The battle erupted like a storm breaking—all screaming metal and flashing steel, all blood and fury and the raw, animal desperation of men who know there is no retreat.
The attackers came in a howling tide, their blades hungry, their eyes wild with the promise of conquest. They shoved and hacked and died, their bodies piling up like cordwood as they fought for every inch of stone.
The defenders met them with teeth bared and shields locked, their backs to their city, their homes, their children. They fought not like soldiers, but like wolves with their den at their backs—cornered, savage, utterly without mercy. Every sword stroke carried the weight of seventeen days of siege. Every spear thrust carried the memory of friends already lost.
Then—the halberdiers struck.
