The dawn broke red.
A sun like a dying coal behind thick storm clouds. Smoke still clung to the earth, curling from the piles of the dead below Thornholt's battered walls. The stink of rot and burned flesh clung to everything.
Garran stood atop the ramparts, his cloak tattered, face streaked with soot and dried blood. His left arm ached from the gash that Mera had bound in the night.
He hadn't slept.
None of them had.
The men below moved like shades — bleeding, limping, faces hollow with hunger and terror they wouldn't name. But they were there. And so was he.
And the enemy was moving.
Harrowmont's second assault came at first light.
This time, the crimson-cloaked soldiers didn't waste breath on truce offers. The scorpions rolled forward, hurling stones into the half-ruined tower. Ladders rose again. Mantlets advanced under a curtain of arrows.
They meant to end it.
Garran watched them come.
Jorik grunted beside him, wiping sweat and blood from his beard. "They've brought fire barrels. You see it?"
"I see it."
"And no retreat this time."
"Good," Garran said. "Neither will we."
The second clash was worse than the first.
Fire barrels arced over the walls, crashing into the yard. Flames leapt, catching stores, blackening the sky. Men screamed as they burned. Garran's voice cut through the chaos.
"Hold the line! Douse it! Crossbows ready!"
The enemy surged through the smoke, ladders clattering against the walls. The Black Harp met them with spears, axes, boiling oil. Every breach contested with blood.
Jorik's axe bit through helm and bone.Mera fought with a curved blade, quick as a snake.Even old Dannic took a pike and held a gap near the smithy.
Garran killed without counting. His world shrank to the next face, the next blade, the next instant. Blood slicked the stones. Mud turned to soup.
Twice, the enemy nearly took the gate.
Twice, the defenders drove them back.
By midday, the fighting slowed.
Smoke blanketed the holdfast. Harrowmont's men, exhausted and ragged, fell back beyond bowshot. The Black Harp held what little remained.
Half Thornholt was fire-gutted. A dozen men dead in the yard. Most of the food gone. The stream at the base of the hill ran red.
And still they stood.
In the blackened hall, Garran gathered what was left of his captains.
No time for speeches now.
Jorik leaned against the wall, one eye nearly swollen shut. Mera's arm hung limp, the blade in her other hand slick with someone's blood. Dannic was missing two fingers.
They waited.
"We've one night," Garran said."One chance."
He unrolled a crude charcoal map on the scorched table.
"See this line of ash trees?" He tapped a spot behind the enemy camp. "Old trail. Deer path. I've ridden it before. Leads to their rear line."
Jorik grunted, a spark in his battered face. "You mean to hit them?"
Garran's voice was low and sure.
"Tonight. While they drink and count our dead."
He looked around the room. Bloodied killers and cutthroats. The last flicker of Thornholt's defense.
"I'll take twenty. That's all I need. The rest hold the walls. At first light, we finish this one way or another."
And the men nodded.
Because there was nothing else to do now.
Only wolves left.