Free Web NovelChapter 186: Urban Clash
The market square came into view when Süke’s arban turned from the side street onto the main avenue, and the barricade was the first thing that was noticeable.
Carts on their sides across the full width of the south entrance, loaded sacks stacked on top of them, timber and merchant poles in the gaps between. It was built high enough that a horse hitting it at pace would stop cold.
Behind it the garrison positioned in depth across the open paving of the square, and at the far end a secondary position was visible in the narrow opening to the north streets.
Rooftop archers shot at the south entrance from the buildings on both sides. Two steppe riders twenty meters ahead of Süke’s position were under fire from the near-right roof as they cleared the last building.
The first took a shaft through the side of his neck. His horse carried him further forward before he listed sideways and came off. freёwebnovel.com
The second pulled back into the street with a shaft through his upper arm, transferring his reins with one hand, his face locked against it.
Yasa observed the barricade.
"That won’t hold much longer," he said.
"It’s been there since before we were at the mansion." Süke replied.
Yasa glanced at him. "How long?"
"Long enough."
They moved forward into enemy range.
The open paving between the street and the barricade had been fought over before they arrived. A horse lay on its side fifteen meters from the barricade, four shafts in it from the enemy fire earlier.
Two men from an earlier assault were on the stones between the horse and the nearest wall, one of them close enough to the barricade that he’d nearly overwhelm it before he went down.
Süke moved his arban to the corner and began putting fire toward the rooftop positions. The garrison archers on the roof were concentrated toward the south entrance and working what remained of their arrows with accuracy.
Their firing rate had dropped from what it had been early in the fight, but dropped wasn’t gone.
Arsu was shooting from Süke’s left.
"My forearm’s tightening up," he said. "From where the sleeve got cut at the mansion."
"Then shoot with the other hand," Yasa kept his bow trained toward the roofline.
"That’s not helpful," Arsu said.
Köge pointed toward the barricade.
"Barricade center. There’s a gap at the left cart."
He said it once and sent his next shaft toward it.
Süke looked where Köge had indicated. A piece of timber between the central cart and the building wall to its left had loosened from the pressure.
It wasn’t wide enough for two horses at once, but enough that the garrison would need men to block it with their bodies rather than with material.
He couldn’t tell from this distance whether anyone had moved to fill it or whether the east-flank pressure had pulled them off.
Then the east entrance of the square collapsed under the eastern arbans’ push, and in the two minutes that followed the garrison fighters from that section pulled toward the center of the market square rather than toward the south entrance.
They had men enough for one or the other.
"We push," Süke said. "Go."
He drove his horse off the corner and across the open paving toward the barricade’s left cart.
The paving stones had blood on them from the earlier assaults and the horse’s stride broke twice on the wet stone before it found firm ground.
Köge was on his right, Yasa and Arsu behind.
Two garrison spearmen had reached to block them from the interior side when Süke arrived at the barricade.
The first didn’t have his spear set. Köge drove his horse into the man before he’d brought it up, the horse’s momentum driving the garrison fighter backward and down into the ground.
The second spearman had his spear set and aimed at Süke’s horse’s neck.
Süke pulled left hard, the spear sliding off the horse’s shoulder, and cut the man across the forearm as he went past. The grip on the spear broke.
He drove through the gap into the barricade’s interior.
On the interior side the garrison’s second rank pressed back. The fighting there was close and without room for anything but what the range allowed.
Süke cut right where a garrison fighter was working on Köge’s horse from behind and felt rather than saw something happen on his left.
He turned.
Yasa had a short spear through his left side, below the ribs.
The garrison fighter who’d put it there was pulling it back. It came out and the man vanished back into the mass of soldiers behind him.
Yasa’s left hand went below the ribs. His horse moved three steps east on its own and stopped.
Yasa was still in the saddle, right hand on the reins, left hand pressed against the wound with blood running between his fingers.
Süke broke from the fight and rode to him.
"It’s not as bad as it looks," Yasa said.
Süke looked at the wound. The entry point was below the left ribs and the blood coming from it was dark and moving fast.
He looked at Yasa’s face and then back at the wound.
"Shut up, it’s bad," Süke said.
He looked behind him.
"Köge."
Köge was already close. He came alongside Yasa’s horse and took the reins from Yasa’s right hand without a word, then turned both horses toward the gap in the barricade.
"Get him behind it," Süke said. "And keep him there."
Arsu had come through the gap behind them and was watching.
Süke turned away and went back to the fight.
The garrison defense broke four minutes later.
It started at the east entrance and flushed west in beats, each defender finding their neighbors gone and making the decision to retreat.
The soldiers nearest the secondary position pulled through the square toward the interior streets in reasonable order, still moving as a group rather than scattering.
The ones who stayed at the barricade’s center died there or were pulled down mid-run.
One garrison commander near the central cart kept his men in place for a full minute after everything around him had begun retreating, shouting directions in Bulgar, pointing east toward a position that had nobody left in it.
He died facing south, still trying to shout orders.
The square’s interior was loud and open when Süke rode through the broken barricade.
Riders from three directions were inside and the organized resistance was finished.
In the east corner a market stall had been set ablaze during the fight, and the fire had moved from the stall to the building behind it.
That building was going fully now, the flames visible above its roofline, the smoke climbing in a heavy column that spread flat overhead and joined the south and north gate’s smoke already hanging over the city.
Ash drifted across the square in small gray flakes, the kind that came off burning thatch, settling on the stones, the dead and the horses moving through them.
Süke found Yasa behind the overturned grain cart on the barricade’s interior.
He was sitting with his back to the wood, Köge crouching beside him. The cloth packed against his left side had soaked through. freeweɓnovel.cøm
"How is it?" Yasa said when Süke came to him. His voice was thinner than it had been.
"They retreated further into the city." Süke said.
"I’d have bet they scattered."
"You’d have lost,."
He looked at Köge. "The physician riders, get them here. They were behind the main assault when we came through the gate."
Köge nodded and got his horse.
Further than the square, through the streets the garrison had retreated into, the sounds of the fight were still happening but scattered.
The city’s organized defense was brought down to their last stand.
