the inside of the great arch that would hold the gate. There were open holes, tubes running down the great curving length of the wall. Gavin filled himself with light and blasted green luxin down each tube. It would give the wall some flex, but also strength to recoil from any battering ram blow. He sealed each green luxin tube at the end.
“Lord Prism,” Corvan called, holding a fresh-drafted telescope up to one eye. “It looks like they have teams pushing their artillery out in front of the army. They know we don’t have the skirmishers to go out and smash them. Damn spies! I can’t see the culverins, but we know they have half a dozen. If they fire from greatest random—” He paused, doing mental calculations. Greatest random was literally the greatest distance gunners could reach, but at almost two thousand paces for the biggest culverins, there was no such thing as aiming. “They could begin their bombardment anytime now if their crews are practiced. Within minutes, even if they’re not.”
It wasn’t the culverins Gavin was worried about. Because of the trajectory of those big guns, their shots would hit the front of the wall. Brightwater Wall could take as many direct hits as they wanted to give it. They would have to come substantially closer for the higher-trajectory howitzers and closer still for the mortars that would absolutely wreak havoc on the stubborn crowds behind the wall. Garriston’s cannons would have to knock out those guns before they could be placed, bagged, and loaded.
“Damn it, find someone who’s not doing something more important and get these damn people back,” Gavin ordered. “This isn’t a Sun Day outing! Shells are going to be landing where they sit in ten minutes!” Gavin turned back to General Danavis. “Start firing as soon as you can. Buy me time, General!”
Gavin felt more than heard the next section of wall fall into place. People were rushing everywhere, but he pushed it out of his mind and confronted the new biggest problem of all, now that the wall was actually taking shape.
He hadn’t built the gate.
He ran over to one of the cranes hoisting supplies to the top of the wall. It was already lifting off the ground as he approached, rising fast. Gavin jumped, throwing out two hooks of blue and green luxin, snagging the sides of the load. He rose fast and pulled himself up. He jumped off as soon as the load settled on top of the wall, startling the soldiers operating the crane. They froze.
“To work!” he roared. They jumped, and then jumped to it.
Gavin ran across the top of the wall, dodging men to get back to the arch above the gap where he needed to draft the gate.
Tremblefist was barking orders, sending up a small number of Blackguards to stand with Gavin—as if they could do anything to protect him from incoming shells—but not so many that they would get in the way of the defenders trying to set up the wall for any of a hundred tasks. The rest of the Blackguards took up positions in front of the empty gate.
As in all battles, there was simply too much to see, too much happening all at the same time to put everything together. Gavin looked toward the sun, poised above the horizon.
Two hours. All I need is two hours. Protecting these people is one great purpose I have that you must approve of. So if you’re up there, would you please get off your holy ass and help me?
General Danavis had been organizing, training, promoting, firing, and training Garriston’s defenders for the past week. Twenty hours a day, sometimes twenty-two. It was inhuman, and yet it wasn’t enough. Gavin was accustomed to the discipline and ease of working with veterans. By the end of the Prisms’ War, his men had worked together fluidly. Stocking this wall with supplies would have taken his veterans literally one-third of the time it was taking these men. His veteran cannoneers would already be sighted in, with distances marked off. These men barely knew each other, much less trusted each other. It made everything painfully slow, and Gavin was slow to adjust to how slow they were.
We’re doomed.
But then he drafted a quick platform to walk out on in front of the open arch—necessary to gather some of his open threads of luxin—and he caught his first sight of the wall as his enemies would see it.