The Clash at the Stone Bastion

The tenth day dawned without sun. A north wind blizzard was coming down the gorges dragging whirls of snow, and in the valley the viceroy's regiments, with no reserve powder, no grain and the glacier pass closed, had only one way out before hunger broke them: take the stronghold by force. At terce the kettledrums sounded. Three regiments of veteran infantry began to climb the slope with mantlets, ladders and grapnels, under arquebus fire the snow made blind.

On the main wall walk the snow piled on the merlons in a slippery crust. Irene went along the line of embrasures in a mail shirt under her tunic, pointing out targets to the town's archers.

"Wait for the second ditch! Let them see your visors shine before you loose!"

Beside her, Íñigo and Irati were drawing up fifty border crossbowmen. Irati's eyes had been red since the glacier and she hadn't said a word all morning; Íñigo hadn't asked her to. Nerea and Lope were in the gate tower with the clansmen. Across her back Nerea carried Jarek's crossbow.

The first wave set its ladders against the barbican and the whole wall seemed to creak. Hundreds were climbing, with halberds, left-hand daggers, wheellock pistols in leather holsters. From the lower embrasures, Oakhaven's millers and carpenters poured boiling water and quicklime; the women of the town, organized by Brianda the night before, passed jars of hot pitch from hand to hand up the spiral stair.

In the archive tower, Tomás and Beatriz had no crossbows. They had the valley's charters, the treaties and the guild letters, and they carried them down in baskets to the deepest cellar of the stronghold in case the wall fell: no one would burn a second time what had taken ten years to write. When they had finished, Tomás took an axe from the armory and went up to the wall walk. Beatriz followed with two jars of pitch.

Three fathoms from the main ladder, Bruno and Brianda swung the falconet's carriage around. The one with the bubble.

"Everyone back!" shouted Bruno.

"There is no back," said Brianda, and put the linstock in his hand and her own over it.

The gun went off with a sharp crack. It held. A cloud of shot swept the ladder from top to bottom, split its oak rails and broke up the assault in a cascade of screams and metal. Bruno let out the breath he had been holding since the night at the forge. Brianda laughed, the same laugh as the first time the lead ran clean.

On the eastern flank, a second column topped the wall. Six armored officers surrounded Fadrique with short pikes, trying to cut their way to the gate tower. Irene drew her short sword and charged them, and for a long while they fought back to back on flagstones slick with ice and blood, as they had fought ten years before in the courtyard on the night of Morvath's coup. Fadrique took a cut on the forearm. Irene took a blow from a pike shaft to the ribs that knocked the breath out of her. They didn't give ground.

Íñigo and Irati charged up the ramp with the crossbowmen and closed the ring on the last attackers. Irati leapt onto the parapet to cut with her knife the ropes of the grapnels still hanging from the stones. From the gate tower, Lope blew the horn, and the clansmen went out through the postern to harry those regrouping at the foot of the wall.

By mid-afternoon, the viceroy's bugles sounded the retreat.

On the wall walk no one shouted victory at first. They were too tired. Bruno sat down on the stones beside the falconet, which was still smoking. Ciro handed him a waterskin. Sira and Nuño, who had come up from the river to carry jars, leaned against each other on the stair. Rodrigo, who had spent the battle in the watchtower noting in his book where each column climbed, came down and showed Leonor a page: the outline of the wall and, on it, a cross for every place where someone had held.

Irene, a hand to her ribs, looked along the wall walk: bargemen beside crossbowmen, smiths beside scriveners, a lady from Toledo and a clansman sharing the same waterskin. Three centuries of winter had not managed what that morning did: that no one in Oakhaven asked where the person beside them came from.

In the valley, the viceroy's army was beginning to strike its tents. And in the middle of the camp, beside the marshal's, Beatriz saw through the spyglass a closed litter with black curtains that no one went near to take down.