They headed around the wall. Tobry was limping badly, favouring his right thigh. Rix’s back ached as if he had strained it. But the pain was nothing. It was irrelevant now. Tobry was back! The world had resumed its proper orbit. Everything was going to be all right.
“I’d sooner fight my way in through the front gate, personally. But then, you always did have a way with walls.”
“Driving you up them, you mean?” Tobry chuckled.
“It’s not far now,” Rix said quietly.
They were approaching Basalt Crag, and when the lightning flashed he could see men fighting on the wall.
“The enemy are up,” he whispered. “Keep low and we might take them by surprise.”
He drew Maloch, and Tobry his own sword, then they crouched and ran. The fighting was furious; dozens of Cythonians had reached the top and Rix could not see many defenders. Three scaling ladders stood against the wall and more enemy troops were streaming up them.
“If we can make a bit of a breathing space,” Rix said quietly, “we might be better off attacking the ladders.”
“Good idea. I’ll follow your lead. But first, let’s hit the bastards hard.”
They hurtled into the attack, side by side, carving through several lines of the enemy before they realised they were being attacked from behind. With Maloch in his left hand and Tobry by his side, Rix felt no harm could come to him. He dropped several of the enemy with blows from his steel fist.
A ragged cheer broke out from further along the wall. “Deadhand, Deadhand!” The defenders did not know Tobry but Rix’s height, bulk and steel-gauntleted right hand were unmistakeable. They attacked with renewed vigour and soon the enemy on the wall, besieged on both sides, were fighting for their lives.
“I’ll hold the line here,” said Tobry. “Go after the ladders.”
Rix hesitated, but only for a moment. Tobry was a fine swordsman.
Rix ran along the battlements, looking over. The soldiers on the furthest ladder were closest to the top of the wall. They would be attacking within a minute. He raced down, took hold of the top of the ladder and shook it.
The men were well trained; none of them fell. He shook it again. They clung on, then resumed the climb. Rix wrenched the ladder from side to side, trying to make it slip at the base, but it was securely mounted and two men held it steady.
The wind howled and a flurry plastered them with snow. The blizzard was almost on them. Rix wiped snow out of his eyes.
This wasn’t going to work. Unsheathing Maloch, he reached down as far as he could and, taking advantage of a momentary darkness, dealt the top three rungs a ferocious blow, cutting them in half. Had the men on the ladder seen? He did not think so. He took hold of the two sides of the ladder, locked his steel gauntlet against one side, then wrenched with all the strength in his arms.
Too late the soldiers realised what he was up to, but they were holding onto the rungs, not the side rails, and Rix’s mighty heave tore the rungs out of the rails, all the way down. He thrust one rail left, the other right, and watched the men fall. It might not kill them, but after falling that far onto rock they were bound to break bones.
An arrow glanced off the battlements, driving chips of stone into his swollen cheek. He ignored the flare of pain and ran for the second ladder, though he did not plan to use the same trick twice. Not with their archers watching for him. He picked up a dead Cythonian lying on the wall and pushed his head and shoulders over. Three arrows went through the man’s throat. The enemy archers were dangerously good.
Sheltering behind the body, Rix heaved the dead man down the ladder. As the body fell, it knocked the climbers off one by one and the tumbling figures cannoned into the men steadying the ladder, which toppled.
One ladder left. He was planning on dealing with it the same way when a cornet sounded from the darkness below. The surviving enemy scrambled down the ladder and retreated into the blizzard, leaving their dead behind.
The fighting on the wall was over. Rix leaned back against the wet stone and closed his eyes for a moment, but could still see the dead and the dying. Not far away, a signal horn sounded the three-note call — send up the healers.
If only he had proper healers. Damn Oosta. What kind of a healer took both of her assistants away on the eve of battle? People were going to die because of her stupidity.
He wiped his face, then headed along to his troops. They were checking the fallen men, heaving the enemy over the side and laying Garramide’s dead along the inside wall. The injured still lay where they had fallen on the bloody stone. A man and a woman, both wearing red healers’ armbands, ran up. The man began checking the fallen, sorting them into those who needed immediate attention, those who could wait, and those who could not be saved. The other healer was Astatin, the witch-woman.
Glynnie wasn’t there. What if she had been killed? “Where’s Glynnie?” he called.
Astatin was holding a man’s partly severed arm and muttering incantations. She did not reply.
“Don’t know,” said the man.
Rix told himself to calm down. It was impossible to keep track of everyone in the chaos of battle. Glynnie could be anywhere. But the fear would not go away. He looked around for Tobry but could not see him either.
“It’s over,” grinned a bloodstained Nuddell. “We must’ve killed a hundred of the buggers here.”
“Plus another twenty or more round the corner. They were trying to blow a hole in the wall,” said Rix, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. He shook hands with Nuddell and the other men at the front. “That was well fought, lads.”
“We’ve done for a third of them, then, and plenty more injured. But without you coming up the back way and surprising them, it could have been tricky.”
“Very tricky,” said Rix. Running the long way around the wall hadn’t been a stupid blunder — it had been the best thing he could do. He wasn’t a fool and a failure after all. “How many have we lost?”
Nuddell’s grin faded. “Fourteen men dead, here, and nineteen injured, some badly. Bad enough, but it could have been a lot worse.”
“Any man lost is one too many,” said Rix. And there had been more casualties along the wall, and at the gate. But thankfully Tobry wasn’t among them. He was limping up now. His clothes were in tatters and a bloody bandage was tied around his left thigh.
“Sergeant Nuddell, meet my old friend Tobry Lagger.”
They shook hands. “Never seen a blade worked so well as yours,” said Nuddell.
“I used to practise,” said Tobry. “Have they gone?”
“Yes, but it’s not over yet,” said Rix. “Not by a long way.”
“Still, something to celebrate,” said Nuddell.
“Oh yes,” said Rix, putting an arm around Tobry’s shoulders. “I’m not planning to stop for a week.”
He pulled free. There were a dozen things to do first, and not least of them, making sure Glynnie was all right. “Nuddell, take Tobry downstairs. Ask Swelt to fix him up with a bath and a room. I’m going to walk around the wall, just to make sure of everything.”
“Keep your head down, Deadhand,” said Nuddell. “They could have longbow snipers out.”
Nuddell and Tobry went down. Rix continued along the wall to each of the towers, thanking his men individually and sending all but the night guards below.
“Do you think they’ll attack again?” said his captain, Noys, who was on the left-hand tower beside the gates.
The wind shrieked. Rix took shelter behind one of the battlements, but the frigid wind had already leached the battle warmth out of him, and every bruise, wound and muscle strain was throbbing. For the enemy, exposed on the windswept plateau with no shelter save their tents, things would be getting desperate by midnight.
“Blizzard’s going to get a lot worse, and it can kill them quicker than we can. They can’t climb ladders in this wind; certainly can’t fight in it. They’ll have to take shelter until the blizzard passes.”