And suddenly he was up. Hauled himself over the parapet and dropped down on the other side, Carleon spread out ahead, a hill of crooked streets and grey roofs with Skarling’s Hall at the top. He pulled his axe from his belt, swung his shield from his back. Not a moment too soon. Arrows flickered from the windows of a building twenty strides away. One clattered against his shield. Another bounced from a man’s helmet just beside him. Another found its mark and someone fell, screaming, barged into someone else, knocked him from the walkway to topple into the town, wriggling in the air.

Fires were burning. He could smell it. Smoke smudging the sky. Scratch of it in his throat as he struggled to catch his breath. Burning arrows shot overhead. There were men fighting everywhere. Metal clashed as his Carls flooded up the ladders and over the parapet. A grim strain as men struggled to shove back the defenders, shields scraping on shields, boots slipping and sliding in blood, tripping on bodies.

“Yes!” bellowed Flatstone, pointing north with his axe. Above the writhing men he could see the gatehouse Stour had fallen from. The gatehouse where that witch must be. They’d captured a good thirty strides of wall, were pushing the defenders back. “Push on! Drive ’em! Kill ’em!” There was a Thrall sitting against the parapet, dead no doubt, but Flatstone split his head with his axe. No way he could make it through the press to the fighting, not yet, but it helped to get your weapon red, get your face red, get your hands red, set the tone for what would come later. “Kill the—”

“Chief!” someone roared in his ear, plucking at his shoulder. “Chief!”

“Fucking what?” Flatstone bellowed, spinning about, and saw straight away what. A great mass of men were pouring down the long slope to the south of town. Towards the walls Flatstone and his men had just climbed. A tide of coloured shields and twinkling mail. Reinforcements! Come to help him storm the city! He felt a rare smile crack his lips.

Then he saw the standards streaming with the wind. Then he recognised ’em. “What the…”

He’d fought some o’ those bastards at Red Hill. Seen those signs bobbing on the broken wall of the ruined fort there, where the Dogman made his stand. Now here they were, charging right at his rear.

“Where’d those bastards come from?” he gasped.

“The south, I reckon—”

“I can see that, you fool!”

“They must’ve had men hanging back.”

“You fucking think?”

Flatstone stared wildly about, but now there was trouble ahead as well. Carls spilling from buildings in the town, surging up the steps to bolster the men fighting on the walkways.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

They had to push north, link up with the rest o’ Calder’s men, make a fight of it on the walls and in the fields outside the city. They’d been caught off balance, maybe, but they still had the numbers.