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“What’ll it be, sir?” Esef asked. “We can save many lives if we abandon the stock and keep to the towers. They want our goods, not our lives.”
The commodore scraped at the floor with one of his tough feet like a horse eager to be off. “Dwarves don’t abandon their own. I’ve a duty to the Company, as does every dwarf here, to make them trade in blood for what they’d take without gold.”
“Give em a taste of our law,” a beardless signaldwarf said, but the elders ignored him.
“We should have dug a trench. In my youth, before the suerzain’s family came to power here, we were more careful,” Esef observed.
“Too late to regret it now,” the commodore said. “Go down and open the stores. If there are any mail shirts, hand them out to the dwarves on the barricades.”
“Where shall I go?” Auron asked as Esef spoke into one of the tubes.
The commodore jumped. “By my beard, I thought you were the tail of the banner hanging down. Stay in the towers, young drake! It’s the safest place. We may lose a good many dwarves, not to mention our stock.”
“Where’s Djer?”
Esef raised his face from the speaking-tube. “Where a dwarf his age should be, at the barricade.”
Auron fixed his stumpy tail and swung below the cupola, climbing down the side of the tower as he had come up, eschewing ladder for claw. He found Djer shouting orders for the dwarves to add everything they could move to the barricade. He held no weapon; he pointed and gestured with the long stem of his pipe.
“What shall I do?” Auron asked.
Djer kicked a case of crossbow bolts open on the ground. “Here, bowmen, take more!” he shouted, then looked at Auron as if he had just met him as a stranger. “Die on the walls with the rest of us.”
“Doesn’t anyone here know how to fight a battle?” Auron asked.
The dwarf set his mouth. “We’re traders first. Warfare is a long second. The towers haven’t been attacked in generations. Our machines used to frighten our enemies.”
“Another almost,” Auron said.
The drake could read the fierce light in Djer’s eyes, even behind his daylight-mask. “But they’ll still find that we’ll die only once we’ve built a wall of bodies around us.”
Auron saw arrayed companies of men in his mind, memories passed down from his grandfather. “Let the machines try to win it for you. But be prepared for them to fail. When men fight, they always keep a strong force out of the battle, in case of the unexpected. Don’t put all your dwarves on the walls—keep something back.”
Djer looked up at the towers, where the push-pull dwarves were manning their devices for hurling death at the enemy, and at the widely spaced dwarves, only two to a wagon, at the barricades.
“There’s few enough down here. You’ll be the reserve. Your fire might be a surprise if all else fails.”
Auron tensed, and his earholes tucked themselves behind his griff as they descended from his crest. “I will try.”
“Horses won’t be able to get past the barricade. It’ll be like the battle in the tapestry. They’ll ride round and round until they’re all dead. There might be some fights if they dismount and try slipping through, but we should—”
“They’re coming! Why don’t the towers fire?” a dwarf shouted from the wall.
Auron craned his neck and looked through a gap in the heap of wagons, bales, and boxes that served as a wall. The horsemen sat their mounts, still well away from the wall. The towers facing the lines of riders launched their missiles. Some flamed in the growing light, leaving smoke trails as they arced toward the enemy. The towers wasted no further missiles after the first fell short. Auron heard whistles and trumpets from the enemy and saw a rustle of motion from behind the barrier of horses.
“Some among them know how far our war-machines can throw,” Djer said.
Gaps opened in the screen of horses. Figures on all fours charged forward as the first rays of the dawn touched the banners at the tops of the towers. They were like dogs, only heavier. Auron heard pained squeals and realized they were swine. He saw blood running down their flanks, impelled by cruel spikes digging into their flesh. The pigs bore bags across their backs, the kind of satchels men sometimes put on their horses, though to what purpose Auron could not guess.
The dwarves did not wait to find out. The towers launched their shot and flame, the walls crossbow bolts. A swine or two fell, but the rest raced forward, some with crossbow bolts stuck through their fleshy shoulders and necks.
The dawn went white, and there was a thunderclap. A pig had disappeared, apparently in a flash of lightning.
“Sul-fire! Ware! Sul-fire,” a dwarf at the barricades shouted. “They’re under the walls, bring fire buckets! I smell a—” Another explosion cut the shout off; the dwarf and pieces of his wagon flew into the air as if by a giant’s fist driving up from the ground. Auron’s nostrils caught a noxious reek: a sulfurous mix of rotten eggs, burning flesh, and acidic smoke.
More thunderclaps sounded, though only one blew another gap in the barricade. Pieces of debris, flesh and wood, fell to the ground. Some dwarves hurled themselves from the walls, but most stood to their posts—bravely obeying orders or frozen in fear of the thunderclaps.
“The horses come. Loose, loose!” a dwarf called.
