«No!» Blade shouted. «We shouldn't both be here, you young idiot! Get back!»
If Zemun heard Blade's shouts, he ignored them. There seemed to be a battle-madness in him, that made him totally indifferent to the world around him. No, that wasn't quite true. The wild eyes in the grimy faced were fixed on the siege tower as if it had some hypnotic attraction. Zemun stopped, waved his sword, shouted curses, ignored more bolts and arrows-then the heavy plank swayed one final time and crashed down on top of him. Even over the uproar of the battle, Blade heard Zemun Bossir's skull crack.
Blade covered the rest of the distance to the plank so quickly that he was there before the first Wolf crossed it. Blade met that unfortunate Wolf, his ax swinging in both hands. The man flew off the plank and landed very nearly in two pieces The second man was a Wolf leader. Blade smashed his shield with one swing, his shoulder with a second, his face with a third. The Wolf leader collapsed on top of the wall, falling almost beside Zemun Bossir.
Blade killed three more Wolves with his ax, then the handle cracked. He grappled a fourth man with his bare hands and heaved him backward into his comrades so that three of them fell off the plank. More Wolves scrambled up into the tower from the ground, but by now Morina's defenders were swarming up to meet them. Now Blade was in the middle of a swirling hand-to-hand combat where men hacked, kicked, and thrust at each other, and threw each other off the wall when they couldn't do anything else.
Suddenly the Wolves stopped coming across the plank. Blade snatched up a fallen mace and ran across the plank to the top of the tower. A Wolf leader's head poked up through the hole in the wooden floor, and Blade's mace crashed down on it. Then three Morinans ran up along the wall, carrying a huge iron hook tied to a hundred feet of heavy rope. They tossed the hook to Blade, who swung it down and drove it firmly into a joint in the floor under him. Then he ran back to the wall and threw the plank down. Every man who could grab the rope did so, someone started a chant, and the men began to pull. As more Wolves scrambled out on top of the tower, it swayed farther than ever before, hung precariously for a second, then went over with a crash. The Wolves on top jumped, but misjudged their distance. They landed safely, but a second later the falling tower landed on top of them, mashing them into the ground. Blade called for torches and tar barrels to burn the tower, then ran back along the wall to his former position.
Blade alternated between being a fighter and being a general all the rest of the afternoon, because the Wolves went on attacking as if they still had some hope of winning. Blade couldn't see how they could believe this, with so much of their siege equipment smashed and the Morinans still holding as firm as ever. Were they hoping for the Wizard to come to their aid, or did they perhaps hope the Morinans' courage might still crack? Certainly there seemed to be no end to the Wolves, so the reinforcements from the north had probably arrived.
Afterward, Blade couldn't have told a coherent story of the rest of the afternoon's fighting for a million pounds. It was just one endless slaughter, the Wolves corning on, the Morinans holding, and the men on both sides dying. There were times when Blade wondered if perhaps he'd died and gone to Hell. It was hard to believe there could be this much blood, this much killing, this many screams of pain and rage anywhere else.
Blade did know that in time the attacks came to an end. No more Wolves stormed forward over the heaped bodies of their comrades. No more bolts plucked men off the wall beside Blade. From inside the city he could hear the sounds of minor skirmishing. The mounted guards and bands of civilians under Haymi Razence were hunting down the last Wolves who'd managed to get past the walls. There weren't many of those Wolves left, and the sounds of the fighting were scattered and faint.
In fact, there weren't going to be many Wolves left anywhere. Blade didn't know how many men this day's fighting had left dead or maimed, and he couldn't even force his numbed brain to make a guess. He did know that Morina had given the Wolves a second hammering, and from this one they could never recover. The armies of Rentoro would now outnumber the Wolves eight or ten to one. With that kind of odds in their favor, they could march out and meet the Wolves in the open field. No more Rentoran cities would have to stand these murderous sieges, see their women and children crushed under falling houses, and have their cobblestones turn dark with blood.
Blade was just getting used to the relative silence that was falling over the city, when suddenly it came apart all over again. There was a frantic boiling of movement all around the Wolves' camp, with men on foot and men on heudas dashing about. No two of them seemed to be moving in the same direction. Some of the riders went down, others trampled Wolves under the hooves of their mounts. A vast cloud of dust rose as the Wolves' heudas stampeded, and the thunder of their stampede drowned out all the other sounds.
Suddenly Blade realized what was happening. He sprinted to the nearest stairs, plunged down them to the street, and ran to the nearest saddled heuda he could find. He vaulted into the saddle and wrenched the animal's head toward the nearest gate, just as Serana ran up. She was in hacked and dust-covered armor, and there was blood on one cheek and on the sword she waved.
«Someone's attacking the Wolves' camp!» Blade shouted. «I have to ride out there and find out who's leading them!» He waved his mace at the gate guards. «Pull those wagons clear, now! Move!»
The wagons blocking the gate rumbled aside, the gate creaked open, and Blade spurred his heuda up to a gallop. He pounded through the gate, leaving Serana staring open-mouthed after him. He was glad to have an excuse not to talk to her. She'd done her share of the fighting and certainly nothing about Zemun Bossir's death could be blamed on her. Still, the deaths of both Count Drago and his grandson would make the succession of the Bossirs in Morina complicated, to say the least. Blade didn't want to say anything about the matter to anyone until he had time to put his own thoughts in order and find out who was out there, joining Morina's battle at the last moment.
Blade thundered out of the gate and crossed the moat on one of the Wolves' piles of brushwood and planks. He passed several small clusters of Wolves. They stood watching him in numb silence, like men who'd been hit over the head but hadn't found time to fall down. Blade did see one Wolf leader topple over as he passed, a man apparently quite unwounded. Sunstroke, probably. The Wolf leaders had been fighting all day under a broiling hot sun, encased in full plate armor.
By the time Blade came up behind the Wolf camp, most of the heudas were long gone and the dust cloud was settling. The mounted men were riding about, chasing those Wolves who hadn't run off after their mounts. Some of the Wolves were trying to surrender, and a few of them were actually succeeding.
The mounted men were mostly small, wiry types, in weather-stained dark clothing, mounted on thin, nervous heudas. «Where's your leader?» Blade called out.
One of them jerked a thumb after the fleeing heudas. «Gone t'run down Wolves.»
Blade spent a frustrating couple of hours trying to catch up with the leader of the new arrivals. Three times he reached the place of a battle just after the fighting ended and the leader rode off after more Wolves. It was getting dark and Blade was several miles from Morina before he finally caught up with the man.
The leader was a man about the same size and shape as Zemun Bossir. He sat on his heuda as if he and the animal were a single body, and his entire face was covered by a black leather mask. Blade realized this must be the leader of the northern outlaws, Arno of the Mask. Well, the man had said he was riding south to help Morina. He'd also said he'd guarantee them victory. In a way he had-the Wolves wouldn't even be able to make a safe retreat with their heudas driven off. But Arno and his men would be wise not to claim too much credit. After all their losses, the Morinans would not much care for that.