Batu POV
The gate's timber had been burning and patching and burning again for days. What the garrison had put up to replace the original protection was lighter than what had been there at the start, and the lower joints showed where Fang's compound had found them multiple times before the garrison's bucket water had reached the fire and stopped it from spreading.
Batu sat Daichin at the south and looked at the gate across the two hundred meters of open ground between the packed dirt wall and the ditch. The two trebuchets behind him had been throwing since before first light, their cracks carrying out in the early morning air.
The assault formation was ready and waiting behind the dirt wall, Torghul at its head, the relay riders at their positions throughout the ranks. The open ground was clear, the ditch beyond it, and the gate was burning at its lower section from Fang's compound working the pitch joints at the conserved rate.
