CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE SIEGE OF NARSHA
Terra, Locke, and Celes ran down the street towards the origin of the explosion. But before they went very far, they heard another. Then another.
"Look!" Locke said as they rounded a house. From where they stopped, they could see down over the city walls. In the valley they beheld an army clad in imperial brown and, in the midst of them, three black raptor-shaped machines. Bright flashes issued from the magitek tanks, followed immediately by echoing booms. They bombarded the walls, sending up quantities of stone and mangled men, brick and bone. The souls of the men on the wall, so lately discharged of their earthly weight, rose upward and vanished. Terra stood dumbfounded by the violence.
"Come on!" Locke urged them. "We have to find Banon!"
The streets were a swarm of people all running in different directions—mothers carrying their babes, children standing on street corners crying out for their parents, men arming themselves and running to join the fray. Terra got separated from Locke and Celes. She tried to look for them, but she was jostled by the crowd. There was an explosion overhead. A building had been struck nearby; it sent down a shower of wood and stone. Then someone grabbed her hand. It was Locke! He led her through the crowd.
The closer the three of them got to the city walls the fewer were the people running away. They would later learn that the women and children of Narsha, led by Arvis, evacuated into the mines.
They found Banon by his voice. "Aim for the pilots!" he thundered. The archers on the parapet continued to spend their arrows, holding fast to their stations, even as their comrades were blasted away beside them.
Terra could no longer see them, being beneath the wall, but she cursed the Empire's cowardice to use such war-machines, those false crow-gods. She and her friends ran up the stairs to join Banon.
There were thousands of soldiers in the valley before the strong walls of Narsha. Indeed, for the snow Terra could not see the end of them. They wore brown armor, round helmets, and oblong shields which bore the symbol of an iron scepter. There were swords strapped to their sides and spears in their hands.
The magitek tanks moved on long, raven-like legs ending in three-taloned feet. On their backs there was a fan of thin metal, like a dorsal fin, and on either side pipes belching black smoke. Above the beak was a chamber where the pilot sat, protected by a thick layer of glass. All the arrows of the Returners and the Narshans rebounded ineffectively.
Someone came up from behind Terra.
"All the men made it inside just in time." It was Edgar. "The snow must have concealed the soldiers. If our men saw them, they must not have had a close look. They must have thought they were late-coming reinforcements. No one else has arrived yet. All we have are my men and those we brought from Mobliz and about four hundred fighting-men of Narsha. If anyone else is coming, they may be ambushed if they do not expect the Empire."
"This is evil news," said Banon. "I had not counted on the Emperor's speed. I don't know that we can hold Narsha, strong-walled though she may be, against two thousand men and three magitek tanks. But we have no other course now. May the gods grant us mercy."
"Do you hear that?" said Edgar. "The tanks have stopped firing."
"Perhaps they want to talk terms," said Banon, and called a ceasefire.
Terra looked and saw a tall, snake-thin man dressed in pomp and bright colors and looking something like a clown.
"Kefka!" someone hissed nearby. Terra jumped.
Beside him stood a greater man, preeminent he seemed among warriors, proud and erect. She recognized him from South Figaro. It was General Leo.
"I'll bet you it was General Leo that called the ceasefire," said another man. "If it were only him, and not that villain Kefka, you can be sure there would have been negotiations before either side fired a shot."
Then Kefka spoke. His voice was high and cruel, and Terra felt her very blood drop several degrees to hear it:
"Who of you cowards can answer for this vile rebellion! Why does his Excellency, the all-benevolent Emperor Gestaul, find treachery in the North where he once found friendship? Who has seduced you, fools, to throw in your lot with terrorists and thieves? Answer!—if you have tongues, and do not dream that your thin walls will withstand the Emperor's wrath, justly ignited. Give up the leaders of this pathetic insurrection and you will find that the Emperor is as rich in forgiveness as he is in justice. You need not all perish. Speak!"
To whom thus Banon: "As for tongues, keep your forked one behind its teeth, if you don't want it cut out! I know you, Kefka, and you know me. Let us not, therefore, speak falsehoods and idle words when deeds are called for. What the Emperor calls friendship, honest men call slavery! And where the Empire extends its tyrannous dominion, honest men are few.
"We know what you would do, Kefka! You would have the woman Terra, sometime called Witch of the Empire, now called friend to free men and just law. You would have the Esper of this mountain, thinking perhaps to gain for yourselves power and life everlasting. Not content to be humbled and struck down once, you come to be shown a second time what happens to men who aspire to deity, thinking perhaps that the Esper will remain idle and not sweep away the Emperor's arrogance—and all the men you have assembled here—with fire from heaven!"
The way he spoke, Terra fully expected Esperial fires to descend that moment and consume the imperial army.
Kefka was livid. He stomped the ground childishly, which apart from being ridiculous seemed to make him all the more dangerous. Indeed, the soldiers closest to him gave him a wide berth. "Fool!" he cried, "Whoreson! Rabble-rouser! Terrorist! So you admit to me that you have abducted the woman Terra, whom the Emperor loves as his own daughter. No doubt you can find some unworthier thing—worthier for you—on which to slake your lusts, foul defiler! Many great wars have been fought, and many famous peoples have been destroyed, for the sake of a woman. Give her up to us now and the Narshans may live. Hear me, Narshans! Kill this fool Banon where he stands and expel the rebels from among you, and the Empire will grant you everlasting peace."
At that moment several things happened all at once. General Leo came forward to speak, but just as he opened his mouth Kefka shouted: "Fire! Fire! Fire!" The magitek tanks roared to life and began once again to launch their terrible missiles.
At the same time (Terra saw out of the corner of her eye), one of the archers on the wall turned and fired at Banon. The traitor was dead—slain by his fellow Narshans—almost the moment after the arrow left his string, but the arrow would surely have found its mark had not Celes intervened. It happened so quickly that Terra hardly saw it. There was a flourish of white cloak, a figure passed before Banon (it might have spun), and the arrow was no more. It was Terra's belief that Celes had caught it in her cape.
A part of the wall exploded nearby and Terra was struck with a stinging spray of rubble.
"Come," said Banon, "We must get higher, and we must find you some armor, Captain."
Thus they descended the stairs and left the wall, Banon leaving Edgar in charge, the archers still firing, the shouts of men killing and men dying and the thunderous blasts smiting the wall filling Terra's hears, and her heart with sorrow. She hardly dared to look back, for fear of seeing some heavenward soul mounting the air. She hardly dared not to look, for fear that one of these tiny blue stars might go up unacknowledged.
Terra, Banon, Locke, and Celes climbed the streets of Narsha towards the armory. They passed many an empty house, so cheery only an hour before, now grim and bare and damaged by enemy fire. The snow on the road had been packed down by the feet of the refugees, even as more fell and covered it softly. Where was Arvis? Terra hoped he was safe. It would be a terrible thing to win him back from death only to lose him a moment later.
Looking up at the summit of Mt. Narsha, Terra's hood fell back. The peak was darkening, and its peals of thunder overmatched those of the magitek tanks. The billowing black clouds—lit up now and again by fierce lightning—were expanding overhead. The moment Terra's hood fell back, she was seized again by fear, and her headache returned in full force. Her ears rang painfully.
She must have winced, because Locke asked her if she was ill, though his voice sounded like it was underwater.
"I'm fine," said Terra, reluctant to speak because of the pressure in her head.
At last they reached the armory. They passed through the gate under an arch in the wall. There was a tower coming out of the stone building, partly nestled in, partly emerging from the cliff behind it, with the top commanding a wide view of the valley.
With her mind so muddled, Terra had little care to observe her surroundings. Somehow they had reached a little hall or corridor lined with weapon-racks on both sides. Banon found his armor and put it on. He looked even more powerful than before, clad all in iron, clinking when he walked, and heaving a huge double-sided ax over his shoulder. Then Locke, reluctantly it seemed, put on his armor. It was thin and shabby (exactly suiting him) and spare at the joints, allowing him full range of movement and speed. It might not stop the full force of a thrown spear, but a glancing sword-stroke would fail to penetrate. Clearly Locke trusted more to his agility than to a smith's ironwork.
Celes' armor was there too. It must have been brought with the other things by the Returners. Hers was by far the most elaborate and expensive. Much care must have gone into its making. She went away to change, and Terra assisted her and put on her own armor. Celes' armor was perfectly crafted to fit her body, and shone with a pale silver sheen (even in the relative darkness) as if by moonlight.
To Terra they had given only a long garment of chainmail for her to wear under her cloak, which was heavy for her, though made for boys. They reasoned that Terra would not join in the fighting, but would stand behind the archers and cast fire upon the enemy if she could, or go up to call upon the aid of the Esper, a thing which Terra still didn't know how to accomplish. And, at any rate, they reasoned that the imperial soldiers would be ordered not to shoot one on whom both sides hung all their hopes.
