correctly identify it as the largest threat to the town's defenses. There was little more he could do about the oncoming ram, because the only legionares not fully occupied fending off the assault were the men directly over the gate. Tavi pointed at half of the men there. "You, you, you, you two. Follow me."
Legionares seized shields and weapons, and Tavi led them down the wall, to the first point of attack, where two Canim had already gained the walls while more came behind them. A green recruit screamed and attacked the nearest Cane, forgetting the founding principle of Legion combat-teamwork. The Cane was armed with nothing but a heavy wooden club, but before the young le-gionare could close to within range of his Legion-issue gladius, the Cane took a two-handed swing that slammed the heavy club into the legionares shield, sending him sailing into the air to fall to the stone courtyard below, where he landed with bone-shattering force.
"Ehren," Tavi shouted, as he drew his own sword. The Cane took club in hand again, raising it to strike at Tavi before he could close the range.
But just as the Cane began to swing, there was a flash of steel in the air, and Ehren's skillfully thrown knife struck the Cane's muzzle. The blade's point missed by an inch or so, and it only drew a single, short cut across the Cane's black nose, but even so, the knife was deadly. The Cane flinched from the sudden pain in such a sensitive area, and it threw off the timing and power of its attack. Tavi slipped aside from the heavy club, drove in hard, and struck with a single slash that opened the Cane's throat clear to the bones of its neck.
The mortally wounded Cane dropped his club and tried to seize Tavi, teeth bared, but Tavi kept driving forward, inside the Cane's easy reach, and the legionare coming along behind Tavi added his own weight to Tavi's rush, as did the man behind him, so that their weight drove the Cane back against the battlements, where the legionares dispatched the raider with ruthless savagery.
Tavi hacked down at a heavy rope on the battlements, but the tough stuff refused to part despite several blows, and another Cane gripped the top of the wall, to haul himself up. Tavi slashed at the Cane's hand, drawing a cry of pain, before the raider fell back, and Tavi finished the job on the rope.
He looked up in time to see his legionares chopping their way down the wall, dispatching the second Cane, though the creature's sickle-sword took one veteran's hand from his arm before it fell. Legionares hacked at the remaining climbing lines. There was a howl of wind, then a roar and a blossom of fire at the gate, and all the while, more of those high-arcing stones rained down on Aleran heads and shoulders.
"Buckets!" Tavi shouted. "Now!"
Legionares seized the buckets of pitch, scalding water, and heated sand, and hurled them down upon the Canim at the base of the walls, eliciting more screams. It gave some of the defenders precious seconds to throw down the remaining lines, while archers had the opportunity to send arrows slicing down into the foe, inflicting even more injury, even before Crassus and his Knights made a second run along the wall, blinding and deafening the foe with the gale of their passing.
The morale of the attackers broke, and they began fleeing from the walls, at first hesitant, then in an enormous wave. The archers sent arrows flying after them as swiftly as they could loose them, wounding still more, while legionares began to whoop and cheer again.
Tavi ignored the Canim, looking up and down the wall. The attack had been repulsed, but it had cost the defenders, badly. The high-arced stones had been distressingly effective, and the medicos rushing to assist the injured were far outnumbered by the casualties. The green troops coming up to the walls weren't moving with the swift certainty of the veterans, and the rushing medicos and legionares attempting to carry the wounded to help weren't helping matters. The legionares had barely held the wall before, and if they did not reorganize and restore discipline to the defensive positions on the battlements, the Canim might well overwhelm them. Or at least, they might have, had they not broken instead of maintaining the attack.
The deep Canim horns blared and jerked Tavi's gaze to the host outside the walls.
The black-armored regulars had risen