Batu POV
The gate's timber had been burning and patching and burning again for days. What the garrison had put up to replace the original protection was lighter than what had been there at the start, and the lower joints showed where Fang's compound had found them multiple tis before the garrison's bucket water had reached the fire and stopped it from spreading.
Batu sat Daichin at the south and looked at the gate across the two hundred ters of open ground between the packed dirt wall and the ditch. The two trebuchets behind him had been throwing since before first light, their cracks carrying out in the early morning air.
The assault formation was ready and waiting behind the dirt wall, Torghul at its head, the relay riders at their positions throughout the ranks. The open ground was clear, the ditch beyond it, and the gate was burning at its lower section from Fang's compound working the pitch joints at the conserved rate.
Batu looked at the gate, at the army, at Torghul on the formation's right watching him.
He gave the order.
Torghul gave it to the relay riders and the relay riders gave it to the assault riders and the tun began to move. Batu sent a separate rider for Orda in the north wall and stayed where he was, watching the assault co around the dirt wall and start to cover the open ground.
Temur POV
The order reached him through the relay as a single arm signal, the one Temur had been watching for since they stopped in position behind the dirt wall before dawn.
Around him his arban was already moving. Buras was on his right with his bow half-raised, watching the gate where the fire had left black smoke rising from the lower facing. Möge was on his left, saying nothing, his horse stepping forward at the pace the horses around it were setting.
They ca around the dirt wall and the full ground appeared ahead of them.
The gate was one hundred ters out. The garrison's walkway was manned across its full width, the defenders at the rail, and the first arrows ca before Temur had covered thirty ters on the open ground.
Long range, the shafts dropping steeply, most of them falling short or wide, but not all of them. A rider two positions to his left took one through the outside of his thigh, a drop shot, and the man grabbed the wound with his left hand, kept his bow in his right, and kept riding.
Temur had his own bow up. He drew, found a man at the rail ahead, released, and the shaft dropped well short.
He nocked again.
At this stage the fire was mostly about presence, keeping the walkway archers uncertain about leaning out over the rail to aim. He released, nocked, released, the rhythm going into his arms while his horse moved under him, covering the ground.
At fifty ters the formation compressed.
The timber for crossing the ditch was stacked where the riders ahead of him were grabbing it, planks that had been carried forward from the supply line, and the lead riders were loading them up, two n to a section, pulling them across their horses and pushing forward toward the ditch.
For three seconds the formation bunched behind that point, horses pressing into each other, a rider calling sothing ahead that Temur couldn't make out over the general noise of the assault.
A relay signal went through the press and the lead ranks sorted themselves and the movent resud.
He pushed Möge's horse aside with his knee to keep his own line. Möge shoved back before he understood and adjusted his position.
"We need to move!" Möge said.
Temur gave no answer. He was watching the walkway, the gate and the ditch appearing ahead of the lead riders.
The garrison's fire was heavier than anything he'd got used to during the morning surveys from behind the dirt wall. They'd been conserving their arrows for weeks and they were using all of them now.
Buras took a walkway shaft through the left shoulder, a flat shot from the east tower at close enough range that the arrow went past the shoulder ca out the front.
Buras cried loudly, his bow dropped. He reached for the reins with his bow hand, transferred them, and kept riding with the right arm hanging, his teeth locked and his eyes on the gate.
Temur looked at him for one full second, saw him still in the saddle, and looked back at what was ahead.
The gate's lower side was fully burning at the left joint. Fang went overboard when the assault started, the compound coming in bursts rather than just an inconvenience, and the pitch had caught across the gate and the wall.
The bar across the gate's center was showing char on its face where the heat below was climbing it.
Möge's horse stumbled near Temur. A shaft had gone into its flank at a shallow direction, not through anything that killed it imdiately, and the horse broke its stride, three bad steps.
Möge leaned forward over the neck with his heels driving in hard, talking at the animal in a voice low and urgent, and the horse found its footing again and pushed on with the wound in it.
Möge was still in the saddle. His bow was still in his hand.
"Fine here!" Möge said.
The ditch had most of the work done now. The planks were going in, the lead riders dropping their timber into the hole and the sections landing on what was already in there, building the bridge from the near edge toward the far side.
The walkway archers attempted to stop them repeatedly.
A shaft hit Temur's horse's saddlebag with the flat sound of an arrow stopping in packed leather, the point just short of coming through. Another ca between him and Buras close enough that he felt it pass.
He kept his bow working, kept drawing and releasing into the walkway, not stopping to see where any of it landed.
The gate was bowing outward from the heat building behind on it, the bar across its center had gone dark across it entirely.
The ditch was just ahead of his arban.
The bridge was finally completed.
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