the men within earshot had more cause than mere cold.
One of the officers standing in the small knot behind him shuffled forward. “Yes, sir. But they’re at a disadvantage not knowing the layout of the streets, and the defending housecarls are as tough as frozen leather.”
“Tougher than Imperial troops?” the general asked quietly.
“Well, no, sir. But the defenders are fighting for their homes and their loved ones; that alone gives them an added incentive.”
“Colonel Marcellus, our incentives include living to see the spring and not being hanged for lack of military fervor. You will now regroup your regiment and personally lead it back into the city. You will not retreat. I expect to see you again either as a corpse or as victorious commander at the head of his adoring troops. Do you understand?”
Marcellus saluted and marched away to join his regiment, which was still falling back through the breach in the walls. Bellorum then ordered a fresh bombardment of the city to keep the defenders occupied while he ordered up reinforcements.
Within fifteen minutes the regiment had regrouped and stormed back through the breach, at exactly the same time the other Imperial troops fought their way through the main gates and into three other breaches around the perimeter walls.
This time the defenders were pushed back slowly, fighting street by street and house by house, until finally, after more than five hours of desperate struggle in which the general himself helped to maintain the stretched lines of communication, the defenders held one barricade in the courtyard of the citadel. Here, the last of the housecarls raised their shield-wall and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the surviving townsfolk.
Firing volley after volley at the upturned carts and old bedsteads that made up the barricades, the Imperial troops stormed a waiting hedge of spears where they were impaled by the momentum of their charge and the press of their comrades pushing from behind. Again and again they attacked, like a storming sea crashing against a rocky headland, but each time they fell back and the defense held.
Bellorum watched the struggle for almost an hour from the broken gatehouse, his face an impassive mask, until he suddenly dismounted and drew his sword. The time had come to set an example. He walked to the head of his exhausted troops, who had retreated yet again, and stared at them silently. Then, raising his sword, he turned and faced the last barricade. By this time the short winter day had drawn to a close and snow had started to fall again, drifting slowly down to settle on the debris and corpses of the besieged town.
The defenders waited silently. Nothing could be done. Earlier, their commander had tried to negotiate with Bellorum under a flag of truce, in an attempt to evacuate the noncombatants, but after listening for a few moments the general had nodded to the musketeer beside him, and the housecarl commander had been shot in the head. Even the Vampire King and Queen in the Ghost Wars had respected the flag of truce; only Bellorum, it seemed, set his own conditions.
The dull rattle of shield locking with shield was the only sound the defending line made as the Imperial troops began to advance. But this time, instead of charging, the soldiers of the Empire walked slowly forward, as unstoppable as a rising flood behind their brutal general. The surviving townsfolk picked up stones and broken roof tiles and hurled them at the Polypontian soldiers in a deadly hail, but still they came slowly on, unheeding of the resistance. Bellorum reached the barricade and began to climb, his shield raised above his head to receive the blows of ax and sword, but his face remained calm and impassive as though he were taking a stroll in a garden. At last he reached the summit of the barrier, and his sword struck at the housecarls’ line, the thin blade snaking forward with deadly accuracy to pierce the eye and brain of the soldier before him. Then, glittering in the torchlight, it struck to left and right, slicing open a throat, severing a jugular. The line started to fold, and the Imperial troops drove forward, hacking and slashing in a bloody storm. And still Bellorum strolled on, killing as he went.
Within fifteen minutes most of the resistance had crumbled, and Bellorum set his victorious troops to work, eliminating the last few survivors. First, the soldiers were disarmed and beheaded, after which the townsfolk were herded against a wall and systematically