Page 108 of Towers of Midnight (The Wheel of Time 13)

Burn me, where are those archers!" Rodel Ituralde climbed up to the top f the hillside. "I wanted them formed up on the forward towers an hour go to relieve the crossbowmen!"

Before him, the battle clanged and screamed and grunted and thumped nd roared. A band of Trollocs had surged across the river, crossing on ford ifts or a crude floating bridge fashioned from log rafts. Trollocs hated rossing water. It took a lot to get them over.

Which was why this fortification was so useful. The hillside sloped irectly down to the only ford of reasonable size in leagues. To the north, Tollocs boiled through a pass out of the Blight and ran right into the Liver Arinelle. When they could be forced across, they faced the hillside, mich had been dug with trenches, piled with bulwarks and set with archer awers at the top. There was no way to reach the city of Maradon from the Might except by passing over this hill.

It was an ideal position for holding back a much larger force, but ven the best fortifications could be overrun, particularly when your men /ere tired from weeks of fighting. The Trollocs had crossed and fought heir way up the slope under a hail of arrows, falling into the trenches, hav-ng difficulty surmounting the high bulwarks.

The hillside had a flat area at the top, where Ituralde had his command losition, in the upper camp. He called orders as he looked down on the woven nass of trenches, bulwarks and towers. The Trollocs were dying to pikemen lehind one of the bulwarks. Ituralde watched until the last Trolloc an enor-nous, ram-faced beast roared and died with three pikes in its gut.

It looked as if another surge was coming, the Myrddraal driving an-ither mass of Trollocs through the pass. Enough bodies had fallen in the iver that it was clogged for the moment, running red, the carcasses pro-iding a footing for those running up behind.

"Archers!" Ituralde bellowed. "Where are those bloody "

A company of archers finally ran past, some of the reserves he'd held back. Most of them had the coppery skin of Domani, though there were a ew stray Taraboners mixed in. They carried a wide variety of bows: narrow Domani longbows, serpentine Saldaean shortbows scavenged from guard posts or villages, even a few tall Two Rivers longbows.

"Lidrin," Ituralde called. The young, hard-eyed officer hurried across he hillside to him. Lidrin's brown uniform was wrinkled and dirty at the :nees, not because he was undisciplined, but because there were times when his men needed him more than his laundry did.

"Go with those archers to the towers," Ituralde said. "Those Trollocs re going to try another push. I do not want another fist breaking through o the top, hear me? If they seize our position and use it against us, I'm oing to have a rotten morning."

Lidrin didn't smile at the comment, as he once might have. He didn't mile much at all anymore; usually only when he got to kill a Trolloc. He aluted, turning to jog after the archers.

Ituralde turned looked down the backside of the hill. The lower camp ms set up there, in the shadow of the steep hillside. This hill had been a atural formation, once, but the Saldaeans had built it up over the years, nth one long slope extending toward the river and a steeper one on the pposite side. In the lower camp, his troops could sleep and eat, and their applies could be protected, all sheltered from enemy arrows by the steep illside upon which Ituralde now stood.

Both of his camps, upper and lower, were patchwork things. Some of he tents had been purchased from Saldaean villages, some were of Domani lake, and dozens had been brought in by gateway from all over the land. A large number of them were enormous Cairhienin things with striped patterns. They kept the rain off his men, and that was enough.

The Saldaeans certainly knew how to build fortifications. If only Ituilde had been able to persuade them to leave their hiding place in the city f Maradon and come hel

p.

"Now," Ituralde said, "where in "

He cut off as something darkened the sky. He barely had time to curse ad duck away as a group of large objects rained down, arcing high to fall n the upper camp, eliciting howls of pain and confusion. Those weren't oulders: they were corpses. The hulking bodies of dead Trollocs. The Shadowspawn army had finally set up their trebuchets.

A part of Ituralde was impressed that he'd driven them to it. The siege quipment had undoubtedly been brought to assault Maradon, which was little to the south. Setting up the trebuchets across the ford to assault uralde's lines instead not only would slow the Shadowspawn, but would tpose their trebuchets to his counterfire.

He hadn't expected them to hurl carcasses. He cursed as the sky darkled again, more bodies falling, knocking down tents, crushing soldiers.

"Healers!" Ituralde bellowed. "Where are those Asha'man?" He'd pushed the Asha'man hard, since this siege had begun. To the brink of exhaustion. Now he held them back, using them only when Trolloc assaults got too close to the upper camp.

"Sir!" A young messenger with dirt under his fingernails scrambled up from the front lines. His Domani face was ashen, and he was still too young to grow a proper mustache. "Captain Finsas reports the Shadow-spawn army moving trebuchets into range. There are sixteen by his count."

"Let Captain Finsas know that his bloody timing could be better," Ituralde growled.

"I'm sorry, my Lord. They rolled them down through the pass before we figured out what was going on. The initial volley hit our watchpost. Lord Finsas himself was wounded."

Ituralde nodded; Rajabi was arriving to take command of the upper camp and organize the wounded. Below, a lot of bodies had hit the lower camp, too. The trebuchets could get the height and range to launch over the hill and fall down on his men in their previously sheltered area. He'd have to pull the lower camp back, farther across the plain toward Maradon, which would delay response times. Bloody ashes.

I never used to swear this much, Ituralde thought. It was that boy, the Dragon Reborn. Rand al'Thor had given Ituralde promises, some spoken, some implied. Promises to protect Arad Doman from the Seanchan. Promises that Ituralde could live, rather than die trapped by the Seanchan. Promises to give him something to do, something important, something vital. Something impossible.

Hold back the Shadow. Fight until help arrived.

The sky darkened again, and Ituralde ducked into the command pavilion, which had a wooden roof as a precaution against siege weapons. He'd feared sprayshot of smaller rocks, not carcasses. The men scattered to help pull the wounded down to the relative safety of the lower camp, and from there across the plain toward Maradon. Rajabi led the effort. The lumbering man had a neck as thick as a ten-year-grown ash and arms nearly as wide. He now hobbled as he walked, his left leg hurt in the fighting and amputated beneath the knee. Aes Sedai had Healed him as best he could, and he walked on a peg. He'd refused to retire through gateways with the badly injured, and Ituralde hadn't forced him. You didn't throw away a good officer because of one wound.

A young officer winced as a bloated carcass thumped against the top of the pavilion. The officer Zhell didn't have the coppery skin of a Domani, though he wore a very Domani mustache and a beauty mark on his cheek in the shape of an arrow.

They could not hold against Trollocs here for much longer, not with

the numbers they were fielding. Ituralde would have to fall back, point by point, farther into Saldaea, farther toward Arad Doman. Odd, how he was ways retreating toward his homeland. First from the south, now from the northeast.