Chapter ninety

Monurbis

 

The struggle for Monurbis was brief and decisive.  The Tlaxacans had only the multitude of kinaam and a few humans to attempt a siege of the city. Against them there were more than twenty thousand crimson and pale flame knights, who were able to man the defences. There were no elven archers, of course, but many of the knights were proficient enough with bows.  More important than any of this, however, were the Orbiverdi.  Euphorbia had a plan: she intended to open the doors and invite her enemies in.

 

Otto was dumbfounded. He, Euphorbia and Bellis had met in the old Imperial Palace to discuss tactics. Von Eisen had kindly gutted the Tlaxacan interior and now the building was big and empty but untainted.

‘Open the doors to a Cloak’s army?’ he said, wondering if he’d heard this correctly, ‘what do you mean?’

Euphorbia nodded.

‘Yes, exactly’

‘But our best defence is surely to stay behind the city walls – there are too few of them to be able to take the city’

Euphorbia studied his face carefully. She was still struggling to understand humans, particularly the kind that called themselves ‘knights’.  However, of all of that kind of human it seemed that Otto was the easiest to comprehend.

‘Why are you so certain that we need to defend?’

Otto screwed his face up in intense concentration.

‘Umm – because we’re being attacked, my lady…’

Euphorbia’s eyes, her beech green eyes, widened and she smiled. No former kinaam could be said to have a beautiful face, but this smile was undoubtedly beautiful. It also seemed to belong in another world.

‘Only one small part of the force is attacking us, grandmaster, the other part is coming home’

‘What on earth do you mean?’   

‘We need to wash our cousins and set them free…’

Otto turned to the proconsul, in the hope that he might interpret his deputy’s speech.

Bellis shrugged. He had said nothing up to this point, sitting in a tatty old wooden chair, which was all the furniture that they been able to find so far.

‘The kinaam’ he said, ‘she’s talking about the kinaam…’

‘You mean the Tlaxacan slaves?’

‘Our kinspeople’ said Euphorbia, softly

‘They are not free’ explained Bellis, ‘but they can be freed’

‘Or they can free themselves’ whispered Euphorbia

Bellis nodded at Otto meaningfully.  Otto still didn’t understand and Euphorbia was clearly not going to explain any further.  Bellis groaned inwardly.

‘The Orbiverdi are freed kinaam, and they have the ability to do the same for other kinaam. Why do you think there are so many green-eyed folk up here?’

Otto studied Euphorbia carefully. It was obvious now he thought about it – physically the Orbiverdi and the kinaam were the same, but the green-eyes burned with a flame that was completely absent in the kinaam.  

‘So’ said Euphorbia, after suffering this intense scrutiny for as long as she could bear, ‘I need you to chase the humans away when we open the doors’

‘If you can’ said Bellis

Otto thought about this for a moment.  

‘A feint at the right moment might draw them away, but it might pull off a large number of the kinaam at the same time’

‘So be it – we know that we cannot save them all’

‘But many may die…’

Euphorbia lifted her left hand up to touch her forehead with the end of her fingers.

‘Spare then if you can – they are helpless slaves…’

‘And the humans?’

‘You act in self-defence – they are legitimate targets, I suppose. I can only hope that you will use only reasonable force.’

Otto considered this briefly

‘Yes, ma’am’ he said and saluted her, on a sudden impulse.

Bellis looked at them; the two non-elves seemed to have found a place in the elven empire. He coughed and smiled secretly behind his hand.

‘General’ he said, ‘I am glad that you are able to help us so well – we were in desperate need’   

 Otto nodded, his mind full of plans. He hadn’t thought about Victoria for more than three days and he really felt much happier.  The imminent threat of death seemed a small thing compared with the pain of unrequited love.

 

***

The kinaam swarmed around the city like flood waters lapping round a house: probing every culvert and portal seeking a weakness. The battlements were full of Orbiverdi, standing where elven archers had stood so many times before.  These were no warriors however – they were a choir and they had come to sing.

Otto drew a few hundred of his pale knights together in front of the main gates. On his command the gate was opened and the knights charged through the kinaam, scattering them as gently as they could. They then forged on as hard as they could towards the baggage trains, right at the back of the army. Otto armed about half of his knights with blazing torches, so that the threat to burn the provisions was very obvious.

The Tlaxacans were not expecting this sudden attack and their few mounted human troops turned their horses round to attempt to cut off the knights’ route. The other humans, those on foot, reacted far less rapidly, and were clearly torn between controlling the kinaam and defending the baggage train. There were many more human Tlaxacans than knights, but Otto’s manoeuvre was completely unexpected, as it was apparently suicidal. The moment or two of uncertainty that ensued was enough.

The kinaam swarmed through the open gate, following the simple order to attack and destroy.

The moment that the first foot soldiers crossed the threshold the Orbiverdi began to sing. They sang from the battlements, from the courtyards and through every open window.   And the individual songs, called forth from each singing mouth, were slightly different from each other, and it was as if each one was a vine that was growing out of every crack and gap in the city walls and pavements.  For a moment the knights that still remained in the city wondered whether the structures would withstand this assault, but then they realised that these vines were only sound and that they cared nothing for the material; it was the immaterial that they were intent on finding.

The vines met along the narrow walkways of the city and where they met they fused and carried on. This was the slowest music in the world, but the strongest, and as the colours of the individual songs merged they coalesced into a repeated sequence of chords, very loud but pure and consonant: sub-dominant, dominant, tonic.  On every tonic chord the vines sprouted light green leaves that floated gently out into the approaching kinaam. Every time that they touched a kinaam the creature stopped, as if in great thought, and then each one closed its dead grey eyes. A moment later they opened them again and they blazed forth green and living. One by one the emancipated beings stepped to one side and shook themselves as if escaping from a long nightmare.  Then they knelt, silent and still, surrounded by the forest of the song.

In a few minutes, the population of Monurbis and of the Empire was swollen by ten thousand and the Tlaxacan army was all but defeated. The red cloak humans had no idea how to respond to the change in their slave army – suddenly they had lost nine tenth of their forces.  The attack on the Tlaxacan baggage train now seemed so much more serious: their supply lines were far too stretched already and they might well lose all of their provisions. The retreat was sounded and there was an unseemly scramble to grab what they could and escape. Otto was happy to let the army withdraw without engaging them.  Monurbis was saved, at last.