was sure. If what he said was true, then he killed thirty more princes and the whole of Kashmar's army. Ormaz mostly had the boy's word for it, but so far, stories collected from the returned survivors supported him.

  Ormaz went down, followed by four men who were his guards and arms bearers. One of them carried his helmet, and another carried his great mace. The Citadel's rocky prominence stood sentinel between the harbor city's valley and the wide plains of North Kravikas. The Citadel's foundations dug deep into the rock, and that's where Ormaz's restless feet took him. Down and down, into the archive of dead princes.

  What few princes were left in the city had gathered the night before and listened to the ritual words as Ormaz had kissed his last good son's banner and sent it here. Samir and Zaid's niches were side-by-side, their banners neatly folded and laid atop the stacks of boards detailing their accomplishments and failures. The next niche was empty, set aside for Okber once the fate of his Riverlands force was verified. Samir, Zaid, and Okber: three good sons. Two more, he'd dropped into the sea. Another was pruned for being too violently uncontrolled. The last was exiled for being lazy. Three princely sons out of seven was an excellent crop, but all three had died in his reach for Hadith's dream.

  Ormaz didn't reach the throne without taking chances and suffering losses. He didn't regret reaching for Sand Castle. He would have been a fool to pass up the opportunity. But, he should have held one son in reserve. He should have allowed Zaid more flexibility. Ormaz had never seriously considered failure. Nor did he need to, at first. But when Enclave got involved, he should have reassessed. They viewed the heretic as a serious threat, so he should have done the same.

  Gobert tried to warn him, but he didn't listen. Then again, if he stopped to think every time Gobert warned him about something, he never would have achieved anything.

  Working by a lantern's light, he slipped new boards under Zaid's folded banner. They were a record of his battles in the South, gleaned from survivors' stories. The topmost board was lettered with the Pasha's words, as good an epitaph as most, made better by coming from the enemy's mouth.

  As a general, he didn't disappoint …

  By dawn, Ormaz was on the frosted eastern ramparts, looking down. The eastern side of the city, the section farthest from the docks, extended past the Citadel and right up to the entrance of the valley, where a curtain wall drew the line between city and plain. Enemy forces gathered three hundred meters beyond the wall, mounted on their appalons, awaiting their leader's signal to begin. Their lines were straight, but their units were of irregular sizes, organized by tribe. They had a large center force and multiple smaller blocks to the flanks and rear. Instead of preparing to charge as a mass, they were deployed for independent action.

  Fifteen hundred was an impressive mounted force, but appalons didn't climb ladders or break down walls. Ormaz didn't see what they hoped to accomplish unless he sent his men beyond the walls to fight. If the boy thought he could taunt a Tyrant into doing something that stupid, he was bound to be disappointed.

  Gobert joined him just as the first arc of sun peeked above the eastern horizon, puffing white clouds into the air. "You shouldn't be here," he said, instead of a proper greeting.

  "Then neither should you."

  "At least one of us should be inside," pressed Gobert.

  Ormaz huffed a great cloud of breath over the steep drop. "It's not going to be me. What do you think they're up to?"

  "Freezing their rebel balls off." Even from such a distance, they could detect restless movement among the ranks. Nearer to home, Lord Olson had his cavalry at rest near their kneeling mounts. Men stood on the walls, with backup forces resting behind them and another shift in their beds.

  Sunlight reached the Citadel's heights before it reached the men below, and Ormaz had to squint into the sun. Maybe they were waiting for dawn to blind the ramparts before they attacked, but it wouldn't do them any good. The city walls were proven against disciple sling stones, and there weren't any battering rams or ladders in evidence. Did the Pasha think the gates would simply open for him?

  The two men waited with their bodyguards, too tense to be bored. Phillip lacked the men for a proper siege, so time wasn't on his side. He had to do something, or his men would camp and consume resources indefinitely. Ormaz doubted the tiny oases they called home would support the pointless endeavor forever.

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  The sun kept climbing, as it did every day. A slight sea breeze brought the scent of smoke to Ormaz's nose. It wasn't just the cooking fires expected at this time of day but the acrid smell of a garbage pyre. Ink, offal, cloth, tarred wood, scorched metal, mossy stone, hemp sacks, rope, mold, thatch, feces, and all the accumulated things lingering in forgotten corners.

  Distant bells started to ring. A messenger hurried toward him. "My Tyrant," he said from one knee, "there is a fire at the docks. Several old warehouses are in flames. Crews have been dispatched." Ormaz didn't acknowledge the messenger but strode to the western rampart, the Princes' Wall, which had the best view.

  Lord Mateza, who managed the city, was already there with a pair of messenger boys. The bulk of the city lay below them, following the valley to where the docks ended and the ocean began. Pillars of smoke were evenly spaced across the waterline, too coincidental to be an accident. Mateza acknowledged his Tyrant's presence without fanfare and took another board from a winded messenger. The lack of formality was permissible, under the circumstances.

  "I didn't expect this from him," confessed the Prime Minister.

  "Why wouldn't he kill our people?" asked the Tyrant. "We tried to kill all of his."

  The peel of warning bells floated up to them. Their pattern was distinct: evacuation. Half the city's bells were ringing. The western streets began to fill with people coming east, toward the Citadel.

  "I didn't order that," Lord Mateza claimed, looking at the message in his hand, "but we should let the order stand. These fires can't be put out. Nothing seems to work on them."

  "The Pasha ordered it," said Gobert. "This is what he did to Enclave. He spared the people but destroyed the buildings."

  Mateza looked up suddenly. "The evacuations started as soon as the warehouses caught fire. I think he has people down there. Tyrant Ormaz … "

  "Tell Olson to send two hundred men. Look for strangers helping the evacuation."

  One of the boys sprinted away. The fires progressed, pushed inland by a cold wind coming from the sea. Block by block, it spread across the harbor district. Lord Olson joined them on the wall just as a detachment of two hundred quick-marched into the city streets. The formation moved rapidly until they were halfway across the city, where they got mired in streets filled with people coming the other way. The sections of the city right behind the harbor were the most crowded.

  "We'll have to open the upper parks and practice yards," Gobert advised. "All these people have to stand somewhere or else the streets will be impassible."

  "Do it," agreed Ormaz, without waiting for Olson or Mateza's opinions.

  There weren't enough fire teams for the growing blaze, and another five hundred soldiers were sent to augment the city's efforts. More princes gathered on the western wall, but their visibility declined as smoke bloomed over the city. The shouts of thousands of people reached them through the haze, as great a commotion as on festival days.

  "I'm going down to my rooftop," Lord Mateza said, pointing at the tall building where he lived and had his offices. "I can't see anything from up here."

  "Look!" One of the guards pointed. At first, they didn't see it. "The streets are moving!"

  The newly abandoned western half sagged, starting at the avenue running north and south along the line where land had been reclaimed from tidal swamp. Buildings followed the roads, bowing out to the sea and pressing against the lower areas until they, too, gave way and slumped seaward. Trees tilted. Buildings sagged. Parts of the city that hadn't yet caught fire pressed against the parts that had.

  Thousands of people raised their voices in fear. Fires were a familiar threat, but now the land itself was moving. A roar reached the Princes' Wall, a sound of mass destruction at a distance echoing off the surrounding hills. The princes stood on the perch in awe, as something essential in the harbor broke free.

  Piers and jetties shattered. All of the western city, all reclaimed land, stretched and grew westward toward the bay like clay deformed under a childish hand. Docks and ships were shoved into the bay by flows of once-stable ground. Thousands of structures collapsed within a minute, while others rode their little patches of land, surrounded by flaming rubble until they met the water. Water boiled into steam wherever the fiery ruins touched the sea.

  Ships anchored in the bay deployed oars and sails if they could, but many of their crews were ashore. Bigger ships in the choicest spots, either tied to a pier or anchored close, suffered the worst. They were overcome by the rushing earth, lifted aground, or crushed by a chaos of mud and broken city. Small boats with shallow drafts had the best luck escaping if they could hoist their sails in time. Ormaz counted ten of them tacking madly against the unfavorable wind, slicing through the bottleneck of the Horns at a steep angle, narrowly missing a large trader vessel that almost ran itself aground trying to dodge them.

  Four hundred years, gone in minutes. Four hundred years. Half of his city was under fire, smoke, water, and mud. Parts of it were still moving.

  Someone was yanking on his arm and shouting. Ormaz looked and saw that it was Gobert. "What are you doing?"

  "You have to get off the wall, now!"

  Ormaz jerked his arm away from the frantic Prime Minister. "I can have your hands for that! Explain yourself." Guards put themselves between the two men.

  "He said we'd end up like Enclave. Don't you get it?" He was pleading now, as he sometimes did, but this time there were witnesses. "He didn't just raze a few buildings; he destroyed their power base. Tyrant's Bay. The Citadel. Hadith's Line. You have to get indoors right now!"

  "Control yourself, Gobert! They can't reach us here."

  "We don't know what he's capable of!" His hand swept over the half-ruined city. "He can do anything. Let go of the desert, brother! Let them have it! It's a poisoned dream!"

  "Never. Run to safety if you want to, Gobert. I'm going to the east wall, to see what our enemy is up to. Keep your hysterics to yourself." He took a few steps east and then turned back to his Prime Minister. "Too much reading has addled your mind. Shore up your faith. Saint Bahram himself blessed our family."

  Gobert opened his mouth to say something, but Ormaz never heard it. He was thrown against the parapet by an impact against his chest. Suddenly on his ass, he looked down and saw a hole in his shining armor, filling up with blood. People were shouting. A guard put his own body over Ormaz, shielding him. They were under attack, he didn't know where from, but a Tyrant's answer was always the same.

  "Mace." The word bubbled and coughed out of him, spraying his protective guard. The familiar hilt was laid in his hand. Ormaz found he could grasp but not lift it.

  "I'll get you out of here, my Tyrant," said the protective guard as he grasped Ormaz's breastplate in both hands and prepared to haul him to his feet. There was a sound of metal punching through layers of metal, and a round hole appeared near the guard's diaphragm. He grunted, wavered, and had to lean against the parapet, still shielding Ormaz's body. The Tyrant felt a horrible pain, starting in his chest but spreading everywhere. He looked down. The tail end of an arrow stuck out of him, wavering in time with his weakening heart.

  Ormaz tried to move but couldn't. He was nailed to the parapet and wedged in by a heavily armored guard. There was more shouting and the sounds of men falling. The man trying to shield him lost half his head somehow. Brains, blood, and bone went everywhere.

  The Prime Minister's voice, the noise that hectored him for his entire life, was the last sound he heard. "Fool! Why don't you ever listen to me?"