Batu POV

The watch fires on Suvar’s wall had been burning through the night along the walkway and higher on the watchtower platforms. By the hour before dawn, when Torghul’s formation came into position around the city’s southern side, they were still burning.

The garrison inside had known since the earthworks fell what the morning would bring. They had used the night to make what use of it they could.

The formation moved into the encirclement without signal fire to guide it, working from the positions Torghul’s relay had mapped the previous afternoon from the earthworks northern walkway.

Suvar’s gate was visible from the south as a dark gap in the wall, with the nearest watch fire casting its light against the gate’s wood. The gate was sealed with a heavy bar across its center, and the joints where the gate met the sill had been freshly pitched.

Subutai came alongside Batu in the pre-dawn dark.

He looked toward the gate, then back at Batu.

"The pitch is at the lower joints where the gate meets the sill. That’s where fire catches fastest."

He observed the gate’s outline in the watch fire’s light.

"Fire arrows on the lower joints first, then the center bar. The upper section catches last from the heat below it. When the bar chars through the center, it loses its strength and the leaves will give when the wedge hits them."

He paused and nodded toward the wall.

"The wedge stays two hundred meters away until the gate starts to burn. The watchtowers will be shooting at their position the whole time."

"And the wooden walls?" Batu said.

Subutai kept his eyes on the gate.

"Let them burn if they catch. They’re not the entry point."

Batu turned to the relay rider at his right.

"Tell Torghul. Fire on the lower gate first."

The rider went.

Torghul POV

Sixteen thousand riders had the city surrounded by the time the sky had found enough gray to show the wall’s full outline.

The encirclement curve at four hundred meters gave a thinner density on the southern side than the earthworks assault, and Torghul pulled the south arc tighter to three hundred meters to maintain suppression volume.

The wall was manned along its entirety. Walkway defenders stood at their positions the length of the southern face, and the watchtowers projected two meters above the walkway height on each side of the gate. The tower platforms already had archers working at long range into the forming encirclement before the first fire signal came.

A shaft from the northeast tower came down from above and found a rider in the formation’s eastern side through the top of the shoulder, the drop from height driving it down through the joint. The rider’s horse turned east on its own and carried him out of position.

A second tower shaft struck a horse in the western side, the animal going down without any intermediate stumble.

The first fire signal went.

The initial volleys fell short of the gate or wide of the joints. Six hundred meters was a long shot, and the archers made their adjustments through the second and third volleys, working the range in.

The fourth volley began landing on the gate’s face. The fifth concentrated on the lower-left joint, and the pitch there darkened and then caught, a small orange point that began feeding outward through the coating. The sixth volley went to the lower-right joint, and the work of establishing the range on that side began again.

The suppression fire had been going into the walkway defenders simultaneously, compressing the rate of return fire from the wall as the defenders went behind the rail between shots.

The watchtowers did not compress. Their platforms sat above the effective reach of the encirclement’s suppression, and the archers on them were shooting into the formation without anyone covering them adequately.

A rider in the south went down from a tower shaft, horse collapsing and the rider going over its neck. Another took a shaft through his forearm and kept his position.

The lower-left joint fire was spreading up the gate’s facing timber. The lower-right joint caught on the tenth volley, and the fire there started its own spread. The two fires were working toward the bar’s face from below.

Torghul watched the bar. It was still intact.

Gal POV

Gal had a hundred men in the assault wedge’s fourth rank, and he had been counting time since the wedge took its hold at two hundred meters from the gate. He found the counting useful in these positions. It kept his attention from going to the things happening around him that could not be addressed from where the wedge stood.

The watchtower archers were the things he could not address.

A shaft came into the wedge from the right tower, dropping from above and found the man at the outer right of Gal’s first rank through the back of the helmet and into the base of the skull.

The man went forward off his horse without any motion to catch himself, and his horse stood in position in the wedge with an empty saddle. A man from the rank behind moved up and filled the gap.

The man directly to Gal’s left was named Orkhon. He had an arrow through his left forearm from the earlier exchange ten minutes ago, the shaft still in him, his rein transferred to his right hand. He was watching the gate and had not made any sound about the forearm since it happened.

The gate’s lower-left fire was spreading. The lower-right joint had caught. Both fires were working upward toward the bar.

Two more men in the wedge took hits from tower fire while Gal was watching the gate. One stayed in the saddle with a shaft through the shoulder. One went down, and his horse was walked out of the wedge by the man beside him and the gap filled from behind.

Gal counted.

The bar was charring at its center. He could see the char line spreading from where the fire below had reached the bar’s face, a darkening that moved east and west from the center as the heat climbed into it.

The signal came from Torghul’s position.

Gal drove his heels in and the hundred behind him did the same. The wedge was moving at a canter within three strides, and the gate was two hundred meters ahead.

Their path had a wall on each side, and the south wall defenders were shooting from it while the watchtowers were shooting from above. The ground between the wedge and the gate was flat open terrain with nothing to take it.

He kept his eyes on the bar, where the char line was still spreading, working outward from the center. The bar darkened as the heat beneath it climbed. The fire in the lower part was fully running now, the gate’s facing timber burning on both sides of the bar, and the bar’s own face turning black from the heat below.

The wedge was closing in, and the gate’s leaves were beginning to bow outward under the pressure of the heat building behind them.

He kept riding.