John Carr - Siege of Tarr-Hostigos

The second platform was in place now, ladders rising on it. The men on these ladders must be some of the southern swampmen Soton had brought north, or the Blethan Ruthani who had raided their baggage train at Ardros Field. They carried no armor, no clothing except leather leggings and breechcloths, and no weapons but hand axes and long wicked knives. If the men in the mortar pit could start hitting the wall in time, there was still a chance-

The Hostigi mortar emplacement spewed flame, smoke, slabs of stone, and flying timbers. An enemy shot or a stray spark had touched off the remaining fireseed in the magazine. Most of the men in or around the pit went down where they stood.

Flying debris scythed into the rear of the Hostigi infantry holding the barricade at the breach. Their line wavered. Some charged forward, grappling with Styphoni and rolling down the rubble to die in the moat with them. Others gave way, and a volley of musketry cleared a path through the ones who stood. Across the dying and the dead of both sides, the Sacred Squares poured over the barricade and down into the outer courtyard.

It seemed to Ptosphes that the Styphoni reached the gatehouse where he stood in the time between one breath and the next. Bullets whistled around him; the men atop the keep were now firing on the inner wall without caring much who was there. His reluctance to turn his back on the enemy gave way to an indignant refusal to be shot in the back by his own men. He ran to the edge of the gun platform, sheathed his sword, and made his way down the rope ladder with both hands, until he was sure his arms would pull out of their sockets. The rope ended about two rods above the flagstone paving of the inner courtyard.

It was a long drop for an armored man no longer young. Ptosphes went to his knees and was quite sure all his bones were jarred loose from one another. Thankfully, all of them seemed intact when he stood. Smoke was rising from the base of the stairs, to the keep. He sprinted for them without stopping to take a breath.

A bullet tore through his jack and glanced off his breastplate, while another clipped his beard and seared one hand. At first they came from both sides, then he heard a shout from above, "That's Prince Ptosphes, you wolf's bastard!" and the bullets from the keep stopped. A moment later a crash like the end of the world sounded from behind, followed by screams and curses that penetrated even the ringing in Ptosphes' ears, and a choking wave of fireseed smoke. Some Styphoni with more zeal than sense must have used a petard on the inner gate, no doubt blowing it open but also demolishing a good many comrades as well!

Two of the swamp warriors reached the foot of the stairs before Ptosphes. He cut one down with his sword, knocked the ax out of the other's hand, leaped on to the stairs, and dashed up them. By the time he reached the top, the blood pounding in Ptosphes' ears drowned out every other sound. He leaned against the wall beyond the doorway, feeling the cool stone against his forehead and not hearing the outer door being shut and bolted behind him.

By the time he'd been led to a chair and had a cup of wine thrust into his hands, Ptosphes had enough of his wits back to think about what to do next. This was no normal siege, where the garrison of the keep was always given one last chance to surrender. This one would end with the Styphoni trying to bury the Hostigi under a pile of their own dead flesh if they couldn't finish the battle any other way.

If Phidestros and Soton and their captains had the wits the gods gave to fleas, they would launch the last attack as soon as they could, before their men had time to lose their battle-rage. Otherwise those men might start thinking of the kind of fight waiting for them behind the walls of the keep.

When Ptosphes had drunk the wine and could stand, he walked over to Harmakros in the chair of state. He had to walk carefully, to avoid stepping on exhausted men catching their breaths, cleaning their weapons, or just lying staring at the ceiling. The lightly wounded were taking care of each other; the badly wounded hadn't reached the keep.

"I lost sight of the column on the ridge. What of them?"

"They started to close when the column at the main gate ran. Then the breach fell, and the ridge fighters drew back. Not without leaving a good many men behind, to be sure."

"What do we have left?"

Harmakros' shrugged. "A hundred, maybe a few more. That's all, unless we get some through the underground passage from the outer courtyard."

"It's being watched?"

"Of course!" Harmakros wasn't going to take accusations of carelessness lightly, even now. "Three men, with a barrel of fireseed to blow it up if the bastards try to come through."

"They'll come soon, wherever they do it." Ptosphes leaned against a stone archway and propped himself up with his sword. By the Twelve True Gods, he was getting old!

"I have men watching on the roof, and more men on the stairs relaying messages, my Prince. They won't catch us napping."

"Unless they kill the men on the roof."

"With Soton's cannons? Not without shells, and maybe not even with them. Anyway, I'll wager a cask of Ermut's Best they don't have any shells."

"Done," Ptosphes said. "But just in case they do…"

"I've had the men on the roof build themselves a shelter with chests and rolled-up tapestries."

Some of those tapestries, Ptosphes realized, were probably part of his wife's dowry. Not that anybody except Rylla would be left to care before long, of course, and this was a better end for the tapestries than being looted or burned, eaten by vermin or left to rot in the crumbling shell of the keep.

Ptosphes forced his mind away from such thoughts and climbed the stairs to the roof.

Seeing the Styphoni swarming over the shambles that had been his seat and home didn't improve Ptosphes' mood. It helped to see the men on the rifled three-pounder actually smiling as they carved notches in the smoke-stained oak of the gun carriage.

"The big one's for smashing the wheel of one siege gun. Didn't hit any of our people either," the gunner added. "The four little ones are banners we knocked down. The circle is one of the guns. We might have got ourselves a second, but the Styphoni were too cowardly to man it again and by then we'd run out of shot and were firing broken pottery and chunks of masonry."

One of the swabbers laughed. "Styphon's bully boys didn't like eating our stones!"

Never mind that the gunners probably hadn't done half the damage they thought they had. If they spent the last candle of their lives grinning and the last moments killing more Styphoni, what did anything else matter to them now?

Ptosphes had just descended to the keep hall when a messenger followed him down the stairs. "They're moving a heavy field gun into the inner courtyard. One of theirs, though, from the number of men they've put to hauling it."

"Everyone to your places, men," Ptosphes said. He hesitated; added, "It's been an honor to be your Prince and captain."

A ragged cheer rose, then outside the musketry began again heavy, rapid fire. The expected message came down from the roof-the bullets were mostly coming up, to keep the gun there out of action. Even a three-pound ball could wreck a gun carriage.

He saw a black faced and bloodied Vurth crouching with a musketoon. "I thought you were dead!"

Vurth smiled, his crooked yellow teeth grinning like a death's head. "It'll take more than a Styphoni musket ball to take my life-Down Styphon!"

Ptosphes grinned as a score of harsh voices echoed with "Down Styphon!"

"Wait until they attack," Ptosphes ordered. "Then they'll have to cease fire or have spent bullets falling back on their friends." He doubted that the mercenaries or even the Knights would care to risk much of that. It had been a bad day for self-inflicted casualties on both sides; for the Styphoni it was about to get worse.