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Chapter 504: The Battle of King’s City (Part 2)

The sound came seconds after the flash—low, heavy, rolling across the distance with the particular quality of something that had no interest in being heard and did not need to be.

Near the shack at the pier’s edge, a pillar of earth rose in time with the sound, then collapsed back into a crater.

“What was that?”

“Did the gunpowder ignite?”

“Doesn’t look like it. Looks like the ship did something.”

“From a mile away? That’s absurd.”

The knights debated among themselves. Weimar frowned at the crater and at the intact shack and considered the intelligence reports he had read through winter. The rebel king’s snow-powder weapons were better than anything King’s City’s blacksmiths had managed—better range, better accuracy, a quality of manufacture that Timothy’s alchemists had been unable to match after months of trying. Enlarged versions would do what he had just seen: reach out across the river and drop a projectile where it was pointed.

They know about the shack.

The fire appeared again at the ship’s bow. The same thunderous roll of sound. This time the earth pillar attached itself to the shack directly, mud splattering across its roof in a wide arc. The second shot was a correction. Which meant they were aiming.

Weimar let the thought settle. If the enemy had seen through the ambush—if they had some means of detecting what lay beneath the surface—then Timothy’s trap had failed before it was sprung. He could accept that. He could fight a direct engagement. The walls of King’s City were two hundred years old and had never been breached; if the rebel king wanted to test his weapons against bluestone, Weimar would let him.

Then the third shot came.

It was not aimed at the shack.

The sound was not like the first two. The first two had been distant thunder. This was thunder here—the concussive crack of it went through the battlements, through the stone beneath Weimar’s feet, through his teeth. A small hill arched up in the open ground ahead of the pier. Dirt and stone flew higher than the wall. Then the smoke came, a great gray-white cloud churning up from the black mud, and the earth beneath the wall swayed.

Weimar dropped to his knees behind the battlements. Beside him, Scar’s foot went out from under him and he fell hard. Grit and soil rained down for what felt like a long time, though it made almost no sound when it landed—because Weimar’s ears had stopped working properly and were ringing in a way he hoped was temporary.

That fool didn’t wait for the flag signal.

The ground that had been flat was now chewed: craters and mounds, hot white smoke rising from loose black mud that smelled like the bottom of a cannon barrel. The militia on the pier—the decoys—were either down where they stood or running for the tree line. The fleet had begun moving again, forming into a column, heading for the pier.

“Who gave the order?” Scar, embarrassed and furious, had grabbed a guard by the collar. “I’ll have his head!”

“It was one of His Highness’s own men.” Weimar straightened. His ears were still ringing but the world was coming back. “Watch the enemy. They’re landing any moment. Prepare the blue flag.”

He thought of the warehouse. He thought of the man inside it, waiting with his torch. There had been no signal from that position. I hope the fella hiding in the warehouse will be able to complete his mission.

No movement came from the pier. The enemy’s crews landed without resistance and began organizing on the bank.

Allen Alba was inspecting his rapier when the world shook.

He knew in advance the gunpowder would be detonated—it had been explained to him clearly enough—but knowing and hearing were entirely different categories. He dropped the rapier. His horse lurched sideways under him and he caught the reins by reflex. Two miles away, at a minimum, and still the sound had gone through his chest like a blow.

He soothed the horse with his hand and turned to face his cavalry. “When the gate opens, you follow my charge. Full speed. Don’t conserve the horses—there’s nowhere for them to retreat to either.”

The response was scattered, uncertain. Most of them hadn’t recovered yet.

He raised his voice. “His Highness set this trap. The thunder falls on our enemies, not on us. Gather yourselves. Our enemies have nowhere to run.”

Better. Not good, but better.

The mercenaries waiting behind the cavalry were still glassy-faced. Allen did not particularly care about the mercenaries—they were cleanup, back-line work, clearing bodies and holding ground after his cavalry had broken the enemy. They didn’t need to be inspiring. They needed to be present.

Time passed. The gate did not open.

He glanced up at the battlements. No signal. He could not leave his position to inquire—the charge could come at any moment, and moving the cavalry now would put them out of position. He waited. The waiting was the worst part of any battle: the body prepared for movement and found only stillness.

Then, distant and muffled, another sound—the enemy signal to advance, he thought, though he had never heard it before.

Something went wrong. The trap should have broken them already.

Then he heard the wind.

It arrived before he could identify it—a sound like cloth tearing, only larger—and the city gate beside him erupted. Stone and brick fragments flew. The impact threw him from his horse. The horse stepped on his thigh as it fled, and the pain that followed drove everything else out.

He tried to stand. Failed. Turned his head and saw his thigh: the plate armor deformed and tilted, the bone white and exposed through the torn flesh, tissue hanging from the break.

My career.

He understood this completely and without hysteria, the way you understand something that has already happened.

The wind came again.

This time it struck the gate itself. The two guards posted there ceased to be standing men and became something else—the debris swept through them, wood fragments and stone chips moving at speeds that turned them into edges, and what was left folded against the wall. Five or six horsemen behind the gate went down in the scatter. A hole the size of a basin sat in the gate’s two-foot thickness, punched through by something fired from more than three miles distant.

Someone screamed demons and the word went through the cavalry formation the way panic always moves—fast, specific, contagious.

The horsemen broke. They rode over their own mercenaries getting clear. The disorder became catastrophe. Everything near the west wall became chaos in the space of twenty seconds, and Allen lay on the ground and watched the sky and felt the noise recede.

It’s so cold.

That was his last clear thought.

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