“Did you think of this?”

     Leothan shook his head. “The Brigadier. The idea apparently came to him during his visit to Mekrol, while looking for a cure for the Princess. Something Parcellius said, I think he said. I don't really remember. It's not important. We did a bit of investigation to find out whether the idea was feasible. Turned out it was. The biggest problem was getting so much explosives into the city without anyone finding out.”

     Glowen nodded. “The army's been complaining about a shortage of explosives for weeks, and we know the munitions factories have been producing the stuff non stop, every factory working at triple capacity. We assumed the enemy had been intercepting the transports.”

     “They've been trying to intercept them, and we’ve encouraged them to think they’ve been successful. We blew up a supply wagon now and then, with only a fraction of the amount of explosives in it that there should have been. The enemy spies apparently weren't demolition experts. They didn’t know how big a bang that much explosive was supposed to make. In reality, it were successfully entering the city, disguised as food supplies in preparation for a siege. Into the city and down into the Hetin tunnels...”

     There was a huge nearby explosion that shook the whole room. Both men staggered and had to reach out to the furniture to support themselves. Dust fell from the ceiling. More explosions followed, further away, and the King ran to the door, throwing it open and calling for Darnell. The Private Secretary was right there, with a pair of runners. “Find out what the hell that was!” he commanded. Darnell nodded and sent a runner to obey.

     “It was an artillery shell,” said Glowen. “The enemy's finally close enough to attack the city itself.”

     Leothan stared at him, then ran across the room to the window. Sure enough there were explosions across the city. Even as he watched, the library clock tower collapsed into ruins, surrounded by billowing clouds of dust, and more buildings were exploding as six inch shells slammed into them. The palace shuddered again as another shell hit it and a large patch of plaster fell from the ceiling just a couple of feet from the King.

     Leothan ran back to his Private Secretary. “The Queen!” he said. “Where is she?”

     “She and the Royal children are in the Ministry Building,” replied Darnell.

     “The Carrowmen are targeting it,” said Glowen, ashen faced with fear. “They're trying to put an end to organised resistance. I think it’s just one battery of artillery, but it would only take one lucky hit...”

     “Get my family to safety,” Leothan ordered Darnell. “Somewhere away from the centre of the city.” Darnell nodded and sent the second runner.

     “We shouldn't stay here,” said Glowen. “The Palace was already structurally unsafe after the earthquake.”

     “The structural engineers passed this wing as safe for continued occupancy,” pointed out the King.

     “Because you bullied them into it. They weren't happy about it. They knew this wing was bound to have been weakened by the earthquake, and now with this...”

     “I didn't bully them. I may have expressed my reluctance to leave the palace...”

     “Can we argue about it later? Right now we need to move to a stronger building!”

     Leothan looked at the coils of wire emerging from the wall, though. “You go,” he said. “I can't leave.”

     “Why the hell not?” As he spoke, another shell landed nearby, shaking the room again. More lumps of plaster fell from the ceiling and the room was filled with dust. A crack opened in the wall, and a horrible grinding sound came as bricks on either side ground against each other. The sound of a collapsing ceiling came from somewhere nearby, together with frightened screams. “Majesty!” insisted the General. “You have to order the evacuation of the palace!”

     Leothan stared at the wires again, then nodded. Amberley could detonate the explosives from the bunker. “Order the evacuation of the palace.” he told Darnell. “Get everyone out.”

     The Private Secretary nodded and began shouting the order to everyone in nearby rooms. As he was doing so, more runners came to replace the two he’d sent off and he sent them to spread the word. “Majesty!” insisted General Glowen, reaching out to take the King's hand. “Let's go!”

     “Once we're sure everyone’s out...”

     “Now, Majesty! Before I pick you up and carry you!”

     Leothan stared at him in astonishment, wondering whether he’d actually do it, but then he nodded and allowed himself to be led away.

☆☆☆

     Field Marshall Amberley tensed up anxiously as the bunker shuddered around him. “How safe are we down here?” he asked.

     “Pretty safe,” replied Captain Worrall, the bunker’s duty officer. “There's twenty feet of solid bedrock above us. No shell can penetrate it. The main danger is that the access tunnel might be blocked off by falling debris. We're under a school here, though. It’s not likely the Carrowmen will target it.”

     “They built the command bunker under a school?” cried Major Vallory in astonishment.

     “The school was built before they found the bunker. This is a Hetin bunker. They found it while digging a sewage pipe for the science block. Three thousand years it's been down here, totally unsuspected by everyone, and when they broke in they found it as perfectly preserved as if the Hetin folk had only moved out yesterday. That was when we learned the name of the Hetin city that once stood here. Krasnoyarsk.”

     “We can't be sure how the name was pronounced...” began an eager looking aide, but Amberley interrupted him impatiently. “Could the shelling sever the demolition cables?”

     “Of course they could,” said Worrall. “They may have been compromised already.”

     “Then we have to detonate now, just in case. Wire up the detonator.”

     “Our most recent reports say the enemy hasn't finished occupying the trenches!”

     “That report’s twenty minutes old. We have to hope they’re all in by now. Wire up the detonator.”

     The Captain nodded and gestured to the engineer. He nodded in turn and picked up a large box with a plunger in the top. He carried it across the room to where wires ran along the wall from the access corridor and down to the floor. One set of wires ran to the War Room in the palace. He ignored them and wired the detonator to another set of wires that ran back up to the surface, to the city wall and then back down into the Hetin tunnels where they branched and rebranched until they reached the waiting piles of explosives, packed and shaped so that the bulk of the explosive force would be directed upwards. The man tightened the screws holding the wires in place, then stood and nodded to the Field Marshall. “Ready,” he said.

     “Then let’s not stand on ceremony,” said Amberley. “Do it.”

     “Me? I thought that you...”

     “Just do it!”

     The man nodded and pulled the plunger upwards. Then, after a pause during which he contemplated the magnitude of what he was about to do, he pushed it down again...

☆☆☆

     King Leothan emerged from the palace to see the buildings of the city shuddering under the impact of enemy shells. Two shells had landed in the palace grounds, leaving smoking craters in the immaculately manicured lawns. The gardener’s going to have his work cut out for him tomorrow, he thought. Beyond the walls of the palace grounds, he saw an office block exploding as a shell hit it full on, punching right through and emerging from the other side with a spray of rubble, and a moment later another building collapsed as neatly as a controlled demolition as a shell hit it near the ground.

     There was a sound like a howling banshee as a shell flew through the air directly above him. It hit the palace and an entire wing collapsed in on itself like a falling house of cards. The guest wing, he realised. Thankfully they didn't have any guests in residence at the moment, and the majority of the staff had been evacuated out. Only buildings were being destroyed, and buildings could be rebuilt. He put it out of his mind, therefore, and allowed the General to lead him to wherever it was they were going.

     The ground thumped under his feet like the heartbeat of some colossal subterranean monster. Each beat was the impact of a shell hitting his city, but then there was another, much larger lurch. Large enough to throw both men off their feet. Leothan tore the elbows of his tunic as he landed hard on the gravelled walkway, the sharp stones digging into his skin. Beside him he heard the General give a grunt of surprise as he also hit the ground. Behind him came the rumbling of masonry as another wing of the palace collapsed, and Leothan looked back to see a wave of white dust sweeping towards them.

     “What in the name of...” began the General.

     Leothan picked himself back up, and saw to his astonishment that there was a wall of white cloud rising with glacial slowness all along the horizon, almost completely encircling the city. The ground under his feet continued to shake as if another earthquake had struck. A man made earthquake. Beside him, General Glowen was struggling to stand back up. Leothan reached down a hand to help him.

     “Was that...” began the General.

     “The trenches,” replied Leothan, numb with shock at the magnitude of what he’d unleashed. “Amberley must have triggered it.”

     “But it was too soon! Our latest reports said they needed another hour at least to occupy the trenches!”

     “Just being near the trenches may have been enough,” said the King as the wall of smoke and dust continued to rise. So silent! he thought in disbelief. It should have made a noise. A bang loud enough to deafen the whole city. Why was it so silent? Because it was an underground explosion perhaps, he thought. The sound would have been muffled by thousands of tons of silty soil. He shook his head to drive out the irrelevant thought. People are dying in their thousands out there, he scolded himself. Enemy soldiers, but people nonetheless, and I’m obsessing over trivialities.

     “Your Majesty,” said a voice, and he looked around to see Darnell running towards him, with two runners behind them. All three were covered head to foot in white dust. “Thank Those Above you're safe!”

     “My family?” said the King in sudden anxiety.

     “Safe, Sire. They’re being taken to Terringham House with a unit of guardsmen. We should get you there as well, Sire.”

     “Later.” He turned back to the General. “Get the army ready. The whole army, what's left of it. As soon as it settles down out there, open the city gates and send them out. They are to engage whatever units of the enemy they encounter. Kill or capture them. Hopefully, we can take them before they recover from the shock. Take out their whole army in one fell swoop.”

     “Or they'll take out ours. They outnumbered us three to one before the detonation. If we missed them, if there weren’t enough of them in the trenches, and if they recover, get themselves organised again fast enough...”

     Leothan nodded. “One way or another, it ends today,” he said. “Send out the army, Ben.”

     The General nodded and ran off to obey.