A Burning Sea by Theodore Brun (i am reading a book txt) 📕

Prince Maslama’s assault on the outer gate had intensified. Flaming missiles landed with ever-increasing accuracy on the outer gatehouses, the clay pots shattering in showers of flesh-melting terror. Despite the carnage on the walkways, Byzantine reinforcements were still bravely throwing themselves into the skirmish. Katāros felt his pulse racing under his pale skin. Such mulish obduracy would all be for nothing once the caliph’s host was released into the gap between the walls.

The rest of the emperor’s retinue were all pressed up against the stone rampart, craning their necks to see. The Mujahideen were at the outer gate now, cutting down the first of the defenders on the inside. They had reached their objective. Now they just had to take it. Meanwhile, the defenders on the inner wall had their missiles trained on the killing ground between the walls now, felling Arab and Byzantine alike in their desperation to thwart the raiders. Katāros saw a man in a white tunic laying about him with a long sword. And next to him, another with a long-headed axe. Not a conventional Byzantine weapon. The first man was wounded, and limping. . . yet he was dealing death to each spearman he hunted down with lethal precision.

Recognition broke suddenly in the eunuch’s mind like a beam of light: Katāros knew that man.

He knew him. And damned him to hell.

Erlan was too late.

There were still twenty Arabs between him and the gate. His shield was flapping like a broken wing. He flung it away and snatched a javelin from the gore-slick roadway as a black-helmed swordsman turned to meet him. Beyond him was another Arab, a huge black-clad beast with an enormous axe, hacking great shivers of wood out of the gate. Erlan knew he’d have it open soon but the swordsman blocked his way. Their blades rang, his bones jarred to the marrow, the Arab’s eyes flared, curved steel whipped across his thigh. Erlan screamed in pain, spraying spittle in his enemy’s face, feeling the strength leak from his limb as he fell to his knee. The Arab slashed down his blade, expecting to finish him, but Erlan threw himself forward, driving Wrathling’s pommel into the man’s groin. The Arab buckled, the javelin slid through Erlan’s fingers, he jabbed upwards, and the point went through the man’s throat like a street vendor’s skewer. The man choked, coughed blood into Erlan’s face, blinding him, then fell to the ground. For a second Erlan couldn’t see.

‘Get up, get up, you young lout!’ yelled Einar’s voice. ‘We ain’t done yet.’ Erlan felt a powerful hand grab the scruff of his tunic and haul him to his feet. He palmed the worst of the blood from his eyes and snatched his new long-knife from its sheath at his back. He looked up. To his horror, the axeman and his comrades were throwing down the splintered remains of the bars that locked the gate in place. The last of them had hardly touched the ground when the doors flung wide and a torrent of men burst through the gap like the breaking of a tidal wave.

Erlan had time only to seize Einar’s shoulder and dive out of the way, dragging the fat man with him. A dozen Arabs were through – then fifty, sixty, a hundred men. His head and shoulders smashed against the stone wall behind the gate, knocking the wind out of him. From the ground, he could see only the door and the racing figures, hear the yells of triumph, taste the sour nausea of disaster and defeat in his throat. Everything was a blur, everything shifting, everything moving. Everything except the door.

It was a mad hope. Mad and forlorn. His head was ringing. But all he could think was: close the gate.

There it was. Close the gate.

He stood, put his shoulder to it and pushed. Pushed against the ocean but the ocean gave not an inch. The weight of men was too heavy. Then, suddenly, there was another man beside him, heavyset, and swearing like a blacksmith in a language he knew well.

‘Heave,’ Erlan rasped through gritted teeth.

‘What d’you think I’m doing?’ snarled Einar, laying his considerable weight against the timber. Wild, wordless prayers shrieked in Erlan’s head. There was a sudden crash outside the gates like a thousand cymbals, a blast of heat through the door. Oil seeped hot and viscous around his boots. There was a strange, weightless lull in the flood, a silent instant which in the next heartbeat was answered with animal screaming. Erlan smelled burning flesh.

‘Now!’ yelled Einar and they shoved again with all the strength left in them. This time the great bulk of oak swung on its hinges until it was almost in place. And thanks to the Christ-God or the Virgin or to pure blind chance, there were defenders on the other door, too. Another Byzantine fell in beside them, then another, until they had the weight of half a dozen men behind them.

Through the wooden planks came Arabic war-cries and savage screaming and the hack of steel against oak, but the pendulum had swung to the defenders now. Spearheads struck like vipers between the closing doors, trying to lever it open. Einar fell back and heaved his axe at the gap, howling with fury, splintering spear-shafts like dry kindling. Any Arab close enough to get a hand through the gap soon regretted it until at last the great doors crashed back on their stone frame.

‘Seal them now!’ someone screamed. A thick beam fell across the brackets, and then another.

Erlan sagged against the door and slipped slowly down it into the dust and the blood and the oil that puddled at his feet, deaf now to the frustrated blows ringing against the heavy timber. He watched, exhausted, through hooded eyes at the Arabs who had forced their way through the gate. Every one of them was a hero, he thought. Every one of them deserved a saga-song.

And he watched as the Byzantines butchered them like swine.