The ogres were already halfway across the meadow when Riverwind dashed up the steps, joining Brimble and Kronn on the battlements. He stared over the merlons, down at the city’s attackers, and said nothing.
“Why aren’t they sending more?” Kronn wondered aloud. “Can they take the city with so few?”
Brimble shook his head. “I doubt it,” he said. “But that’s not what they’re aiming to do.”
“They’re going to test our defenses,” Riverwind agreed. He bent his bow around his leg, strung it quickly, and readied an arrow. “They’ll engage us, try to find our weaknesses, then withdraw. Brimble, you should get your men in position.”
The grizzled kender had already turned to bark at his troops. Archers and slingers ran to their posts, then stood ready, waiting expectantly as their foes moved toward the town. Then, when the ogres were in range, they raised their weapons and began to fire.
The first volley of shafts and stones slammed into the front ranks of the horde, a rain of death that felled a hundred ogres in an instant. The second flight streaked into their midst, but the attackers were ready for it. They stopped, raising their shields over their heads to block the barrage. Even so, three score of their number dropped, dead or dying.
When the ogres lowered their shields and began to move again, they did so at a run, charging toward the walls. Kendermore’s defenders slew another hundred and fifty attackers before they reached it. Riverwind picked off three ogres with his bow, and Kronn and Brimble pelted the attackers with stones hurled from their chapaks.
Then the wall shuddered, dust rising from its flagstones, as the ogres slammed against it with all their might.
Brimble blew on his whistle. “Rocks!” he roared, his shout carrying above the din of the attacking ogres.
As the archers and slingers continued to pepper the town’s assailants, other kender picked up stones from the battlements and heaved them off the wall. The rocks ranged from stones the size of a kender’s fist to great slabs so heavy it took two kender to lift them. They crashed down upon the horde, smashing the ogres’ upraised shields and crushing whatever they struck. The ground beneath the wall quickly grew littered with rubble and broken bodies.
Below, ogres heaved javelins with all their might; many of the spears clattered uselessly against the wall, but here and there they flew true, arcing over and between the merlons to impale the kender atop the battlements. Some of the dead collapsed on the catwalk. Others fell from the wall, their arms and legs windrnilling as they plummeted to the hard ground. One javelin flashed by Riverwind, lodging in the stomach of the archer to his right. The skewered kender, a woman with a bright red topknot, staggered and fell back, screaming, into the courtyard below. Her cries ended with a crunching of bone as she struck the cobblestones.
“Cauldrons!” Brimble roared. He lifted a stone the size of his head and hurled it down, smashing an ogre’s skull. “Move it, you laggards!” he bellowed, and blew on his whistle. “Douse them now, before you get stuck with one of those spears!”
Obediently, the kender nearest the steaming kettles grabbed up their pry bars and began to heave, tilting the cauldrons. The thick, black pitch was more stubborn than water to pour, but the kender heaved with all their might, and soon steaming tar splashed down upon the ogres. Cries of agony rose from the ground below. The pitch clung to whatever it hit, and black-drenched ogres howled, clawing at their faces and bodies as it scalded their flesh. Several archers nocked arrows wrapped in oil-soaked rags and touched them to nearby braziers. The arrows burst into flame, and at another shouted order from Brimble they loosed their shafts toward the pools of pitch below. Fires leapt into life where the arrows struck, killing many more ogres. The stench of burning rose from below, mixing with the brimstone reek of the wind. Black smoke filled the air.
“That’s it!” Riverwind shouted. He loosed another arrow, which flashed through the air, hitting an ogre in the neck. “You’re doing it! Keep at them!”
The assault continued in this way for an hour, though to Kendermore’s defenders it felt more like an eternity. In time, half the attacking ogres lay unmoving at the base of the wall, pierced and smashed and burnt. But half still remained, and the supplies of arrows and slingstones on the battlements ran perilously low. One by one, the archers and slingers cast their weapons aside and joined their fellows at rock-heaving.
“There!” Kronn cried, pointing out across the meadow. “Ladders coming! They’re going to try and scale the wall!”
Riverwind squinted, leaning dangerously out over the merlons. He ducked a soaring javelin, then peered toward the distant Kenderwood. Night had fallen, but in the glow of the fires and the pale moon, he could make out several hundred more of the ogres, charging forward to join their fellows. They carried at least two dozen long, sturdy ladders.
“Get ready!” Brimble shouted. With practiced ease, he slung his chapak across his back with one hand, picking up a long military fork with the other. “They’ll all come at once. Be prepared to repel them!”
Hurriedly the kender set down or cast aside their weapons and pry bars, discarding them in favor of pole arms. The few remaining archers and slingers concentrated their last shots on the ladder bearers. They succeeded in stopping a third of them before they could get near the wall, but the rest came on, driving their ladders into the ground and swinging them up toward the walls. Then the ogres began to climb.
Wherever a ladder rose, kender ran to intercept it. They pushed with their bill hooks and pitchforks, trying to shove the ladders away before the ogres could reach the top. Several ladders fell, crashing back to the ground and crushing those who had tried to climb them.
But the ladders were sturdier than the ones Riverwind and Brimble had used in their drills, and the ogres who held their bases steady were strong. Of the seventeen ladders that went up, nine refused to fall.
Brimble Redfeather swore like a sailor, shoving his fork against a ladder with all his might. “Damn it!” he snarled. “They’re going to make it up here! They’re going to take the wall!” He blew hard on his whistle, sounding a signal he’d hoped he wouldn’t have to use. “Arm yourselves! Be ready when they come! Kill them as soon as you can see their ugly faces!”
The kender dropped their pole arms, which were ill-suited for close-quarters fighting, and took up their own weapons again. Hoopaks, chapaks, clublike battaks, hammer-headed hachaks, and many other strange weapons rose in anticipation of the first ogres to crest the wall.
The kender didn’t have to wait long. The ogres climbed quickly, and soon they began to appear at the top of every ladder. The kender laid into them, shouting as they chopped and slashed and thrust with their weapons. Surprised by the defenders’ fury the first few ogres fell from their perches, bloody and battered. In several places, the ogres steadying the bottoms of the ladders had to leap aside to keep from being struck by the plummeting corpses. The kender promptly responded by toppling those ladders to the ground.
Not all of the attackers were so easily thwarted, however. In three different places along the wall, the ogres forced the kender to give ground, vaulting over the merlons to land on the catwalk. The kender rallied quickly, sprinting along the battlements to hold the intruders at bay. In one place, they forced the attackers back quickly, toppling their ladder when they were done, but the ogres held the other two breaches. Kronn and Riverwind ran to one of those battlefronts, and Brimble dashed to the other.