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  With a grating sound and a shower of dust, the block toppled over the edge and fell a meter, where it was brought up short by a pair of attached chains. The chains received the jolt and began to run out over two hefty pulleys attached under the center of the gate’s arch. The other ends of the chains were bolted to the top outer corners of the massive gates, which perforce began to swing ponderously inward. Pulled by the two thousand kilogram mass of the descending block of stone, the doors swung irresistibly in on the column of riders, four or five abreast, still streaming through the opening. Over the shrieks of men and horses and the sickening crunch of bones, the three-tonne gates ground together, effectively severing the column of Wrth invaders at its midpoint.

  Welcome to my surprise, thought Kirrah with a savage exultation, as the riders trapped in the three blocks south of the gate began falling under volley after volley from the rooftop archers. Outside the gates havoc ruled, as the bowmen on the walls let fly again and again into the milling, broken column of Wrth. Something smacked the upright stone beside her, and she woke with a start to the fact that she was in the midst of a firefight. The archer to her left gasped sharply, his bow clattered to the stone walkway, and he sank to his knees with a Wrth quarrel high in his left side.

  Kirrah keyed her helmet closed and watched the melee. Twice she was struck by the vicious short crossbow quarrels fired from below, feeling like a child’s punch through her protective suit. Two, three of the defenders were down, but scores of Wrth lay twitching and bleeding in the dust. Striking from behind cover atop the vai’atho roofs, her archers rained feathered death on the lightly armored riders trapped in the street south of the closed gate, many of whom were too tightly packed to maneuver at all. On the road outside the gate, the far north end of the column was only now reacting to the ambush. A few riders raced south up the sides of the column outside the walls, no doubt officers coming to investigate.

  Behind her in the street, the trapped and frustrated Wrth surged back and forth in the killing zone. A few had the presence of mind to attempt to scale the three-meter eaves, which they could reach from horseback. Several tried attacking one of the private doors in the sides of the vai’atho walls. These ambitious individuals promptly sprouted a feathered shaft or two and fell back into the carnage. Three blocks to the south, a pile of dead horses over a meter high marked the Wrth’s introduction to ranked pikemen. The ground-level squad of archers at that end precluded any possible breakout.

  From the north, the approaching outriders reached as close as they could to the gates, held back by the press of riders. They began shouting orders. Kirrah pointed them out to Irshe, and the defending archers began to focus on the officers. After the third one fell, the attack broke off. Another forty or fifty raiders perished in the retreat under the sleet of iron tips. To the south, Falling Ash Road had become a charnel house. Fallen riders and horses lay twitching and bleeding on top of one another, and wherever Wrth drew together to attempt a stand, the archers’ fire converged. No place to hide, no way to flee, no defense. Just like Akaray’s family! Kirrah thought, with a naked, predatory satisfaction.

  “Irshe! I want prisoners!” she called. Another whistle and hand signal, and the rain of death broke off. “You speak a little Wrth, do you not?” When he nodded, she said, “Tell them to surrender.”

  “Kirrah Warmaster, they have no word for surrender.” Baffled, the two stared at one another a moment.

  “Tell them to throw down their weapons and live, then.” Fools. Irshe waved his bow over the wall’s defensive stone barrier and shouted down into the street. Crossbow bolts spattered around him. He jerked back, blood trickling from a cut in his ear. Enough, that is quite enough, she thought clearly, and stepped to the parapet.

  “Tell them Kirrah Warmaster demands their lives,” she said, standing between two crenelations over the bloody street. More shouts from Irshe down to the trapped Wrth. One of the riders raised his crossbow and fired deliberately, striking Kirrah’s suit in the belly. Her sidearm already in her hands, she carefully aimed at the man.

  “Tell them again!” she demanded. Irshe repeated his shouted words. The first man was busy reloading. Another rider raised her crossbow. Kirrah took the hit, high on her chest, and pressed the firing stud.

  Crack! The searing yellow light flared back from the stone walls. The rider’s head disappeared in an explosion of superheated steam and blood, scattering gobbets of pink and red on the nearby Wrth, who stood stunned. The smoking body bounced lifelessly to the pavement as the horse reared.

  “Tell them again!” Another shout down. One of the Wrth farther down the street shouted something and rode towards them, raised his crossbow. Crack! His chest and back blew outward, pieces of scorched leather armor dangling from one side. Like a wave, the shock swept along the remaining Wrth.

  “Again!” Kirrah switched the beamer to continuous beam, cutting mode, one quarter power. A thin line of flame sprouted from the crossbow of the first man, slid down his saddle and across one ankle. The next one in line jerked in surprise as her leather chest armor parted into two smoking pieces. The man behind her shrieked as a white-hot spot crossed his bare leg and set his horse’s mane smoking furiously. The beam swept down the crowded street, scorching flesh and starting half a dozen small fires. Eighty meters down the road, a rider pulled himself up onto the roof on the west side of the street. Taking careful aim, Kirrah fired again, full power. The Snap!-flash brought every eye to focus on her or her target, who tottered, staring stupidly at the shattered stump of his forearm, and toppled back into the street.

  Shocked silence. No one moved.

  “Tell them, Kirrah Warmaster demands their lives, either as her warriors or as practice-targets for her archers.” Irshe shouted her words into the street. “Tell them, the old ways are dead. They must choose now! Signal the archers to make ready!” Dammit, people, figure it out… Two blocks away, one horseman began to move. Slowly, picking its way carefully among the red ruin littering the street, the horse approached. A young woman, (not quite the age of Ensign Sara Roe, is she?), short brown-and-gold hair, a fierce red wound on her forehead, blood trickling from low on her right thigh where an arrow pinned her leg to the saddle. She called up in an oddly accented version of the Talamae language:

  “Who offers warrior-service to the Sath-clan?” Her voice was high and clear and steady. “Who brings fire to my fire?”

  “Kirrah Warmaster holds all the lives in this street. Your puny weapons are an offense to me. Cast them down, and live.”

  “Wrth live by the bow and the sacred blade. We…”

  “Hold up your sacred blade,” Kirrah interrupted, the external speaker-patches on her suit drowning out the other’s voice. The girl drew a curved steel blade and held it high over her head. “Not one stroke has your sacred blade made today upon your enemies. I have defeated your blade.” Nice timing, she thought, as her beamer, set to invisible infrared, melted through the upraised sword ten centimeters beyond its hilt. The severed seventy-centimeter end fell with a clatter, loud in the silence. The girl’s eyes flicked wildly from the melted steel stump sticking out of her hand to Kirrah, and back.

  “Your bow, also. You alone, I command you to shoot me. All others, you die if you move! Watch, and learn your first lesson.” Slowly, the girl reached out to another rider next to her, who had just reloaded. Eyes on Kirrah, she took the crossbow from his unresisting fingers and rode slowly to a point just under where the suited figure stood on the wall. Ooof! Right in the solar plexus, good shot! The girl’s eyes widened in disbelief as Kirrah stood unmoving, the short bolt falling away. “Give me an arrow,” she hissed to Irshe, who put one of the new meter-long shafts into her hand.

  “You are the first to listen. This will be your weapon in my service,” Kirrah said, tossing down the missile. The girl leaned sideways in the saddle and caught it, the other arrow through her thigh bending a little as she leaned forward. Damn, these people are tough, Kirrah thought. Now to close the
deal…

  “This will be the least of your weapons, for those who follow me. Cast down your useless bows and your cursed blades. Or die, here, now, with no mark on your enemies. Choose!” Three heartbeats passed, six… the girl turned in her saddle and whistled sharply, shouted an order. Men and women began to dismount. A Wrth twenty meters away raised a crossbow and swung it towards the girl… Crack! Kirrah’s shot whiplashed across the bloody street, blowing a ragged head-sized hole out of his upper chest. He fell to the red pavement with a wet, meaty splat.

  “I was told the Wrth do not break oath. I was told the Wrth follow orders. Are there any more not-Wrth here?” Careful, let’s not overdo this cultural stuff, you’ve been lucky so far… Behind her, Kirrah could hear distant shouts and the clatter of hooves on the stone pavement outside the walls. “Mastha’cha-dakka'tachk!” she called. The leader of her personal bodyguard materialized at her side. “I require your service. It is dangerous.”

  “My life to command, Warmaster” Wrth were not the only tough ones, she was reminded.

  “What is your name, woman?” she called down into the street.

  “Peetha!” the girl said, turning her triangular face upward.

  “Peetha, tell my new student-warriors this. This man,” she gestured to the Corporal, “will walk down this street. You will all throw every bow and blade and weapon to that side, and you will stand on this side. When he reaches the far end, he will pass you through the pikemen, one at a time, bound. You will be fed and cared for, until I am ready to begin your training as my warriors. Disobedience is death.” As the girl began translating her orders, Kirrah said to her wide-eyed bodyguard:

  “Do you understand? Take them to the practice-grounds where the pikemen trained, in the military sector. See to their wounds. Do not allow them to speak to one another. Guard them well. See they are fed tonight. Command whatever assistance you need, in my name. Show no fear, none at all.” The man saluted, the ladder was lowered inside the tower, and he stepped out into the gore-filled street.

  Why is the girl still mounted? Oh yeah, she’s pinned to the saddle… As Kirrah watched, the girl took the shaft of the arrow in her two hands and snapped it cleanly, a handsbreadth above the wound. She lifted her leg in a sudden jerk, raising it clear of the broken end. The bodkin point was visible under her knee, embedded eight centimeters deep in the heavy leather at the edge of the saddle, gleaming dark red with blood. More blood flowed freely from the freshly-opened leg wound, but did not pulse or spurt. More shouts and a heavy rumble sounded from the wall behind them, and Kirrah could hear the heavy whazzz! as arrows were loosed against attackers outside the walls. Just a minute, I’m coming, she thought. First, this girl…

  “Peetha!” The girl looked up, ready to dismount. “You were first to follow. You will be my left hand today. Stay in the saddle, follow my man to the other end, and be sure my other new warriors understand what is required. No more problems, you hear?” The girl nodded understanding. “When the last one is moved, go with him. When you arrive at your …temporary camp, seek aid from my man, for your wound. You will take good care of all my warriors, including yourself.” This time the young woman saluted, fist-to-throat. When no more commands came, she turned and made her horse walk slowly past the row of standing warriors, drawing up behind and to one side of Corporal Mastha’cha, who was walking like a man in a dream.

  “Irshe!” she whispered. “Can you follow along the rooftops and new walls, make sure the longbowmen understand? Send twenty of them to help transferring the prisoners, and keep the pikemen here. The day is still young. And if you see the Royal Cavalry, tell them to escort my, my new students - no trouble, no harm - on my word.”

  “My life to command, Warmaster,” he said with a grin. Lowering a rope over the inner edge of the city wall, he scrambled down to the top of the new wall blocking the first cross-street, then across that and onto the roof of the first vai’atho-block.

  Next, thought Kirrah, turning with something between a groan and a growl towards the growing din outside the walls behind her. Two hundred fifty meters up the road, the mass of Wrth boiled restlessly. The road itself was a near-mirror of the road inside the gates, horses and men strewn in bloody heaps everywhere. Sixty meters up the road, the two wheeled, covered rams bumped towards them over the gruesome obstacles, pulled or pushed by men under the heavy roof planks. Armsmaster Opeth stood with a half dozen men with clay jars, about two liters each, and several more with lit torches. Oh good, the oil’s here. And just in time… bristling with forty or fifty arrows, the two covered rams came ponderously rolling down the road.

  “How much oil is here?” she asked one of the archers. He pointed down into the first side street, directly under the city wall east of Ash Gate, now dead-ended at her new wall that cut off access to Falling Ash Road. There was a cart bearing at least another forty or fifty of the containers, which were being passed up by ropes. That will do nicely, she thought. These people seem to have things under control. Perhaps another bit of low-tech from the history of warfare on Terra…

  “Excuse me,” she said to the man next to her. “Could someone find a bit of cloth for me?” He pulled up the hem of his cape and tore off a five centimeter strip.

  “Will this do?”

  “Lord Tsano! My apologies! Uhhh, yes, I thank you.” Kirrah accepted the offered cloth. “Here, open one of the jars, yes, soak the strip, stuff it into the opening, leave an end free. Before you throw it, fire the end of the cloth.” Opeth stepped to their side.

  “Do you attack the cart with fire, or the men?” he asked. When she stared at him a moment, he added: “I have seen this done once before. It seemed effective, to soak the ground with oil, before setting the fire. It takes a long time, to burn through such wood planks.”

  “The good Armsmaster is quite correct. Please proceed,” she said. A dozen clay jars sailed out, to smash down on the road’s surface just north of the improvised ditch. Within moments, the first of the two rams crashed down into the ditch and almost up the other side. With an audible groan, both of the meter-and-a-half wide front wheels settled back neatly into Irshe’s meter-wide, forty-centimeter deep ditch. Oh, too bad! thought Kirrah. I bet that log under there masses a tonne or more, plus the weight of the cart. Tough luck, suckers! Hands became visible around the back of the wheel, as men strained to move the ram forward. The heavy cart rocked back and forth a few centimeters.

  Opeth gestured, and one of Kirrah’s improvised Molotov cocktails smashed to the road beside the trapped ram. The flames immediately spread to the oil slick on the road, and men howled under the plank roof. Look, it burns green! Kirrah thought absently, as the pale flames licked up around the cart. Another two jars smashed on the top of the cart, setting up a nice blaze, the oil soaking into the dry wood. More howls, as burning oil dripped between the planks. Two, three men rolled burning, out from under the cart, to be immediately impaled by eager archers on the wall.

  “Can the Warmaster claim these Wrth too?” asked Opeth from her right elbow. “Never before have Wrth surrendered. We are all totally amazed.”

  “I regret, the Wrth under this cart are too dangerous to our walls,” she replied. When the rams are destroyed, we can try again with those,” gesturing to the mass of raiders milling just out of bowshot. They think they’re put of bowshot, anyway…

  “Rash’koi-sana'tachk! Can you muster half the men from the rooftops behind us? Those Wrth up the road need another lesson in longbow fighting.” With a broad, toothy grin, the Talamae lieutenant dispatched a messenger. Oh-oh, what’s that second ram up to… The vehicle was turning, aiming about thirty degrees off the road. A rush of men from the first ram scrambled across the fifteen meters separating the two devices, a third of them falling to arrows from the walls. The huge cart moved forward again, smashing through the light frame stalls at the west side of the road, crunching over the wreckage by sheer muscle power. Within a few seconds, it passed around the left end of the ditch and crashed to a
halt against the base of the wall, five meters west of the gate. The wall trembled slightly to the impact. Men rushed along the wall to the site of the new attack, and burning oil crashed down on and around the siege engine. A heavy thud reverberated through the wall as the attackers got their log swinging. Another. Bits of dust and pebbles showered down from the masonry. This is not good, thought Kirrah.

  “Prax’soua-dakka'tachk! Where are your rock-movers?” she demanded. Thud.

  “Here, Warmaster,” the burly blond man replied. At his gesture, three comparably nasty-looking characters clustered around. I bet these are drinking buddies, Kirrah thought irrelevantly. Thud. More pebbles fell, and bits of mortar.

  “The Wrth seek to knock down our wall.” she said. Thud. “I think it would be nice, if the first stone to fall was that big one, the crenellation directly over the end of their ram. Could you please arrange that?”

  “Yes, Warmaster! No problem!” To the south on the rooftops, Talamae archers were double-timing north towards the wall. After an experimental bit of rocking by Prax’soua’s team, the crenelation, a stone about a meter square and twenty-five centimeters thick, toppled out silently and landed with a splintering crunch on the roof of the ram five meters below. Oh, my! thought Kirrah. The roof planks were smashed through, the heavy frame that carried the front end of the battering-log collapsed in splintered ruin, and one wheel fell off as it broke away from the front axle. More firebombs rained down on the opening and around the carriage, and arrows picked off the unfortunate raiders as the flames forced them out.

  A few moments later, Lieutenant Rash’koi reported that an extra sixty-five archers were in position, and fifty or so remained of the walltop’s original sixty defenders.