Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [125]
In a swirl of men and horses, the attack was coming in two prongs, one toward the east gate, one toward the south. Down below Jahdo’s position, the Horsekin cavalry were driving their infantry toward the walls like cattle. As he peered out between the merlons, Jahdo could see sabers flash among the leather cuirasses of the foot soldiers. Here and there an infantryman screamed; once a man fell, blood streaming from a head wound. At a shouted order, the foot soldiers swung their ladders up and lifted them over their heads, then broke into a trot. A rain of stones and flaming pitch greeted them.
Meer stepped forward. The wind caught his huge mane of hair and swelled it out behind him; his multitude of charms and talismans glittered like stars. He held his drum high over his head and began to strike, and with every stroke he boomed out a word, a sharp bark in the Horsekin tongue. Jahdo was sure that over the shouting and hoofbeats, the pounding of the rams and the cursing of the defenders, no one would hear him, but it seemed that out among the cavalry someone saw him. A new kind of cry went up from the attacking regiment, a shriek of alarum and—though perhaps Jahdo just imagined it—shame.
Meer was breathing in time to the drumbeats. Each huge breath he drew seemed to be pulled down from the sky to heave and swell his chest. Each time he breathed out, he sent a curse over the attackers. Jahdo had never dreamt that anyone could call out so loudly, so piercingly, could send a voice so far on such an enormous wave of sound. The defenders round the east gate began to fall silent; the attacking regiment held their place, moving neither forward nor back for a few moments of relative quiet.
In those, the curses began to be heard. Jahdo could see a horseman here or there suddenly toss up his head and start backing his mount or trying to turn out of line. The foot soldiers began to mill around and lose their forward thrust. One unit, off to the north edge, dropped its ladder and shamelessly ran. Meer chanted on and on, as if his voice were a stormy sea, pounding on a beach to tear the sand away and break down some puny seawall. The front of the Horsekin line began to eddy and swirl, moving sideways, not forward. The men in the other prong of the attack off to the south started to turn, to peer at what might be happening and to listen. On and on, Meer cursed and howled, calling down the wrath of every god in the sky or under the earth.
Out among the cavalry Jahdo saw a shove of movement—a single man riding fast, forcing his gray horse through the paralyzed line. Round him they rallied and began to move, yelling at each other, yelling at the infantry, pushing a squad forward with this new rider in their midst. The defenders on the walls began to shout in answer. Meer’s voice was lost as the fighting picked up to the south, but at the east gate the infantry still milled aimlessly. Jahdo kept watching the attack and this new commander, or so he thought him then, on his easily visible gray horse, pushing a slow way forward, surrounded by a box, as it were, of four horsemen to clear his path and protect him.
Somewhere between fifty and a hundred yards away—Jahdo could guess it well out of sling-stone range—the riders in the box formation drew their horses to a halt. As the leader dismounted in the safety of his men’s array, Jahdo thought he might be a human being just from the supple way he moved and the proportion of his legs to his upper body. The fellow began fiddling with some long thing tied beside his saddle—Jahdo couldn’t see what, because the dust plumed as the cavalry pressed forward, parting round the four riders and the dismounted man like water round a rock. Meer paused for breath, lowering the drum