“’Ware fat.” The yell was loud and close.
Julia scrambled away from the embrasure, Rane tumbling to the other side. Two well-grown girls came up, the poles of the fatpot on their shoulders, a third used a clawed lever to tilt the bubbling stinking fat along the grotesquely elongated lip and out the embrasure, spilling the fat on the men below until the pot was empty. Screams and curses, groans and shouts rose to her with the stink of the oil, the sounds of men scrambling away. When the pot was empty the girls went trotting back to the big kettle for another load.
Rane leaped to her feet, sword out, and ran down the walkway.
Several ladders projected above the merlons and men were coming off them onto the walkway. Meien and other defenders ran at them from all around, but dropped to their knees as Angel and his youths leaped up and began shooting, cutting the men down as they stuck their heads up. Several Stenda men were using their longer reach to get at the ladders, but were driven back again and again by the clumsy thrusts of the invaders’ pikes. Julia caught up her rifle, checked the clip, but stood where she was, watching with a frown as enough of the men got over in spite of Angel to make further shooting a danger to the defenders.
A lanky half-grown Stenda boy swung up on a merlon, ignoring the shafts aimed at him, and leaped from one to the next until he was close enough to use his lance on a ladder. He reversed it, swung it back and slammed the butt into that ladder, sending it sliding along the smooth stone face of the wall, knocking into the next ladder over, shoving that into the third that also slid away. As the ladders and the men on them tumbled away, he started a whooping dance where he was, a mountain boy with no fear of heights. Julia swore and dived into the embrasure, began sweeping the hills where the bulk of the army had found shelter, shooting at anyone who stuck his head up, intent on distracting longbowmen and everyone else out there until someone with a bit of sense could yank that young idiot off the wall.
A hand touched her shoulder. She sat back on her heels, cradled the rifle on her thighs, looked around. Rane, back from the m6lee. “Did someone get that idiot down?”
“After he took a shaft in the shoulder.”
“Teach him anything?”
“Doubt it.” Rane chuckled. “Didn’t stop grinning even when Dina was sawing at the shaft and pulling it out of him.”
Julia shook her head. “Him and Angel’s bunch. Seems that kids are the same wherever they grow up.”
Rane chuckled again, and began wiping her sword carefully with a bit of soft leather.
Farther down the wall Angel was cursing as he cut an arrow from a horse’s flank. There was a girl in healer white holding the beast’s head and soothing it while he worked. Another horse was down, dead. Stenda men and mijlockers were using pikes and ropes to pry it up over the knee-high guardwall. More of the white-clad girl medics were helping the wounded down the ramp, a slightly older medic was kneeling beside one of the mijlockers, working on a wound in his leg. As the wounded were helped away, reinforcements came up to take their places. Five hundred against five thousand. But they were holding the wall, a precarious hold maintained by Hern’s careful use of his fighters, by the quick medical treatment, by the tireless efforts of Serroi. They were holding, but Kole hadn’t sent his trained fighters against them yet, he was using the conscripts to wear them down, use up their ammunition, tire them out, whittle away at their numbers. Julia got to her feet, unclipped the canteen from her belt, unscrewed the lid and took a drink. The tepid, metal-tainted water went down fast and easy, cut the dust in her throat and washed away some of the sourness that came into her mouth when she thought of all the killing. She used her rifle with skill and coolness, concentrating on doing it well while she was in the midst of the skirmishes, concentrating on swallowing her loathing for the whole business when it was over. She passed the canteen to Rane. “How close was this one?” She took the canteen back, clipped it onto her belt. “I was too busy to watch.”
Rane waited until the motor roar from below died down a little. “Got more over the wall this time. You saw Hakel doing his dance. He got off lighter than he should but he stopped them.” She scowled back along the wall. “My sister’s son. He does something like that again and. I twist his ear for him.” Julia smiled to herself at the reluctant pride in Rane’s voice. The ex-meie went on, “We have five prisoners, the rest that got over are dead. Our side, three dead, a dozen wounded, six of them bad, don’t know if they can get them to Serroi in time, the rest, arms or legs or a scrape. Most of them ready to be back on the wall tomorrow, blessed be She for giving us Serroi.”
Julia looked past her, saw two men lifting a boy and putting him on a stretcher; his head swung to one side and she saw his face, the gap-toothed, silent scream, as they lifted him. Rudy. She sighed, rubbed her hand across her face. Nothing new for him, his life was one bloody wound. She didn’t know if he could remember any happy times, though there should have been some good moments when he was with his family and they were still working their land.
Liz touched Julia’s shoulder. “Time’s up, Julia. Catch a ride to the shelter and get something to eat.” She squatted beside the crenel, her companion meie with her, Leeshan, a golden minark who looked too small-boned and fragile to fight. “We’ll keep the nasties off you.”
“Hah.” Julia slung the rifle over her shoulder, glanced at the men and women hoisting the dead attackers into the crenels and shoving them off to fall at the base of the wall. “They should be quiet a while now.”
Julia and Rane trudged down the nearest ramp and snagged a ride in the pickup ambulance. The day was bright and cold but there were banks of clouds in the west and a dampness in the air that promised rain and chilled her bones. Julia was grateful for the fur-lined boots Rane had found for her. Must have belonged to a Stenda because the mijlockers had chunky square feet that made hers look like rails. They were a healthy bunch for the feudal society they lived in. An eon ago when she was working with Simon, he’d got her interested in the middle ages where the lives of the peasants and the poor were best described as nasty, brutish and short, however it offended her writer’s ear to use such an overworked set of words. Even the older tie-men seemed sturdy enough, no signs of malnutrition. They’d obviously worked hard all their lives; their hands and the way they stood and walked spoke eloquently of that, but they weren’t beaten down or dull-witted. There was one old tie who claimed seventy years; he was alert and active, a gnarled root of a man ready for another seventy if he wasn’t killed in this siege. From the little she’d seen of the way they lived, they had the Biserica, the healwomen and the teachings of the Keepers to thank for that, not only for their medical care but for the emphasis on cleanliness of body and house. And there was always the magic. Simon was fascinated by how that capriciously accessible power had shaped lives here, the subtle and not so subtle differences he was finding in a society with much the same social patterns and degree of technology as those medieval societies he knew so well; whenever he could, he hung around the Biserica library with its impressive collection of hand lettered books and scrolls. The printing press was going to be an eye-opener on this world. Julia grinned as she thought about the subversive role books had always played back home. That’ll shake them up if nothing else does.
The pickup rattled to a stop, letting them off at the huge canvas shelter, where most of the defenders not on the wall spent their time. Heat, laughter, cheerful voices, food smells hit her in the face and gave her a lift as they always did when she came here. Girls were everywhere, eating, serving, collecting plates, running errands, chattering, sitting in groups working not too hard on fletching arrows; Stenda girls, lanky and blonde; minarks, all shades of brown with tilted black eyes and brown hair ranging from fawn to chocolate; black girls from the Fenakel, green-scaled sea-girls, other types she couldn’t name, not knowing the world well enough; but most of all there were the slim brown girls from the mijloc, dozens of them, ranging from twelve to sixteen, a little frightened at what was happening, but coping with it, the brightest, and most spirited girls of the Plain, many of them here against the will of their kin. Not all nice and sweet. There were greedy girls, lazy girls, quarrelsome ones, arrogant ones, girls with the need to dominate all around them, sly girls and sneaks, yet with all their flaws even the worst of them were fiercely determined to defend the Biserica, sure with the simplicity and arrogance of youth that they were going to win. Julia found it exhilarating to step into that bubbling mix, though she knew the dream for what it was. She picked up a tray and followed Rane to one of the quieter corners.