no longer visible. I then sent forth men from the shield wall, singly, and in squads, to ferry the women and children, one at a time, or the women carrying children in their arms, beneath the cover of their shields, to the walkway. Once they were beyond quarrel range they hurried back to conduct still others to temporary safety. There were cries of rage from the wall.
I saw the young crossbowman, under the cover of a shield, held by his friend, the other young fellow from the front wall, harvesting quarrels from the walkway. There were fine quarrels, crafted by metal workers, not sharpened rods, not blunt sticks, fit for stunning birds. He distributed these to cohorts behind the shield wall, neglecting not to retain some for himself. He was young but his aim was fearsomely accurate. He had been trained on the wall, in a hundred assaults.
I looked at the gate. It was at the end of the corridor we had followed, which had led out, to the landing. Some men were guarding it. Naturally it opened inward, to the advantage of the citadel. We had no adequate way, given the time and materials at our disposal, of barring it from the outside.
Now some of the fellows on the wall were hurling stones and tiles down on the figures huddled below.
I saw one fellow doing this suddenly pitch back, his hands clutching at the shaft of a quarrel. Its passage upward through his head had been arrested by the back of his helmet.
The young fellow with the crossbow set another quarrel to his weapon. I sent some men forward, to try to shield the huddled noncombatants, before they could be conducted away from the wall, but it was of little use. Many of the noncombatants broke and ran.
Many were cut down before they could reach our shield wall.
'Stay closer to the wall!' I cried. 'Get closer to the wall!'
I saw another fellow, his hands on a large stone, it held over his head, turn and fall within the rampart, struck by a quarrel.
The young crossbowman set yet another quarrel to his weapon.
'It is harder for them then they would like,' said a fellow.
'They will be pouring through the gate in a moment!' said a fellow. 'And over the wall,' said another grimly.
He had hardly spoken when the interior gate, leading out to the landing, swung inward, and a stream of Cosians waiting within, a moment later, helmeted, with shields, thrusting with spears, slashing with swords, pressed out against the defenders. At the same time a hundred ropes, along the wall, were thrown downward and men, one after the other, began to lower themselves to the landing. The women and children then, suddenly, screaming, panic-stricken, fled away from the walls. The shield wall was disrupted, the frightened women and children rushing through it, tearing at it, plunging toward the walkway behind us. As shields were turned and lifted quarrels sped down from the walls and men screamed, twisting, hit.
'Forward!' I cried, seizing up the shield of a fellow fallen. 'To the wall!' Behind us we heard the screams of women and children, crowding toward the walkway. We heard, too, the sounds and screams of those swept, as by a flood, from the landing, and from the sides of the walkway, striking into the water. In the panic most of the women and children had fled from the wall. Whereas this more exposed them to the fire from above it also, for us, cleared a killing space. A fellow dropped from a rope before me, and before he could regain his feet, he was dead. Another screamed, his legs hacked. Another leapt from the rope onto the spear of a fellow near me. He was kicked from it. The spear was then driven into another. Butchery at the foot of the wall occurred. Some tried to descend with one hand, fighting with the other. Sometimes two men seized an end of the rope and swung it out and back against the wall, dashing men from it. Cosians feared then to lower themselves into the waiting blades, like steel teeth, waiting for them. Some tried to press down, past others who, seeing what awaited them below, clung ever more desperately to the rope. Men fell to the foot of the wall, to be cut to pieces. Some tried to climb back up the rope but could not do so for the others above them. Some, reaching the crenelation again, were struck back by the jabbing spears of their own men, screaming at them. In their fall they not unoften took others with them, the some seventy feet or so, to the landing, the wall lower on the harbor side then the land side.
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,
