very worst venoms, and climbing vertically to attack a well-prepared enemy was never a healthy strategy.
She locked her legs around the trunk, drew back an arm, summoned her blades and swung. The entire top section of the tree fell. The watcher made a brief wail, quickly lost in the tearing of branches and ended by a dull thud. Nona was left at the pine’s new vertex with a clear view across the hordes arrayed to the east.
Nona hadn’t imagined that Scithrowl held so many people, let alone that their queen could march them over the Grampains and across hundreds of miles to the emperor’s doorstep. True fear gripped her for the first time that day. Skill couldn’t prevail against such numbers. A Red Sister might cut down fifty of the foe only to find five hundred more throwing themselves at her. Gazing at the ocean of humanity stretching out to the east, Nona at last understood the enormity of the threat. This tide would wash across Verity and not stop until it reached the Sea of Marn. Her friends, every novice, every nun, would die. They stood no chance. None.
The line of attack lay to the east. Rows of war machines hurled their missiles, siege towers rumbled forward, and ground forces surged towards the walls, carrying long ladders and grapple chains, borne by gerants huge enough to throw them over the ramparts.
The great majority of Adoma’s force held back though, marshalled in ordered ranks before acres given over to their accommodation and enclosed within rough stockade walls. A second city had sprung up, this one of tents, an endless patchwork of canvas and hide, speckled with flags of many colours. Nona saw the signs of industry, smoke from iron chimneys where weapons and armour were being repaired, horses reshod, swords sharpened. Siege machines not yet committed to the battle hulked like giant beasts recumbent amid the ant swarm of foot soldiers. Elsewhere horses in greater numbers than she had ever seen before milled in their pens, herds of them even though the main strength of the Scithrowl came to battle on their own legs.
The wind carried their stench to her, more ripe even than Verity’s, the sewage of men and animals in their tens of thousands, perhaps a hundred thousand and more, the stink of a thousand cook-fires and a thousand latrines.
Here and there grand pavilions stood among the massed troops, the brilliant colours of their fabric an assault on the senses. Above them pennants cracked in the wind.
Most of the pavilions were too far away for a good view but one stood just a mile off and barely beyond the range of Verity’s bolt-lobbers, close enough for Nona to note its exceptional quality and remarkable size. A line of six large catapults stood fifty yards ahead of it, their missiles earthenware jars of highly flammable liquid. With low and throaty twangs they lobbed their burning cargo over Verity’s walls into the city beyond where the destruction could only be guessed at and smoke spewed skywards.
Nona looked back towards Wheel and her band, now lost in the distance. The small gate through which Abbess Glass had once led her from the city stood free of attack thus far and as close to the battlefront as you could get without finding yourself part of it. Around fifty of the city guard held the ground before the gate and defenders clustered on the wall high above. It was the last eastward entry point where the city could be entered without enduring an arrow storm and it would reduce by a considerable margin the distance that had to be traversed inside the walls to reach the palace. Nona took one more glance around at the unreal panorama, a landscape she knew well made alien by war, and began her rapid descent.
‘That’s the last way in for them. Otherwise they’re just going to get swarmed and cut down at the foot of the walls.’ Nona pointed at the spot.
Kettle nodded. ‘What’s that gate called?’
Nona shrugged. ‘I don’t know …’
‘It’s called “the Small Gate”,’ Bhenta said.
‘There you go.’ Nona scanned the fields for any sign of approaching enemy then looked at Kettle. ‘Can you make Apple understand?’
Kettle nodded again, her brow furrowed in concentration. Her shadow-bond with Apple was an exceptionally strong one and this close to her it allowed for basic information to be communicated. ‘Done.’
‘We should join them.’ Bhenta met Nona’s gaze with those alarming blue eyes of hers. Apple had once taught