by Tim Stead
Bisalt had already drawn the bolts and at his word the others would pull the ropes and the gate would open to the day.
The words came into his mouth, but got no further. He stood, silent and still, in the mouth of the River Gate and stared at the bolts, at the studded wood of the gate. A thought had struck him, and it was a thing as clear as a sunny day, as clear as the tones of the morning bell.
No. It wasn’t possible.
“Sir?”
He looked across as Bisalt. The man was puzzled. A glance up at the tower showed a pale streak of light – the sign of dawn. It was time. It was past time. Still he stood and said nothing.
Surely not. He closed his eyes and tried to remember what he’d seen in the fog.
“Shoot the bolts, Bisalt,” he said. “Lock the gate.”
To his credit Bisalt did not question the order with more than a look. He stepped forward and hammered the first bolt home.
Jerac turned to one of the other men. “Take a horse and ride to the castle,” he said. “Tell anyone who will listen that the city is under attack, that we need men to hold the gates.”
The man stared at him for a moment.
“What?”
“Do it,” Jerac barked. “Now!”
The man looked across at his comrades, but finding no wisdom there ran for the stables. The second bolt crashed home. The gate was locked.
It was simple enough, really. The men on the wagons had been tied because their captors couldn’t control the wagons, or wouldn’t. Horses were taint. And why the wagons? Because seen from the air a column of men with horses couldn’t be Seth Yarra. They would be passed over without a second glance. When Jerac had looked out of the window he’s seen the shapes of men. Men standing. There wasn’t a single horse or wagon, and men on foot wouldn’t wait for the gate to open, they’d come through the postern before dawn.
The postern.
Jerac’s eyes found it in a moment. The bolts were drawn back. The postern was open. Even as he raised his arm to point, to tell Bisalt to bolt it, he saw it swing back on its hinges, bursting open, and armed men stepped through.
It wasn’t as big gate. Really it was only large enough for one man at a time to pass through, but they came quickly, three, five, seven. Jerac’s sword was in his hand. He didn’t remember drawing it, and he was running towards the postern, only six of seven steps, but everything seemed slowed down. He saw Bisalt jump back, sword coming free. He saw one of his own men, hands still on the gate rope, cut down from behind.
Then he was there, and two cuts of his blade killed two men. There were too many of them, though, and he was forced back. As he passed the fallen guard he stooped and drew the man’s sword. Now he had two. It had been an instinct, but he found that it worked well. The second blade gave him time. They were slow, but with one blade he’d had to parry blow after blow, and had not time to strike back. With two he had time.
Jerac Fane began to kill them. He was aware of Bisalt and the others on his right, trying to force the enemy back to the postern, but most of his mind was on the men before him. He found the rhythm had changed. He was moving forwards.
Some of them were trying to draw the bolts, hammering at them with sword hilts, and they were succeeding. If the main gate opened they would pour in, and the gate would be lost.
An arrow took one of them down. A glance showed Jerac that Bisalt had pulled back and was shooting. The others were still fighting to try to retake to postern, but were being held.
“Cut the portcullis down!” he shouted, hoping that Bisalt would hear over the sounds of battle. With the iron portcullis down the gate couldn’t open. Even if it didn’t close the postern, it would restrict them to coming in by the smaller gate, and he thought he could handle that.
They had one bolt drawn, but they weren’t being clever. He could see that men were pressing on the outside of the gate. It was straining inwards, and that made the bolts harder to draw. It was buying him time.
By now he had to mind where he put his feet. There were a lot of bodies littering the ground, and he was adding to the pile. The Seth Yarra were hammering on the last bolt now, and inch by inch, fraction by fraction, it was drawing back. The gate bulged. It could snap, he realised. The bolts were only cast iron, after all, and not meant do such duty as this on their own.
“Mind the gate!”
Jerac heard the cry from behind, and stepped back. The portcullis roared down, chains dragging through their channels with a sound like thunder, but it didn’t reach the ground. The postern stood open, and the portcullis struck the top of it, tearing away the top hinge, shattering the top of one of the sturdy planks of which the small gate was made, but the postern held. Drunken and broken, it did not submit to the portcullis, but held it up four feet from the ground.
The falling iron had killed three Seth Yarra, including the man working the bolt, and Jerac was able to spring forwards again and attack. He killed two men, and suddenly he was alone on this side of the gate. He stood for a moment in the unexpected lull, but it was a moment too long.
Arrows flew through the postern. Most missed, but he was struck in the thigh, the hip and the stomach. It hurt a lot. He ripped the point out of his stomach, and the pain lessened. The other arrows followed, ripped out and cast aside, and Jerac was only half surprised to find that he was uninjured.
He kicked at the postern. It should have had no effect. The small gate was sturdy, even shattered by the portcullis it was a formidable piece of timber, but it moved. He kicked at it again, and an arrow caught him in the calf. He tore it out and kicked a third time.
The postern collapsed, and the portcullis completed its interrupted journey to the ground, burying half its spikes in dead flesh. Jerac jumped to one side where he could no longer be seen from outside.
“Up on the wall,” he called. “Bows up on the wall.”
Bisalt didn’t move. He was staring at Jerac, open mouthed. It was awkward, Jerac supposed. How was he going to explain this? He’d been shot with arrows four times. His men couldn’t have missed seeing it, not all of them.
Jerac ran across the mouth of the gate, grabbed Bisalt and dragged him into the gate house.
“What in the gods name, what are you?” Bisalt said.
“Your officer,” he replied. “Now pick up your bow and get up on the tower. The bastards might be bringing up ladders.”
Bisalt snapped out of it. He grabbed his bow and ran up the steps. At least that was something that Jerac could deal with later. How long had it been since the rider had left for the castle? Probably no more than five minutes, though it seemed that five times as many. He reached the top of the wall with his own bow in hand and looked back into the town. There was no sign of any help.
“There’s a lot of them, Lieutenant,” Bisalt said.
There were. Looking out into the fog he could see hundreds of figures. They were still trying to force the gate by the look of it, packing into the space immediately below. Jerac shot an arrow into the mass of men, and saw a body fall.
“How many arrows have you got?” he asked.
“Fifteen, perhaps twenty,” Bisalt answered. The other men were arriving now, so it was four bows against… he looked over the wall again… four hundred?
“Just keep shooting, and keep your head down.” As in to emphasise his point a volley rattled against the wall, some of them arching over into the street beyond. Jerac shot another couple of arrows. Sooner or later this was going to get more difficult. They would pull back out of range and mount a proper assault now that their surprise was lost. They had to do what they could while it was easy.
It took longer than he’d thought it would. They kept pressing the gate fruitlessly until Jerac’s men had spent nearly all their arrows. At this range every shot was as good as a kill, so he reckoned they must have taken eighty or so, including the ones that fell trying to get through the gate.
It made no difference at all.
There were still hundreds of men
out there in the fog. He heard shouts, and the men below the gate ran back out of bowshot. He looked around at the men. They looked scared.
“Arrows?” he asked.
“Three.”
“Two.”
“Five.”
He had none left himself. His last had taken a retreating figure in the back of the neck, pitching him forwards. He pointed at the man who had two. “Give yours to Bisalt,” he said. “Then come with me.”
There was still no sign of men from the castle. Fifteen minutes had passed. He hoped that at least his own man would come back.
He ran down to the guard room. There was another quiver of arrows here – about another twenty, he guessed. He sent the man back up with orders to share them out, then went out into the street. Anyone at the gate could have shot at him, but he ignored the risk. He wasn’t going to get killed anyway.
The street was, as he had hoped, littered with Seth Yarra arrows. He took off his cloak and laid it on the ground. They he heaped all the arrows he could find onto it. He didn’t bother to count. There were a lot.
He’d just about finished when a party of men rode up. He looked at them. There were twenty of them. Just twenty. He was expected to hold the gate with twenty four men?
“Lieutenant Fane?” one of them asked.
“I am,” he replied, picking up his loaded cloak. “I hope by all the gods that you brought bows,” he said.
“Aye, sir, we did,” the man answered.
“Why so few?” Jerac asked.
“They broke the main gate,” the man said. “It’s a proper war down there. If not for your man’s warning we might not have held them.”
“Up on the wall then,” Jerac said. “And keep your bowstrings quiet until they come again. It’ll be ladders next time, I think. And take those horses down a side street. If you quarter them here they’ll be full of Seth Yarra arrows.”
The men did as they were told, and Jerac carried his rough made sack of arrows up to the wall. The men there were glad to see him and his burden. He laid the cloak out and told them to fill their quivers.
“Twenty more to come,” he said. “Help from the castle.”
“Twenty?” It was Bisalt who questioned. It was always Bisalt. If he had a choice of sergeant it would be Bisalt.
“Aye, that’s all,” he said. “But at least they brought bows.”
Jerac looked over the wall. It was getting lighter now, and the power of the sun was combining with the wind to banish the fog. It was still there, but very much lessened. He could see the Seth Yarra drawn up. He could see them preparing.
Their situation was not impossible. As the new men began to take their places on the wall he considered it carefully. This was the river gate, and just outside the walls flowed the Erinor River. The only approach was over the gate bridge. The bridge could not be broken, as much as Jerac would have liked to break it. It was stone and ancient, and would resist any attempt to pull it down. It did, however, limit any assault to its meagre width. The upshot of that was that they only had twenty feet of wall to defend.
It took them a long time to come. It was almost so long that he had begun to believe that they might not. The sun had cleared the tower and illuminated the Seth Yarra lines to the extent that he could count them. He made it three hundred and seventy, give or take a dozen, and he could see the ladders.
They came in a rush. Jerac had time to loose only five arrows before the first ladder thumped against the stonework. By chance it was close to him, and he put a boot against it and kicked with all his strength. The ladder stayed kicked. It spun out and away from the wall, falling heavily among the mass of Seth Yarra soldiers.
Some of his men continued to fire arrows into the mass and others, in time honoured fashion, reversed their swords and used them to hook the ladders and push them away. Still others stood back with swords drawn, waiting for the first step upon the wall.
It looked ordered and neat, but in a minute it degenerated into bloody chaos. Seth Yarra soldiers leaped onto the wall from ladders that had not been pushed, swords swinging. They were brave men, but not especially skilled, and the guardsmen from the castle more than held their own.
This was a battle of attrition, however, and Jerac could see quite quickly that they were going to lose it. For every guardsman that fell the enemy lost five, six, or seven, but it was not enough. Now was the time to throw caution to the winds. He had been fighting within himself, holding an area of the wall the same size as the other men, and holding it well. He repelled ladders easily, leant his blades generously to those either side of him. He desperately didn’t want to make a spectacle of himself, but if he did not, then the rest of these men would die.
He began to fight as he could. He pushed his men to one end of the wall and held the other himself. He fought with no regard for safety, because he believed himself to be unkillable. He kicked and slashed, stabbed and punched, moving faster and faster as he found a new rhythm. He began to kill men by the dozen. To his surprise his success seemed to draw more and more of the Seth Yarra to his part of the wall. They clamoured to face his blades, pressed their ladders to the battlements at his feet, even turned their backs on his men. It became a slaughter. They had lost sight of the military objective.
A horn sounded.
As quickly as the assault had begun, it ended. Jerac snatched up his bow and shot three of the retreating Seth Yarra. Then he sat down on the edge of the wall, looking at the carnage and feeling a weariness that had nothing to do with tired muscles. The dead littered the wall. He had lost five men, but Seth Yarra had lost over a hundred. They lay piled at the foot of the wall, and scattered across it. He had never seen the like, but then that was to be expected, this was his first battle.
Bisalt approached him.
“Do you think they’ll come again?”
“They might,” Jerac said. “I don’t know. Did you see the way they came for me? Why did they do that?”
“They mistook you for the Wolf,” Bisalt said. “They are promised life after death if they kill the Wolf. One of the prisoners said.” He looked at Jerac. “Frankly I would have made the same mistake.”
“I’m just a man, Bisalt,” Jerac said. “I’m no Wolf.” Bisalt nodded, but his eyes didn’t believe it. Why should they? After all, he’d seen Jerac shot with arrows. He’d seen him fight like some sort of demon. He had to say something more. “I don’t understand it. It’s Wolf magic, though. The Wolf did this to me.”
“You’re Narak’s?” Bisalt seemed impressed.
“Aye, I’m Narak’s, though he never said this would happen. I was an ordinary man before.”
Bisalt smiled. He seemed somehow relieved. “So the Wolf is with us even when he’s not,” he said.
If they wanted to think of it that way it suited Jerac, but he’d been honest. He didn’t understand it. All he’d done was buy Narak a drink, back in the days when the Seventh Friend was still the Wolf Triumphant, back in the days before the war when he’d been an aging master carpenter of cautious habits. He’d recognised the Wolf, told him he knew who he was and been granted favour. Simple. As he understood it he’d live an extra year or two, be free from illness, that was about all.
Yet now he was Jerac Fane, the Wolf by proxy. The word would spread. His life would change.
He looked out at the Seth Yarra again. They didn’t seem to be preparing another assault, so he picked a couple of men and sent them down to the street to gather as many arrows as they could find.
It was proper morning now. The sun was up and shining. He looked across the city towards the main gate. It was south and east, and he could see smoke over that part of the city, rising and being quickly scattered by the breeze. A proper war, the man had said. He guessed that meant fighting toe to toe in the streets, but he didn’t think it any more proper than the bloodbath on top of this wall.
He heard hooves and looked down. Fifty men on horseback approached. He recognised the major. Jerac didn’t go down. He wai
ted on top of the wall because that was his place. The major came up and stood for a moment looking out at the enemy, taking in the bodies at the foot of the wall. Jerac’s men had tipped the Seth Yarra who’d died on top down among their comrades, and some had fallen in the river.
“How many men did you lose?” the major asked.
“Five, sir.”
“Five?”
“Yes, sir.”
The major didn’t speak for a while. He stood and looked at the enemy who waited in ranks some two hundred paces down the road.
“How did you know?” he asked.
“Know what, sir?”
“Not to open the gate. That they were Seth Yarra.”
“No horses or wagons, sir. Men on foot would have come through the postern. And the murders on the road. I thought they must have used captured wagons to deceive the Eagle, sir.”