Others clung wildly to the ropes, unable to move. Of these flighted quarrels, at the leisure of calm marksmen, took bloody tolls. Some men below stood even on bodies trying to reach men above them on ropes. More stones and tiles rained down. I saw a fellow struck to one knee by a tile hitting on his shield. For a moment he seemed in shock. Then he struggled up, again, unsteadily, to guard his yard of wall. More quarrels were flighted over us. They hit the walkway like hail. "Back to the wall!" I supposed that many of the bowsmen on the wall, from the safety of the crenelation, were continuing tenaciously, following their original orders, to seal off, as they could, the walkway, keeping the pen closed, so to speak. A child ran screaming past me to press himself against the wall, cowering there. In a moment he had been overtaken by a woman who crouched down, wrapping him in her cloak. We were buffeted by women.
"Get out of the way!" cried one of our men. A Cosian slid down a rope, shielded by the women. He thrust one aside, putting his blade into a fellow. Another, though, from the other side, caught him, and he backed against the wall, then turned, scratching at it, spitting blood. The child wrapped in the cloak, soothed by the woman, watched him as he sank to the foot of the wall. The woman was weeping. A glance about showed that the danger was at the gate where the Cosians, in their hundreds, were pressing out, swelling forth, onto the landing. I hurried along the wall, to the left of the gate, as one faces it from the landing.
"To the gate!" I cried to every other man. "To the gate!" Their swords bloodied they turned and sped to the vicinity of the gate. I hurried about the fighting there and detailed men from the right, as well, to the gate. In the layered leather of my shield bristled quarrels.
I returned to the wall. Few descended now the ropes. It could be seen from the wall even more clearly than from the landing, I suppose, the steady, blade by blade, stroke by stroke, expansion of Cosian territory below, its burgeoning from the gate. When it reached the walkway the walkway would be indeed closed. That was what I wanted most desperately to prevent. I was not interested in holding the landing itself, except in so far as it protected the walkway. My primary objective was to evacuate the landing and withdrew to the piers. Indeed, I myself would wish to close the walkway once this evacuation was complete. I seized two fellows and issued orders. I was surrendering the wall. One raced to the wall to the left, the other to the right. Two lines were formed, one to the left, one to the right, of fellows with shields. There two lines, converging, the fighting in the center, by the gate, between them, led to the walkway, and then out on the walkway, for better than forty yards.
The men in these lines crouched down, their shields between themselves and the wall, creating an open fence of shields, a poor, broken cover, given the paucity of their numbers, but better than none. Some fellows near the wall urged the women and children to stream behind these, trying to reach the piers. Crouching down many did, and, it seemed, all with children. I saw the one woman, still clutching the child in her cloak, darting from shield to shield. Other women chose not, either from fear or prudence, to risk this dangerous run. I saw some looking up, in fear, at the ropes, still dangling there, and pull away their veils, thrust back their hoods and put their hands to the collars of their robes.
A woman clutched at me, then sank to her knees beside me, holding me. I looked down, angrily. Her eyes, over the veil, looked up at me. It was Lady Claudia, in the provocative rags that have been designed by the former Lady Publia, that she might hope to be of interest to Cosians. A free woman, bundled in the robes of concealment, spit on her as she passed. "Slave!" she hissed. Lady Claudia looked up at me, clutching me. I pressed her away with my foot, to the landing. "Traitress!" I said to her. She crawled back to me and brushed aside her veil, to press her lips piteously to my feet. "To the piers!" I said to her. She leaped up, sobbing, and fled toward the walkway.
Now that the wall was freed I saw more Cosians descending on ropes. I saw, too, happily, some small boats from the piers, manned apparently by fishermen and others, fellows who had made it to the piers earlier, making their way toward the landing. I had little doubt that these were the results of the commands of Aemilianus, now out on the piers somewhere, hoping that they might, in their small way, aid in the evacuation of the landing. To be sure, for the quarrels, it would take great courage to bring these to the landing. I could see, too, the backs and fins of sharks crowded about the lower edge of the walkway, near the landing. They were so thick there it seemed they constituted a surface. It was almost as though one might walk upon them. Yet I could not have cared to tread that shifting, treacherous, churning surface. The water, close to the landing, by the walkway, was white with their thrashing. I think perhaps they attacked one another as often as those in the water.
I saw more than one woman, struck from the walkway, reaching out, seizing the walkway, pulled again, screaming to its safety, even in the midst of the frenzy at its edge. Among the free women running to, and on, the walkway, under the partial cover of the shields, I saw female slaves, too, barefoot and bare-armed, in their tiny skirts, their necks in their light steel collars. The heads of the women who were not hooded I could see were shorn and those of the slave females cropped the shortest of all. Among those hastening on the walkway I then saw a naked figure, stumbling, being dragged by a free woman behind her on a leash. The naked figure's wrists were thonged together behind her back. Her head was covered by a hood, improvised from a part of a man's tunic. The gag would still be in her mouth. It was she who had been Lady Publia. I recalled that she had not had her hair shorn until I had done it, with a shaving knife, in the cell. One could not see it under the hood, but I had made it slave short. It seemed to me then that most of the women who wished, or dared, to attempt the walkway had done so. It was will for the men were being beaten back, almost to the beginning of the walkway. I saw the snout of more than one shark rising from the water. Cosians pressed about. More swarmed through the gate to the landing. More descended on the ropes. I issued orders, dispatching the fellows nearest me to convey them to their respective destinations. The two lines which had to some extent protected the women and children now withdrew to protect the flanks of the center. Then I, standing at the walkway, man by man, as was opportune, sent fellows back along the walkway, retreating to the piers. These mostly backed along, protecting their retreat with their shields, making their way in a file between the fellows still in position on the walkway, on each side of it, those I had placed there to afford protection to the women and children. The lines thinned to the sides of me, and before me, and the Cosians pressed in, yet more closely.