On reaching the walls they tried attacking in three places, hauling their ladders up, the shields constantly pummelled by the heavy rocks heaved from above. Reva kept bobbing up to loose at any attackers who strayed from cover, shifting her aim to the men on the ladders when they began to climb. She would wait until they were a good twenty feet off the ground before sending them tumbling back, hopefully onto the heads of their comrades. She stopped counting at six.

“My lord!” a man called to Antesh, running from the wall’s west-facing section. “The river!”

Reva and Arken followed Antesh as he ran to view the danger. The western defenders were staring and pointing at the spectacle of fifty or so large rafts making their way across the dark waters of the Coldiron, each laden with shield-bearing Volarians and propelled forward with long poles. From the constant movement of the rafts’ occupants Reva judged these free men rather than Varitai. Soon to be free corpses, she thought grimly.

“Spread your men out,” Antesh told the House Guard sergeant who had command of this section of wall. “Squads of ten. Each one goes for a different raft, tell them to aim at the polemen.”

He ordered them to loose as soon as the rafts came within range, arrows arcing down into the shifting mass of Free Swords, forcing them to keep their shields raised.

“Got the bastard!” Arken exclaimed as his arrow claimed a pole man on the lead raft, Reva’s shaft taking the man who stepped forward to replace him.

The pitch of the arrow storm increased as the rafts drew closer and the archers could pick out gaps in their shield roofs, the raft in the lead soon drifting out of control and twisting in the current, scattering bodies from its deck that the river carried away. Another two rafts suffered the same fate, but the remainder managed to make the bank, although they all showed sizeable gaps in their ranks.

The Free Swords scrambled ashore and ran to preassigned points to begin their assault, losing ever more men to the archers, but there were too many to kill and soon their ladders were reaching up to the battlements. The Free Swords had archers mixed into their ranks, keeping up a steady stream of arrows at the point where the ladders crested the wall. Reva saw two archers fall as they stepped up to push a ladder away.

“Get your spearmen up,” Antesh told the House Guard sergeant as the Volarians began to scale the ladders.

Reva loosed a final arrow at a climber, ducking back before she could gauge the result and moving to stand with the sergeant as he arranged his spearmen into tightly bunched groups. Arken stood at her side, hefting the axe he had chosen from the armoury. She never had enjoyed much success teaching him the sword.

Antesh kept his archers at the wall as long as he could, exacting a fearful toll on the climbers, but losing several more to the Volarian bowmen below. “All right, move back!” he shouted, walking to Reva’s side and placing his bow carefully on the top of the inner wall. “Time to dance, my lady,” he said to her, drawing his sword.

She placed the wych elm next to his longbow. “I still have questions about this,” she said, tapping a finger to the carvings.

“Ask me tomorrow,” he said with a faint grin.

The first Volarian to reach the battlements was a large fellow with swarthy, brutish features under a thick iron helmet, shouting in rage and terror as he pulled himself over the wall. Reva darted forward, ducked and rolled under the Volarian’s wild slash, drawing her sword as she came to her feet and stabbing upwards, under the man’s chin, forcing the blade through tongue and bone into the brain. She withdrew the sword, turning and slashing at the face of the next climber trying to haul himself onto the battlements. He fell screaming and blind onto the men on the ladder below, taking them with him as he plummeted to his death.

More Volarians appeared on either side of her and the spearmen charged forward with a yell, stabbing and killing in a frenzy, the battlements transformed into a confused jumble of thrashing men. One of the Volarians commanded Reva’s instant attention as he cut down the spearman who came for him then began hacking through the melee with a short sword in each hand, three men falling to him in quick succession. He was clad in different armour to the others, less bulky with his arms left bare apart from greaves on his wrists, and no helmet on his head which was shaved bald. His face betrayed scant emotion as he fought, side-stepping thrusts and delivering killing blows with cool precision, moving with a speed that bordered on the unnatural.

Arken gave a yell and charged at the man, axe raised, deaf to Reva’s warning. The skilled man brought both swords up in a crossed parry as Arken’s axe came down, then extended a kick into the boy’s midriff, sending him flat onto his back, the axe flying from his grip. Reva ran forward as the Volarian moved in with the killing stroke, flicking her sword at his eyes and forcing him back. There was no surprise on his face as he stood regarding her, blood trickling from the fresh cut below his eye, and barely any pause before he attacked, one sword slashing at her head, the other thrusting at her belly. She twisted, deflecting both blades with a vertical parry, continuing the spin but descending to one knee, bringing the blade round to cleave his leg above the ankle. He wore thick greaves on his calves so the cut wasn’t enough to cripple him, and he registered little pain or shock as he stabbed down at her, the tip of his short sword shattering on stone as she spun again, rising to thrust the sword into the base of his skull.

The twin swords clattered onto the stone as the skilled man sank to his knees, spasming as Reva pulled her sword free, falling onto his face and lying still.

She drew breath and looked for Arken, finding him standing with the other defenders clutching his chest and staring at her. The Volarians seemed to have vanished. She went to the wall to watch them flee, some huddled behind shields as they attempted to shuffle to the causeway, others just running blindly towards safety, many falling to longbows as they did so.

“We may have a little respite . . .” she began turning back, falling silent at the sight of them all kneeling with their heads lowered. She looked around, ready to berate her uncle for coming to the wall, then realised he wasn’t there. They were kneeling for her, even Antesh and Arken.

“Don’t do that,” she said in a small voice.

? ? ?

Reva spent the rest of the morning helping carry the wounded to the makeshift healing house Brother Harin had established in an inn near the gate. The brother and his two fellow healers from the Fifth Order, an elderly woman and a man of middle years, worked tirelessly stitching cuts and setting bones, whilst occasionally managing to save men from what Reva assumed would be fatal wounds.

“This may interest you, my lady.” Harin held up an instrument and moved to the archer she had seen take an arrow in the cheek the night before. The shaft had been removed but the head was firmly lodged in the bones of his face. The brother had given him a hefty dose of redflower but he still whimpered in pain, staring up at the instrument in Harin’s hand with fearful eyes. “This is called the Mustorian lance, in honour of your late father.”

The archer shrank back as Harin crouched down to inspect his wound, a deep gash in his cheek, recently cleaned but still leaking blood. Reva took the man’s hand and squeezed it, forcing an encouraging smile. “My father?” she asked Harin.

“Yes, his famous arrow wound was pretty much identical to this unfortunate fellow’s. The head so deeply buried that trying to cut it out would have been fatal. The healer who treated him was obliged to design a new instrument.” He held the long probe up for her inspection. “See the way the point is shaped? Narrow enough to fit into the base of an arrowhead and when it does”—he pushed his thumb along the centre of the probe and it split in two—“I extend it and grip the head, allowing swift and easy removal.”

“And painless?” she asked.

“Oh, Faith no,” he said, leaning over the wounded archer and starting to guide the probe into the wound. “It’s exquisitely agonising, so I’m told. Hold this fellow’s arms for me would you?”

She found Arken in the inn’s tap room, the elderly healer wrapping bandages about his chest. “Cracked ribs,” he told her with a rueful grin. “Only two though.”

“That was foolish,” she said. “Choose an easier kill next time.”

“None of them are easy, except for you.”

“All done,” the healer said, tying off the bandages. “I’d normally give you a vial of redflower for the pain, but we’re having to ration it.”

“There are a few extra bottles at the manse,” Reva said. “I’ll have them brought here.”

“Your uncle’s care requires redflower, my lady.”

He won’t last long enough to need it all, she thought then winced at the coldness of it. “He . . . wouldn’t wish to see his people in pain.” She turned to Arken, clasping his hand. “Get some rest.”

? ? ?

She sought out Lord Antesh, finding him in a room in the gatehouse arguing with Lord Arentes about how best to distribute the men. “They’ll know by now that concentrating against one or two points will avail them nothing,” he said with an air of forced patience. “Next time they’ll try to test us in several places at once. The Father knows they have the strength to do it.”