will he their second string. It won't be as bad once we're in there. If
they're smart, they'll see there's no point going on."
The captain saluted without answering. Balasar was willing to take that
as agreement.
It took perhaps half a hand to gather a force of men together. Two
hundred soldiers would press forward and take the forges, where Sinja
had said the paths down would be open. They were only another street
down. "There wasn't a line of defenders to crush, so the horsemen were
less useful. They could still move fast, and men on foot who entered the
streets wouldn't be able to attack them easily. Footmen with archers
interspersed between them ducking fast from doorway to doorway was the
best plan.
Etc explained it all to the group leaders, watching the men's faces as
he asked them to run through the rain of stones and arrows. Two hundred
men to move forward, to take control of the forges and then hold the
position against anything that came up out of it until the rest of their
force could join them. Balasar would lead them. Not one of them
hesitated or voiced objection.
"If we live until sunset," he said, "we'll see the end of this. Now take
formation."
The drum throbbed, the captains and group leaders scrambled to the
places where their men stood waiting. A few bricks detonated on the
street in their wake, but no one had stayed out long enough to be in
danger from them. Balasar squatted in his chosen doorway, rubbing his
shoulder. The air was numbing cold, and the great dark towers rose
around them, higher than the crows that wheeled and called, excited, he
guessed, by the smells of blood and carrion.
It struck him how beautiful the city was. Austere and close-packed, with
thick-walled buildings and heavy shutters. The brightness of snow and
the glittering icicles that hung from the eaves set off the darkness of
stone and echoed the vast blank sky. It was a city without colordark and
light with hardly even gray in between-and Balasar found himself moved
by it. He took a deep breath, watching the cloud of it that formed when
he exhaled. The drummer at his side licked his lips.
"Go," Balasar said.
The deep rattle sounded, echoing between the high walls of the houses,
and then the press was on, and Balasar launched himself into it, shield
high, shoulder cramping. He made it almost halfway to the shelter of the
forges and their great copper roofs before the arrows could drop the
distance of the towers. Five men fell around him as he ran that last
stretch and found himself in a tangle of heat and shouting and swinging
blades. One last group of the enemy had stayed hidden here to defy him,
to stand guard against them. Balasar shouted and moved forward with the
surge of his men. In the field, there would have been formation, rules,
order. This was only melee, and Balasar found himself hewing and hacking
with his blood singing and alive. It was an idiotic place for a general
to be, throwing himself in the face of a desperate enemy, but Balasar
felt the joy of it washing away his better sense. A man with a spear
fashioned from an old rake poked at him, and he batted the attack away