modern cannon, and I’m fairly certain they’ve brought a few of those along with them.’
Bahn nodded, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck.
‘In the meantime, they’d slash and burn all of Khos from under us. If we sit and wait for them, there’ll be nothing left to protect save for this city.’
‘But in the field, sir,’ he blurted. ‘How can we possibly defeat that many?’
‘We don’t need to defeat them, Bahn. All we need to do is buy ourselves some time.’
Bahn massaged his tired eyes for a moment. It felt as though he was speaking in a different language to the man.
‘But, General,’ he said, as Creed began to pace back and forth before him. ‘Even if we mobilize every Khosian reserve that we can, even if we scrape the barrel, we can only put six or seven thousand shields into the field. Our resources of blackpowder have gone to the navy and the defence of the walls. Our field cannon are few. We don’t even have the guns to match them, never mind the men.’
The general stopped before the windows, his hands behind his back. In the light, his black hair shone with a near-blue lustre.
Whether he was looking at his painting or the silent walls of the Shield, Bahn couldn’t tell.
‘It’s a bad stroke they’ve given us, I’ll grant you that. I’d hardly credit the Matriarch with such imagination. And it’s too risky for Sparus to have thought of it. Perhaps old Mokabi has come out of his retirement, then. I sense his flair in this.’
Creed paused, and his head tilted towards the window: at the very instant that he had spoken the name of the retired archgeneral – the same man who had led the Imperial Fourth Army to the walls of Bar-Khos – a boom sounded from the direction of the Shield.
Another sounded, and then another, until the windows themselves were trembling from the rippling concussions.
The Mannian guns had started to fire on the Shield once more.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Beachhead
The woman held a mug of chee for him when he woke late the next day. Ash struggled to sit up, his chest feeling tight and sore. Cakes of sand fell from one side of his face as he coughed long and hard into his fist, his eyes watering from the pain of each convulsion.
Through his tears Ash saw that the storm had passed in the night, though a wind still blew strong from the sea. The breeze had dried his clothes and his skin, at least those parts he had not been lying on, and heat too wafted over from the small fire next to him.
When Ash stopped coughing long enough to take a tentative sip of the steaming chee, he found his spirits lifting.
‘My thanks for your help,’ said the woman on the sand next to him. ‘It was timely of you.’ She held out a hand to him. ‘Mistress Cheer.’
Ash shook it. She had a man’s grip, and it was not shy of strength. For a moment the air between them was a passing curtain of smoke, and he peered through it, taking in her features beneath her thick thatch of dark hair. She reminded him of his wife’s mother, of all people – Anisa, possessed of that rare attractiveness that seemed to improve with age and stature.
And then the smoke cleared, and Ash saw the curl of the old scar that clove through her upper lip – like a hair-lip, though running up to her face and across her left eye.
‘Ash,’ he said, somehow still taken by her looks.
She creased her lips with a smile. ‘A pleasure,’ she told him, and appeared to mean it.
Behind her, the young women she had been protecting the previous night were rifling through a collection of clothes chests. It seemed they were putting together outfits for the day.
Mistress Cheer gathered her skirt above her ankles and stretched her stockinged feet out to the fire with a sigh. ‘A fine mess they’ve made of the landing,’ she said with a gesture of her head towards the bay.
‘Where are we?’ Ash asked over the brim of his mug.
‘Khos. In a place called Pearl Bay.’
He’d been right then. Now, no doubt, the army would be heading for Bar-Khos in an attempt to take the city from behind. The boy’s mother lived near there, he recalled.
He kept his thoughts to himself as he drank down the chee. The wonderful sensation of warmth in his belly made him realize how long it