“Bows!” he shouted to them. “Clear the top of that wall while I go up. Then come after me!”
One of them, a corporal with years of battle experience, nodded his understanding. As the ladder crashed against the top of the wall, bouncing out once, then settling again, he mustered the other four men to its base, bows ready.
“Go on, lord!” he shouted to Selethen. “We’ll cover you.”
At that moment, a blue-veiled face appeared above the wall as its owner tried to shove the ladder back. Three of the bows thrummed loudly and the Tualaghi screamed and fell back. Two of the shafts had found their mark. Two more would-be defenders were picked off and Selethen realized he was wasting time. He leapt for the ladder and ran lightly upward, feeling the springy wood bending and flexing under his weight as he ascended. An arrow from below hissed just over his head, and he heard a cry of pain from the battlements above him.
Then he was at the top. He felt the ladder vibrating as one of his men began to follow him up it. A defender to his left raised a spear, then dropped it as an arrow took him in the armpit. Another came at Selethen from the right, thrusting with a spear. Selethen deflected the heavy weapon with his sword, then chopped back at the enemy, the razor-sharp curved blade cutting into the man’s shoulder and neck. The Wakir snatched his sword free as the man fell, then vaulted over the battlements onto the catwalk behind them. Three more defenders rushed at him and he stood firm, parrying their blows with an iron wrist, then, when one of them overreached, darting the tip of his sword forward like a striking snake. Behind him, he heard two more of his men coming over the wall, dropping onto the catwalk with him. A third was less fortunate. A Tualaghi archer standing back from the fight felled him with an arrow. The man hung over the empty space at the top of the ladder for a moment, then toppled back down onto the hard ground below.
Now there were more Tualaghi archers running onto a redoubt that stood out from the wall thirty meters away, allowing them a clear shot back at the men at the base of the wall and any who tried to mount the ladder.
“Shields!” Selethen yelled to his men below. “Shield wall and roof! Now!”
The men bunched together, the front rank dropping to their knees and raising their shields into an angled wall facing the archers. Those in the second rank crouched to take cover, and brought their own shields up over their heads. The group now presented a protective steel barrier to the archers. They were relatively safe behind the shield wall and roof, but they couldn’t go anywhere without being shot. They were trapped.
Selethen brought his attention back to his immediate situation—and not a moment too soon. A Tualaghi swung a murderous two-handed stroke at him with a huge scimitar. Selethen swayed to one side to evade the blow and cut at the man’s upper arm.
His sword bit through the chain-mail shirt the man was wearing over his blue robe, and sliced through the flesh and muscle, cutting to the bone. The desert raider screamed in pain as the sword fell from his hands. He stumbled away, doubled over, trying desperately to stanch the blood flowing freely from the wound. Selethen grunted in satisfaction. He was out of the fight, just as surely as if the Wakir’s blow had killed him. Selethen parried another sword, jabbed back at his attacker’s eyes, visible above the blue veil, and sent him reeling back in panic.
“Get your backs to the wall!” he shouted at his two comrades, and the three of them slowly gave ground until the rough stone of the wall was against their backs. With their rear safe from attack, they faced out at the remaining three sides, defending desperately, attacking when they had the opportunity. Selethen noted that one of the other troopers had blood running down his right leg.
“Hurry up, Gilan,” he muttered under his breath. “We can’t hold out here for long.”
• • • • •
Lydia ran onto the wharf, her soft-soled boots making a grating noise on the crushed gravel that formed the surface. Edvin was now aboard Ishtfana. He waved to her and she headed gratefully for the galley. Since they had been gone, he had hauled the Heron alongside the larger ship and tied them together. Kloof, seeing him wave, stood up on her hind legs to peer over the bow of the galley and barked a cheerful greeting to Lydia.
Kloof!
Lydia clambered up onto the ship, then stepped down onto the foredeck, absentmindedly patting Kloof’s huge head as she did so.
“What’s the rush?” Edvin said. “Is there some kind of trouble?”
“There’s plenty of trouble,” she told him. In spite of her run back to the wharf, she wasn’t even breathing heavily. Lydia was in excellent condition and, as a hunter, she had spent years running down fast-moving prey. “There are a lot more defenders than we were told and we’re badly outnumbered. The crew are bottled up in an alley by about sixty men and can’t make headway. If we don’t get them moving, Selethen’s force will be wiped out.”
Before she had finished speaking, Edvin had clambered back aboard the Heron, where he retrieved his sword belt and shield. He rejoined her now, a doubtful look on his face.
“Well, I’ll come back with you. And we can take Kloof. But I’m not sure we’ll make much of a difference.”
“I was thinking of enlisting the rowing crew,” Lydia said. “There are over thirty of them and if we can make a flanking attack, that should turn the tide. Are they still on board?”
He nodded. “They’re below. I guess they’re used to it there and they didn’t see much point in going ashore into the middle of a battle. Do you think they’ll fight?”
Lydia shrugged and ran to the hatch leading to the rowing deck. “If they don’t, they’ll be slaves again in less than an hour.”
There was a low buzz of conversation on the rowing deck. As she came down the companionway, the noise ceased and thirty-five pairs of eyes studied her curiously.
“We need your help,” she said bluntly.
“Again?” It was the rower who had originally questioned Hal when he had asked them to row the ship to Tabork. Lydia singled him out and nodded.
“Again,” she said. “The battle is going badly. Our men are outnumbered. There are far more Tualaghi in the town than we’d been told. If we don’t break through them, and soon, the attack will fail. Selethen’s men are already outnumbered and they won’t have any way of getting into the town. They need Hal and the others to fight their way through and get the gates open.”
“And how is that our problem?” another man asked, and his companions’ eyes all turned briefly to him, then back to Lydia.
“If we lose,” Lydia told him, with a grim note in her voice, “Hal and the others will be killed.” She saw the man beginning to shrug, and added quickly, “And what do you think will happen to you then?”
The man’s head came up and several of the others began to mutter as they realized the implications of what she had just said. She rammed home the point.
“D’you think Iqbal is going to shake your hands, pat you on the head and send you on your way?” she asked sarcastically. She paused, then added the obvious answer to her question. “You’ll be chained up and pulling those oars again before you have a chance to think.”
“We could take the ship ourselves,” the man said. “We could escape to sea.”
“And how would you get past the boom?” Lydia asked him, and saw the sudden light of hope in his eyes fade. “You’re stuck here, and unless you help us, you’ll remain here.”
“I knew we shouldn’t have helped you!” a third man said.
She glared at him. He was the sort, she felt, who would always whine about his lot.
“Well, you did,” she told him harshly. “You’re here now and there’s nothing you can do to change that. But you can fight for your freedom.”
She stopped. There was nothing more to say. This wasn’t the time for a stirring call to action. Their choice was grim, and simple. Fight alongside the Heron Brotherband or be drag
ged back into captivity. After a long pause, the original speaker asked a question that set her heart racing with hope.
“What do we do for weapons?”
She heaved a sigh of relief, then gestured forward to the crew’s quarters. “The crew had weapons,” she pointed out. “You can use them. And if there aren’t enough, you can shape some of the broken oars into clubs.”
The man stood and turned to face his fellow rowers.
“She’s right,” he said. “We have no choice. So let’s arm ourselves and finish the fight.”
chapter twenty-eight
It was a raggle-taggle mob that Lydia led away from the ship. She and Edvin were in the lead, with Kloof straining against the leash held by Edvin. Behind them straggled the former slaves. Some were dressed in the gaudy, but grubby, finery left behind by the corsairs. A few were still in the ragged, filthy clothes they had worn on the rowing bench for the past months.
The majority of them were armed with a selection of actual weapons—swords, axes, spears and maces. But half a dozen of them had to content themselves with clubs and staffs made from shortened oars. Looking at them, Lydia decided they would probably be just as effective as the other weapons in the hands of untrained men.
Normally, taking a group of ex–galley slaves into battle against the hardened troops commanded by Iqbal would be an almost certain recipe for failure. The rowers were hard muscled, admittedly. But they had been ill treated and malnourished for months and their reserves of energy and strength would be limited. Plus they weren’t experienced warriors. The awkward way some of them held their weapons made that only too clear.
But her aim wasn’t to defeat the Tualaghi defenders. It was to launch a surprise attack from the rear or the flank, distracting them, making them turn away from Hal and his men and so giving the latter a chance to break clear of the alley where they were hemmed in and drive the enemy back in confusion.
They reached the first plaza—the alley where the attackers were contained lay straight ahead. Lydia looked to either side and saw another narrow street leading off to the left, parallel to the alley. She gestured toward it.
“Come on!” she shouted, and set off at a jog, the irregular patter of the rowers’ bare feet on the cobbles telling her that they were following.
Kloof let go a short, explosive bark and strained forward. It was all Edvin could do to contain her.
They entered the shady side street, their eyes unaccustomed to the dimness after the glare outside. As they ran along it, Lydia realized that it angled away from the alley where the Herons were fighting. Her heart pounded with anxiety. What if this street didn’t connect to the same plaza? She looked ahead. The street was long and narrow and there was no sign of light at the far end, no sign that it led into the plaza. She was on the brink of turning the group around when they came to a narrow footway that ran off at right angles.
She stopped abruptly, the man behind her blundering into her. She cursed at him, shoved him away and studied the footway. It was barely wide enough for two men abreast. But she could see sunlight and an open space at the far end, and hear the clash of weapons and the shouts of men fighting.
“This way!” she ordered, and plunged into the dim, narrow space.
The sounds of fighting grew louder, but she could see no sign of the Tualaghi at the end of the walkway. That meant they had come past them and Lydia and the rowers would emerge into the square behind them—a perfect result.
Ten meters from the end, she held up a hand for the men behind her to stop. Mindful of the result last time she’d stopped, she kept going for a few paces, then came to a halt and turned. She could hear the sound of heavy, ragged breathing from the rowers. They really were in dreadful condition, she realized. But she hoped that adrenaline would see them through the few minutes it would take for them to perform a surprise flank attack on the Tualaghi. Adrenaline and an overpowering wish for revenge.
“When we get to the end, fan out either side so the men behind you can get out. Edwin and I will go forward a few meters, so form up behind us in one long line. Then, when I tell you, charge into them and hit them with everything you’ve got. All right?”
There was an angry growl of assent from the rowers—an almost primeval sound, she thought. After months and years of being brutalized and tortured while they sat helplessly in their chains, these men finally had weapons in their hand, and an enemy in sight. The Tualaghi may not have been the men who mistreated them, but they were allied to those men, and that was enough. She looked at them, saw the anger and determination in most of their eyes, and nodded.
“Let’s go.”
• • • • •
The mixed group of Skandians and Arridans had been pushed back until they were level with the end of the alley. They could deploy no more than three men at a time, so Thorn took advantage of this by constantly changing the men who were fighting, making sure there were always fresh warriors facing the Tualaghi. But the sheer weight of numbers was prevailing. Thorn himself refused to take a spell. He continued to lead the fight, smashing and jabbing with his club-hand, swinging his small shield like an oversized fist. He never stopped, never seemed to tire.
As Ingvar stepped back into the alley, Hal shoved forward to take his place. The defenders were now comprised of Thorn, Hal and Stefan. Ulf, Wulf and Jesper stood ready to take the next shift in the fighting, although it was doubtful that Thorn would relinquish his place.
Ingvar leaned on the shaft of his voulge, breathing heavily. Along with Thorn and Stig, he had borne the brunt of the fighting so far. Now he peered forward through his tortoiseshell spectacles, watching the progress of the fight as Hal drove forward at one of the Tualaghi, driving the man back until he stumbled, then following after him.
And going too far!
Ingvar realized that Hal, fresh to the fight, had lost his sense of where the small defensive line should be. He had gone several meters too far into the ranks of the Tualaghi, allowing one of them to get behind him, between him and the alley and his two co-defenders. Ingvar saw one of the Tualaghi sweep back a huge, straight sword for a horizontal stroke from behind his skirl.
“Hal! Drop!” he roared, his massive voice carrying over the sounds of fighting—the clash of weapons, the grunts and curses of the men.
Hal heard the call and didn’t hesitate. He dropped to his hands and knees and felt and heard the massive blade whistle just above his head. Had the stroke connected, he would have been cut almost in two, he realized. He craned around to see his attacker. He was too close for a sword thrust, so he scrabbled out his saxe instead, preparing for a close-in stabbing thrust from below.
Then he saw the voulge, hurled with all Ingvar’s massive strength, smash into the swordsman, shattering the links of his chain mail, plunging deep into his upper body.
The force behind the heavy weapon was so great that the Tualaghi was hurled back several paces, blundering into three of his comrades, bringing one of them down and scattering the other two like ninepins.
Hal took advantage of the confusion to regain his feet. He stepped back smartly into line with Thorn and Stefan. The old sea wolf glared at him.
“Keep the line,” he growled. “You should know better!”
“Sorry,” Hal said. He had no time to thank Ingvar as he found himself facing another two Tualaghi. He stabbed one in the thigh, sending him sprawling on the bloodstained cobbles, and disarmed the second with a bewildering circular motion of his sword, trapping the other man’s blade with his own and twisting it from his grasp. The Tualaghi’s eyes widened in fear as he realized he was suddenly defenseless. He dropped to his knees and scuttled back behind his companions.
Hal had no time to pursue him. He was immediately engaged by another attacker. His arm was aching already from the continual effort of thrusting and hacking and retrieving his blade, along with the jarring impacts as he parried the en
emies’ strokes.
Any minute now, he thought, and he’d call for Wulf to relieve him.
Then he heard a familiar sound, the deep-throated bark of a huge dog, infuriated and ready to fight.
“Kloof?” he muttered. “Where did you come from?”
And, suddenly, the men opposing him were facing away, turning in confusion to face a new and unexpected attack from behind.
A row of gaudily clad figures, mixed in with others wearing filthy, disheveled rags, was charging headlong into the rear ranks of the Tualaghi force, hacking and slashing with spears, axes and swords, swinging wildly with wooden clubs fashioned from galley oars. They hit the rear of the Tualaghi force with a resounding crash of metal and wood on metal, hurling men to either side as they smashed their way into the Tualaghi ranks.
Kloof seemed to be everywhere. The huge dog hit the enemy soldiers like a battering ram, hurling them aside, snapping and snarling and biting with those giant jaws, seizing weapon hands and shaking each one violently until the soldier released his grip on the weapon and it went spinning into the confused mass of his comrades.
The suddenness of the surprise attack from the rear splintered the Tualaghi force and the solid ranks in front of the Herons began to waver and disintegrate. Thorn, as a wise and experienced battle commander should, saw the moment for what it was: the opportunity to break the Tualaghi force once and for all.
“Come on!” he roared, and charged forward, his club swinging in terrible, controlled arcs, smashing men out of the way, driving them to their knees. Hal and Stefan, their tiredness forgotten, joined with him, and Stig and the twins came behind them.
The Arridan cavalrymen, finally freed of the constricting space of the alley, surged out like an unstoppable tide, scimitars rising and falling, shields ringing as they blocked the hopeless strokes of the blue-clad desert warriors.
Hal saw Edvin directing a group of enraged galley slaves toward a small knot of Tualaghi who had formed a defensive circle. The blue-robed men went down under the furious onslaught. To one side, he saw Lydia, casually picking off enemies who showed any sign of rallying after the attack. Her darts flashed through the air, sending men sprawling, staggering and screaming with the pain. Suddenly, Hal felt very tired. It was over, he realized.