The defenders trying vainly to break past Arken's defences were now falling back into the tower itself, directly adjoining this wall.
“Get in!” Sasha yelled at him, pointing past with her sword. Arken charged out of the guardhouse along the wall, Sasha after him, and crashed shield-first into the tower door. It burst open, and Arken was then pressing down the stone corridor beyond, a one-man barrier taking up all the space, absorbing blow after blow with his shield and leaving defender after defender dying underfoot as he pressed on. Sasha had respected the Steel before, but now that respect reached a whole new intensity.
Behind her came Yasmyn, then Danel guarding their backs…only now the defenders seemed to vanish as those before Arken died or fled, and those behind diverted to the main skirmish, against the small knot of Steel infantry now well within the keep's walls.
They emerged into a major hall, elegant dark stone, tapestries, and rugs lit with lanterns. Some servants saw them and ran in terror.
“Let's find these fucking Meraini,” Sasha growled. “Where would they hide?”
They found the Meraini barricaded within a regal suite at the top of the tower. Sasha stood just out of sight of the suite's main doors down a hallway, as Arken continued to keep watch, leaning around the corner with his shield for protection from the occasional crossbow bolt that came his way.
Yasmyn removed the bolt from Danel's arm and helped wrap the wound to stop the bleeding. Danel wanted to go downstairs and help with the battle, but Sasha told him what any with ears could now begin to tell.
“No need,” she said, leaning by a window and listening. “Once a formation of Steel got into the tower itself in good order, it was over. They know it, I hear them surrendering.”
She sent Danel and Arken to guard the hallway stairs while she watched the Meraini's suite with just one eye exposed to crossbows. As she'd thought, some men retreating from the fight below came rushing up the stairs, and in the enclosed space, Danel and Arken sent them crashing back down. She heard further yells from below, panicked men thinking they were trapped, no doubt telling their superiors that the upper floors were held by entire battalions of Steel.
They may as well have been. The local guards could fight, but with nothing like the skill of Arken and Danel, and their equipment was not to the Steel's quality. One Steel infantryman in these hallways could block the entire passage and force opponents to fight him one-on-one, a contest that nine times in ten they would lose. Seeing that, with militia of less than full commitment, demoralisation set in fast. The moment the Steel phalanx had made it past the second portcullis, the fight had been won.
Soon Arken was being summoned downstairs to accept terms. Then a pause, as prisoners were disarmed and rounded up. Then Bergen climbed the stairs and came over, grinning to see Sasha and Yasmyn guarding the Meraini's location.
“So you girls got them boxed in, huh?” His shield bore many new marks, and a bolt stuck through the steel and wood. He looked unharmed, though sweaty and tired.
“How do you like real fighting, cavalryman?” Yasmyn asked, seated against a wall with a view of the Meraini's doors. Sasha knew she'd probably been wrong to include Yasmyn in the first wave-atop the walls and guardhouses, she could have used another man with a shield, and Yasmyn's speed and climbing hadn't been as useful as she'd thought. Still, Yasmyn had done well, and would never have forgiven Sasha if left behind, for she certainly could not have taken a place in the Steel phalanx.
Arken returned with Danel and Eirden. “We have three dead,” he told her. “Two more may not live, several more are injured but not seriously. We count a hundred and thirty-seven prisoners.” To Sasha's surprise, he fought back a grin. “They could not believe it once they'd surrendered, and counted how few we were. They thought we were hundreds.”
Sasha nodded, not really surprised. “Good,” she said. “Now someone else is going to have to talk sense to the Meraini, because I don't speak the tongue, and they probably only speak Ilduuri besides.” And if they have to surrender to a woman, she didn't add, they'll probably throw themselves out the tower windows for shame.
“It's an amazing victory!” Arken continued. “I confess I did not think it could work. How did you know?”
“Practice,” said Sasha. The hero-worship was nice, but she was impatient to be out of here. Petrodor Riverside had been the first time she'd killed people and regretted it. The Altene was the first time she'd attacked and killed men who had not attacked her first. She could not get the terror on the weeping crossbowman's face out of her mind. He couldn't have been more than twenty.
Arken started shouting at the grand doorway at the end of the hall. Indignant shouts came back in Ilduuri. Arken began to translate to Sasha, but she made a face.
“I don't care,” she said. “Tell them we'll take them willingly or unwillingly.”
More Ilduuri Steel came up the stairs as Arken continued. A number were staring at Sasha in amazement to see that she was still alive, having charged alone along the walls and guardhouses with no shield or armour.
Arken soon became tired of what he was hearing and arranged six men in two lines of three. Shields overlapping, they rounded the corner at a walk, took several bolts through the shields, then ran. There followed a lot of crashing, hacking, and finally screaming, as more Steel followed their comrades in.
Sasha walked in to see, and found a broad regal chamber now strewn with the bodies of several men in chain and black embroidered shirts of a style she had not seen amongst the others. One man the Steel had down on his knees, disarmed with hands held behind him as he struggled. He had a black goatee, long dark hair bound at the back, and quite a lot of jewellery.
“Jeffensen of Meraine, he says,” said Arken, leaning on his shield. “Second son of the Chansul. He says we have committed an act of war against Meraine, that we have the blood of thousands on our hands from the battles that will follow.”
“Thousands of yours, you cock,” snorted one of the Steel. “Doesn't count, see?”
There came more scuffling from the adjoining chamber, and some swearing by the soldiers. One of them called Arken, who went. Sasha followed.
In the next room, a man was being dragged from a bedchamber. He wore the clothes of a high-class townsman: silk shirt and tight breeches. He stared at Arken, and Arken stared back. Then Arken began laughing. Surrounding soldiers seemed grimly amused.
“What?” Sasha asked in confusion.
Arken shook his head in disbelief. “General Daani,” he explained to Sasha, with the mocking little bow of a man making an introduction, “Commander of the Ilduuri Steel.”
EIGHTEEN
They could have waited the night but Sasha knew she had to move fast. She had her men (because they were assuredly her men now) commandeer enough wagons and horses for them all, plus their wounded, Jeffensen and several more Meraini, General Daani, the several senior Remischtuul found in adjoining chambers or trying to hide in the kitchens, and all the boxes of Meraini talons they could find, the stash revealed to them by one of the Altene staff, hidden in a dungeon vault.
Now they rattled down the road from the Altene, a far more pleasant descent than the way they'd come up, with torches and moonlight to show the winding way down. Sasha climbed into the rear of her wagon and slept.