The first probing attacks came after about five days of looting. They were tentative, designed primarily to identify strong points – and weak ones. The defenders had certain advantages here. Martel had received his training from Vanion, and Vanion could, therefore, predict almost exactly what the white-haired former Pandion would do, and, moreover, he could marshal his forces so as to dissemble and deceive. The probing attacks grew stronger. They came sometimes at dawn, sometimes late in the day and sometimes in the middle of the night when darkness shrouded the smoky city. The Church Knights were always on the alert. They never removed their armour, and they slept in snatches whenever and wherever they could.

It was when the outer city lay almost entirely in ruins that Martel moved his siege engines into place to begin the steady pounding of the inner city. Large rocks rained from the sky, crushing soldiers and citizens alike. Large baskets were mounted on some of Martel’s catapults, and bushels of crossbow bolts were launched high into the air to drop indiscriminately into the ancient city. Then came the fire. Balls of burning pitch and naphtha came sailing over the walls to ignite the roofs and to fill the streets with great splashes of searing fire. There were as yet no half-ton boulders, however.

The defenders endured. There was nothing else they could do.

Lord Abriel began to construct engines of his own to respond, but aside from the rubble of destroyed houses, there was very little at hand to throw back at Martel in reply.

They endured, and each stone, each fireball, each shower of arrows dropping from the sky in a deadly rain only increased their hatred of the besiegers.

The first serious assault came not long after midnight eight days after the looting had begun. A disorganized horde of Rendorish fanatics came shrieking out of the dark, smoky streets to the southwest bent on attacking a somewhat shaky bartizan on the corner of the old wall in that quarter. The defenders rushed to that point. Sheets of arrows and crossbow bolts swept through the black-robed ranks of the Rendors, felling them in windrows like new-mown wheat. The shrieks took on that note of agony that has risen from every battlefield since the beginning of time. On and on, however, came the Rendors, men so wildly gripped by religious frenzy that they paid no heed to their dreadful casualties, some of them even ignoring mortal wounds as they dragged themselves towards the walls.