While this went on, the fighting continued, the streets clogged with frantic, murderous scrums of armoured men who were being rained with cinders and burning timbers. Here and there companies and demi-tercios of arquebusiers had space to form up in lines and the opposing forces fired and reloaded and fired again only yards away from each other, the formations melting away under the withering barrage like solder in a furnace, to be replaced by reinforcements from their rear until one side broke and ran.

Wherever the regular Hebrian troops made a stand, the retainers of the Carreras and the Knights Militant who were with them could make no headway, though the Knights, their heavy armour some protection against bullets at all but the closest ranges, would form wedges of flesh and steel which would try to spear through the enemy lines by brute force. But they were not numerous enough. The firing lines opened to let them through after discharging a volley at point-blank range and those of the Knights who remained on their feet were swamped by scores of sword-and-buckler men to the rear.

And yet there was more to the battle than the mere contest between fighting men. Often in the middle of the carnage the combatants would cease their warring and as a body would seek shelter from the approaching holocaust. Men feared being burnt alive more than any other death, and would run into the enemy lines and be cut down quickly rather than remain to be consumed by the flames in their irresistible advance.

And civilians were there in the midst of the battling tercios and companies and demi-platoons. They fled their houses as the flames approached and died by the hundred as they ran through deadly crossfires or were caught by toppling buildings. Had anyone been in Abrusio who had also been at Aekir, he would have found the former more horrifying, for in Aekir men had been intent only on escape, on evading the enemy and the fire. Here they fought in the midst of the blaze, grappling with each other whilst the flames licked at their heads. Streets which were aflame from top to bottom but which were strategically valuable were defended to the last. The soldiers of Hebrion knew that by opposing the Knights they were labelling themselves heretics, the retainers of an excommunicate king, and that if they were captured, the pyre awaited them anyway. So no quarter was asked or given. The battle was more bitter than any struggle against the heathen, for the Merduks would at least take prisoners, intending them to swell the ranks of their slaves.

G OLOPHIN stood on the topmost column of Admiral’s Tower, a walled platform which housed the iron framework of the signal beacon. With him was General Mercado, his half-silver face alight with the sliding crimson reflections of the burning city. On the stairs below a knot of aides was collected, ready to take orders out to the various bodies of soldiery about the Lower City.

A wall of flame hid the heights of Abrusio Hill, hid even the peaks of the Hebros beyond—a curtain whose topmost fringe dissolved into anvils and thunderheads of toiling smoke.

They started by burning books, Golophin thought. Then it was people, now it is the cities of the kingdoms themselves. They will consume the world ere they are done. And they do it in the name of God.

“I would curse them, but I have no Dweomer left,” he said to Mercado. “All I had, I used to divert the fire from the waterfronts. I am as dry as a desert stone, General.”

Mercado nodded. “Your work is appreciated, Golophin. You saved a score of the fleet’s biggest ships.”

“Much good they’re doing us at the moment. When is Rovero to assault the boom?”

“Tonight. He will send in fireships to cover his gunboats, and the troopships last. With luck, by tomorrow he will be bombarding the Upper City.”

“Bombarding our own city,” Golophin said bitterly. His eyes had sunk so far into his head that they were mere glints which were answering the bloody light of the fire. His face was skull-like below the bald scalp. He had over-extended himself in his efforts to save the ships of the fleet, more than two dozen of which had been in dock when the flames had begun licking round the wharves. As it was, six of them had been destroyed and could be seen burning, alight from truck to waterline, black silhouettes of phantom ships surrounded by saffron light, their guns going off in chaotic sequence. Six great carracks with almost a thousand men on board, men who had been cut off from escape and had leaped into the waters of the Inner Roads to drown like rats. Sailors did not swim. It seemed ridiculous, farcical. Their bodies, some ablaze, floated in the Inner Roads by the hundred. Hundreds more were living yet, clinging to spare topmasts or anything else they had had the presence of mind to fling overboard as the flames came ravening towards their vessels. No one could get near them: the fires had cut them off from land.

An unbearably bright flash, and seconds later the enormous boom of an explosion. The powder magazine of one carrack had gone up and the ship, hundreds of tons of wood and metal, had erupted into the air and was raining its dismembered fragments down on the waters of the harbour, starting fires on the other ships which had managed to put off from the blazing wharves in time to avoid its fate.

“If hell were a creation of man, it would be very like that picture below us,” Golophin said, awed by the spectacle.

“God has certainly no hand in it,” Mercado said.

An aide came with a grubby parchment message. Mercado read it through, his lips muttering the words.

“Freiss’s men have attempted to stage a break-out. The fire is finally at the walls of the Arsenal. He is dead, and most of his traitors with him.”

“The Arsenal?” Golophin asked. “What of the stores within it? My God, General—the powder and ammunition!”

“We’ve shifted maybe a quarter of it, but we cannot get at the rest. First Freiss and then the fires have cut it off.”

“And if the fire detonates the powder stores?”

“The main stores are thirty feet below ground in stone cellars. They have pipes in them which let out to the harbour. If the worst comes to the worst I can order the pipes opened and the powder magazines flooded. They would take half the city with them when they went up. Don’t worry, Golophin—I won’t let that happen. But it will mean destroying our powder and ammunition reserves, leaving only the naval stores here in the tower.”

“Do it,” Golophin said grimly. “Abrusio is hurt badly enough as it is. We must preserve something of her for Abeleyn to reclaim.”

“Agreed.” Mercado called an aide and began dictating the necessary orders.

“Rovero has taken a squadron to Pendero’s Landing,” the General went on when the aide had left. “Two carracks, some caravels and a trio of nefs in which are three thousand marines and arquebusiers of the garrison. He is going to try and convince the King that a land assault over the city walls will be more effective than attempting to carry the Great Harbour. If we can break the boom tonight, then in a couple of days we will be assaulting from both land and sea and another squadron can give supporting fire to the overland force if they attack the walls near the coast. That is Abeleyn’s best bet, in my opinion. They have us pinned down here, by the fire itself and the guns they can bring to bear on us from Abrusio Hill. Also they are thin on the ground, and will be hard put to it to see off two attacks at once.”

“Whatever seems best,” Golophin said. “I am no general or admiral. I’ll keep Abeleyn informed, though.”

“Can that bird of yours bear a burden, Golophin?”

“A light one, perhaps. What is it?”

Mercado produced a heavily sealed scroll from his doublet. The galley-prow emblem of Astarac could be clearly seen, melted into the crimson wax which fastened it shut.