Where then was Aemilianus?

It was not my fight. I should go below. Surely in the citadel, somewhere, I could find other garments. My accents could not be confused with the liquid accents of Ar or those so similar, of Ar's Station. In the ingress of victors I should mingle with them.

It was not my fight.

Where was Aemilianus?

How dispirited seemed the defenders! How listlessly they stood! How resigned to their fate! What preparations did they make for the towers? Did they think they now faced only fellows on ladders, fellows climbing ropes, the clinging, climbing, creeping, shouting swarms, stinging with spears and blades, that they knew from a hundred trails in the past? They would be swept aside like dried leaves before the descendent blast of Torvaldsland. Were Cosians not to know their swords had been warmed and nicked in their romp?

"Ho, fools!" I cried, striding down the walkway. "The bridges will drop and you will think an avalanche of iron has spilled upon you! How shall you meet it? Let it spill on your heads? Clever fellows! Bring poles! Bring stones! You, fetch grapnels and ropes. The crews to the catapults, now! Yes, to the engines! You men there, you can see where this tower will come, there by the stairs. Break away the stone there! Open a great gap! You there, bring tarn wire!"

"Who are you?" cried a man.

"One who holds this sword!" I said. "Do you want it in your gut?" "You are not Marsias!" cried another.

"I am assuming command," I said.

Men looked at one another, wildly.

"The wall cannot be held," said a man.

"True," I said. "I do not lie to you. The wall cannot be held. But what will it cost the Cosians?"

"Much," said a man, grimly.

"Those who have no stomach to stay," I said, "let them hide themselves among the women and the children below."

"Life is precious," said a man, "but it is not that precious."

Suddenly there was a blast of trumpets from the foot of the wall and the eleven towers, with a lurch and groan, began to creep forward.

"Hurry!" I cried.

"Bring stones, poles, tarn wire!" cried men.

17 Battle: We Will Withdraw to the Landing

The bridges of the tower were still raised. These bridges were each about eight to ten feet in width. The towers themselves, which taper on the sides and back for stability, but are flat on the approaching surface, to make it possible to come flush with the wall, at that height were about fifteen feet in width. They were out from the wall, back from it, some seven feet. The lower sills of the bridges, from whence they would swing down, clapping, thundering, on the crenelation, were about four or five feet above the height of the wall. This permits a considerable momentum to the attackers without being so steep as to endanger the surety of their footing. There was no accident about the height of the towers. A simple geometrical calculation gives the height of the wall. We could now hear little movement within the towers, scarcely the clink of arms. They were, however, crowded with men.

"It is the waiting I do not like," said a fellow near men.

I lifted and lowered my sword. Men tensed along the wall. Fires were lit. It had taken the towers at least five Ehn to move the twenty yards or so to the wall.

They were now here.

There are many ways of meeting such devices. The most effective, but generally impractical, as it consumes much time and materials, is to raise the wall itself, building it higher, so that they can serve as little more than ladder platforms. What is more often done when time permits is to build portable wooden walls, some fifteen feet or so, in height, with defensive walkways and loopholes for missiles, which are then moved in the path of the towers. Sorties, the object of which is to fire the towers, are less practical than it might seem at first glance. Such towers are usually well defended, and are often not brought into play until such excursions are for most practical purposes beyond the resources of the defenders. Too, it is difficult to fire such objects, and the fires began on them by, say, small task forces are generally quickly extinguished.

At a singe blast of trumpets, the eleven bridges were loosened, rattling, to the crenelation.

As soon as the bridges struck down on the stone, at eleven points along the wall, from each of the somber, giant, looming, hide-hung towers, scores of men packed within rushed forth, spewing forth, erupting, like lave or steam and water breaking from the side of a cliff, racing, sprinting, descending the bridges, shields set, hurling themselves downward. Poles, and pikes, and stones, and wire, and steel and fire met them. At two of the towers great poles were used. One, a foot thick and twenty feet in length, managed by ten men with ropes, mounted at an angle of some twenty degrees on an improvised pivot of heaped stone, swept the bridge an instant after it struck the crenelation, then tumbled off, used once, to fall behind the parapet. Men, before its movement, were struck screaming to the ground, but others followed them, pouring over the wall, to plunge into coiled tarn wire, to stumble, to fall, to wade in it bloodied, to meet stones and steel. The second great pole was tied to two crosspoles and, by ten men on each crosspole, was thrust in place as soon as that bridge fell, and was held at an angle, like a railing, its sturdy barrier diverting the stream of attackers, causing many on the outside edge to be buffeted by their comrades to the ground below, a hazard in crossing such a bridge at any time under the conditions of battle. Many clung to the pole, as they could, and many strove to slip under it or climb over it. In the cleared angle of the bridge, the defenders mounted to the bridge itself an there, behind the barrier, and about it, stanched the flow of men upward, holding them on the planking of the bridge, between the tower and the wall.

At two of the bridges tiles and bricks, some two feet in length and six inches in height and width, met the attackers, not so much to stay the force of the attack as litter the bridge itself, that rushing men, not suspecting them, might stumble and fall. And in such cases there was always the press of men from behind, ascending the ladders, pushing the others forward. Tarn wire here, too, was set to enmesh those who came over the wall. I had had the rear portions of the two catapults propped up, that the angle of fire could be flattened. This, given the height of the openings, revealed by the dropped bridges, made it possible to fire at point-blank range, the shovel of one catapult containing a thousand bits of rock and metal, the shovel of the other a large boulder, weighing perhaps fifteen hundred pounds, requiring five men for its loading, trundling it up the ramp.

The first catapult slung its storm of missiles into the charging men, blinding them, denting shields, cutting clothing from bodies. The second catapult cast its load, its boulder, into the midst of startled men and had it not been for their smitten bodies, dashed back, cushioning the blow would have torn its way free through the back of the tall, shedlike tower. In both cases defenders then climbed to the bridges to meet the foe, driving him back, thrusting him down to the lower level, stopping the ascent at the ladders. At the termination of another bridge we had broken away an opening in the walkway, enlarging a gap about stairs. Here charging foes leaping from the wall found no footing but only an opening beneath them, half pit, half stairs. Men waited below for those who still moved, with axes. Another charge, rushing forth from the tower, unable to stop, pushed on by the masses behind them, plunged into flames, where we had heaped bundles of tarred sticks in their path, the sort that on wires and chains, flaming, are hung over the walls at night to illuminate ascending foes. At another bridge, Vosk fishermen, from the vicinity of Ar's Station, fought, perhaps men who had merely been trapped in the city when the Cosians had taken their positions, and, at another bridge, huntsmen, from the interior, perhaps similarly detained. The fishermen had a net with them, doubtless brought up from their small boat in the harbor. Such devices are rich in war uses. They can discommode scalers and grapnel crews. They can block passages. From behind them one may conveniently thrust pikes and discharge missiles. In the field they may serve as foundations for camouflage, for example, effecting concealments from tarnsmen. Questioned, eagerly had I assented to its use, pleased to have the unexpected and welcome aid of such an object. Nets, too, of course, are used at sea in the repulsion of boarders. Similarly, nets, often small and silken, but sturdy and cunningly weighted, are used in the taking of women. At both these bridges the charge was arrested by the bristling points of a braced, pike wall, two men to a pike. At the fishermen's bridge the net was cast, but its weights were not now stones. Rather was it weighted with two logs which, at it settled upon its catch, were toppled over the parapet.