Then he saw it-a ghost-faint flicker of movement along the edges of a wide street half a mile to the north. He waited, eyes fixed on that spot, until a momentary glimmer of moonlight showed a dark mass flowing forward across the street. Unmistakably the moonlight sparked off polished metal.
«I see one column,» he said to Yekran. «Crossing Rona Avenue»
«Good,» said Yekran. «The watchers reported three, though.»
«One of them will certainly come along the riverbank,» said Blade. «They will want to cut us off from retreating into the open country. They won't want to let a thousand slaves get away.»
Yekran's jaw hardened. «We don't want to retreat. We want to stay here and kill those-«His voice trailed off. Apparently he couldn't think of a word nasty enough to describe the Wakers. They stood in silence for five minutes. A sentinel in a tower overlooking the riverbank signaled that one of the columns was on the move there. A few minutes later the third column also came into sight. It was moving in on the east side of the enclave with scouts out in front.
«The east column will be Krog's, almost certainly,» said Blade. «I don't think any of the other gangs know anything about throwing out scouts, unless Krog taught them.»
«I would like to meet this man Krog,» said Yekran slowly. «I hope we do not have to kill him.» Then, briskly, «Well, Blade, I think we know where they are now. Let us go down.»
Below, at street level, the frantic bustle and confusion of the first alert was fading as people reached their stations and peered into the darkness. About half the trained fighters and two thirds of the partly trained ones were manning the walls. Blade had the rest organized into a reserve that he could move to wherever the attack was strongest. Everybody who was too young, too old, or too weak to fight had other jobs-carrying water and extra weapons to the fighters, carrying away the dead and wounded. Except for the Waker prisoners, who were locked up in vaults, everybody in the enclave had something to do. The Wakers would be attacking a whole people, not just the fighters. Blade hoped that fact would give the Dreamers the edge they needed-especially with the new weapons. He hoped those weapons worked as well in battle as they had in the tests.
Time crept on. Blade wondered if the Wakers were going to delay their attack until daylight. He doubted that Krog could have persuaded all the other gangs to fight by day. But if he had, things would go badly for the Dreamers. The new weapons would lose half their terror value in daylight.
A figure came out of the darkness and up to Blade. «A message from the commander of the war machines, Captain Blade. The column on the riverbank is within range now. Can we open fire?» The man wore an expression like a small boy asking if he can open his Christmas presents.
Blade shook his head. «Wait until the eastern column is within range. Then concentrate on them.» The man nodded and dashed off.
The People of the Blue Eye would be hardest to scare with the new weapons. But they would also be the most dangerous if they got over the walls. The farther away they could be hit, the better.
The eastern column must have been at very close range when the messenger arrived. Only minutes later one of the catapults went twonggg. Blade dimly saw something soar through the air and drop down out of sight. He could clearly hear the crash as the stone landed, and he thought he heard faint screams and shouts. He swore to himself in frustration. Up on the roofs he could see but not command; down here he could command but not see. He realized he was in the same maddening situation as every general in history who has wanted to see what was going on.
The siege machines went on firing, and the stones went on crashing down into the streets to the east. The fireballs were being saved for a surprise at close range. Blade heard no more screams from the east, however. If the People of the Blue Eye were out there. Krog had probably ordered them to scatter. A minute later another messenger ran up, confirming Blade's suspicions. The eastern column had disappeared, but the other two were still moving in.
Blade grinned. Possibly Krog was going to play the same game he had accused Blade of wishing to play with him. He would get his rivals' fighters killed off and spare his own by delaying his own attack and letting the others go in first. Then Narlena ran up with a message. The column from the riverbank was in sight and coming up the street fast.
«All right,» Blade said to Yekran. «You take the northern side. I'm going down to the south.»
They shook hands, and he followed Narlena off along the street, first walking, then loping, then tearing through the darkness at a run. Ahead of them loomed the wall at the south end of the street, its top and rear face crowded with Dreamer fighters. They ran past the catapult standing in the street, waved to its crew, ran through the aid squads standing ready behind the fighters, and reached the wall. The fighters manning it turned to greet Blade. As they did so, an ear-splitting chorus of war yells and screams shot up from the street beyond. Blade heard the swelling sound of running feet and clashing weapons moving rapidly toward the wall.
The men with the fireballs in the upper windows didn't wait for orders. Neither did the catapult crew. Two windows lit up with a searing blue-white glare. The two centers of the glare arched out into mid-air, dropping toward the street, trailing twenty-foot streamers of flame, and spitting out sparks like a Roman candle. At the same time the catapult hurled a hundred pound bag of jagged stone and metal fragments clean over the heads of the men on the wall, straight into the oncoming enemy. A very different kind of screaming and yelling now rose from beyond the wall. Blade dashed forward and scrambled up the wall just as the catapult let fly again. He and Narlena flattened themselves on the stones as another bag sailed overhead and crashed into the street.
Looking over the top of the wall, they could see the street beyond lit up by the fireballs. Both of them lay in the street, still sputtering, hissing savagely, and flaring up every few seconds. Men lay writhing and screaming on the pavement or ran howling away, hair and beard trailing smoke and flame. Some of them stumbled and fell over the mangled dead or the dying who had been struck down by the flying debris. As Blade watched, a third bag of fragments smashed down into the street, spewing pieces in all directions, cutting down more of the running men. The entire head of the attack column seemed to have vanished in less than a minute. But farther down the street Blade could see hundreds more fighters, still brandishing their weapons, still howling threats and war cries. They would attack again.
They did. This time there were three times as many as there had been the first time-moving even faster. Blade could hear their commanders yelling at them to spread out. But trying to get untrained Wakers to change their normal fighting habits in the middle of a battle was hopeless. They came on in the same dense mass as before. More fireballs plunged down into it; more men screamed and shrieked as the flames seared and blinded them. More shots crashed down in the street, solid stones as well as bags of fragments smashing men to the ground, reducing them to pulp before they could even scream. The charge lost half its men as it came down the street.
But the other half was driven by a thirst for revenge and by dreams of loot and prisoners. They kept on coming, charging through the flames, through the flying stones, through the arrows that whistled by their ears and sank into their bodies, over the corpses of their comrades, up to the wall like a wave.
The Dreamers on top of the wall flinched and gave way. For a terrifying moment Blade was alone on top of the wall, Wakers boiling around him so thickly that neither he nor they could lift a weapon. He grabbed the nearest Waker with his bare hands and jerked the man's neck back until he heard it snap. Then he lifted the body and threw it down into the men still climbing up the wall. His sword swung out in a lethal curve, carving chests, stomachs, and faces in a single sweep.