The rising wall of smoke began to clear, aided by the wind. As the inky fog lifted, it revealed Hurkel, lying prone on the bridge, his armour steaming like a hot cooking iron. It revealed swathes of confessors struck down by flying debris, their screams and cries carried away with the smoke. It revealed no trace of the wounded Keeper, nor the great chunk of iron shield beside which she’d crawled. And it revealed a great rent in the bridge of the ancestors, a blasted hole where the wagon and chariot had sat, which crumbled and spread as Chel watched it. In a rising puff of stone dust, the unsupported sections either side of the gap collapsed inwards, crumbling back to stumps from pillar to the ruin of the city wall. When the collapse at last waned, a gap of thirty strides stood between city and bridge, beneath it only the dark yawn of the gorge and the spindly aqueduct below.

Hurkel lay at the lip of the collapse, and to Chel’s disappointment he began to move. He climbed to his feet, tearing at his armour, shrieking for assistance from the cowering confessors nearby. He snatched at the panels, trying to tear the steaming metal from his flesh, howling and cursing and stomping. At last, the confessors bore him from view, as the red tide fell back from the bridge one more time.

Shouts from the ruined courtyard below brought people running. With shock, Chel saw Lemon and Foss picking their way through the debris, and over Foss’s shoulder lay the slumped and mutilated form of Matil. She was unmoving, deathly still, but their calls for help were answered by running guards and the few staff who remained at the gates. A messenger appeared a moment later, one stride ahead of the guard captain, delivering an update via Mira the seneschal to a dazed and startled Tarfel.

‘She lives, but perhaps not for long, highness.’

He nodded too many times, his head shaking like a rattling cart. ‘Bring her doctors, surgeons. Bring her everyone.’

‘Of course, highness.’

They looked back at the shattered gatehouse, the smoking ruin of the bridge, the massed army beyond it, licking its wounds.

‘And get everyone out of here. Off the walls, out of the gatehouses. Get them to the back of the city.’

The captain frowned, long moustache drooping. ‘Abandon our posts? I do not understand.’

Tarfel pointed at the wrecked bridge. ‘Fear of bringing down the bridge was the only thing holding back their bombardment. Pretty soon, someone over there is going to remember that too.’

The man’s eyes flickered, then with a swift bow he turned and began crying orders. Chel and the others joined the exodus, retreating back through the twisting stairs and narrow passages that interwove the walls, expecting at any moment to hear the whistle and blast of demon eggs.

As they reached the streets beyond, the first explosions tore at the walls.

THIRTY-THREE