At midnight the Hunt-Wardens threw fire at the north wall, and it was not an assault, and that was the worst of it.
Idrin had been waiting for the horns. He had heard them at the tenth bell, a long low call from the far side of the marsh, and then a second call from nearer the reeds, and he had come up the wall-stair with his coat half-buttoned and his heart going hard in his chest, expecting a rush. There was no rush. There were no ladders. There was only a sound from the reeds like a flock of heavy birds getting up off the water all at once, and then a curve of dark shapes going up into the smoke and turning over at the top, and coming down.
They were clay pots, the size of a man’s head. They were packed with something that burned. He saw the fire in them before they struck. Each one was a small orange sun against the black sky, sliding down the curve of its own path, and then it broke on the stone of the north wall with a flat dull crack and the orange spread out across the parapet in a sheet of running light. It did not drip. It spread. It went along the top of the wall in a fan, and down the outer face, and in at the crenels, and the smell of it came up in a rush that made Idrin’s eyes stream and his…
