Trials Read Online Free Page A

topple several of them, but the enemy was managing to reach the top of the wall, and when they did so they showed themselves to be hardy fighters. The defenders fell, decimated by the war axes in the hands of those brutal men.
    The fight turned fierce on the battlements and the shouting of those fighting for their lives was now deafening. The Norghanians had climbed onto several points and had secured them, helping their comrades on their way to back them up. Gerart saw one of these spots behind him about twenty paces away and called on his Royal Swords to follow. An enormous enemy soldier with a patch on one eye was opening a way through for himself with Rogdonian soldiers flying around him like rag dolls under the blows of his axe and shield.
    Gerart reached him, flanked by two Royal Swords. Two countrymen of the snows accompanied the Norghanian.
    “Look! What do we have here? A nobleman in his pretty dress armor and his nannies,” he sneered in a voice as hoarse as it was ugly.
    “This nobleman is going to gut you, Norghanian scum.”
    “Ha ha ha!” the imposing soldier laughed. “Do you know who you’re fighting today? The Thunder Army,” he said, beating his hauberk, which was bright red with white diagonal stripes. “We’re the ones who open up a way, the ones who bring down walls, the ones who take fortresses, and today this one’s going to fall before our power.”
    “You’re wrong there, one-eye. Today we’re going to slaughter the whole Thunder Army, and none of your ugly friends will ever get back to the snowy mountains alive.”
    “Hah! And do you think that’ll change things? After we’ve opened up the way the Snow Army will come, and do you plan on defeating them as well, poor little nobleman?”
    “Yes, just as calmly as we’re defeating you, without a single drop of sweat.”
    “Ho ho ho, I like you, pretty little nobleman, you’ve got guts. For that I’ll kill you quickly and you’ll barely suffer. But before you die, understand that afterwards the Invincible Men of the Ice are coming, and there aren’t enough men to stop them in all Rogdon. I want you to die knowing your fortress will fall, that your land will be ours.”
    The enormous warrior attacked with his axe, covering himself at the same time with his shield.
    Gerart crouched, letting the axe pass over his head, then struck at the one-eyed man’s face as the man raised his shield to protect himself. At that moment Gerart buried the axe he carried in his left hand in the man’s unprotected side, piercing his armor. The Norghanian folded over towards his wounded side, and Gerart stabbed his neck with a well-aimed stroke.
    As he stepped over the dying warrior, he looked into his still-blinking eye and said:
    “You shall not pass.”
    The two Royal Swords dispatched their opponents with ease and walked on with the Prince. Now they had to stop the broken dam which was letting through the enemy tide.
     
     
     
    Above the Queen’s Gate, in the center of the fierce battle, under the screams and howls of the Thunder Army, Lomar did not take his eyes off the gigantic siege towers and the covered battering rams. Those infernal machines were advancing and would soon be in position. Beside Lomar were a hundred archers, the best in the fortress, and a fire with a huge boiling cauldron held in a reinforced swinging framework of metal. The soldiers were fighting fiercely, cutting off any enemy who came for the cauldron. Lomar’s archers dealt death among the climbers, arrow after arrow.
    There were countless victims on both sides by now. Lomar, in the midst of that chaos of blood, cries and death, could see that Count Helmar was in serious trouble. He was trying to defend the eastern part of the wall, but despite his efforts, it was falling into enemy hands. If it fell, they would be lost. The tide would overwhelm the wall through it and the enemy would be inside the fortress. Lomar went up to two of his archers and said:
    “We aren’t