Under Gravity's Dust

UNDER GRAVITY'S DUST

Copyright © Mike Woods 2015

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved.

Part One

The wall was breached two turns of the glass before dawn, and soon Veritas would burn with a fire to make the very heavens seethe with envy.

Moths danced with macabre fury about the torches lighting the city walls and, beyond, the campfires of the invading Thravi army. Doves broke from the spires and towers of the town when the wordless cries of the Thravi shattered the night’s peace. Cooing their frenzy, the birds’ flight broke the sleep of those townsfolk fortunate enough to find rest in those final fell hours.

Orpin watched the men and women on the ramparts repel another ladder. He felt the soldiers and the townsmen around him shift in discomfort. This time it was different. He refused to meet the eyes of the men around him—instead he watched the defenders with weary eyes, old eyes, heavy lidded and scratchy with torch smoke. Eyes that had already seen too much.

Up shields!

Arrows hummed into the streets, and the men around him took shelter. His own arm felt too heavy to lift.

A torch high on the wall flared and spat burning oil as it was struck by a stray arrow. The soldier beside it raised his arm to shield his face with a cry, his short sword clattering to the ramparts, and he stumbled back and fell with a heavy crunch to the street below. Soldiers rushed forward to attend their broken comrade.

In the dark void of the torchlight’s wake an attacker clambered atop the wall. A frantic defender struck the Thravi’s chest with the flat of a blade and the scrambling arms and hands slipped out of sight. But there was another to take his place. And another.

Just to the right a Thravi scrabbled over like a beast, onto the ramparts and madly swung his blade at the panicked defenders. His face was lit demonic with dancing fire, and he screamed dire war cries that cracked with fear. When he fell to the slashing blades and crunching hammers of the valiant Firrian defenders, there was already another wild attacker in his place. This one was forced forward by those behind, and charged straight over the ramparts, careless of the blades biting his armoured chest, and fell flailing to thud on the cobbled street, crumbling inside his armour. Faster than the defenders could throw them back, the Thravi streamed over the wall—wild-eyed and charging every which way, fanatics, falling and shattering legs on the street and trying to rise before the defenders encircled their broken bodies. They kept coming, crashing to the streets, only to be stuck mercilessly by defenders’ swords, or landed on by their countrymen.

Along the ramparts duels ensued. The attackers already began to overwhelm the exhausted defenders, swinging their swords with renewed vigour while the poorly trained townsfolk fled and the few soldiers bunched up to repel the crazed fighters.

Ten paces further down the ramparts another ladder clattered and stuck fast to the top of the wall.

The walls are breached, Orpin said to himself. He thought it was a whisper, but the words were taken up by those at his side.

The walls are breached!

The shout carried back through the streets, and the men readied weapons for the charge. Above the streets arrows sizzled, sleek and deathly, impossible to make out against the still dark sky.

***

Kori was even now the envy of his age mates: barely twenty spring thaws and he had seen three battles and claimed twelve scalps. The sacking of Veritas was his fourth battle, and would not be his last.

He joined the ululating cries of his brethren as he crested the wall, and saw before him only the leathern calves of his fellow warriors. As he clambered upright on the ramparts he saw the pitiful town laid bare before him, the time-ravaged buildings, the hastily erected fortifications scattered in the winding streets, and the scuttling Firrian savages consumed by fear.

The Firrians thought themselves strong, invincible, but the Thravi would not cease—their fury was irrepressible, they wouldn’t rest until this curse was scoured from the very stones they walked.

Before him, a warrior leaped from the ramparts, arms and legs wheeling, and Kori laughed grimly as he heard the fool crash to the stone below. Too eager to taste blood on their blades, too ready to die. A warrior needed a cool mind, stomach of stone. He would not throw himself wantonly beneath the blades of these backwater savages.

Kori swung left in time to see his brethren fell one of the defenders. He rushed in to bolster the attack. The wide-eyed Firrian backed off, his sword parrying a flurry of blows. Kori’s blade snaked out gut high and parted the weak flesh of the soldier. A rush of hot blood and bile spilled on the stone wall, and the bearded savage doubled over. Kori swung down and his sword crushed the soldier’s helm, jarring his wrist.

He roared his disdain to the dancing streets below, and his brethren coursed around him, uncaring of the corpses over which they trod, eager to share in his blooding of the dawn.

He wrenched his blade out of the dented helm and shoved the body with his foot. It fell with a satisfying thud among the defenders rallying below.

This day would be remembered in times to come, and he would be elevated as a hero, a giant in the eyes of those who spoke the tale. He would kill many men.

***

Chay’s chest surged with anticipation as the warriors drove the defenders from the wall and poured over in to the city. He felt like he could join their battle cries.

Those youths would be dreaming of glory. And a good thing, too: it drowned out the horror. At least for now. In years to come, well.

Another volley of arrows whistled up from the lines of bowmen. He didn’t imagine many would find homes in the flesh of the Firrians, but the flights of those shafts would sow chaos in the streets.

They weren’t expecting attack—they had always underestimated the Thravi. Out here they imagined themselves safe at the world’s edge. Some oasis, Chay thought, kicking at the dusty ground beneath his feet. He remembered the way the farmers had stood, motionless, families beside them, even as their livestock stampeded and as flame licked up their neighbours’ homes.

No, they did not expect us.

For so many years the Firrians had existed secure in the knowledge their armies and their brutal regimes would protect them, keeping their enemies down on distant lands—so long, so blind and unaware that those very beliefs would inspire the hatred that now drove the Thravi armies to their door.

The river had turned. No stone the gods had yet made could not be worn down by water’s ceaseless flow.

Cries of agony echoed over the town walls. The play of shadows from the oil torches showed duelling figures, swords rising and falling, bodies spinning and falling.

A loud, resonant thud came from the gate. Chay looked up at the wall his stomach twisting with anticipation, but other than the fighting shadows there was no movement, no signal.

He glanced down the line at one of the squad leaders. She nodded tightly, unfazed by the wild screams of their countrymen along the wall. Her strength and coolness firmed those soldiers alongside her.

The Thravi army was in good hands. Once the claws of the warrior caste had sown fear and spilled blood, dashed the spirit of the defenders, this icy core of the army would crush what resistance remained.

He could feel the weight of the army behind him. And the weight of the greater Thravi forces spread throughout the land. More than that, he could feel the expectation of his people: the leaders, his superiors, his family and all the people he’d known. None of them were with him now, but they drove him nonetheless.

Two more ladders were secured to the wall’s peak. Warriors swarmed up, clambering over each other in their haste to blood their swords. Atop the wall one hung single-handed to the parapet, sword out, trying to hook his legs to the top rungs of a ladder. Another warrior batted his flailing legs away before cresting the wall—the hanging warrior’s grip slipped and he fell, cartwheeling, to land broken and bent at the foot of the sandstone wall.

Damn savages, Chay muttered.

Another loud thud echoed from the gate. To Chay’s right the ramsmen wheeled the steel-tipped trunk in place.

Voices roared within the town—Chay thought they came from all around him. Atop the wall a torch was lifted. It was waved right and then left, then right again, flecks of fiery oil spilling to either side.

That’s the signal, came the call.

The ramsmen were already wheeling their engine in line with the gate.

Chay looked down the line at his troops again.

Ready now, soldiers.

He didn’t need to tell them.

***

The first rider had come bearing news of armies on the move. Emmet remembered the cool response of the commanders, wondering what it had meant.

They’d sent messages, and received horrific tales in turn. Vellis had fallen, and mighty Ysil on the Langua’s heaving banks. In Veritas, they’d seen the smoke, but still they hoped.

Then the replies had stopped coming. Sit tight and wait, the commanders had told them.

Most of the soldiers had nowhere else to go. And to where? Beyond the southern fields it was grassed plains for miles down to the rocky coastline. Nothing but guano and shellfish. West? Inhospitable in more temperate months; beneath the summer sun, mere hours on the sands would see pilgrims fall.

The stories he’d been told—both myths and tales from the wars—promised hope of a saviour at the last moment. He knew by now the world didn’t work that way, but still found himself glancing to the horizon, hoping to see pennants whipping in the cool night air.

Instead, just smoke and