They were working in shifts, shooting from the slit windows, and the blood on several uniforms told Beyn it wasn’t all one-way traffic.
He went through into the front room; the makeshift barricade was indeed shuddering and shifting with every impact on the door. While the main doorway was blocked right up to the lintel, once the wooden frame gave way, the doorway was wide enough that they’d be able to haul much of the debris away.
‘Damn,’ he muttered, stalking outside again.
There were soldiers everywhere: reinforcements, running up to the wall in groups of fifty or a hundred, and auxiliaries, humping fat bundles of arrows forward for the archers. The sky had lightened a little, but that only served to make clearer the true horror of their situation.
A line of men was strung across the causeway, thousands committed to the fight in one go, and hundreds were already dead. Those at the front were barely fighting; they just stood behind shield and spear and allowed those behind them to hold spears above their heads and thrust at the enemy, who were doing likewise. It was a battle of attrition. Beyn had several thousand men in reserve - but so did the Menin.
A piercing shriek of jubilation cut through the brutal clash of steel on steel, sending a chill down Beyn’s spine. He looked up, and saw a pair of dark shapes in the sky hurtling towards him.
‘Dapplin!’ he roared at the nearest unit of pikemen, ‘get ready!’
The squad moved forward as the captain yelled orders, but still they barely had time to get into position before the first of the Reavers arrived. Squatting low over a blade-edged shield, the Menin white-eye smashed into Dapplin’s men. His long braided black hair flying, the Reaver tore a bloody path through them, the shield cutting through flesh wherever it touched, until it slowed enough for the white-eye to roll off, grab it and loop the leather hold over his shield-arm, and start towards the archers beyond.
Beyn caught sight of the weird tattoos and scars that adorned his face, which was contorted in berserk rage as the Reaver hacked at the archers with his great spiked axe. Two men fell almost at once, then another as the white-eye turned around and slashed a man’s chest with his razor-edged shield.
As Beyn raced towards the frenzied white-eye, Cober hard on his heel, the Menin abruptly changed direction and launched himself at the pair like a whirlwind of steel. His speed almost caught them out, his axe whipping around to catch them mid-step. Beyn managed to abandon his charge in time, throwing himself to the ground and skidding under the warrior’s outstretched arm, but Cober was not so lucky — Beyn heard a crunch of blade parting mail.
The King’s Man twisted as he slid on the rain-slicked cobbles and hacked at the Menin white-eye’s foot as his momentum took him through the Reaver’s legs. Before he’d come to a halt Beyn was turning, one weapon above his head, while he jabbed the other at the unprotected back of the Reaver’s knee. The Reaver arched in agony, but his howl of pain was cut short as one of the archers fired at almost point-blank range. The arrow punched a hole in the Reaver’s cuirass and threw the white-eye backwards onto Beyn, who collapsed under the enormous white-eye. He desperately tried to free his weapons before realising it was dead weight on him, not a living enemy.
‘Don’t just stand there!’ he cried, struggling to get the dead man off him, ‘bloody shoot the rest of them!’
As he got to his feet he saw the other Reaver had been surrounded and impaled, but several soldiers had been lost in the fight. The victory was short-lived as four more Reavers landed, flying directly into the defending line like an artillery strike. Those at the back turned to the nearest reserve squad, while the other two charged into the undefended rear of the battle line and began to slaughter the spearmen.
‘Get to them!’ Beyn roared, then he faltered as he looked down and saw Cober, still on the ground. The white-eye’s hands were clasped around his neck and blood flowed freely from between his fingers. His mouth was open, as if he was trying to speak. Beyn looked into Cober’s eyes and saw the horror there: the pain, and the fear of his impending death.
A wave of anguish swept over Beyn and his knees wobbled for a moment, but there wasn’t time, not