I saw the fists of Aemilianus, in the improvised litter, clench.
There was laughter from the wall.
"Let your women strip themselves stark naked," called a fellow down from the wall, "and present themselves one by one at the gate for our appraisal." "Perhaps some will be found pleasing," said another fellow.
"The throats of the others will be cut!" laughed another from the height of the wall.
The tall figure on the height of the wall, the standards behind him, betrayed no emotion. He surveyed the scene below him. smoke was rising from somewhere in the citadel.
"Aemilianus himself agrees to surrender his person into your hands!" called the officer.
Aemilianus lay back on the litter, on the stone of the landing, his eyes closed. "Terms!" called the officer. "We ask terms!" The figure on the height of the wall lifted his hand, a small gesture. "No!" cried the officer below.
He stepped back, the hand which held the white sheet lowered. "No!" he cried. At the gesture of the commander on the wall two of the fellows flanking him, crossbowmen, had set quarrels into their bows.
"No!" cried the officer below, backing away.
I saw the two quarrels leave the bows like metal birds. The snap of the cable and its vibration carried even to the landing.
"Shield wall!" I cried. "All with shields here! Form the wall!" Men with shields hurried to where I stood, lifting the shields, overlapping them.
I forced my way among them, sometimes literally thrusting shields into position. Quarrels struck about me. I saw in one wild instant the officer who had addressed the wall now facing us, he having turned about. He had a look of dismay, of disbelief, on his face. Then he fell, the two quarrels in his chest. "Back!" I cried to the screaming women and children, "Get as close to the wall as you can! Back! Back!"
But many fled toward us.
I saw a fellow tumble from the wall, a quarrel in his chest, though it was not finned. It had apparently been only a sharpened rod. I saw the young fellow who had had the this penning the people below between the water and the wall, holding them there, like verr for the slaughter.
I crouched down behind the shield wall. "Take the commander, shielded," I said, "to the piers."
"I will remain here," said Aemilianus. "You will command," I said, "from interior lines."
"I will stay here!" he said.
I gestured to the bearers of his litter, who lifted it, the two fellows with the spears thrust through the net, Aemilianus stretched his hand toward me, and I clasped it. The bearers, then, crouching down, behind four fellows holding shields between them and the wall, hurried toward the walkway.
The women and children closest to the wall were in little immediate danger from quarrels. It was hard to strike them with quarrels from the height of the wall. I looked wildly to the height of the wall. The commander was no longer visible. I then sent forth men from the shield wall, singly, and in squads, to ferry the women and children, one at a time, or the women carrying children in their arms, beneath the cover of their shields, to the walkway. Once they were beyond quarrel range they hurried back to conduct still others to temporary safety. There were cries of rage from the wall.
I saw the young crossbowman, under the cover of a shield, held by his friend, the other young fellow from the front wall, harvesting quarrels from the walkway. There were fine quarrels, crafted by metal workers, not sharpened rods, not blunt sticks, fit for stunning birds. He distributed these to cohorts behind the shield wall, neglecting not to retain some for himself. He was young but his aim was fearsomely accurate. He had been trained on the wall, in a hundred assaults.
I looked at the gate. It was at the end of the corridor we had followed, which had led out, to the landing. Some men were guarding it. Naturally it opened inward, to the advantage of the citadel. We had no adequate way, given the time and materials at our disposal, of barring it from the outside.
Now some of the fellows on the wall were hurling stones and tiles down on the figures huddled below.
I saw one fellow doing this suddenly pitch back, his hands clutching at the shaft of a quarrel. Its passage upward through his head had been arrested by the back of his helmet.
The young fellow with the crossbow set another quarrel to his weapon. I sent some men forward, to try to shield the huddled noncombatants, before they could be conducted away from the wall, but it was of little use. Many of the noncombatants broke and ran.
Many were cut down before they could reach our shield wall.
"Stay closer to the wall!" I cried. "Get closer to the wall!"
I saw another fellow, his hands on a large stone, it held over his head, turn and fall within the rampart, struck by a quarrel.
The young crossbowman set yet another quarrel to his weapon.
"It is harder for them then they would like," said a fellow.
"They will be pouring through the gate in a moment!" said a fellow. "And over the wall," said another grimly.
He had hardly spoken when the interior gate, leading out to the landing, swung inward, and a stream of Cosians waiting within, a moment later, helmeted, with shields, thrusting with spears, slashing with swords, pressed out against the defenders. At the same time a hundred ropes, along the wall, were thrown downward and men, one after the other, began to lower themselves to the landing. The women and children then, suddenly, screaming, panic-stricken, fled away from the walls. The shield wall was disrupted, the frightened women and children rushing through it, tearing at it, plunging toward the walkway behind us. As shields were turned and lifted quarrels sped down from the walls and men screamed, twisting, hit.
"Forward!" I cried, seizing up the shield of a fellow fallen. "To the wall!" Behind us we heard the screams of women and children, crowding toward the walkway. We heard, too, the sounds and screams of those swept, as by a flood, from the landing, and from the sides of the walkway, striking into the water. In the panic most of the women and children had fled from the wall. Whereas this more exposed them to the fire from above it also, for us, cleared a killing space. A fellow dropped from a rope before me, and before he could regain his feet, he was dead. Another screamed, his legs hacked. Another leapt from the rope onto the spear of a fellow near me. He was kicked from it. The spear was then driven into another. Butchery at the foot of the wall occurred. Some tried to descend with one hand, fighting with the other. Sometimes two men seized an end of the rope and swung it out and back against the wall, dashing men from it. Cosians feared then to lower themselves into the waiting blades, like steel teeth, waiting for them. Some tried to press down, past others who, seeing what awaited them below, clung ever more desperately to the rope. Men fell to the foot of the wall, to be cut to pieces. Some tried to climb back up the rope but could not do so for the others above them. Some, reaching the crenelation again, were struck back by the jabbing spears of their own men, screaming at them. In their fall they not unoften took others with them, the some seventy feet or so, to the landing, the wall lower on the harbor side then the land side.
Others clung wildly to the ropes, unable to move. Of these flighted quarrels, at the leisure of calm marksmen, took bloody tolls. Some men below stood even on bodies trying to reach men above them on ropes. More stones and tiles rained down. I saw a fellow struck to one knee by a tile hitting on his shield. For a moment he seemed in shock. Then he struggled up, again, unsteadily, to guard his yard of wall. More quarrels were flighted over us. They hit the walkway like hail. "Back to the wall!" I supposed that many of the bowsmen on the wall, from the safety of the crenelation, were continuing tenaciously, following their original orders, to seal off, as they could, the walkway, keeping the pen closed, so to speak. A child ran screaming past me to press himself against the wall, cowering there. In a moment he had been overtaken by a woman who crouched down, wrapping him in her cloak. We were buffeted by women.
"Get out of the way!" cried one of our men. A Cosian slid down a rope, shielded by the women. He thrust one aside, putting his blade into a fellow. Another, though, from the other side, caught him, and he backed against the wall, then turned, scratching at it, spitting blood. The child wrapped in the cloak, soothed by the woman, watched him as he sank to the foot of the wall. The woman was weeping. A glance about showed that the danger was at the gate where the Cosians, in their hundreds, were pressing out, swelling forth, onto the landing. I hurried along the wall, to the left of the gate, as one faces it from the landing.