Darksoul. Anna Stephens

behind them and knew they’d be attached to grappling hooks that they’d latch on to the portcullis. As soon as they’d hooked on, the squad on the other end of the rope would start cranking, hoping to pull the portcullis free of its housing before the defenders could sprint the length of the tunnel and unhook them.

      Standard manoeuvre, one we know how to counter … Durdil’s eyes tracked the long ropes trailing from behind the sow. Looked as though they stretched back to the trebuchet, now facing away from the city as though it was going to hurl rocks into its own army.

      ‘Fuck the gods,’ Durdil breathed and grabbed Renik by the shoulder, pulled him to the arrow slit. ‘What happens if they connect the ropes from the portcullis to the treb’s throwing arm?’ he hissed. ‘Could it work?’

      Renik paled and swallowed. ‘Dangerous,’ he said. ‘Either it flips the treb, shatters it, snaps the ropes or rips free the portcullis. Three of those will be lethal to the men around it. The fourth could well be lethal for Rilporin.’

      Durdil spun from the window and shoved Vaunt towards the stairs. ‘Get those fucking hooks off the portcullis right fucking now.’

      Vaunt didn’t hesitate, didn’t protest a major shouldn’t be doing something like this, didn’t mention the arrow shot he’d be under from the men in the sow the second he got close to the hooks. He just dodged a knot of soldiers and threw himself down the spiral staircase.

      ‘Help him,’ Durdil shouted, and the men gaped for a second and then followed. ‘Renik, get a Hundred and muster this side of the gates. If they get that portcullis open, hold them there until I can get you reinforcements.’

      ‘Sir,’ Renik said and bolted for the same staircase that had swallowed Vaunt.

      ‘Edris, Yarrow, whose command is under the least pressure?’

      ‘Mine,’ Edris said, ‘we’ve had them pinned back for a good few hours now.’

      ‘Right, fifty men. Fetch both the stingers stationed outside the gate into Second Circle. Vaunt’s going to stop the sow tearing open the portcullis if he can, but if not I want those stingers rolled into the tunnel and loosing at any advance. Renik’s your support. Do not let them through that tunnel. Understand?’

      ‘Yes, Commander,’ Edris said and saluted. Durdil returned the gesture. ‘It’s been an honour, sir.’

      ‘Shut up, Edris. I’m not sending you out to die,’ Durdil said, and they both knew he was probably lying. ‘Dancer’s grace. Go.’

      Durdil was almost at the stairwell in the back wall when half a dozen blue-clad men slammed through the door from Double First’s wallwalk. The first hurled a dagger. So much for this wall being under control.

      Durdil threw himself out of its path and dragged his sword from its sheath. He snatched up a shield from the pile stacked inside the doorway and charged. Yarrow was a second behind him, despite his command being Second Last.

      The Mireces Durdil faced was covered in blood from the flap of scalp hanging in his eye. He feinted left and then right, attacked left and Durdil whipped the shield laterally across his body, turning side-on behind it. The sword clattered off the shield boss and struck sparks from the stone floor. Three more Mireces circled behind him, grinning, two engaging Yarrow, the other looking to stab Durdil in the back.

      Durdil parried a flurry of attacks, backing slowly across the room, but then reinforcements from somewhere arrived and together they drove the Mireces back through the door on to the allure. Durdil followed with his shield up. The wallwalk was a chaos of men in Mireces blue – too many – and Palace Rank green struggling and screeching in mad dances across the stone. Splashes of red that were the Personal Guard here and there, but for every defender there seemed to be three attackers poking up over the wall from the ladders.

      Durdil cut through a gap between two of his men, shoved a Mireces hard in the back so he impaled himself on a Ranker’s sword, punched his mailed fist into the face of another and sent him back-flipping off the wall in a spray of teeth and blood, and then he was in the thick, his blood singing and his feet sure. His fifty-six summers fell from his shoulders like an unneeded cloak and he killed his way towards the siege tower and the Mireces around it.

      Durdil put his weight behind his sword and forced the tip through a man’s ribs from behind; he’d been too busy sidestepping out of the bridgehead to notice Durdil’s approach. He screamed and then stopped as the blade stole his breath, the sound strangled, pathetic, a consumptive child’s last whimper. He fell to his knees and Durdil put his boot on his shoulder and wrenched his sword free. It grated against ribs, slid soft and silky through lung, and emerged with its length dull and black with blood.

      Yarrow was at his side now and Durdil slashed past him and took the nose and cheek from a Raider. The man screamed blood and pain and Yarrow finished him with a graceless shove over the wall into the attackers waiting below.

      A swift glance showed him the sow was almost at the portcullis; he needed to be down there. ‘Can you hold?’ He grabbed Yarrow’s arm. ‘Colonel, can you hold?’

      ‘I – yes, Commander. On my honour we’ll hold.’

      ‘Good. I’ll station a runner in the gatehouse; you need further reinforcements, let me know. Though I don’t expect you will.’ His meaning was clear and he saw Yarrow take it. The colonel swallowed, nodded again. ‘This is the biggest push we’ve seen from them. I’d say don’t be a fucking hero, Colonel, but I need you to be.’