“Move,” he yelled. He clasped her arm and stood in a swift motion, dragging her upright, to her stumbling feet. They stood amidst a graveyard of broken ceramic. It looked sharp. And the fall. Had he hurt her? He might have hurt her.
A problem for another time, when her life wasn’t in danger.
Using his body to cover her from behind, Niel pushed Ayla ahead of him towards the castle door. He stepped before her only for a moment, to grab the icy door handle and wrench it open.
“Niel,” Ayla started to say.
“Lock yourself in your room,” he barked, and shoved her inside, and slammed the door back shut.
“Archers,” Niel bellowed to his men. “Wait for them to light and take your aim.”
Battle pounded in his blood. He was a man made for violence, bred and trained for it from his first steps. He hated this business of range fighting; wished he was on the ground, sword in hand, to remove the threat. But that was foolishness, in a situation like this one. Severely outnumbered as they were, Blackfell’s walls were his only advantage.
His men grabbed the bows at their stations, stringing them with well-drilled speed and nocking their arrows.
Niel studied the nearest bright firespot below, like a dragon waiting for its prey to make the mistake of moving. There: a flicker of movement as one of the enemy soldiers below leaned to the fire, to light the next bolt and load it into the siege bow.
“Fire,” Niel yelled. His men released a half-dozen shots. Niel didn’t join them, though he’d strung the bow at his sentry post just in case. He was only a passable archer. His father had little tolerance for range weapons. It was the sword, battle axe, war hammer and lance that Niel had mastered, not the bow. Without access to a supply line, he didn’t dare waste arrows.
Besides. The bowmen kept perfect focus on their prey.Niel’sjob was to see the whole field, to adjust their strategy if needed. And he could see those small lights moving below him, each being loaded into their siege bows.
“Again,” he roared.
The bowstrings twanged softly in his left ear. His men’s.
No shouts from below. No hits.
The next round of fire bolts punched up towards them, arcing over the wall to his left. Niel turned to watch them go. The arrows flew too far overhead. None of this round were even close to hitting his men. Niel snorted.
“Again,” he commanded.
More of his own men came out the door, running low, some with bows and others barehanded. Niel handed his bow to one he knew was a clever archer. He watched his archers take aim through the crenels of the wall. The nearest had one eye closed, teeth gripping his lower lip.
A shout of pain from below, on the ground.
Niel’s men were too well trained to celebrate for getting one. But they had the locations of the siege bows now; knew their general distance from the fires. Unless Corin ordered the large bows moved, Niel’s archers could keep up a flurry of arrows. Niel moved down the wall, keeping his eyes focused on the targets below, giving orders for which of his archers should target which fires.
Surely Corin had something else planned. What did he think he was going to do, launching volleys of fire-arrows at a stonecastle? Maybe it was a cover, to keep Niel’s forces back away from the outer wall so that Corin’s men could approach. If so, Corin's bolts shouldn’t be going so high overhead. The first round had been low enough to kill them if they had struck. Why change the positioning of the mounted crossbows?
Niel raced down the wall, half-bent, studying the darkness at the castle’s base for any signs of movement.
“Fire!” he heard Ivar shout. “Fire in the courtyard!”
Niel turned in towards the rest of the castle, disoriented. Was Ivar telling the men to fire on the courtyard? Were there intruders inside the…
The confusion only lasted half a second before he saw the flames licking up from the courtyard of the castle. The courtyard was mostly open ground, dense with snow they’d shoveled pathways through.
But it also held the small castle stables. And the woodpile. And flames were licking up from below him, just visible from where Niel stood on the wall. It looked like the woodpile.
His brother hadn’t been aiming forhimat all. He’d been aiming high on purpose, trying to drop the arrows into the courtyard. Ditmar would have told him the layout in great detail. Niel was a fool not to have realized immediately what his brother’s goal was.
“Kerr!” Niel yelled. The blonde captain wasn’t fully armored. He’d rushed out from the castle with only a helmet, cloak, boots and gloves on over his nightclothes. Kerr loosed the bow he’d been pulling and saluted to Niel.
“Your command. Keep them firing and keep an eye on the perimeter,” Niel ordered. Just because Corin was going after their wood store with information he’d doubtlessly gotten from the locals didn’t mean Niel wasn’tstillworried about ladders. A double-pronged attack would be just his brother’s style, if Corin wanted to wipe them out entirely.
“Aye, lordship,” Kerr snapped.
The words weren’t even out of Kerr’s mouth before Niel barreled down the stairs.
