The mercenaries at the rear of the crowd shoved the crossbowmen forward before the charge began. They needed to soften their target first.

The bolts came one after another. Col tracked each shot as it arrived.

The first struck the timber frame of the gate, throwing off sparks before dropping harmlessly into the dirt.

The second hit the stone beside the passage entrance and skipped away.

The third passed clean through and struck the valley road beyond the gate. Even through the noise of the fight, he heard it bounce and tumble.

The fourth found a target.

It struck a soldier on the left side of the passage across the calf. The bolt punched through muscle and buried itself deep enough to matter. Blood splashed down his boot immediately. The soldier stumbled back behind the timber, dragging the wounded leg and leaving a smear of red on the stone.

One man removed from the line.

More arrows missed, then the crossbowmen bent over their weapons and started reloading.

Col watched their hands. The motion of the strings told him exactly how much time remained.

"Wait till they commit to the charge."

Hod answered from the left flank.

"Aye."

The wound in Hod’s thigh was catching up with him now. When he shifted to respond, his hip moved a fraction slower than he intended.

Not much.

Enough for Col to notice.

Hod kept his footing and stayed where he was.

The crossbowmen were still reloading when the crowd finally committed.

The mercenaries hit the passage at a run, packed shoulder to shoulder, shoving each other forward.

Col saw the distance vanish and dropped his fist.

Twenty pistols fired almost together.

The passage trapped the sound. The blast slammed into stone and timber from every direction and came back before the first shock had faded. Col felt it through the gate beside him and through the stone beneath his boots. His body took the force before his ears sorted it into noise.

The report raced up the walls, crossed the fort, and rolled out into the mountain darkness.

The leading mercenary took a shot through the right side of his chest at close range. It tore through his lungs and burst out through his back in a spray of blood and shredded cloth that splattered the men behind him. Momentum carried him two more steps before his legs gave out. He crashed sideways across the entrance.

The second mercenary caught a shot through the left cheek. Teeth, blood, and fragments of jaw erupted from the far side of his face. The shot exited near the base of the skull. He dropped where he stood, dead before he hit the ground.

The third man was hit in the knee while running. Bone shattered. His leg folded sideways beneath him and he crashed into two men beside him. All three went down together in a tangled heap across the entrance.

Another mercenary managed to reach the passage before a shot from the right flank struck him in the abdomen. The shot punched through flesh and gut. He folded around the wound, vomiting blood as he collapsed inside the choke point.

Twenty pistol charges inside a stone corridor created more smoke than the fight in the yard. The passage was narrower, the air more confined. Grey powder smoke gathered along the walls and hung there.

Visibility dropped until a man could barely see two feet ahead.

"Passage’s choked with smoke," the soldier on Col’s right muttered.

The charge carried forward anyway.

The men in the rear kept pushing. Mercenaries and soldiers were within arm’s reach before either side could clearly identify targets. Bodies from the volley blocked the entrance and everyone had to climb over them. That made the footing miserable for both sides.

One mercenary slipped in low beneath a soldier’s guard and drove a short blade toward the ribs. A rib caught part of the strike and robbed it of some depth, but the knife still punched in.

Blood followed immediately.

The soldier didn’t retreat.

Instead, he stepped into the attack and dragged the mercenary closer. He slammed an elbow down onto the knife wrist. Bone cracked. The blade dropped.

The soldier drove his saber through the man’s throat.

Steel burst from the back of the neck. Blood sprayed across his coat and face. The mercenary collapsed twitching at his feet.

The soldier remained standing despite the wound in his side.

Two more mercenaries pushed through together, using the bodies near the entrance as cover.

The first took a saber thrust through the gut. He staggered back clutching at the wound while blood spilled between his fingers.

The second tried a wide cut despite the cramped space. His blade slammed into the gate timber and lost most of its force.

One soldier seized the opening.

A knee to the thigh wrecked the mercenary’s stance. A follow-up cut opened the sword arm from wrist to elbow. Flesh peeled apart and blood poured down the sleeve.

The weapon dropped.

The mercenary stumbled back into the smoke screaming.

A figure appeared three feet ahead of Col.

The man was already swinging. He had found Col by sound and guessed right.

Col turned the strike aside and let the force slide past him. Then he answered with a cut across the right side of the mercenary’s neck. The edge carved through flesh and muscle from below the ear toward the throat.

Blood spilled over the man’s chest.

He staggered backward into the smoke with one hand clamped against the wound.

Col moved past him toward the pressure building on the right flank.

Somewhere behind the mercenaries, a calm voice carried through the fighting.

"Keep moving. Don’t let the smoke stop you."

Over the next minute the smoke slowly began to thin.

Shadows emerged in stages.

Once Col could see roughly eight feet ahead, a new problem became obvious.

The right side of the gate passage was taking more pressure than the left.

Bodies blocked the center of the entrance, forcing more mercenaries toward the right side. The defenders there had absorbed the heavier fighting for multiple exchanges already.

Hod still held the left flank.

His injured leg was costing him speed. Every pivot carried a slight hesitation through the wounded thigh. Each adjustment solved the immediate problem, but every adjustment also stole a fraction more of his reaction time.

He was compensating well.

He simply wasn’t moving as fast as he had at the start.

On the right, a mercenary charged with a longsword gripped in both hands and delivered a brutal downward strike.

Sigg, one of Ric’s men, caught the blow on his raised saber.

The defense held for an instant.

Then the weight behind the attack crushed through it.

The longsword drove into the base of Sigg’s neck where shoulder met throat. Steel bit deep, severing the vessel above the collarbone before burying itself in the shoulder beneath.

Blood erupted from the wound.

It sheeted down the front of his coat, splashed across the stone, and ran between the cracks.

Sigg collapsed and never moved again.

The mercenary stepped through the gap he had created.

A soldier on the left stabbed him through the abdomen from the side. The wound was fatal.

It didn’t solve the problem.

The gap remained open.

More men were already pushing toward it.

"Right gap’s open!"

Col was already moving.

He drew his first pistol and fired into the chest of the next mercenary coming through. The shot struck center mass and hurled the man backward into those behind him. Blood sprayed from the exit wound as he hit the ground.

Col immediately fired his second pistol into the throat of another mercenary entering the same gap.

The man’s sword fell from numb fingers.

He grabbed at his neck with both hands as blood streamed through them, then dropped to his knees choking before collapsing forward.

Col holstered both empty pistols and drew his saber.

The soldiers held with steel.

The passage remained defensible because it was only three men wide. No matter how many attackers waited behind, only a handful could reach the fight at once.

Then a new voice carried from the valley road beyond the gate.

"Grey Wardens! Present!"

The passage.

Col counted automatically.

Three seconds.

"On the walls!" he roared, louder than at any point since the hollow. "Clear the bloody passage!"

The defenders moved immediately. Training and survival pointed toward the answer.

Men flattened themselves against stone and timber, opening a clear corridor from the road outside to the yard within.

Col pressed his back against the right wall.

Nothing obstructed the lane.

The volley fired in parts, one every few seconds.

The Sceotan rifles created an entirely different effect from twenty pistols.

Larger charges.

Longer barrels.

More force.

The combined report hammered through the gate like a physical blow. It struck the far wall of the yard and echoed back before the first shock had faded.

The soldiers felt it through stone and timber before their hearing caught up.

Smoke followed almost instantly.

A dense grey-white mass poured through the gate and spread across the yard. It moved faster and thicker than any pistol volley had created.

One mercenary reaching into the passage took a rifle shot through the head.

The front of his face exploded outward in blood and bone.

He dropped into the entrance.

The man directly behind him took a shot through the spine. The impact folded him instantly. Blood spread beneath him before the body even came to rest.

Another mercenary to the right of the entrance was struck through the shoulder.

The ball crossed his chest, shattered ribs on the way through, and burst from the front in a spray of blood.

The impact spun him sideways and dropped him hard.

The charge broke.

The mercenaries at the yard stopped advancing.

Men farther back turned toward the barracks. Others hesitated, looked both ways, then made their own choices.

From somewhere deeper in the yard, the calm voice called out again.

"Stand your ground. Form on me!"

The answer came in the form of retreating boots.

Through the gate, the Grey Wardens finally arrived.

Eighty soldiers entered with sabers drawn and pistols ready. They moved like men who had spent two minutes listening to a battle they couldn’t reach and were eager to make up for it.

At their head, Captain Halm took in the soldiers against the walls, the bodies in the passage, and Col.

"Right on flippin’ time."

His gaze shifted toward the yard.

"Gate’s ours."

The nearest soldier pushed himself away from the wall. Blood darkened his coat from the rib wound and the long fight.

The battle wasn’t over.

Rifle smoke still drifted across the yard. Somewhere inside it, the man who had kept the mercenaries through hours of fighting was still trying to recover control.

The barracks remained occupied.

The situation had changed dramatically.

It simply hadn’t reached its conclusion yet.