Mykel grinned. "After this attack, we'll need everyone to clean up the mess."

Dohark shook his head. "And maybe the colonel will promote you to majer, too."Mykel offered an exaggerated shrug. "I can always hope."

"Best you get on with your preparations, Captain Mykel."

"Yes, sir."

Before he returned to his special preparations, Mykel gathered the squad leaders again, with Bhoral, making sure that all the mounts would be saddled and ready to ride out, if necessary. Then he went back to doing what could get him into great difficulties-if he survived.

By the time another glass had passed, the ammunition and casks of oil were in place, and Mykel had the older barrel, the half keg of heavy nails, and the gunpowder kegs in a shaded place just behind and north of the west gate. He also had a number of other items, including lengths of old, near-rotten canvas and a small bucket of glue.

One cask of oil would fit inside the larger carpenter's barrel, as would a cask of the gunpowder. Mykel set to work with the glue, canvas and nails, until the inside of the barrel was lined with two layers of canvas with the nails glued inside. The glue wouldn't harden before Mykel would probably have to use the device, but all he cared about was something to keep the nails from clumping together too much.

By the time he had finished and replaced the head of the barrel, he was soaked with sweat, and another glass had , passed. With a sardonic smile that he quickly erased, Mykel noted that he had not seen Dohark. The overcaptain had lost conspicuously avoided him while he had been working, and that was probably for the best-for both of them.

Another glass and a half passed. The men had eaten noon ations. The breeze had died off, and the sun beat down on the compound.

Vhanyr came sprinting across the courtyard. "Captain Mykel. Bluecoats are coming! Some greencoats, too. Hun-Ireds of 'em!"

"Fifteenth Company! Squad leaders! Forward!"

Mykel barely waited before he began issuing his orders, orders that thesquad leaders already knew. "Fifteenth Company to the walls! Squad one to the main gate, two to the rest of the west wall, three to the north wall, and four to last gate. Squad five, stand by."

"Fifteenth Company to the walls!" snapped Bhoral, 'Squad one..." He echoed Mykel's orders.

Once he was satisfied that all his men were in place, Mykel climbed the steps beside the west gate, where he stood on the walls below the south tower. He looked westward under the noon sun. The seltyrs' forces had halted a good half vingt to the west, and were stretched out in front of the end of the casaran orchards, forming a line of riders a good five hundred yards across and at least three ranks deep. Most of the riders had dismounted.

That bothered Mykel, although it was what he would have done.

He turned and walked along the top of the wall to the southwest corner, then most of the way toward the east wall of the compound. A half vingt to the east was another formation, considerably smaller, with more clad in green than in blue.

After studying the second formation and confirming that they were also dismounted, Mykel returned to his former position on the wall beneath the south guard tower.

"Sir?" Bhoral appeared.

"Have the men stand down in position. There won't be an attack for a little while at least. But check on the mounts. We still might need them-one way or another."

The squad leader nodded and slipped away.

"You don't think we'll see an attack right now?" asked Dohark, who had appeared at the top of the steps.

"Not for a while. Do you?"

"No. They're not mounted. They're resting their horses."

"They've got something else in mind, I'd wager," suggested Mykel."Siege ladders?"

"Could be."

"They wouldn't try blasting powder," said Dohark.

"They probably would if they could get any." As Mykel said that, he wondered if that happened to be the reason why whichever alectors had provided the rifles had done so-so that the seltyrs wouldn't develop something worse?

"You're cheerful."

"I expect the strongest aspects of human nature to surface-greed, destructiveness, shortsightedness-all the good things." Mykel's tone was more sardonic than he'd meant it to be.

"I'm headed over to the north tower to see if I can get a better view,"

Dohark finally said.

"Yes, sir." There was little that Mykel could do but wait.

Another half glass went by before Mykel heard a dull rumbling sound.

He looked northward, thinking it might be a storm, but the sky remained clear. His eyes went to the west. Six wagons with angled timber barricades five yards wide reaching from knee height to almost two yards lumbered down the road toward the west gate, slowly, but seemingly by themselves.

It took Mykel but a moment to realize that troopers behind the timbers were pushing me heavy wagons. He had no doubts that behind or in the wagons were long siege ladders that would be swung up to the walls, that or something else to allow them over the walls.

Very shortly, he had to wonder, because the wagons swung wide of the road and stopped short of the walls, a good sixty yards back, three on each side, lined up barricade to barricade.

A long single note on a horn sounded.

Crack! Crack!

Mykel ducked as he heard the first shots. Staying low behind the stone parapets, he studied the barricades, realizing that the regularly placednarrow slits in the heavy timbers were for rifles.

A long wagon moved slowly down the road toward the rebels' movable barricades, drawn by eight riders, four on each side of what looked to be an enormous wagon shaft. As it neared the barricades, Mykel looked more closely. A tree trunk almost a yard across had been fastened to an eight-wheeled wagon, and the forward end of the trunk had been covered in iron. As Mykel watched and waited for the riders to get closer to the walls, they began to urge the horses into a fast trot, then even faster.

The firing from behind the timbered wagons intensified.

"First squad! Aim for the riders!" He raised his rifle and began to aim.

Just as he squeezed the trigger, with the wagon-ram less than thirty yards from the west gate, the riders swerved away and let the wagon rumble toward the heavy oak gates alone.

Thuddd! The impact of the heavy tree-trunk ram, with its iron cap, shook the walls, but the gate held.

"Gates held!" called a ranker from somewhere.

Peering from beside one of the merlons, Mykel watched as the wagon began to roll backward. How could that be? Then he saw the long cable attached to the rear of the wagon-ram. While the road from Dramuria rose most of the way from the town to the compound, the last eighty yards before the gates were flat, and the smooth and level stone road leading across that stretch to the west gate made the scheme possible-and all too likely to succeed. The riders didn't have to get that close, and they could try until the ram failed or the gates collapsed.

Almost half a glass passed before the wagon-ram had been drawn back past the barricade wagons. The riders-or another group-re-formed on each side of the front part of the wagon-ram. Several moments passed before the device began to move along the road toward the west gate.

"Aim for the riders on the north-just on the north!" Mykel ordered.

"Aim for the riders! North side!" echoed Gendsyr.

Mykel sighted on the lead rider, squeezing the trigger, and willing hisshot home.

The rider crumpled in the saddle, but dropped the lead or whatever linked him to the ram, and his mount carried him off the road. The ram continued to rumble toward the gates.

Mykel shifted his aim to the second rider, aiming and firing.

Just as he squeezed the trigger, the riders broke away from the ram, earlier than they had before, and the heavy contraption rumbled inexorably toward the gates.

Thudddl Once more, the gates and walls shook.

Mykel looked down. The gates were definitely bowed, and at least one of the heavy timbers was splintered in one place.

"Aim for the horses!" ordered Dohark from the north tower. "Drop the horses!"

The Cadmians waited, and Mykel wondered if they would not have done better if all the Third Battalion companies had followed his example and tried to whittle away the seltyrs' forces in the field. Then, Heransyr had tried that, and Seventeenth Company had been wiped out.

Once more the wagon-ram began to move forward, but this time, the horses only started it, well behind the barricades, and moved away, while a good score of bluecoats used leads attached to the rear of the ram and others just pushed it from behind.

"Fire!" ordered Mykel and Dohark near-simultaneously.

Mykel brought down three of those pushing the ram, and another half score fell to other fire, but other bluecoats took their places and the ram rumbled toward the west gate.

The thudding impact was accompanied not only by the shaking of the walls, but by the sound of splintering timbers.

Mykel looked down to see the north side of the gate ripped open wide enough for a man to enter. Outside the walls, the rebels were dragging back their ram once more."One more time, sir, and the gates'll go," Gendsyr said. "Two at most, and we're not stopping 'em with rifles."

Mykel could see that. So far there were perhaps twoscore bodies strewn on the flat east of the gates-if that. There were a good thousand bluecoats waiting back out of easy rifle range.

After a quick glance back outside, Mykel scurried down the steps to where one of the kegs of gunpowder had been placed at the base of the stone wall. There were also several casks of oil. The gate was bowed enough that he could i squeeze both through-he thought.

Overhead he could hear Dohark barking out orders about timbers and wagons, but Mykel would leave that to the overcaptain. If the ram weren't stopped before it did more damage, Dohark's timbers would do little good.

"Fifth squad! To me!" Mykel ordered.

Vhanyr appeared instantly. "Sir."

"We need to get that keg and two of those casks out through that gap. I need someone to go out there with me."

Vhanyr turned. "Lortyr! Fonyt!"

Mykel looked up. "Gendsyr! We're headed out in front of the gates!

Open fire at those barricades and anyone who even looks up!

"Yes, sir. First squad! Stand by to fire!"

Mykel waited until the two rankers stood beside him. "You're going to set those casks of oil out in front of the gates-a good five yards. Put them so close together that they touch-right in the middle of the road. I'll be right behind you with this keg of powder."

The two rankers looked at Mykel and the keg of gunpowder.

"You don't mind if we hurry, sir?" asked Lortyr.

Mykel grinned. "The faster, the better." Behind him, he could see rankers pushing two wagons toward the gate, probably to overturn and block the entry as well as they could.Lortyr rolled one cask to the gate, right up to the opening, then turned it sideways. He had to lift it-with the help of two others-almost chest high to get it through the bowed part. Then he slipped under the cask and helped lower it to the stone pavement. Keeping low, he turned the cask and rolled it out five yards or so. He kept the cask between him and the bluecoats, even while he levered it upright.

Behind him, Fonyt followed the same example.

Once Fonyt was through the gate, Mykel lifted the smaller keg of powder, standing by the gate, waiting for both rankers to dash back.

Mykel scuttled out, quickly setting the powder directly behind the two barrels of oil, then returning, almost diving through the narrow opening in the gates. He'd sensed shots, but all had seemed high, perhaps because the angle of the slits in the rebel barricades had been designed more to allow shots at the positions on the top of the wall.

The two rankers grinned at the captain. "That all, sir?"

"For now." Mykel grinned back, but only for a moment.

"Clear the gate space!" Dohark bellowed from above.

Mykel hurried back up to the top of the wall on the south side.

Out to the west, the rebels were readying the wagon-ram for another run at the gates. Below, behind the gates, rankers were wedging timbers and the wagon beds into place, as well as they could be, to reinforce the battered and bowed west gates.

More slowly, the wagon-ram began to move eastward.

"First squad! Fire!"

More of the bluecoats pushing the ram dropped than on earlier runs, and the ram did not seem to have quite the same speed. Mykel also thought that it was wobbling somewhat, but it still stayed on the road.

He watched, his rifle ready, sighting on the gunpowder keg. He needed that keg to explode in flame. He truly needed it. As the shadow of the ram neared the oil casks, he fired-once, twice, and a third time, willing theexplosion.

Crumpt! The walls shook, and a wave of flame spewed upward across the wagon and the ram. The front two wheels on the right shattered, and the weight of the ram dropped the corner of the wagon. Then the iron-tipped ram skidded sideways, coming to rest against the stone gate supports. The wall shook again.

The flames from the oil and from the burning powder and wagon created a heat so intense that the Cadmians on each side of the gate were forced to duck completely behind the merlons and walls.

Mykel studied the gate below. His explosion had twisted the north side of the gate open farther, despite the wagon beds and timbers, leaving an opening wide enough for one rider, perhaps two, once the flames and fire died away-and if the riders could force back the timbers and wagon bed behind the opening.

The firing from the timber barricades died away, not that there had ever been that much.

Mykel frowned as he realized that. Why hadn't they fired more?

He wanted to shake his head. Because they were worried about ammunition. They had to be concerned.

He climbed down the steps and crossed behind the gate, then climbed up to the tower where Dohark surveyed the road and the still-massed bluecoats.

"You didn't do much for the gates, Captain." Dohark's tone was half-humorous, half-rueful.

"No, sir, but another hit from that ram would have done much worse."

He paused. "Did you notice that they're not firing that much."

"Wouldn't do that much good."

"No. I don't think that's the reason."