That chance came in almost the next second. Half a dozen Green Towers burst over the top of the wall, screaming at the top of their lungs. They swept two defenders who desperately tried to block them out of existence with flailing sword strokes. One of the attackers gyrated and pranced so wildly that he fell straight off the walkway onto the ground with a squashy thump. The others moved to cut off a section of walkway. Onto that now defenseless section poured a steady stream of Green Tower fighters, screaming, waving swords, hurling spears, leaping wildly down into the courtyard, or scrambling down the ladders.
Instantly the bowmen in the tower shifted to this new menace. They dropped the first two Green Towers to reach the ground in their tracks. Krog picked off a third man with another deadly spear cast. Then Blade moved in, sword carving a humming path through the air before him, straight at the men swarming off the ladders. Behind him came Halda and her fighters, all of them screaming like madmen and brandishing as many weapons as they had hands to hold.
The sudden counterattack brought Blade straight into the ranks of the attackers before they could react. The first three men in his path died as if they had been shoved against a whirling buzz saw; screams, the meaty sound of steel going through flesh and bone, blood everywhere, and then three bodies on the ground. Their comrades checked their rush and fanned out right and left to meet Halda's fighters in a series of death grapples.
Blade kept on into the center of the Green Towers. The continuous crash of his sword against their frantic parries sounded like half a dozen blacksmiths hard at work. He switched from slashes to thrusts in mid-stroke, always on the move, always pressing home the attack, never giving an inch but forcing the Green Towers back whole yards. Arms were lopped off, heads split, chests and stomachs ripped open by that deadly sword. One or two foolhardy types tried to scramble up the ladder, but Blade chopped one in half before he climbed the third rung. An arrow shrieking down from the tower dropped the other one just as he reached the walkway. Then from right and left Blue Eye fighters stormed along the walkway. The Green Tower ladders outside went crashing down in screams and splintering noises. Those Green Tower fighters who did not leap for safety down the outside of the wall died where they stood or else toppled off into the courtyard. The attack over the wall was broken. Blade ordered some of Halda's fighters up the ladders to reinforce the walkway and turned back to the gates.
One hinge on either side had now pulled entirely free of the wall. The great central bolt screeched and twisted farther and farther out of shape each time the ram crashed home. In a few more minutes the gate would be held only by the bars. And one of those bars was already beginning to show the splintered white of a crack.
Halda and Krog now joined Blade with a dozen more fighters in their wake. The commander of the gate guard and his little band also joined them. The gate was doomed; the best tactic now was to hit the Green Towers hard the minute they poured through the broken gate. A minute that was fast approaching-both bars were now bending and splitting and giving off ominous cracking noises.
Suddenly the upper bar gave way entirely, falling into two pieces and both pieces crashing down into the courtyard. Instantly both gates sagged backward, shuddering as the ram jolted them again. They slipped steadily downward until they hung drunkenly on the lower bar at a forty-five degree angle to the ground. Shouts, cheers, incoherent raw-throated howls rose up from behind the gates as the Green Towers saw the way into the courtyard open before them. Blade snapped out orders, and the twenty fighters around him formed themselves into a solid block. Their spears bristled forward and to the sides like the quills of a porcupine. That formation would at least persuade the Green Towers not to try a mad rush as they came over the gates.
But the first figures to come over the gate were not Green Tower fighters. Instead the top of the gates was suddenly swarming with men and women, some of them bloody, most of them staggering with fatigue, as they lurched and scrambled forward. All of them wore the filthy garments of slaves.
«What the devil-?» Blade snarled at no one in particular, staring at the onrush of slaves.
Krog hefted his spear. «The Green Towers are driving the slaves ahead of their fighters, to force us to use up spears. We'd better-«but Blade clamped an iron hand down on the leader's arm as he raised it for a throw.
«No, wait-look!» Blade's arm shot out and his finger pointed at Green Tower fighters now scrambling up the ladder into the midst of the slaves. Their swords were flashing, and slaves were going down screaming and even bloodier than before to writhe and kick out their lives. Others clawed with bare hands and feet at the fighters. Blade's voice rose to a triumphant roar. «The Green Tower slaves are revolting against their masters. They're coming to us!» He raised arms and both weapons high over his head and bellowed, «Slaves! We of the Blue Eyes welcome you. To us, to us! Kill your masters and join us!»
The slaves heard him and began boiling down off the gates, hitting the ground at a run, sprinting toward the solid safety of the Blue Eye formation. The Green Tower fighters heard him too and screamed curses and threats. Spears began to whistle toward him. One struck down a fighter standing beside him. Krog heard him and nodded slowly with a frown on his lean face. And Halda heard him, and the glare he saw her aim at him would have boiled an egg in its shell.
But there was no time to argue with her. The slaves were dashing frantically for the protection the Blue Eyes seemed to offer. Blade desperately waved them on toward the greater shelter of the tower itself. The Green Tower fighters were hacking their way through the slaves and rapidly gathering into a formation of their own just inside the gates. As more and more of them clambered over the gates and the bodies of the slaves and joined the formation, it became clear that the Blue Eyes would be badly outnumbered. Blade swallowed and met Krog's gaze with his own.
«How well did you train these-allies?» he asked.
«Too well, I think,» replied Krog with a sour grin. «Even so, with equal numbers, we win. But numbers won't be equal.»
«Two to one against us already,» said Blade curtly. «I'm damned if we'll wait until they've got it up to three to one.» His gaze swept over the formation of Blue Eyes. His voice rose in a shout designed to be heard both by them and by their massing enemies. «Spears-out! Pairs-form!» A moment's pause while the Blue Eyes shifted into their fighting pairs as Krog had taught them to do. The Green Towers stared uneasily. Blade and Krog strode out in front of their fighters and together raised their voices in one shout:
«Charge!»
The Blue Eye fighters charged at such a pace that Blade and Krog had to move fast to avoid being trampled by their own men. They angled out to each flank as the formation rolled forward, waving their swords and yelling encouragement to their own men and threats at the Green Towers. The Green Towers flinched. They were already giving ground toward the gate when the charging line smashed into them. .
And over them, and through them, and around them. Spears snapped forward with machinelike precision into the first rank of Green Towers. They screamed and reeled back or went down. The Blue Eyes kept right on going over the writhing or still bodies, swords out and blurring in the air in front of them, second spears held high for a downward stab. A mighty roar of clashing metal and screaming men filled the courtyard. And on either flank Blade and Krog leaped, bellowed, struck, and slew.
The first man Blade ran at flinched away. He saved himself, but he opened a path. Blade plunged through that path, deep into the Green Tower ranks, whirling about like a lethal dervish in a continuous blur of motion. The second rank of Green Towers suddenly found themselves attacked not only by the enemy in front but by this bloodstained giant in their rear. Part of that line broke and scattered. Those with a clear path to the gate scampered for it, leaped up, and vanished into the night. Those who found Blade between them and safety mostly died. Then Blade turned toward the enemy's center.