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new weapons would lose half their terror value in daylight.
A figure came out of the darkness and up to Blade. "A message from the
commander of the war machines, Captain Blade. The column on the riverbank is
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within range now. Can we open fire?" The man wore an expression like a small
boy asking if he can open his Christmas presents.
Blade shook his head. "Wait until the eastern column is within range. Then
concentrate on them." The man nodded and dashed off.
The People of the Blue Eye would be hardest to scare with the new weapons. But
they would also be the most dangerous if they got over the walls. The farther
away they could be hit, the better.
The eastern column must have been at very close range when the messenger
arrived. Only minutes later one of the catapults went twonggg. Blade dimly saw
something soar through the air and drop down out of sight. He could clearly
hear the crash as the stone landed, and he thought he heard faint screams and
shouts. He swore to himself in frustration. Up on the roofs he could see but
not command; down here he could command but not see. He realized he was in the
same maddening situation as every general in history who has wanted to see
what was going on.
The siege machines went on firing, and the stones went on crashing down into
the streets to the east.
The fireballs were being saved for a surprise at close range. Blade heard no
more screams from the east, however. If the People of the Blue Eye were out
there, Krog had probably ordered them to scatter. A
minute later another messenger ran up, confirming Blade's suspicions.
The eastern column had disappeared, but the other two were still moving in.
Blade grinned. Possibly Krog was going to play the same game he had accused
Blade of wishing to play with him. He would get his rivals' fighters killed
off and spare his own by delaying his own attack and letting the others go in
first. Then Narlena ran up with a message. The column from the riverbank was
in sight and coming up the street fast.
"All right," Blade said to Yekran. "You take the northern side. I'm going down
to the south."
They shook hands, and he followed Narlena off along the street, first walking,
then loping, then tearing through the darkness at a run. Ahead of them loomed
the wall at the south end of the street, its
top and rear face crowded with Dreamer fighters. They ran past the catapult
standing in the street, waved to its crew, ran through the aid squads standing
ready behind the fighters, and reached the wall. The fighters manning it
turned to greet Blade. As they did so, an ear-splitting chorus of war yells
and screams shot up from the street beyond. Blade heard the swelling sound of
running feet and clashing weapons moving rapidly toward the wall.
The men with the fireballs in the upper windows didn't wait for orders.
Neither did the catapult crew.
Two windows lit up with a searing blue-white glare. The two centers of the
glare arched out into mid-air, dropping toward the street, trailing
twenty-foot streamers of flame, and spitting out sparks like a Roman candle.
At the same time the catapult hurled a hundred pound bag of jagged stone and
metal fragments clean over the heads of the men on the wall, straight into the
oncoming enemy. A very different kind of screaming and yelling now rose from
beyond the wall. Blade dashed forward and scrambled up the wall just as the
catapult let fly again. He and Narlena flattened themselves on the stones as
another bag sailed overhead and crashed into the street.
Looking over the top of the wall, they could see the street beyond lit up by
the fireballs. Both of them lay in the street, still sputtering, hissing
savagely, and flaring up every few seconds. Men lay writhing and screaming on
the pavement or ran howling away, hair and beard trailing smoke and flame.
Some of them stumbled and fell over the mangled dead or the dying who had been
struck down by the flying debris. As
Blade watched, a third bag of fragments smashed down into the street, spewing
pieces in all directions, cutting down more of the running men. The entire
head of the attack column seemed to have vanished in less than a minute. But
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farther down the street Blade could see hundreds more fighters, still
brandishing their weapons, still howling threats and war cries. They would
attack again.
They did. This time there were three times as many as there had been the first
time moving even faster. Blade could hear their commanders yelling at them to
spread out. But trying to get untrained
Wakers to change their normal fighting habits in the middle of a battle was
hopeless. They came on in the same dense mass as before. More fireballs
plunged down into it; more men screamed and shrieked as the flames seared and
blinded them. More shots crashed down in the street, solid stones as well as
bags of fragments smashing men to the ground, reducing them to pulp before
they could even scream. The charge lost half its men as it came down the
street.
But the other half was driven by a thirst for revenge and by dreams of loot
and prisoners. They kept on coming, charging through the flames, through the
flying stones, through the arrows that whistled by their ears and sank into
their bodies, over the corpses of their comrades, up to the wall like a wave.
The Dreamers on top of the wall flinched and gave way. For a terrifying moment
Blade was alone on top of the wall, Wakers boiling around him so thickly that
neither he nor they could lift a weapon. He grabbed the nearest Waker with his
bare hands and jerked the man's neck back until he heard it snap.
Then he lifted the body and threw it down into the men still climbing up the
wall. His sword swung out in a lethal curve, carving chests, stomachs, and
faces in a single sweep.
"Come on back up here, you bastards!" he roared at the top of his lungs.
"We've got to hold the wall."
The sight and sound of Blade jerked the retreating Dreamers to a stop and
turned them into a solid mass. As the Wakers poured down the inside of the
wall, stumbling, falling, and yelling like fiends, they ran into the Dreamers
coming back. The crash as the two forces ran head-on into each other at full
speed echoed in the street and nearly deafened Blade. But he was too busy
slashing his way through the enemy close at hand to pay much attention to what
was going on behind him.
Stones began to crash down from windows high above as the people up there
joined in the fight.
They were falling wildly onto both sides alike.
Blade opened his mouth to bellow, "Stop it!" to the fools at the windows. As
he did so, a stone plummeted down and bounced off the back of his skull. It [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]