Armed with the spear, which is some fifteen feet in length, like a third- or fourth-rank phalanx spear. I reached over the wall and managed to get it behind the top rung of the ladder. No one was close to me then. Then highest fellow was the man with the shield, who had withdrawn earlier. He looked up, discarded his shield, started to climb madly toward the spear, then stopped. The ladder leaned out, a yard or so from the wall. I pried back further, and the ladder straightened, and then it leaned back further, held in place only by the friction with the spear. Some men leaped from it. Others tried to throw their weight against it, to force it forward again. Some dared not move. I slid the spear back and up. The ladder tottered. It must fall backward! But it did not. It crashed forward, against the wall. I pried at it again, and the top rung broke. I wished that I had had one of the tridents or one of the sharpened, steel crescents fixed on a metal pole, useful in such work. The fellow who had had the shield now climbed toward me. This time, however, the ladder leaning out from the wall, I managed to get the point of the spear free from under a rung and on one of the uprights itself. I could now push back. He tried to dislodge the point from the wood but I shifted and caught him under the arm and pushed back more. I hoped to use his own fear against him, his unwillingness to release the ladder, but before I could push back enough, past the center of balance, he released one hand and twisted, hanging to a rung with his free hand. But then, again, I managed to get the point on an upright. The ladder straightened, and I thrust out another foot, and then another, moving my hands on the spear, my hands sweaty, and then the ladder seemed, for an instant, to lean oddly back, away. For an instant I was not clear that it would fall. But then men were screaming and leaping from it, up and down its length, and I saw it turn on one upright, doubtless more from their movements and the shifts in weight than from anything of my doing, and then it fell back, and I heard it snap and break. At the same time I drew back, as a pair of quarrels flashed past. I think it probably that some had been fired at me when I had struggled with the spear for I saw at least one new, irregular scratch in the stone near where I had labored. Yes, oddly enough, though there must have been noise, I had not even noticed it at the time. it was only now, oddly, in recollection that it seemed to me I might have heard something there, cutting at the stone, and other things, too, like hissed whispers about me.
A young fellow, one of the two of a age to be lads whom I had seen on the wall, appeared on the steps leading to the upper battlements. He had only two quarrels left, one in the guide, the other grasped in his hand, with the bow, not really quarrels even, only sharpened rods. Even the blunt-headed wooden quarrels, suitable for stunning birds, were gone. I had used him, and the other, he between the command post and the west, the other between the command post and the east, as messengers, hoping in this way to keep them within the semblance of interior lines, our of the thickest fighting.
'They cannot hold on the west walkway!' he cried. 'They give way!' I issued orders and he raced back. My plan, even if successful, would keep the walkway, nearer the command post, only for a few Ehn. I looked to the east. There more Cosians leapt from the bridge of a tower, clambering and stumbling over the bodies of others, tangled lifeless and wounded in the wire. Men struggled to meet them, with pikes and axes. I became aware them again of the blows of the ram below. The sound had been different for the last few Ehn. How had the ladder I had repelled managed to reach the height of the wall? I went to my left and bent over the crenelation, leaning over the wall. I saw then that the roof of the ram shed sloped upwards. A hill, literally, of debris, of sand, rock and bodies, had been built there, before the gate, and the shed thrust up this incline. This brought the blows of the ram high on the gate, presumably over the rocks and sand, and such, which had been heaped behind it by the defenders. That accounted for the difference in the sound of the ram. What effort it must have taken to force the long ram shed up this incline, how much more arduous must be the labor of those within the shed, hauling on the ropes, swinging the great ram upward! I could hear, too, between the heavy, periodic strokes of the ram, the blows of hammers and axes, and the smiting on punches and chisels, and the sounds of creaking metal, as men sought to cut and punch openings in the facing on the gate, then twisting and prying it back. Plates of facing buckled and were torn away. It was on this artificial hill, built before the gate, that the ladder which had reached to the height of the battlements had been mounted. From where I now stood, because of the shed, I could not see the remains of the ladder.
I went to my right then to survey what might be the case on the west. I watched. Then, suddenly the defenders there, holding the west walkway, withdrew. They had been fighting behind a breastwork of fallen bodies, those of both Cosians and defenders. The Cosians seemed for a moment bewildered, but then, with a great cry, swarmed over the bodies in pursuit. Scarcely were the defenders drawn back than the great cauldron of oil now ignited, now aflame, into which the buckets on long handles had been dipped, was overturned with poles and flooded the walkway behind them. The bulk of the Cosians stopped at this wall of flames some forty feet in width. Some, however, raced into it. Of these some perished in the flames. Others, half fire, screaming, turned about, fleeing back to their fellows. Some crossed it, and were cut down on the other side. This retreat, though it surrendered the western walkway, decreased the amount of area to be held, and, with these new numbers, increased the defenders there. The Cosians then within the wall, in the center, were much harder pressed. Some withdrew, even, to the towers, some of which were aflame. I saw the bridges, burned through, collapse beneath some of them, plunging them to the ground. I went again to my left. There, on the east, I saw that the Cosians had gained yards, and that they were now beyond the wire. The defenders, foot by foot, were being pressed back. More Cosians leapt from the bridge of a tower, down onto the bodies and wire, climbing over them, hurrying to join the fray. The east walkway could not be long held.
I went, wearily, to where the roped, ankle-thonged, naked, gagged, hooded slave lay, on the stones. With my foot I turned her to her back. I unbuckled the sword belt from about her, and then, crouching beside her, turned her to her stomach. I withdrew the sheath from between her back and the ropes. It was distended, where it had received the spear, almost to the bottom. I pressed it as flat as I could, with my hands and foot. The blade then, again, but not well, fitted into it. I rebuckled the belt and put it about me, the strap over my right shoulder, the sheath at the left hip, as one wears it on the march. That is a stabler carry. The advantage of the left shoulder carry, the sheath at the left thigh, is the ease of discarding the belt and sheath, thereby ridding oneself of a possible encumbrance.
The young fellow with the crossbow climbed to the upper battlements. He now had only one quarrel left. 'The flames on the west walkway are lessening,' he said. He looked down at the slave. 'She is still alive,' he said, puzzled. 'Yes,' I said. 'How can it be?' he asked.
'How do you think?' I asked.
'A trick?' he said.
'Yes,' I said.
'But I saw her on the spear,' he said.
'She was hung on it,' I said, 'not mounted up in it, not impaled with it.' 'Are you going to kill her now?' he asked.
'No,' I said, 'at least not immediately, unless perhaps she should be in some respect displeasing.'
'You speak of her as though she were a slave,' he said.
'Are you a slave?' I asked the girl. 'Whimper once for 'Yes, twice for 'no. ' She whimpered once.
'Do you desire to please men?' I asked.
She whimpered once.
I patted her. 'Show us,' I said.
She lifted her behind, piteously, placatingly.
'That is not Lady Claudia!' said the young fellow.
'No, it is not,' I said, But I smiled to myself as I said it. Did he not know that Lady Claudia would have been quite as quick, if not quicker to lift herself, hoping to please?'
'Who is it?' asked the lad.
'I have not yet named her,' I said.
'Who was it?' he asked.
'Do not concern yourself with the matter,' I said.
'Where then is Lady Claudia, the traitress?' he asked.
'I do not know,' I said.
'It is as Calendonius said,' he said. 'You are not Marsias.'
'No,' I said. 'I am not Marsias.'
'Who, then, are you?' asked he.
'One whom you have acknowledged as your captain,' I said.
