Sentries from the bridge, bringing news.
Wood rattled behind the walls, and with a groan the heavy gate creaked open. The two sentries galloped toward the gate as Rutger gathered up the reins of his stolid dray horse. His knuckles burned, but he clenched the straps tight in his fists.
As the two horsemen reached the gate, they suddenly pulled back hard on their reins. Their horses jerked and bucked at the sudden bite in their mouths, and everything became chaotic at the gate. The two horsemen slid off their mounts, and sliding steel from their sleeves, they slit the throats of their steeds.
Rutger snapped his reins and shouted at his draft horse, spooking it. Behind him, beneath the heavy tarp covering the bed of his wagon, he heard the pair of hidden Shield-Brethren stirring. Slapping the reins again and again, he drove his startled horse toward the open gate.
The first Mongol sentry died with a surprised look still on his face as one of the two new arrivals—Shield-Brethren, wearing the clothing and armor of Mongol warriors—drew his sword and hacked the man’s head from his shoulder in a single, fluid strike. The second sentry had lifted his spear into a ready position, but the weapon was useless against the second knight’s thrown hatchet. The hand ax struck him in the face, knocking his conical helmet askew and splitting his skull.
In the sentry towers, the four Mongol archers were hurriedly readying their bows, and Rutger spared only a quick glance at them as his horse and cart closed in on the confusion at the gate. Two of the guards jerked back and disappeared from view as arrows launched from hidden Shield-Brethren positions near the Black Wall struck them, and the remaining pair ducked out of sight behind the mud wall.
And then Rutger was at the gate. His horse tried to avoid the two dead horses, but it was hampered by the heavy cart and its cargo. The horse stumbled and the cart lurched as its wheels struck the unmoving mass of a dead horse. The horse screamed and reared, flailing with its front hooves, and the Mongol sentry, standing in front of the panicked horse, jabbed it with his spear.
The sentry realized almost immediately that he was focusing on the wrong target, and he tried to pull his spear back, but the point was lodged in the chest of the horse. When a Shield-Brethren sword caught him under the chin and slit his throat, he died with a disappointed frown on his face.
The two Shield-Brethren in the cart threw off the oiled tarp cover that had been covering them and leaped from the wagon, swords drawn. They joined the pair disguised as Mongol riders, and the remaining Mongol guards found themselves outnumbered.
Rutger reached behind him and snatched up the longsword lying in the bed of the cart. It was Andreas’s blade, and the worn impressions of the younger man’s hand in the leather grip only made him grip the weapon more firmly. With two large swings he cut the tethers and straps holding horse and cart together. The dray horse, bleeding copiously from the spear wound in its chest, staggered a few steps away from the gate and collapsed.
“Alalazu!” Rutger shouted, raising his sword and signaling to the men who were hidden in the rubble of Hünern. They came, pouring out of the alleys and shattered doorways, a ragged host of armored knights, swords and axes and spears held ready.
He scrambled down from the wagon, crossed the threshold of the open gate, and raised his eyes to the guard towers. The surviving sentries were hiding from his archers, and as he looked up, another flight of arrows skipped and bounced off the wall and wooden braces of the sentry towers. Of the two surviving guards, only one was still unhurt. Shooting back at the Shield-Brethren archers meant standing long enough to become a target, and since the fracas at the gate had begun, retreating to the ground meant closing with the invading Shield-Brethren. They had panicked, and the sole survivor hadn’t realized he could shoot down at the men inside the gate yet.
He cast about for how to climb up to the tower and spotted the narrow stairs on the right side of the gate. As his four men clashed with the remaining Mongol gate sentries, he ran for the steps, taking them two at a time. The Mongol guard saw him coming, and stood up, reaching for his spear.
Rutger paused, a half dozen steps from the top, and stared up at the snarling Mongol. The man coughed suddenly, the anger draining from his face, and the spear slipped out of his hands. He coughed a second time, blood flecking his lips, and he stepped forward, his foot coming down on empty space. He fell off the wall, and Rutger counted three arrows jutting from his back as he plummeted to the ground.