Eventually the guards grew so strong that the valley people stopped trying to get through. By that time there were more than two hundred Hashomi tied down, watching Blade's force. Nearly that many had been killed or wounded since Blade arrived at the hospital.
«That makes four hundred Hashomi the Baran will not have to face when he and his men reach the head of the valley,» said Blade. «We haven't finished with them, either.»
«True,» said Giraz. «But I don't imagine they've finished with us, either. If the Master is as you say he is, it's going to take all the running we can do to keep ahead of him.»
«Also true,» said Blade, and began giving orders to prepare the hospital for defense. The ditch around the stockade was deepened and timbers placed in the bottom, jutting upward. Blade's archers kept the Hashomi at a safe distance until the work was done.
Other archers were placed along the trail from the stockade up to the hospital, at every place where the slope might let a Hashom climb up. During daylight they carried improvised drams to give the alarm, by night they had torches.
Still more archers were stationed along the rim of the hospital's ledge, with a clear field of fire down into the valley. At first the Hashomi tried to keep a line of bonfires alight all along the base of the cliff. They quickly discovered this made them excellent targets for archers they could not even see, let alone reach from four hundred feet below. The Hashomi then tried maintaining their watch without fires, and the valley people at once started slipping through again to join Blade. At last the Hashomi had to draw back and form their line of guards out of range of both the archers and the catapult. That tripled the length of the line and the number of men needed to maintain it. Blade had now tied up a force of Hashomi greater than his own strength, apart from the two hundred casualties he'd inflicted. He'd lost no more than eighty killed and wounded.
It was tempting to think that the job was done, but that was a temptation Blade resisted. Sooner or later the Hashomi would react more violently and effectively than they'd done so far. Then Blade's easy campaign would suddenly turn into a bloody last-ditch struggle.
He did everything he could to get ready for that struggle.
Every container that would hold water was filled and distributed among the buildings of the hospital. The Hashomi might poison the spring or climb up above the hospital and shoot arrows down. If they did, Blade wanted to be sure that no one would be poisoned or have to expose himself to get water.
Wooden shields were made for the fighting men, so they could move about even under a hail of arrows and stones from above. Large rocks were piled all along the path, ready to be rolled down the slopes at Hashomi trying to climb up.
The refugees from the valley did much of the work, slaving away sixteen and eighteen hours a day. Whatever had brought them to Blade in the first place, they now knew that their only hope of survival was his victory. If Blade's position was overrun, they were doomed to a quick death in the fighting, or a slower and far more painful death afterward. They knew that the Master of the Hashomi would take the time for a proper vengeance even if the Baran's army was storming the mouth of the valley at that exact moment.
Day after day went by, and the supply of food in the hospital shrank. The fighting men went on half rations, the civilians on quarter rations. The only people still getting a full ration were the sick and wounded. Faces began to look drawn and flesh melted off bones, but now they had another week before the food would be entirely gone. Before that happened, the Baran's army or at least fresh supplies should be on hand.
The very next night the Master launched his offensive. He used his wits and the skill of his men, but more than either he used the sheer brute strength and ferocity of the assarani, the great black reptiles. He brought them up under cover of a misty day, and that night he sent them in against the stockade. How many he sent no one ever knew, but they seemed endless to those who had to face them coming out of the night.
They came hissing and roaring, hurling themselves into the ditch, screaming as they impaled themselves on the stakes. They piled up in the ditch until it was filled with writhing scaled flesh. Then the survivors climbed over the dead and dying and hurled themselves like battering rams against the stockade itself.
The stockade held just long enough for some of the refugees to run up the trail toward the hospital. Then it collapsed in four places at once, the assarani swarmed in, and the Hashomi swarmed in after them. Fifty of Blade's fighting men and more than half the refugees died in a few minutes, under the teeth and claws of the monsters and the swords and knives of the Hashomi. More than four hundred refugees survived to be taken prisoner.
Blade didn't have time to worry about them, because he was too busy with other Hashomi. At every place the cliffs offered any hope, they swarmed up toward the trail, some of them holding their knives in their teeth to leave both hands free. These Hashomi climbed with eerie howls that made the toughest of Blade's men shudder.
Some of the climbing Hashomi missed hand or footholds and fell. Some were picked off by arrows or knocked loose by hurled stones. Some reached the trail and ran wild among the guards and the fleeing refugees. They were all killed in the end, but so were a good many of the guards and refugees. The Hashomi seemed to take a special delight in slaughtering the valley people. If they had time, they castrated the men and mutilated the women just as obscenely. Blade and most of his men would have vomited at the sight of what the Hashomi left behind them, if they'd had anything in their stomachs.
Eventually dawn came and with it the end of the Hashomi attack. Blade was able to add up the night's score. It was a bloody one, on both sides.
He'd lost a hundred killed or wounded, about a third of what he had left. The refugees had been slaughtered or captured wholesale. The House of Free Men was gone, and so was the whole trail down into the valley. Blade could no longer hold anything below the tunnel and the gap.
On the other hand, the Hashomi had lost more than a hundred more fighting men, besides the assarani. The huge reptiles would no longer be nearly so great a menace to the Baran's army.
The Hashomi had paid heavily for their victory, but Blade had lost more than he could afford. He could still hurt the enemy if he was prepared to fight to the last man, and he himself was. He also knew that it was easy for a general to decide to fight to the last man and even plan for it, but not so easy to get even the best soldiers to obey him.
In any case, the initiative now lay with the Master of the Hashomi. Much depended on whether he could think up any more new schemes in the next few days.
Sooner or later, the Baran's army had to arrive!
The morning of the second day after the attack, Giraz woke Blade from a restless, hunger-ridden sleep.
«The Hashomi have gathered in the valley, Blade.»
«Within catapult range?»
«Yes. But they've got more than a hundred prisoners with them. The refugees won't let the catapult crew open fire.»
Blade sprang out of bed and pulled on his clothes. Giraz led him to the edge of the cliff and pointed. Barely two hundred yards from the base of the cliff the Hashomi were gathered around several piles of wood. They were guarding a mass of prisoners. Blade could see that all the prisoners were naked, with their hands bound behind their backs.
Then the Hashomi began setting the piles of wood on fire. When the wood was blazing high, they picked up six of the prisoners. They swung them back and forth, then heaved them onto the blazing wood.