The Dream Devours the World by Pritchard Robert

Author:Pritchard, Robert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-06-19T16:00:00+00:00

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The distance around the walls was several miles, which she covered at a full sprint. She saw the tumult around the gate from some ways off. In the half-light the thousands of torches near the city wall, in their swirling ebb and flow, resembled the moonlit phosphorescence of waves breaking against a cliff. The roar of the voices was likewise like the mindless rage of a sea-storm. From the parapet, cannons spit fire blindly into the darkness.

The throng was too tightly packed; her horse recoiled. Spotting an officer, she rode to him and demanded an update.

"A sarprase uttick, Madam Commander," the man shouted, "while we were ansietyng the urtellari."

"The Amirzade!" She jumped from the horse and seized the man's jacket. "What happened to the Amirzade?"

He pointed into the melee: "He was inttecting the baspery when the attacc kame."

She threw him aside and ran toward the battle. Pushing aside mufti-garbed gunners, she clambered to the top of a caisson. The battle was being fought around the cannons, where shock troops had unexpectedly come forth from the city's postern. The red uniforms of the Amirzade's bodyguard were visible in the center, but she couldn't make out individuals. She drew her gun and saber and pressed forward. The voices of the troops, shouting in Hejazi or Cairene dialect, made an undifferentiated wall of noise.

Closer to the front, the press of bodies lessened. Inside the battery, the iron-plated mantlets were overturned, their wooden supports splintered, and the area strewn with corpses. The muzzles of two siege guns still smoked from the thermite that burnt out their barrels.

The Amirzade was just up ahead but, as in a dream, though she was running as fast as she could, she didn't seem to draw any closer. At every turn were her own soldiers to impede her. Ahead, one red-robed bodyguard after another fell. The Amirzade fired a shotgun into the ranks of gray-armored soldiers, then threw down the empty weapon and attempted to escape over a broken wagon. But a volley of gunfire washed over him, splintering the wooden wall of the wagon over which he climbed, and he slipped and fell backwards.

Taking the bloody body of the prince, the Nejdi troops retreated before reinforcements could be summoned to exploit the open sortie-gate.

She reached the now deserted front line. The myriad voices seemed to have died away. The Amirzade's sidearm, a platinum revolver he had never fired before except in practice, lay in the dust. All rounds had been discharged. Blood was smeared on the ivory handle. The gun lay heavily across her palm.

Several officers approached, asking for orders. But, insensible to everything, she walked past them and through the detritus to the rear.

In her tent, she lay down on the bed, brittle and weak. Though she couldn't remember having cried since she was a very young child, and had born even the sororicide of her other self with dry eyes, she wanted to cry now, but despite the all-engulfing pain she couldn't. She knew why. It

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