Osric's hand slid off William's sleeve.
Just slid, fingers leaving a dark streak on his tunic before going slack.
"William." Marsh's grip clenched his other shoulder. "My lord. South gate's damaged. If it breaks, this was for nothing."
The west yard blurred—wrecked carts, dead horses, Halden shouting from the wall.
"Cover him," William said.
Two villagers knelt. One pulled a cloak over Osric's face. The other touched the cloth once, then backed away.
William turned to the men still standing.
"Halden!" he yelled.
The archer's scarred face appeared above the parapet. "Still with you," Halden rasped.
"Cavalry's off you," William called. "You've Marsh and the trap. Hold this gate. If Felix comes again, drown him in that ditch."
Halden's eyes flicked to the cloak, then back. He gave one sharp nod. "Aye, my lord."
William faced the yard.
Villagers with shields. A handful of crown regulars in dented mail. Everyone smoked and bleeding.
"Marsh stays with four," William said. "Rest with me. South wall."
Nobody argued. Marsh spat, picked his four, and started snapping orders.
William took nine and ran.
He did not look back at the cloak.
They pounded down the forge lane.
Bram's smithy sagged, roof cracked, but still standing. A regular sat slumped against the wall, helm gone, eyes open. No time.
"Shields up!" one of the soldiers barked from behind William. "Don't stare, just move!"
The lane spat them onto the village green.
Mud. Buckets. People moving.
Wounded leaned against the well and house walls, but the real killing wasn't here yet. Blood trails streaked away, downhill, toward the south.
William saw the chapel door jammed with bodies—old men, children, the priest in smoke-stained white gripping a cudgel—and kept running.
South lane. Between the inn and the cooper's yard.
Barrels stacked as a barricade. Two boys behind them, spears shaking.
"Clear the lane," William snapped as he pushed past. "If you can't hold a shield, you stay back."
They flattened against the barrels, still clutching their spears like talismans.
Houses leaned close, smoke trapped between them. William's lungs burned.
A cold dot hit his cheek.
He wiped it away without looking up.
The sound changed ahead—wood screaming under impact, men shouting from their guts.
He turned the last corner into the south yard.
Rain hit him and the gate in the same breath.
It came in hard slashes, hammering the yard, hissing on the fires chewing at the houses by the wall. Smoke tore sideways. Mud went from bad to worse.
The gate was wrecked.
Outer doors gone, torn into pieces and rammed back inside the arch. Planks, doors, a stolen beam, all spiked together into a crooked lattice. The inner gate leaned under it, cracked wide on one side.
A gap gaped in the mess. Man-wide. Shoulder-high.
Germanian shields drove into it, two at a time.
Ashford met them with bodies.
Hale stood just inside the gap, boots in a pile of corpses—villager gray, Germanian black, crown blue—all mashed together. His shield was jammed into the leaning wood, his sword punching over the rim in short, ugly thrusts.
Dead lay thick along the base of the wall and around the gate. This was where the village bled.
The yard boiled.
Villagers and soldiers heaved new beams into place, hammered spikes, dragged the wounded back by whatever they could grab. Someone slipped in the red mud and went down; someone else hooked them by the collar and yanked them up before they were trampled.
On the wall, Hobb paced the parapet, bow in hand, rain plastering hair to his skull.
"Front rank, step!" he roared. "Nock—draw—LOOSE! Ankles, not boards! You hit wood again and I swear I'll toss you to them myself!"
Arrows hissed down in ragged volleys. Hobb's Duplication Muti was long gone; his string-hand shook with every shot. Three archers were down along the wall walk, rain filling their eyes. No one had spare arms to move them.
William hit the yard, boots splashing pink water.
He'd been gone minutes.
It looked like the wall had eaten a dozen lives.
"Lord!" Hale roared from the choke. "Quit staring and get in!"
A Germanian helm shoved into the gap. Hale smashed his shield into it, chopped down, and another body dropped into the pile at his feet.
William snapped back.
He jerked his sword toward three soldiers and a big-shouldered villager. "You four—third rank behind Hale. Shields up. Nobody runs. You hold."
They shoved forward, shields lifting, giving the front line something to fall back into.
"The rest on the braces!" William shouted at the men by the timber. "Cross them low. If one goes, the others stay. Move!"
A woman with a hammer grabbed two men without waiting. "You heard him! Get under it!"
Hobb saw the shift and leaned over the parapet.
"Good!" he bellowed. "Make me a damn forest in that doorway! Let 'em chew wood and corpses all day!"
Rain ran in sheets off the leaning gate. Blood turned thin, washing from bright red to dirty pink as it slid into the yard.
William ducked under a sagging plank, shoulder jammed beneath it opposite a villager.
"Lift," she grunted.
They heaved. Outside, something heavy smashed into the gate. The whole brace jumped. The plank almost ripped from their hands.
"Hold!" somebody screamed.
William dug his boots into the sucking mud and locked his legs. His ribs screamed. The plank climbed a notch and wedged under another beam.
"Spike it!" the woman gasped.
The hammer-boy slammed iron into wood until it stuck.
A shield punched through the gap again.
William let go, tore his sword free, and slid into the second rank beside Hale.
The Germanian forcing in was big, shield high, trying to bully Hale off the brace.
William went low.
Steel flashed. His blade took the man in the ankle, just above the greave. The Germanian dropped. Hale's sword finished the rest.
"Nice cut, my lord!" Hale spat. "Again!"
Lightning flickered somewhere beyond the wall. Thunder followed, low and long.
William's eyes swept the base of the wall for half a heartbeat—villagers he'd spoken to that morning twisted in the mud, a crown soldier's hand sticking out from under the pile, fingers curled; a girl from the inn's common room in a dark pool just below the ladder.
All here. All for this gap.
Osric under a cloak. Everyone else by the south.
"Front line, change!" Hobb's voice cracked down. "One step back! Fresh shields in! Move like you want to live!"
Hale echoed the order. Fighters in the front rank shuffled back a half-step, new shields rammed up into the space.
One man's knee buckled. William grabbed his collar and shoved him toward the rear instead of letting him fall in the gap.
A sword lanced blindly through, scraping William's sleeve, opening his forearm. Heat blossomed; he twisted, rode his own blade along the steel, and drove it into the arm behind it.
A yell on the far side. The enemy sword fell, clattering, and vanished under boots.
"Didn't know nobles bled in the muck," one of the soldiers behind him muttered, half a laugh in it.
"Keep talking," William said, eyes on the gap. "I'll trade places with Hobb."
Hobb's roar came again, ragged and fierce.
"Gate's ugly, but it's ours! You keep that hole stuffed, they choke on it!"
Outside, beyond the broken wood and bodies, Felix's line shifted, shields coming up for another push.
Inside Ashford, under the leaning braces and the hammering rain, William locked his boots in the flooded mud, sword wet in his hand, and met the next man through.