Then the enemy started to move forward. They were chanting too, the onomatopoeic war cry of the CUT, starting as a rumble and then growing into a growling blurred chorus as they lashed themselves into a frenzy:
“Cut. . Cut. . Cut! Cut! Cut! CUT! CUT!”
“I don’t think they’ll stop,” Corporal Dudley said quietly. “There aren’t enough of us to kill enough of them to sicken the rest.”
His men were bunched around them. A little down the rampart a girl three or four years younger than Ritva was whimpering slightly without being conscious of it, but she was also propping up a heavy crossbow, ready to shoot through a firing-slit. A younger brother with the same carroty hair and freckles was struggling behind her to load another, doggedly working the lever to cock it ready to hand forward.
“CUT! CUT! CUT!”
The enemy began to run forward to get through the killing ground, masses of them, their leather and undyed wool dark against the tawny green grass but their faces showing lighter under helmets or hats. Here and there a mail shirt showed gray and gleaming with oil, or more often a breastplate of molded hide with steel strips riveted on, but most had only their leather jackets and shields.
“Attacking all ’round,” Corporal Dudley said. “So we can’t shift men to meet them.”
Every catapult cut loose, six of them, one for each tower, with a series of heavy tung sounds. This time the round shot couldn’t miss; the figures were still doll-tiny, but her mind sketched in what happened when the hard, hard metal hit and bounced and twisted through the ranks. Again and again as fast as the crews could cock and load, they were aiming for the mantlets, improvised shields on wheels taken from farm carts. Those were covering the men with the ladders and fascines.
Then the artillery crews switched to clay pots full of napalm that wobbled as they flew and trailed black smoke from the sheaths of burning rag rope wound around them. Bright streaks of yellow flame blossomed where they struck. One hit a mantlet and sprayed through every gap in the crude carpentry, and men ran out from behind it with their clothes and hair on fire, rolling screaming on the ground in a futile attempt to put out the clinging death. A few of their comrades paused to give them the mercy-stroke.
“Shoot!” someone shouted on the wall; she thought it was the Rancher, Avery McGillvery.
The extra height meant they had the range on the attackers, and everyone cut loose; the hard snap of bowstrings mingling with the deeper note of crossbows. Some part of her that wasn’t focused to a single diamond point of concentration on drawing and shooting until her shoulders burned noted that they were splitting around the approaches to the gate. Even that mass of savage faith wasn’t going to face the flamethrower’s arc again. Probably some of them were thinking of what they’d do to the crew of it when they got their hands on them.
“Look-” someone began to shout, as snarling horn-signals went through the Cutter force.
Half the onrushing horde stopped, alternate blocks-or clumps, for they were in no formal order, but close enough. Afternoon sunlight sparkled along their ranks as they raised their bows, blinking off the points of the arrows like starlight glimmering on the sea. An odd whispery creaking sounded, the noise of many, many powerful composite bows being drawn to the ear by as many brawny arms.
“-out!” the cry finished, and nearly everyone ducked away from the firing-slits.
The shout was almost drowned by the whistling rush of air. Ritva turned with her left shoulder against the thick planks and forced herself not to close her eyes in a futile attempt to deny what was rushing at her. This was worthy of a Mackenzie arrowstorm; bowmen could pack together much closer on foot than as mounted archers. Seconds after the strings snapped out their unmusical note the first shafts hit the wood of the fighting platform. Then the mass arrived, a drumming roar like massive hail on a roof, going on and on, more flicking through the fighting slits and down into the settlement. Trying to shoot back at once would have been suicide.
“This is what my father called trying to fight projectiles with targets!” she shouted, and thought Corporal Dudley grinned even then.
Thunk as they sank into the timbers or the thick planks and she could feel it through her shoulder like a trembling vibration over and over again. Pock for the ones that fell a little short and hit the pise wall beneath her feet, some sticking and others bouncing off with little divots of the rocklike material knocked free. Hssss as hundreds more went by overhead, arching down into the space inside the wall, and more and more cracking on the tile roof or arching over it.
Cries of pain came as the unlucky or incautious fell; one white-bearded man not too far away staggered backward with an arrow through his face and fell over the rail and down the inside of the wall. Then the storm slackened as the attackers fired individually rather than in massed volleys; those were rancher levies out there for the most part, not professionals.
Haven’t seen the Sword of the Prophet, she thought; their reddish-brown armor was unmistakable. Don’t miss them, but that means they’re probably all out west trying to kill my family.
Ritva took a deep breath and stepped to the arrow-slit and shot and shot and shot, then ducked back. Beside her the girl with the red braids was shooting too, handing her crossbow behind her, taking the next from her brother, squinting down the sights and wincing as the butt thumped against her shoulder.
“Here, Anne!” he cried, just barely audible through the surf-roar of noise, shrill and high. “Get ’em, Annie, get ’em!”
Another shout ran around the parapet: “Shoot the storming parties! Leave the archers, shoot the ones coming at us!”
Good advice, she thought, and shot three times again.
An arrow came through the slit and just missed her as she ducked back, close enough that she could feel the wind of its passage on the sweat-wet skin just below her ear. Men fell out there, many, she needn’t pick individual targets, just shoot into the brown. They had their shields up, but at this range they likely wouldn’t stop an arrow; some of them were holding up improvised siege shields made of planks from the fences and buildings. One of those fell as she shot, a man taking an arrow through the toes and staggering aside hopping; two more hit him and he fell limply. Ladders and fascines dropped, then came on again as hale men snatched them up and rushed forward with the others over the bodies of their dead and wounded. The catapults were shooting steady as metronomes, blasting tracks through the dense mass of men.
Then the storm of arrow fire lifted; the attackers were getting close enough that they endangered their own men. They were at the ditch, throwing the bundles of brushwood and bales of hay into it. Others butted the long poles that had been warehouse or barn rafters and let them topple forward. Hundreds of knotted lariats snaked towards the parapet, each topped with a barbed steel hook. Defenders hacked or pried at them, and used spearpoints or forked poles to push at the ladders. Many fell back, but myriad hands raised them again. Ritva leaned over the edge for a second and shot directly down at no more than five yards distance.
Two women near her walked forward with a big jar held between them, cloth wrapped around the handles. The contents smoked and seethed; a third woman unbolted and lifted a trapdoor. The first pair lifted and poured in careful unison. The boiling tallow poured in a translucent torrent, and war cries turned to shrieks below. Others were doing the same, or lifting the traps and throwing javelins and rocks downward.