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.