David Zindell - The Lightstone

'Yes, Prince Maram?'

Maram noticed that all the men at the top of the tower were looking at him. So were those along the wall below.

'- and I really shouldn't remain here, if I would only get in your way. If I were to join the others in the keep, then -'

'You mean, the women and the children?' Lord Grayam asked.

'Ah, yes, the… noncombatants. As I was saying, if I were to join them, then…'

Maram's voice trailed off; he noticed Kane had his black eyes fixed on him as did I my own.

Again he gulped air, belched and rolled his eyes toward the heavens as if asking why he was always having to do things that he didn't want to do. And then he continued,

'What I mean is, ah, although I'm certainly no swordmaster, I do have some skill, and I believe my blade would be wasted if I had to wait out this battle in the keep – unless of course you, sir, deem my inexpertise to be dangerous to the coordination of your defenses and would -'

'Good!' Lord Grayam suddenly called out, wasting no more time. 'I accept the service of your sword, at least for the duration of the siege.'

Maram shut his mouth then, having woven a web of words in which he had caught himself. He seemed quite disgusted.

'All of you,' Lord Grayam said, 'Sar Valashu, Kane, Princess Atara -we're honored that you would fight with us, of your own choice.'

In truth, I thought, listening to the booming of the drums, we had little choice. Our escape was cut off. And because the Librarians had succored us, especially me, in a time of great need, it would be ignoble of us to forsake them. And perhaps most importantly, Alphanderry's cruel murder needed to be avenged.

DOOM, DOOM, DOOM!

Maram, gulping again, drew his sword as he looked out one of the crenels of the battlements. He muttered, 'At least there's a good wall between us and them.'

But the wall, I thought, as I looked down at the Librarians lined up along it, might not provide as much safety as Maram hoped. It was neither very thick or high; the red sandstone its masons had built with was probably too soft to withstand very long a bombardment of good, granite boulders, if the Count's armies had the siegecraft to hurl them. The mural towers, being square instead of round, were also more vulnerable, and the wall had no machicolation: no projecting stone parapet at its top from which boiling oil or lime might be dropped down upon anyone assaulting it.

Even now, in the last moments before the battle, the city's carpenters were hurriedly nailing into place hoardings over the lip of the wall to extend it outward toward the enemy. But these covered shelters were few and protected the walls only near the great towers at either side of the vulnerable gates. Since they were made of wood, fire arrows might ignite them. To forestall this calamity, the carpenters were also nailing wet hides over them.

'Sar Valashu,' Lord Grayam said to me as he placed his arm around the Librarian next to him, 'allow me present my son, Captain Donalam.'

Captain Donalam, a sturdy-looking man about Asaru's age, grasped my hand firmly and smiled as if to reassure me that Khaisham had never been conquered: if not because of her walls, then due to the valor of her scholar-warriors. Then he excused himself, and walked down the tower's stairs to the wall, where he would command the Librarians waiting for him there.

We, too, took our leave of the Lord Librarian. There was little room for us along the crowded ramparts in the tower. We walked down the stairs, thirty feet to the wall, and took our places behind the battlements. Maram bemoaned being that much closer to the enemy. And with every passing moment, as the drums beat out their relentless tattoo and the first arrows began hissing through the air, the enemy marched closer to us.

As they drew in upon the city in their lines of flashing steel, the nervousness in my belly felt as if I had swallowed whole mouthfuls of butterflies. I counted the standards of twenty-nine of Aigul's battalions. Among them fluttered the much larger standard of Count Ulanu's whole army, the yellow banner stained blood-red with its great, snarling dragon. Near it, on top of his big brown horse, was Count Ulanu himself. The knights of his vanguard rode with him. Soon enough, I thought, they would let the lines of their men advance forward past them to prosecute the very dangerous assault of the walls. But for the moment, Count Ulanu had the point of honor as the thousands of men on both sides of the wall turned their gazes upon him.

'Damn him!' Kane growled out beside me. 'Damn his eyes! Damn his soul!'

Everyone could see that we had hard work ahead of us. Four great siege towers, as high as the walls and with great iron hooks to latch onto them, were being rolled slowly forward across the grass. They were shielded with planks of wood and wet hides; the moment they came up against the walls, many men would mount the stairs inside them and come pouring over the top. Three battering rams, each aimed at one of the west wall's gates, rolled toward us, too. But the most fearsome of the enemy's weapons were the catapults that had now ceased their advance and had begun heaving boulders at the city. One of these was a mangonel, which flung its missiles in a low arc against the wall itself. Even as I drew in a deep breath and grasped the hilt of my sword, a great boulder soared across the pasture and crashed into the wall a hundred yards to the south, shattering its battlements in a shower of stone.

Now it begins, I thought, with a terrible pulling inside me. Again and. always, it begins.

As I did before any battle, I built up walls around me. These were as high as the stars and as hard as diamond; they were as thick as the mountains that keep peoples apart. My will was the stone that formed them, and my dread of what was to come was the mortar that cemented them in place. Already, the screams of men hit by flying rocks or pierced with arrows filled the air. But their agonies couldn't touch me.

'Oh, my Lord!' Maram cried out, hunched behind his stone merlon next to me. 'Oh, my Lord!'

Now the archers along the walls, working with crossbows or long-bows, firing from the arrow slits at the centers of the merlons, shot out great sheets of arrows at Count Ulanu's men. Warriors began falling, in their ones and tens, clutching their chests and bellies. And the enemy's archers returned our fire in great black clouds of whining bolts that arched high and fell almost straight down upon the walls in a clatter of steel points breaking upon stone and too often finding their marks in a throat or a hand or an eye.

'Oh, my Lord! Oh, my Lord!'

Most of the arrows, however, at this range were wasted. The battle-ments provided good cover from their trajectory. More worrisome were the shots fired off by the enemy's most skilled bowmen as their armies drew closer. Perhaps one in ten of these arrows, screaming through the air in straight lines, streaked right through the arrow slits. An archer standing only ten yards from me was killed by one of these. I tried not to look as he practically jumped back from the battlements, a feathered shaft sticking out of his opened mouth and look of vast surprise in his eyes.

There is no pain, I told myself. Now there is only killing and death.

We had skilled archers of our own, and none so fine as Atara. She stood beside me, firing off arrows at a rate that the nearby crossbowmen couldn't match. And few could match the range of her powerful double-curved horn bow, and none her accuracy. Every one of her shots struck some man of Aigul or Virad or one of the naked Blues. Some deflected of a curve of armor or a shield; some found their mark in a shoulder or leg, and so did not kill. But as the moments of terror passed, with missiles shrieking out from and toward the walls, she slowly raised her count of the enemy she had slain.