Gal POV

The riders from the south pressed toward the counter-formation’s front. The spearmen at the line’s center held their points forward. The horses in the leading rank checked before them.

Two horses went into the points anyway. One took a point in the shoulder and backed. The other drove through. The spear shaft broke under the horse’s weight and the rider was inside the front rank’s spacing with his saber working left.

The riders from the eastern cross-street came at the right end of the line where the spearmen were facing south. They could not turn their spears fully east before the horses reached them.

The right end broke in the first twenty seconds. The men there went backward into the men behind them. A gap opened between the right end of the line and the platform’s east corner.

From the western cross-street it took thirty seconds longer. When they reached the left end it broke the same way.

The garrison commander on the platform called something south.

The center men began moving north toward the granary’s side door in a line, not a run. The rear men went through the door first. The front rank followed them in order, holding formation while the line’s ends were gone on both sides.

A man at the back of the center’s withdrawal took a shaft through the back between the shoulder blades. He hit the door frame and slid down it.

The rest were through.

The market space had no organized line in it.

Gal drove his horse north past the broken formation.

Orkhon came alongside. The broken shaft’s stub was still lodged in his forearm where it had snapped off during the gate crossing. The skin around it was dark. He still had not mentioned it.

The side door the commander had gone through opened into a short lane running along the granary’s western face.

Gal could see a man in a commander’s coat forty meters ahead, moving fast.

Two riders behind Gal followed without being told. They ran the lane to its end where it opened onto a narrow cross-street running east.

The commander was on a horse now. He had taken it from somewhere. He was driving it east toward the far cross-street.

"East," Gal said to the rider on his right, and pointed down the street.

They went east.

The streets narrowed as they went. The commander turned north into a shorter lane.

The horse he was riding knew inside the city and it was showing.

They closed over the next two hundred meters. The lane bent twice and ended against the north wall’s inner face.

The commander pulled his horse up at the wall.

There was nothing north of him.

He turned and faced them.

Gal stopped his horse twelve meters out and looked at him.

A man in his fifties. Broad through the chest. A sword in his hand that he held with expertise. He had done everything a garrison commander could do with what he had.

"It’s over," Gal said.

The commander did not understand the words, but understood what they were.

The commander raised his sword.

Gal moved his horse forward.

The two riders with him came from each side.

It was done in the space of three strides.

Unnamed Rider POV

The east tower door was at the south wall’s inner base. A bar lay across it on the inside.

They broke the bar with an axe and went in.

Eleven riders and him. The stairs went up steeply, one man wide, timber underfoot.

The archer at the top heard the bar break and shot down the stairwell before they were two steps in.

The shaft hit the wall beside the first rider’s head. The first rider kept going.

A second shaft came down. It found the upper arm of the rider behind him. The point drove through the muscle.

He went back down past the others and out the door. The rider behind him took his place.

They went up.

The first archer at the platform had no room to reset at the stairwell opening.

He caught the rider coming through with a short knife. The rider took it in the side and put his saber through the archer’s chest.

The second archer on the platform went over the rail before anyone could reach him. The drop to the outside was long.

The platform had nothing at its rail.

The west tower was two hundred meters along the wall walkway.

They ran along it, the planks underfoot.

The west tower’s archers saw them coming before they reached the stairs.

Three shafts came down the walkway while they were still fifty meters out.

One found the rider two places ahead. It went through the thigh and stayed in.

He went down on the walkway. The others went around him and kept moving.

The tower door at the walkway level gave on the second kick.

The stairs inside were shorter. The two archers who had come down to the stairs’ top gave up those stairs in the next minute.

The west platform was clear.

Both towers had nothing at their rails.

Gal POV

The granary’s main doors were barred with a heavy timber brace.

Axes went into the brace until it gave. The doors swung inward.

Inside, grain sacks were stacked floor-to-ceiling in rows along both side walls and through the center. The smell of stored wheat was dense and cool in the enclosed space.

This was what the garrison had organized around. This was what the city needed to get through winter.

Orkhon rode inside with the loading group.

They pulled sacks from the outer rows and passed them back through the doors. Riders outside tied them across their horses and moved south.

The work ran for fifteen minutes.

The outer rows along both side walls were cleared. The first three rows of the center aisle went with them.

What remained was most of the granary.

Gal looked at Orkhon.

Orkhon watched the last sacks go out. "Enough?" he said.

"Enough," Gal said.

He gave the order for fire.

Fire arrows went in through the open doors into the inner rows.

The sacks caught fast. Dry grain burned hot from the first contact.

The fire found the center aisle and spread east and west along the grain’s full width.

The first row burned. Heat reached the second. The second caught.

Within five minutes the granary had its fire. There was nothing that could be done about it from any direction.

They pulled out through the doors.

The loading riders were already moving south with what they had taken.

Gal turned his horse south.

Orkhon fell in beside him.

The lane behind them filled with riders moving the same direction. The recall moved through from the south without anyone needing to explain it.

Torghul POV

The east tower stopped firing.

Torghul read it from the rhythm. The platform had been shooting at intervals throughout the city engagement.

Then the intervals stretched. The last shaft came down. The platform was done.

He looked at the west tower.

It was still working.

Then it stopped too.

The granary smoke rose above the north wall’s line in a dense column. Darker than the outer city smoke. The color of burning grain.

It rose straight in the still air and spread at the top into a wide mass that covered the city’s upper air above the walls.

He told the relay rider to send the recall through the gate.

The gate was open.

Riders who had been going through it were now coming back the other way.

Loaded riders moved south at a canter with sacks across their horses. The direction reversed through the gate opening the way water reversed when it found a lower point.

The east wall walkway was clear.

The west wall walkway was clear.

The south wall’s defenders had compressed into the sections furthest from the gate during the interior engagement. They were still there.

The third day was done.

Batu POV

The granary smoke was visible above the north wall.

Both tower platforms had gone still.

The riders coming back through the gate were loaded with what the granary had held before it was burning.

The line through the gate moved south in a continuous flow.

Dorbei’s western smoke was still rising.

The raiding had run through the full engagement without pause. It had not stopped for the recall.

The four-day window had what it needed from today.

Tomorrow would be to regroup and the river crossing back east.