4 IV

The knife they gave Wrolf was iron, to his surprise. The brownish gray metal had striations that gave it an almost marbled appearance, and the shape was crude, but it was more than he had expected. A sharp rock would have been more than he expected.

The branded slaves were roused at dawn and herded towards the front while the real army prepared and the stone throwers continued their barrage. The goblins were placed at the front—there were nearly a mass of them—with some six or seven gross dwarves behind. These dwarves carried the siege ladders, and the battering ram was deployed in their midst.

As the spearmen formed ranks behind them, taskmasters walked through the slaves, distributing vodka and pulque. Wrolf got pulque—he would have preferred vodka—and only enough to get a bit tipsy.

"Drink up," the taskmaster jeered. "I sure as 'Bitz wouldn't wanna charge the enemy sober."

It was nearly two hours after sunrise when the horn blew. The stone-throwers flung one final volley, and the slaves were set off at a run. The army set off at a brisk march behind them.

The sling-bullets hit first, arching high over the boulder-strewn field and falling upon the goblins' front ranks. Arrows followed shortly.

Wrolf was near the front of the dwarves. He sprinted through the whistling bullets and whizzing arrows, somehow unscathed, until a goblin fell before him, a sling bullet shattering its skull; he tripped over its limp body and dropped his knife.

Wrolf laid there as dwarves ran past, some stepping on him. He was vaguely aware of the danger of being trampled—more had died underfoot than to bullet or arrow this day—but he found it hard to care. He wanted to die after all, didn't he?

But why? Because he was ashamed of falling into the captivity his best friend had committed suicide to avoid?

At a hissing sound, Wrolf looked up. An arrow was falling towards him.

Time seemed to slow. Thyrn wanted that arrow to hit him, Wrolf realized, rather than one of his real warriors. Thyrn, who had taken advantage of famine to conquer, who had depopulated his home village for fodder for his army. Thyrn, who Wrolf hated.

In that moment, Wrolf decided something: he would not die for than damnable conqueror. He would outlive the man out of pure spite.

He rolled to the side—the arrow landed where his head had been—and rose to his feet. He ran.

Some goblins and dwarves crowded behind boulders, catching their breath in their meager cover. Wrolf did not, sprinting ahead and catching up to the rear of the goblin host.

The precipitation of projectiles intensified as they neared the wall. Goblins fell, wailing, as Wrolf made it through unscathed, shielded from harm by the press of taller goblins around him.

From fields of boulders, they entered abandoned fields of withered crops, lacerated by irrigation canals and sprinkled with boulders and burned-out farmhouses. Wrolf jumped canals and dodged boulders and corpses, and soon enough the final obstacle was the creek below the wall.

The western bank of the creek was littered with corpses, and the water was colored black and red by goblin and dwarf blood respectively. It came up nearly to Wrolf's armpits, though was barely waist-deep for the goblins around him.

The eastern bank was clean; it was so close to the wall the defenders couldn't see them. Here Wrolf finally let himself stop to catch his breath. He looked up as he panted, and thought about how a blind spot this close to the enemy was a serious drawback—not that he was complaining, of course.

"Ah, doomer, glad you could make it!" a voice called out. Wrolf looked up, incredulous, to see the dwarf from last night. Wolm, was it? "Your prediction was wrong."

"The morning's still young."

"But the worst is behind us. This section of wall isn't breached, and if no ladders show up we have an excuse to sit out the rest of the battle."

"Unless we lose." Wrolf sat, leaning against the stone base of the wall. "If Thyrn gets pushed back we'll have to retreat with archers and slingers at our back."

"Won't happen." His voice carried an edge of resigned disappointment. "Thyrn has the numbers, Komn's wall is breached, and, most crucially, Thyrn has the food that Komn lacks. You know the city's people have tried to throw open the gates? Thyrn didn't even need to attack; another week and the city would have surrendered, Komn's stubbornness be damned."

The lack of ladders was enough for the dwarves to sit in the wall's shadow and catch their breath, but not for the goblins; those started climbing on each others' shoulders and pulling themselves up onto the battlements. Dwarves were too short for such a maneuver, but the ladders had only fallen behind, not out of the battle.

Some dozen dwarves approached the creek, carrying a ladder. As they reached the creek, however, they fell pray to an aerie of arrows.

"Liatz's loins," Wolm cursed, "there goes our plausible deniability. Come on."

Wolf, Wrolf, and a dozen other dwarves grabbed the ladder as it floated to the near side of the creek. They set it against the wall.

"Now what?" one asked. "Who goes first."

"Not me," Wrolf said.

"We'll draw for it," Wolm said. "Does anyone have straw?"

No one had straw.

"What about the knives?" Wrolf asked. "They're crude, there's no way they're the same length."

"That'll do."

They drew their knives, holding them side-by-side. They were nearer in size than Wrolf had thought, but he was right about them being different lengths. It was his that came up shortest, shorter than Thold's by a hair.

He sighed. "I shoulda kept my damned mouth shut."

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