Free Web NovelThe bridge was six planks wide at its widest and Temur could see it flexing under the first horses that went across, the planks shifting on the rough material below them. The animals' hooves found ground and then lost it again, and the riders drove them forward anyway because stopping on the bridge was the same as dying on it.
Temur pushed into the mass at the near edge. Buras was directly behind him, one-handed on the reins, his right arm hanging and his face locked against the pain of it. Möge came up on his left and Temur could see the horse already moving oddly under him, the flank wound pulling at its stride.
"Move quickly over the ditch," Temur said.
He drove his horse forward.
The first plank buckled when his horse stepped on it. Not breaking through, but a violent sideways tilt that sent the animal's front right leg down between the planks before it scrambled up. He drove his heels in and the horse climbed over the dip and kept going, the rest of the six strides of the animal picking its own way through footing that shifted under it.
A rider ahead of him at the crossing's midpoint took a shaft from the walkway, straight down, the garrison archer finding him from directly above. The shaft went in through the collarbone. The rider dropped forward over his horse's neck, slid off the left side, fell between the planks and into the ditch below. His horse ran on across and into the open ground on the other bank.
Temur reached the other bank of the ditch.
The heat from the gate hit him before he'd covered five meters past the ditch. Not the distant warmth of a fire watched from behind the dirt wall but a physical wave pressing against his face and the backs of his hands, the compound burning both lower joints ablaze now, the smoke rolling upward in a dense black column and spreading flat overhead. He could taste the compound's burning in his throat.
Buras made it across behind him. He heard Möge come over after, Möge's horse balking twice on the bridge before Möge got it moving with his heels and hard words.
Möge pulled up at the other bank breathing fast, the horse's wound working at it in ways the crossing had worsened.
"Still with me?" Temur said.
Möge adjusted his grip on the reins. "Still with you," he said.
The gate was fifteen meters ahead. Riders were piled up in front of it, firing upward at the walkway, waiting for the gate bar to fail. A garrison archer above the gate sent a shaft straight down into the press at close range. It went through a rider's shoulder and the man yelled, grabbed at it and kept his horse turning at the gate face.
Temur pushed into the press with his arban and started shooting at the east tower.
"East tower," he said. "All of you, east tower."
Goru, on his right, redirected without a word and started hitting the tower's platform with short-interval releases. Juqa, behind and one over, followed him. Buras fired with his right arm in the only posture that worked for a one-shouldered draw, the shaft going wide of where a healthy shoulder would send it, but going toward the tower, and that was enough.
Eventually, the bar finally cracked.
He heard it over everything else, a deep splitting sound from inside the gate, the charred wood giving along the full weakened length. The left leaf bowed outward two hands of distance, then further, then a rider hit it with his horse's chest at a full push and the leaf came inward and the gate was open.
The compound had spread from the gate to the passage from the relentless projector fire, small flames running both sides ahead, and the smoke compressed the way inside but the riders went through it anyway.
Temur drove his horse into it.
The heat inside the gate passage was worse than outside. The walls restrained it, held it against the riders going through, and the smoke sat heavy at eye. He could hear his horse's breathing working against it.
The garrison defense was twenty meters inside. A spear line, multiple men across the lane's full width, points set at mounted height, archers on the building rooflines flanking the passage. They had had weeks to pick that ground.
The first rider into the passage hit the spear line on the right flank, his horse taking a spear through the chest at the shoulder and going down hard, folding over its front legs. The rider was thrown forward into the line itself and the garrison fighters took him apart while he was still on the ground. freewebnoveℓ.com
Temur drove his horse left before the first rider had finished falling. He went at the flank, pushing for the gap between the leftmost spearman and the passage wall. freewēbnoveℓ.com
The spearman there read what he was doing and shifted to cover the gap, bringing his point around. Temur pulled his horse hard right at the last moment, the animal's shoulder bumping into the spearman and knocking him backward without clean footing under him, and Temur cut down at the base of his neck on the right swing.
The cut went in where the neck met the shoulder.
The spearman's knees folded. He went down against the building wall and stayed there with the spear still in his hand.
The left flank of the line broke with him down, and Temur pushed through and pulled his horse right to cover Buras coming through behind him.
A garrison fighter from the second rank came at him with a short sword and got the blade inside his guard at a thrust, the point driving for his face. His horse stepped left from a noise beside it at that same moment and the thrust went past his cheek close enough to feel the air of it.
Temur cut across the man's sword arm on the return, not a killing blow but the arm dropped and the sword with it, and the man backed into the passage and another rider ran him down from behind.
"Möge!" Juqa called from somewhere to his right.
Temur turned.
Möge's horse had gone down in the passage, the flank wound finally taking it, the animal dropping to its knees and rolling onto its side with Möge kicking free of the saddle. Möge was on his feet in the ground with riders pressing around him and the garrison still holding ahead.
"Cover him!" Temur said.
Goru peeled from the press and put his horse between Möge and the garrison fighters working the lane.
Möge had his saber out, on foot, and he was fighting from the ground with a garrison spearman who had come around the line's broken left flank. Quick on his feet, closer than the spear's range wanted him to be, he got the spearman's thigh open with a short cut and the man went to one knee.
Then an arrow from the roofline came down and found Möge through the back of the neck.
He went forward and down on top of the spearman and neither of them moved after that.
Temur watched it.
He kept driving his horse north into the passage.
The garrison broke two minutes after Möge death. The weight of the tumen pouring through the gate behind Temur's arban pushed into the passage from every side, riders filling every gap, and the garrison professionals did what professionals did, which was to break in good order and not be destroyed in the retreat.
They pulled back north through the city streets in formation, buying ground, giving it up step by step.
Temur stopped his horse at the gate's interior side.
He had Buras still up, the shoulder wound dried dark down his coat, his face white with it but his eyes open. He had Goru and Juqa and three others from the arban who had come through the passage intact.
He had Möge on the ground ten meters back in the lane.
The main avenue of Bulgar went north from the gate, buildings on each side, the city ahead of them.
He looked at it.
Then he looked at Buras.
"How is it?" he said.
Buras straightened slightly in the saddle. "Bad," he said. "I can still ride."
Temur turned his horse toward the city.
