We fought on the height of the keep.
The last four arrows of the great yellow bow were fired, and four who threatened us fell from the delta wall beyond the keep, from which they were attempting to cover the climb of the besiegers.
Standing even on the mantelets under the tarn wire, with spears and swords, we thrust at the tarnsmen dropping to the wire, leaving go of the ropes to which they had clung.
We heard grappling irons with knotted ropes fly over the parapet, scrape across the stones, and wedge in the crenels. We heard the striking against the walls of the keep of siege poles, like ladders with a single upright, rungs tied transversely on the single axis. We heard the trumpets of the attack, the running feet, the climbing, the clashing of weapons, the shouting of men.
Then helmeted heads, eyes wild in the "Y"-like openings of the helmets, appeared at the crenels, and gauntleted hands and booted feet appeared, and men were swarming at the walls.
I leaped down from the mantelet on which I had stood and flung myself to the wall.
I heard the ringing of the steel of Samos, the cries of the men behind me.
I caught sight of the boy, Fish, running past, a spear held over his head in both hands, and heard a horrible cry, long and wailing, ending with the abrupt striking of a body far below on the stones.
"Keep more from coming!" I cried to my men.
They rushed to the walls.
Within the parapets we fought those who had scaled the walls.
I saw one invader climbing down the ladder to the lower levels.
Then he cried out and slipped to the level beneath, his hands off the rungs.
I saw Telima's head in the opening. In her teeth was the dagger I had seen. In her right hand, bloody, was the admiral's sword I had discarded.
"Go back!" I cried to her.
I saw Luma and Vina climbing up behind her. They picked up stones from the roof of the keep, and ran to the walls, to hurl them at point-blank range against the men climbing.
Telima, wildly, her two hands on the sword, struck a man from behind in the neck and he fell away from the blade. Then she had lost the blade, as an invader struck it from her hand. He raised his own to strike her but I had my steel beneath his left shoulder blade and had turned again before he could deliver his blow.
I saw a man on the parapet fall screaming backward, struck by a rock as large as his head, hurled from the small hands of Luma. Vina, with a shield, whose weight she could hardly bear, was trying to cover the boy, Fish, as he fought. I saw him drop his man, and turn, seeking another.
I threw a man whom I had struck, even before he died, over the parapet, striking another, who, clinging desperately to the siege pole, carried it back in a long arc with him as he fell. I saw one of my former slaves, with a spear shaft, beating another man from the wall.
Samos thrust his blade into the "Y"-shaped opening of a helmet, parried a spear thrust from his body, and met the steel of another man.
We heard the trumpet of retreat, and killed six as they tried to escape back over the wall.
We, panting, bloody, looked about ourselves.
"The next attack," said Samos, indifferently, "will be the last."
Samos survived, and I, and the boy, Fish, and the three girls, and, beyond these, other than the dancer, Sandra, who had remained below, only five men, three who had come to my holding with Samos, and two of my own, one a simple mercenary, one who had once been a slave.
Raiders of Gor    Book 6    Pages 296 – 298
