The immense walls of Elyaran rose from the dust like a sleeping stone leviathan. Thirty cubits high, the outer ramparts, forged from dark granite and reinforced with iron-braced timbers, had been built to withstand sieges lasting for years. Above the main gate tower—the Iron Mouth—hung Inspector Varok’s red banners, lazily fluttering in the scorching desert air.
Two leagues away, hidden within the dry fissures of the salt flats, Azhred and Tair watched the city.
Azhred adjusted the strap of his leather breastplate. Behind them, three hundred northern horsemen and two thousand irregular tribal warriors waited in the shadows of the canyons; their spears gleamed like a bed of iron needles.
"Varok has stationed five thousand imperial soldiers inside," Azhred whispered; his amber eyes fixed upon the distant battlements. "The granaries are full, the wells are deep, and the gate mechanisms are protected by ancient defensive systems. A direct assault would cost us half our men before they even crossed the moat."
Beside him, Tair sat leaning against a salt-covered rock. His right leg, encased in the leg brace, lay crookedly upon the ground, lifeless. The dark leather band over his empty right eye socket absorbed the harsh sunlight, while a thin trace of dried black blood stained his collar.
He was not looking at the walls. He was looking at the base of the city—where three enormous iron grates discharged a muddy, foul-smelling torrent of water into the salty marsh.
"Walls... do not hold cities, Azhred," Tair said, forcing the sentence through a throat that no longer supported a normal voice. "People... hold cities."
He pulled a cracked clay tablet from his bag and laid it flat upon the dry earth. It was a sketch of the city's underground water channels, bribed from a disgraced architect three nights earlier in the lower city of Veylahr.
Spatial Architecture: ASTRA
SYSTEM: Elyaran Sewer System
STRUCTURAL WEAKNESS: West floodgate
NEURAL COST: 27%