Last to Rise(36)

It was the next morning, though you wouldn’t have been able to tell from me sleeping or anything so sensible. Instead I was perched on a stupid rock far too high up for my liking, and trying not to look down, with varying success.



This city outgrew its walls a long time ago. What we had was mountains. Mahala had grown to fit the space in between like a fungus, spilled out over the top in a welter of concrete and steel. I wasn’t looking out over walls, and glad of it.



Outside, a pair of machines were firing out smoke and missiles. They were taking it in turns to pound out what looked like very big bullets. Each salvo began with a hollow boom as the engines geared up and ended with a shudder as the projectiles battered into the stone gates, and each time more of that stone chipped away. The machines belched out black smoke which twined among the buildings close by the gates, made every breath a choke and left its mark in sooty smudges over everything.



From where I stood – OK, crouched behind a handy outcrop, hanging on for dear life – I was almost directly above one of only two identical concessions to the truth that Outside did, in fact, exist despite Ministry’s protestations and probably disgust. Under the platforms of Clouds and Top of the World, just above Heights and Trade and tucked out of the way so it couldn’t be seen unless you were looking for it, there was a small wall. Small but very, very thick, between two arms of a mountain where they ran down to meet each other, making a natural chasm that just begged for a wall. On this side of it lay a wide space filled with abandoned crates and Glow-driven machines for moving cargo that sat dead and sad-looking in the rain. The remnants of the life-blood of Mahala, trade. Below us, in that small wall, a set of gates. Fifty feet high and maybe three or four thick, they sat at the end of a short tunnel, almost an arch, to keep them from prying eyes. From inside the city, anyway. On the other side of the wall and gate, further up a small valley that seemed it could barely contain them, was an army.



If it had just been men, we’d have been laughing. Mahala, with her coat of mountains, was nigh-on impregnable, and where the structure was weak, like the tunnels, we were sneaky. Sneaky was no damned good against what the Storad had brought with them.



I lowered the telescope. “How long, do you think?” The question on everyone’s lips.



Pasha twisted his fingers beside me, hissed in pain and screwed up his eyes. “They think a week, maybe less. So do I. That’s if the rest don’t turn up too soon.”



Pasha looked a bit sick, but determined all the same. I was pretty impressed by him being able to rummage in heads over that distance, and said so.



“Not so hard – it’s all they’re thinking about. That and, well, I know Dench so it’s easier to get a fix on him.”



We waited a while in the freezing dawn rain – the Storad had certainly picked their time, and I didn’t envy those men out there under canvas with sleet slicing down at odd angles so that it got under even the best coat. Under usual circumstances, just before winter set in would be a stupid time for a siege, but they had to strike while we were weak. If they waited till spring, when the snow melted off the pass, we might have built our strength back up. A risk for them but frankly, at that point, my money was on them. The really heavy snow of true winter wasn’t due for a month or more, and Pasha was right – it wouldn’t be a week before those gates were down. Not unless we did something about it.



I flipped up my coat collar, but as was usual the bastard rain managed to sneak its way in and down my back. As the day grew greyer and colder and the rainclouds thicker, what we were waiting for came.



Dench’s men hadn’t come back from their little sortie down in the tunnels, and he must be wondering why, or where, exactly – or maybe he knew exactly where. Maybe he was planning another attack, only it would be careful and precise if I knew Dench. We were hoping to beat him to it.



We weren’t using that tunnel we’d discovered, or rather not in the way Dench would expect. Because he knew about them and he wasn’t daft, so he’d have them covered if he knew where the entrances were, and I was sure he knew where the entrance to that one was because his men had been down it once already. Jake had been lucky – Pasha had talked to her before we’d made the climb up here. Dench hadn’t found the tunnel she was currently in as she looked for Allit’s machines. It was too far up the pass perhaps. That was the good news. The bad news was that not only were the new machines really real and really coming over the pass, they were closer than we’d hoped too. Jake had been all gung-ho about trying a bit of sabotage and mayhem, but Pasha had managed to talk her out if it. For now. He’d managed by telling her that if, or more like when, it all went tits-up she could use her swords as much as she liked.