indifferent to slung stone and arrow.
And then surged forward behind the ladders once again.
By now it had been discovered that large stones dropped on the attacking larvae below the walls were somewhat more effective than slings and arrows, but that fire was disappointingly inefficient. The deadwood figures were not really dry, and they would have to be burnt into ashes to be stopped.
'A breach! A breach!'
Mark heard the cry go up some minutes after the second surge with ladders against the walls began. Looking down at the top of the west wall, to his right, he saw that gray mannikins were on it, their arms windmilling as they fought.
'The sword comes!'
'Townsaver!'
Through the defenders' thin reserves the figure of Nestor, recognizable in his new armor, was moving into action. Above and through the banshee-howling of the enemy sounded the high shriek of the blade. The sound called up for Mark his last day in his home village, and he felt a surge of sickness.
The hand of Dame Yoldi pressed his arm. 'It comes awake, and timely too. We have a holding here, and unarmed folk in it to be defended. The gods cannot be wholly evil, to have forged a weapon of this nature.'
Mark could not think beyond that screaming sound. Nestor had reached the foe now, and the blade in his hands blurred back and forth, faster than sight could follow it, and the first gray rank went down.
This was Duke Fraktin's first chance to hear Townsaver scream, and he was greatly interested. He watched from a distance as the small blur in one man's hands cleared the west wall of larvae. The Duke was impressed, but not particularly surprised.
He watched also, with fascination, how gracefully and angrily Queen Yambu rode her prancing warbeast in front of her own ranked army of human men, even as he himself paced near the center of his own. The bulk of the Duke's forces were now disposed in a semicircular formation, with its right wing on the lake almost behind the castle, left wing anchored just about where the winding road came up the hill to find Sir Andrew's fortified main gate. Upon that gate a hundred larvae were now battering with a ram fashioned from the trunk of a huge tree. Their feet slipped and slid in mud that had been their predecessors' bodies, while stones and fire decimated their ranks from above. Meanwhile, along the road, rough battalions of replacements jostled forward, howling dully, ready without fear or hope to take their turn beneath the walls.
From the winding road around west to the lake again, the human forces of Yambu held the field. They were arrayed, like the Duke's army, in a rough halfcircle. The Duke like everyone else was well aware that the two armies of attackers were watching each other closely and uneasily, even as both watched the progress of the swarming preliminary attack on the castle by Yambu's auxiliaries.
The Duke turned to his blue-garbed wizard, who was waiting nearby clad in incongruous-looking armor. 'At least,' His Grace remarked, 'a good part of the Horde is going to he used up against those walls, and particularly by that sword. We can hope that most of those dead-wood monsters will be out of the way before it comes our turn to fight Yambu, for the spoils.' 'Indeed, sire.'
'I'm convinced now, Blue-Robes, that it was she who tried to kidnap my cousin. Obviously she's got word of the swords somehow… what word is there from the east?'
This last was spoken to the Duke's staff at large. None of them had any real news to report from that direction. At night there were the reddened eastern skies for all to see, and by day the distant plumes of smoke. When the Duke had dispatched a flying scout with a message for the small garrison at Arin-on-Aldan, the scout had come back with a report of being unable to find the village or its garrison, in the altered landscape and foul air. (The message had been an order for the family of Jord the Miller to be brought into the Duke's presence for some serious interrogation, milder methods having failed.) Indeed it appeared now that communications with the foothill region had broken down completely. Reports, scattered and uncertain, indicated that the whole civilian population of that area was now in flight, and military patrols were at best disrupted. The Duke sighed, for his vanished family of subjects for interrogation. But he had a battle to fight here, and could spare no extra manpower for search operations of doubtful utility over there.
Still, the blue-robed wizard did not appear entirely unhappy when this subject came up for discussion. He had the air of holding good news in reserve, and, sure enough, at his earliest good chance he announced it.
'Sire, I am pleased to be able to report that my private project has achieved a measure of success.'
'What other project?' The ducal brow creased with a slight frown. 'Oh. You are speaking now of… of what you spoke to me about last night in secret.'
'Exactly so, sire.' The wizard bowed, a small dip with an air of triumph. 'We now have reason to hope that Mars himself is soon going to come directly to our aid. Then, what will our rivals have gained from their paltry success in raising the Horde?'
'By the Great Worm Yilgarn.' Duke Fraktin was indubitably impressed. But he was suddenly somewhat worried as well. 'Do you think, Blue-Robes, that such a raising is… the god? Mars? Are you sure you're serious?'
'Oh, entirely serious, sire.'
A hundred people or more might be watching, even if probably none of them were close enough at the moment to hear. The Duke made himself smile. 'Do you think it entirely wise?'
At this the wizard began to look downcast; he had surely been expecting more enthusiasm from his master. He was somewhat relieved when their talk was interrupted. A closeranked body of men had surrounded, and were now bringing into the Duke's presence a man who (it was reported) insisted on speaking to the Duke himself, who swore that he had been within the past day inside the beseiged castle, and who claimed to know a way by which it would be possible to enter secretly with a body of armed men.
Presently, after the man was thoroughly searched, and tested for magical powers, the Duke confronted trim. 'Well? Spit it out, fellow.'
The fellow before him was poorly garbed, and young, with a lean, hunted look. 'My name is Kaparu, Your Grace. I have worked as an agent of Queen Yambu in the past, but I'll be pleased to work for a prince as well- known for generosity as yourself instead.'
Throughout the whole morning the fighting continued with scarcely an interruption. What small pauses there were resulted not from any weariness or unwillingness on the part of the inhuman mob that tried to swarm upon the walls, but from their need for new ladders, as numbers of the old ones burned or broke under the impact of rock or fire or molten lead. And even when the fighting ebbed for a time, the howling of the Horde went on without pause. The volume of sound did not seem to diminish much with their necessarily diminishing numbers.
As Mark came down from the roof to the level of the top of the outer walls, he heard a stalwart swordsman mutter: 'We have cut down thousands of them, and yet still they come.' The man was not exaggerating.
Presently Mark was making his way across the crowded main courtyard of the castle, passing hastily arranged stockpiles of supplies, tethered animals, a row of moaning wounded being cared for. He had come down from the roof with Dame Yoldi's permission, in response to a wave from Barbara. A longer break in the fighting than any previous had set in, and the magicians of Yambu had even summoned the Horde back from the walls, out of reach of fire and hurled rock, till more ladders could be got ready. Inside the castle, those who had borne the burden of the battle were being relieved now, wherever possible, for food and rest. Still it seemed to Mark that the yard was crowded mostly with noncombatant refugees, all of whom seemed to be muttering complaints that too many others had been let in. Mark heard several people assuring others that whatever food supplies Sir Andrew had available could not possibly be enough to see this crowd through a long seige.
Mark repeated this saying to his old companions, when he came to the place against a damp-stoned wall where Barbara, and now Ben as well, were waiting for him.
Barbara sat leaning against the wall, but Ben was standing, as if his nerves and muscles were still on alert, tuned to too high a pitch to let him rest. He was not tall, but neither was he as short as his thick build sometimes made him look. The mismatched breastplate and helmet he had scrounged somewhere now gave him an almost clownish look.
Looking at Barbara, Ben laughed tiredly. 'I only hope we have the chance to try out a long seige. I think we'd like it better than…' He didn't finish, but let himself slump back against the wall, and then slide down till he was sitting beside her.
Now Mark could see Nestor, swordless at the moment but still wearing most of his new armor, picking his
