'Do you not know fear, axeman?' asked Nuang Xuan.
Druss turned and grinned. 'What are you doing here, old man? You are wounded.'
'I am as tough as a wolf, as strong as a bear. How close am I to my hundred?'
'By my reckoning you need more than ninety more.'
'Pah, you obviously miscounted.'
'Stay close to me, Nuang,' said Druss softly. 'But not too close.'
'I will be here at day's end, and the Gothir dead will be a mountain,' promised Nuang.
Archers ran through the enemy lines sending scores of shafts at the defenders, who ducked down below the battlements. No-one was struck. The drum-beat quickened, and Druss could hear the sound of running men drowning out the drums. Ladders clattered against the wall and a man to Druss's left started to rise but Druss dragged him down. 'Not yet, laddie. The archers are waiting.'
The warrior blinked nervously. Druss knelt for ten more heartbeats, then launched himself upright, the great axe shining in the sunlight. As he reared up, a Gothir warrior reached the top of the ladder and Snaga thundered down to smash the man's skull.
'Climb and die!' roared Druss, sending a reverse cut into the bearded face of a second warrior.
All around him the Nadir were hacking and slashing at the attackers. Two Gothir soldiers reached the ramparts, but were cut down instantly. A Nadir warrior fell with an arrow jutting from his temple.
On the wall above the gate, Talisman watched as Druss and the Sky Riders fought to contain the western ramparts. The second Gothir force had swung to the north wall, where Bartsai and his Curved Horn were battling to hold them.
Axes smashed into the gates, splintering the ancient wood. Nadir defenders threw rocks down upon the enemy soldiers milling below, but the sounds of tearing wood continued.
'Be ready!' Talisman warned the men of the Fleet Ponies. Notching arrows to their bows, they knelt on the ramparts and the newly built curved wall inside the gates. In that moment Talisman felt a fierce pride surge through him. These men were Nadir, his people! And they were fighting together against the common enemy. This is how it should be, thought the young man. No more slavelike obedience to the cursed gajin. No more running from the threat of their Lancers, their punitive raids, their slaughters.
Suddenly the gates were breached and scores of men pushed through, only to be confronted by an eight-foot wall.
'Now! Now! Now!' yelled Talisman. Arrows lanced into the crowded mass below. So closely packed were they, with others pushing from behind, that few Gothir could raise their shields. Shafts tore into them and rocks pelted them. As Talisman strained to lift a jagged boulder, two men helped him and they pitched the stone over the ramparts and down into the death pit. Panicked now, the Gothir fought to retreat, trampling their own wounded.
Talisman gazed down with grim satisfaction at the thirty or more bodies. An arrow flashed past his face, and he ducked. Enemy archers were now crowding around the breached gates, shooting up at the defenders. Two Nadir warriors fell, their chests pierced.
'Stay down!' shouted Talisman. As ladders suddenly clattered against the wall behind him, he swore. With archers shooting at them from the rear, and an assault from the front, the section would be hard to hold.
Throwing himself flat, Talisman squirmed to the edge of the ramparts, calling down to the bowmen on the curved wall. 'Ten of you pin down the archers,' he commanded. 'The rest to me!'
Ignoring the threat of arrows, Talisman surged upright and drew his sabre. Three men appeared at the ramparts. Leaping forward, he plunged his sabre into the leading man's face, spearing his open mouth.
In the compound below, Gorkai waited with twenty men. Sweat dripped from his face as he watched Talisman and the Fleet Ponies men battling against the warriors swarming over the ramparts. 'I should go to him,' he told Lin-tse.
'Not yet, brother. Stand firm.'
On the north wall, Bartsai and his men fell back as the Lancers gained the ramparts. With an awful suddenness the defending line broke and a dozen enemy soldiers broke dear, swarming down the rampart steps and into the compound.
Lin-tse and his men charged to meet them. Gorkai transferred his sabre to his left hand and wiped his sweating right on his leggings. The men of the Curved Horn were on the verge of breaking, and Gorkai prepared himself to rush to their aid.
At that moment, seeing the danger, Druss ran along the ramparts of the western wall and leapt the yawning gap to the northern ramparts, his huge form crashing into the attackers and scattering them. The silver blades of his axe cut into the enemy ranks. His sudden appearance galvanized the Curved Horn into renewed ferocity, and the Gothir were forced back.
Lin-tse had lost eight men, but the twelve Gothir Lancers were reduced now to four, fighting in two pairs back to back. Two more Nadir fell before Lin-tse and his men cut the Lancers down.
Gorkai swung to watch Talisman. The line was holding, but more than ten Nadir were dead and the attack was no more than minutes old. Some wounded men were making their way to the hospital, others lay where they had fallen, trying to stop the flow of blood with their hands.
Lin-tse and the remainder of his men moved back to stand alongside Gorkai's group. The tall Nadir chief glanced at Gorkai. Blood was flowing from a wound in his face. 'You can tackle the next breach,' he said, forcing a smile.
Gorkai did not have long to wait. Talisman's men were swept aside as a section of the battlements gave way, and Talisman himself took a spear thrust into the chest. Gorkai screamed a battle cry and led his men forward, hurtling up the rampart steps two at a time. Talisman gutted the spearman, dragged the broken spear from his chest and then fell. Gorkai leapt across his body as more Gothir soldiers made it to the ramparts.
Talisman's vision was blurring, and he felt a great dizziness sweep over him. I cannot die, he thought. Not now! Struggling to his knees, he scrabbled for his sabre. Darkness loomed but he fought against it.
Gorkai and his men re-took the battlements, forcing the Gothir back. Blood was bubbling from Talisman's chest, and he knew a lung was punctured. Two men took him by the arms, hauling him to his feet. 'Get him to the surgeon!' ordered Gorkai.
Talisman was half helped, half carried to the hospital building. He heard Zhusai cry out as he was brought in. Desperately trying to focus, he saw the face of Sieben above him. . then he passed out.
The Gothir had given up their assault on the northern wall and Druss, his helm struck from his head, jumped the gap in the ramparts and rejoined the Fleet Ponies. Nuang Xuan, wounded again in the chest and arms, was sitting slumped by the wall.
The Gothir fell back.
Druss knelt down by the old Nadir leader. 'How goes it?' he asked.
'More than a hundred,' said Nuang. 'I think I have killed all the Gothir there are, and what you see outside are merely ghosts.'
Druss rose and scanned the defences. The north wall had only eighteen defenders still standing. Around him on the western ramparts there were some twenty-five Sky Riders. Above the gates he counted thirty, including Talisman's man, Gorkai. In the compound below Lin-tse had fewer than a dozen men. Druss tried to add the numbers together, but lost them in a sea of weariness. Taking a deep breath, he re-counted.
Fewer than a hundred defenders were visible to him, but the bodies of Nadir dead lay everywhere. He saw the Curved Horn leader Bartsai lying on the ground below the ramparts, three dead Gothir around his corpse.
'You are bleeding, Deathwalker,' said a Sky Rider.
'It is nothing,' replied Druss, recognizing the hawk-faced young man he had spoken to earlier.
'Take off your jerkin,' said the youngster.
Druss groaned as he eased the ripped and near ruined leather from his huge frame. He had been cut four times around the shoulders and upper arms, but there was a deeper wound under his right shoulder-blade. Blood had pooled around his belt.
'You need stitches, hey,' the Nadir told him. 'Or you bleed to death.'
Druss leaned on the ramparts and stared down at the Gothir forces, who had moved back out of bowshot.
'Take the old man with you,' said the Nadir, grinning. 'He fights so well he shames us all.'
Druss forced a grin and hauled Nuang Xuan to his feet. 'Walk with me a while, old man.' Turning to the Nadir warrior, he said, 'I'll be back before you know it.'