The splintered oak of the outer gate groaned like a dying beast as eighty pounds of iron-shod ram pounded against the fractured crossbeams.
Jon Hale dragged an iron-bound crate of heavy steel quarrels onto the wet flagstones of the bridge deck, his leather boots skidding in the slick layer of river moss and pulverized stone. Behind him, thirty feet below the roadway, the swollen floodwaters of the river roared against the dressed limestone piers, yellow and frothing with mountain silt. The cold spray blew across the bridge, stinging Jon’s eyes and mixing with the oily black smoke pouring from the burning tannery roofs.
Through the ragged six-foot breach in the outer gate, the first wave of the Ash Host vanguard poured onto the stone span.
They were dismounted border shock troops, veteran killers in blued-steel breastplates and blackened iron coifs, brandishing four-foot serrated cleavers and seven-foot spiked billhooks. Their shields were painted with the jagged ash-tree emblem of the northern clans. They charged three abreast across the wet roadway, their iron-shod boots striking the stone in a deafening, frantic cadence, screaming their guttural clan war cries.
“Brace the line!” Captain Dain roared from the right flank of the barricade, his broadsword resting across his iron-plated buckler. “Hold the timber! Let them impale themselves on the ash!”
