Krog was as sparing with words now as any fighter. His eyes swept the courtyard and the soldiers hurrying about it like purposeful ants. He moved back to Blade and nodded. «Good work, Blade. They do as you taught them to do. We should be able to stand off this attack. I did not expect it from the Green Towers, though. They were our allies.» He shook his head sadly.
«If they thought they could-«began Blade. But what he wanted to say about the Green Towers' thoughts was stamped into oblivion a split-second later by a tremendous uproar from outside the gate. Pounding feet, the grind and clang of weapons, conflicting war cries-«Krog!» «Green Tower!»-cries of rage and agony, the sound of men running or being hurled against the gate. . On top of the wall the Blue Eye fighters began to join in the shouting and point downward. One of them turned toward the little clump of leaders in the courtyard and bellowed;
«Green Towers! They're outside the gate. They're carrying lad-«A spear flashing up from below drove through his body from behind. He clutched the bloody spearhead protruding from his stomach, looked down at it as if wondering where it could have come from, and toppled forward and down off the walkway to the ground with a crunching thud. Blade saw several of the man's comrades launch their spears downward in retaliation. Screams rose from outside the walls as some of them found targets.
«Don't throw until you have a good target,» Blade yelled up to the men on the wall. Spears were now arching over on all three sides as the attackers worked their way around the outside. Spears plunged down from the men on the wall, and arrows whirred from the archers in the tower windows. The Green Towers seemed to have no archers. A good thing, too; a few good bowmen could have picked off a good many men from the walkway.
The walkway was now fully manned. Blade shooed back the remaining fighters and the armed women who came out to join Halda inside the tower, telling them to block off the door. If the Green Towers did get swordsmen and spearmen into the courtyard, Blade wanted to make sure they couldn't charge straight into an undefended tower and slaughter women and children right and left.
Then a harsh, irregular rumbling sound rose above the battle's roar. The sickly yellow light of many torches began to glow over the top of the wall. Several shouts in unison came down from the walkway.
«They're bringing up a-a-a-«The watchers on the wall seemed to have no words for what they saw. Blade sprinted to the nearest ladder and swarmed up it onto the walkway. The men on either side of him cleared a space for him as he flattened himself against and wall and cautiously peered over the top.
Lumbering out of the street that led to the gate came a long cylinder mounted on four solid wheels. A swarm of men and women in the garb of slaves tugged at it along the side and pushed at it from behind. Whips cracked as Green Tower fighters strode up and down beside it, lashing the bare backs of the slaves. Close behind it strode a number of Green Tower fighters, each pair carrying a long ladder.
Blade swore. Somewhere in the ranks of the Green Towers was a man with sufficient ingenuity to reinvent the battering ram. That long wheeled cylinder could be nothing else. With the mob of slaves pushing it, it would have the gate to the courtyard down in no time. At the same time other Green Towers would be trying to swarm up the scaling ladders and over the walls. The double-barreled attack would sweep the courtyard clear. The tower was not provisioned for a long siege. In a few days the Blue Eyes would be forced to accept slavery or a final fight against desperate odds. If they were going to win, they would have to win out here. He sprang down the ladder and ran across the courtyard.
Already the fighters on the walkway were shouting for more spears, and slaves and young boys were running out of the tower with bundles of them under their arms. Blade caught one of the boys as he sprinted back after delivering his load and shouted in his ear. «Run up and tell the archers to aim at the men pushing the thing on wheels. The Green Towers are going to use it to try to break down the gate.» The boy turned pale at the thought and dashed off.
Blade turned to Halda and snapped, «Have the women and men fighters inside pile things on the stairway. If the Green Towers break through, we don't want them to have an easy climb up inside the tower.» Halda's face was grim and set as she also ran off.
In the light pouring up from the torches outside the wall, Blade saw arrows flash down from the windows at the slave gang handling the ram. The shooting was good. A chorus of agonized howls rose from beyond the gate. Krog looked toward the gate and shook his head as he listened.
«I don't like killing slaves who are only doing what their masters tell them. I would not have it that way, in time.»
Blade shrugged, trying to present a callousness that he did not feel. «If we can kill a few of them, the rest may just break and run or even escape.» Krog nodded.
Arrows or not, the slaves at the ram must have gone right on pushing it into position. A minute later the gates shuddered under a tremendous impact that sent echoes rolling around the courtyard. Blade winced and made a quick check of his personal weapons. It looked as if there was going to be hand-to-hand fighting very shortly. That one impact alone had shaken the gate as though an avalanche had crashed against it.
Green Tower war cries suddenly sounded out louder than before. Heads and glinting spear points suddenly appeared over the top of the wall as the first assault parties came up the storming ladders. The defenders on the walkway flung themselves at this new threat, jabbing and throwing their spears. Blade saw one monstrous Blue Eye fighter swing two spears like clubs at two heads appearing one on each side of him. The heads disappeared. Then the man thrust the spears down over the wall and levered the scaling ladders backward. Resounding crashes and a chorus of screams and yells marked when they landed.
But there were too many men coming up the ladders for the defenders to meet. When the Blue Eyes exposed themselves to stab at the attackers and push down ladders, spears would flash up from the ground outside. Blue Eye fighters would crumple down onto the walkway or topple backward off it. One Green Tower man climbed over the wall where the fall of two defenders left a gap and started for the nearest ladder. But as he set foot on the top rung, Krog's tanned arm snapped forward. A spear hurled with the accuracy of a rifle bullet drove through the man's chest and slammed him back against the wall.
Meanwhile the crashes and booms continued as the ram battered at the gate; so did the screams as the archers sent more arrows whistling down into the packed slaves wielding the ram. Which would break first, the will of the slaves or the gates to the courtyard? Blade sent a messenger up with orders for the archers to be ready to shift fire to the gate if it went down and to Halda to be ready to lead her fighters out.
The gates were grids of thick logs on massive wrought-iron hinges, an impressive creation for the Wakers, who preferred to scrounge from the ruins. But it was giving way under the pounding of the ram, giving way faster than the morale of the slaves pushing that ram. Blade saw the lashings that held the logs together begin to strain and fray. He heard them creak and groan as the resilience of the logs made them rebound from each stroke. Flecks of rust jumped from hinges and bolts as they shook under the impacts.
With a screech of tortured metal, one of the hinges pooped completely free of the wall, dangling pathetically in a cloud of mortar dust. Soon the only thing holding the gates against the attackers would be the two massive log bars behind them and the fighters Blade was now assembling in the courtyard. Halda was among them, her face still set and grim. But now there was a blazing battle lust in her eyes. She seemed almost past caring whether the People of the Blue Eye won this fight or lost it, as long as there was a chance for her to get into it.