Elric_ The Stealer of Souls - Michael Moorcock [62]
Like vampires, hungry for blood, the men howled and staggered aside crabwise to let pass the log held by their comrades. Again the gates shivered, more easily noticed this time, but they yet held.
Dyvim Tvar roared encouragement to those now scaling the siege ladders. These were brave, almost desperate men, for few of the first climbers would reach the top and even if they were successful, they would be hard pressed to stay alive until their comrades arrived.
Boiling lead hissed from great cauldrons set on spindles so that they could be easily emptied and filled quickly. Many a brave Imrryrian warrior fell earthwards, dead from the searing metal before he reached the sharp rocks beneath. Large stones were released out of leather bags hanging from rotating pulleys which could swing out beyond the battlements and rain bone-crushing death on the besiegers. But still the invaders advanced, voicing half-a-hundred war-shouts and steadily scaling their long ladders, whilst their comrades, using a shield barrier still, to protect their heads, concentrated on breaking down the gates.
Elric and his two companions could do little to help the scalers or the rammers at that stage. All three were hand-to-hand fighters, leaving even the archery to their rear ranks of bowmen who stood in rows and shot their shafts high into the castle defenders.
The gates were beginning to give. Cracks and splits appeared in them, ever widening. Then, all at once, when hardly expected, the right gate creaked on tortured hinges and fell. A triumphant roar erupted from the throats of the invaders and, dropping their hold on the logs, they led their companions through the breach, axes and maces swinging like scythes and flails before them—and enemy heads springing from necks like wheat from the stalk.
“The castle is ours!” shouted Moonglum, running forward and upward towards the gap in the archway. “The castle’s taken.”
“Speak not too hastily of victory,” replied Dyvim Tvar, but he laughed as he spoke and ran as fast as the others to reach the castle.
“And where is your doom, now?” Elric called to his fellow Melnibonéan, then broke off sharply when Dyvim Tvar’s face clouded and his mouth set grimly. For a moment there was tension between them, even as they ran, then Dyvim Tvar laughed loud and made a joke of it. “It lies somewhere, Elric, it lies somewhere—but let us not worry about such things, for if my doom hangs over me, I cannot stop its descent when my hour arrives!” He slapped Elric’s shoulder, feeling for the albino’s uncharacteristic confusion.
Then they were under the mighty archway and in the courtyard of the castle where savage fighting had developed almost into single duels, enemy choosing enemy and fighting him to the death.
Stormbringer was the first of the three men’s blades to take blood and send a desert man’s soul to hell. The song it sang as it was lashed through the air in strong strokes was an evil one—evil and triumphant.
The dark-faced desert warriors were famous for their courage and skill with swords. Their curved blades were reaping havoc in the Imrryrian ranks for, at that stage, the desert men far outnumbered the Melnibonéan force.
Somewhere above, the inspired scalers had got a firm foothold on the battlements and were closing with the men of Nikorn, driving them back, forcing many over the unrailed edges of the parapets. A falling, still-screaming warrior plummeted down, to land almost on Elric, knocking his shoulder and causing him to fall heavily to the blood-and-rain-slick cobbles. A badly scarred desert man, quick to see his chance, moved forward with a gloating look on his travesty of a face. His scimitar moved up, poised to hack Elric’s neck from his shoulders, and then his helmet split open and his forehead spurted a sudden gout of blood.
Dyvim Tvar wrenched a captured axe from the skull of the slain warrior and grinned at Elric as the albino rose.
“We’ll both live to see victory, yet,” he shouted over the din of the warring elementals above them and the sound of clashing arms. “My doom, I will