laughed aloud for joy. “We’ll destroy them with our noise if nothing else,” she called to Tharaman, who thundered beside her.
“Let’s hope not,” he called back. “I prefer it when the enemy puts up a fight!”
Later, as the moon rose over the frozen land, a mixed column of horse and leopard trotted smartly back to the city: cats and humans, absorbed in singing marching songs and oblivious to the people who lined the road up to the citadel, watching them pass in admiration and hope.
22
The Imperial meteorologists had promised at least a week of quiet weather, and as Scipio Bellorum had threatened them with twenty lashes for every day of inaccuracy, he was inclined to believe them. Certainly the weather was good now, even glorious, with high blue skies and a crisp frost. Perfect riding weather.
Behind him marched twenty thousand cavalry and eighty thousand infantry made up of pikemen, shield-bearers, and musket regiments. In addition to this he had a battery of one hundred cannons and an entire rabble of engineers, carpenters, and the usual camp followers. This time there would be no mistakes. The debacle of the earlier invasion had been one of the very few defeats any Imperial army had suffered since he’d taken command of the military twenty years ago, and he was determined that there wouldn’t be another.
His spies had reliably informed him that there was no defending army in the region, and that the nearest large town had only a rabble militia to defend it. The decision was therefore simple. He would take the settlement and use it as base camp for the coming campaign. His highly trained and superbly equipped Imperial troops would breach the walls and secure the town within two days, three at the most, after which the supply caravans could start moving in and they would be ready to begin the war proper with the spring thaw.
He rode at complete ease, hand on hip, highly polished boots resting in gilded stirrups. Despite the cold he wore no hat on his closely cropped head of gray hair, believing that the men should be able to recognize their commander easily. But not one of his soldiers could ever have mistaken his slight, whiplash-hard figure for anyone else. This man with the light blue eyes and thin hawklike nose had led them to victory after victory. And this same man had hanged some of them, whipped them, and sold them into slavery if he thought they’d given less than their very best. This was Scipio Bellorum, Commander of the Imperial armies, and no one — not even the Emperor himself— would deny him anything he wanted if it was within his power to give it.
As it happened, Bellorum’s estimate for the fall of the town of Inglesby was over a week off. The militia and townsfolk had kept them out for ten days, despite the fact that the guns had breached the walls in more than six places. He watched now as the latest attack force came streaming back from one of the breaches. This was the third time in as many hours that the defenders had repulsed his soldiers, and he was beginning to lose his temper.
Added to this, the weather had turned for the worse more than three days ago, and in a rare act of rashness Bellorum had lost a large contingent of troops he’d sent on a mission to garrison the capital, Frostmarris. They’d been caught in a blizzard, and the general who was noted for his good luck had lost his gamble. Usually he ensured that all points were secured before he advanced farther, but the road was open and the prize was too much of a temptation. If he could have taken the city without a blow being struck in anger, the war would have been as good as over.
But for once he’d failed, and to add to his anger, the temperatures had plummeted and it had begun to blizzard, making the besiegers’ camp a place of frostbite and death. It was now imperative that the town of Inglesby be taken, not only to satisfy Polypontian honor but for the sake of survival. If they didn’t get under more substantial cover than Empire-issue canvas, they’d all die of the extraordinary cold.
“Colonel Marcellus, your regiment, I think,” Bellorum said as the Imperial troops streamed back from the walls of the town. His voice was as cutting as the wind that scythed across the frozen land, and the shivering of