Brandt desperately needed to piss. Sure, he’d already taken the time to crouch at the inner edge of the wall and let fly whatever nervous half-hearted stream he could manage twice already since the bombardment had began, but that didn’t seem to have any bearing on his suddenly tightening bladder. It’d happened the same way during the last assaults. The nerves would come, he’d relieve himself thoroughly before things really kicked off, but the moment the time was upon them the only thing his body seemed to care about was letting loose, though he knew he was empty.

“Ladders!” someone shouted, and Brandt joined in the chorus of curses and prayers. For an insane moment he couldn’t remember if he’d prayed or swore, and he laughed a bit. Nobody seemed to mind, each of them seemed to handle the fear in their own ways, and so long as a man stood strong on the parapet nobody judged. There was a ragged crackle as their handgunners fired their first volley, and Brandt peaked up over the wall to see the results. One of the ladder teams had fallen over in the mud as several  of them had taken wounds from the spinning bullets. Then the rest were at the walls.

The ladders were hoisted against the walls and everything was a flurry of action. Men armed with spears who’d lashed crosspieces to their poles had the job of shifting the ladders off the wall, either backwards or more usually to one side. They managed to toss two of them down, but by then men had reached the top of others. Panic threatened to grip Brandt Dittmar, but he pushed it away. He was angry at himself for being afraid, and he forced that anger towards the enemy. One of the ladders that had been shoved away was raised again nearby, and Brandt brought his heater shield up under his eyes with a snarl, hefting his warhammer at the ready.

Earlier in the day, the smiths apprentice had imagined himself as some bold hero with a memorable battle cry that would elevate him amongst his fellows as a warrior of renowned. He imagined himself standing shoulder to shoulder with the famed Greatswords, perhaps with his own bold chinless beard. As the first Talabecman reached over the crenulations towards him, Brandt met him with instinct instead of intellect, spitting and shouting.

“Fuck!” he bellowed thoughtlessly, and obliterated the mans face with his hammer. The man went limp and fell back from the wall, but the next man managed to hop over from another ladder. Then the battle began for real, a desperate ugly fight at the top of the wall. There was a rhythm to it, and the [i]BOOM-CRACK[/i] of the cannon acted as metronome.

The defenders did well and the attackers never managed to get a hold on the wall.

“Sergeant Hoefler!” came a shout from the Gatehouse, a deep bellow that carried over the noise of battle. It was the Greatsword who’d been almost single-handedly keeping his stretch of the fall free of the enemy with great battlement-clearing sweeps of his flamberge. “Sergeant, they’re massing!”

The old fighters stepped towards each other to speak together and Brandt wasn’t able to hear their conversation. Horns were sounding from the other side of the wall and Brandt raised his now-battered shield, ready for the next man to come in range of his bloodied hammer. That man never came, and as doubts and questions started to push against his raging heartbeat, Sergeant Hoefler began hoarsely barking out orders.

“Down from the walls, lads!” he pointed towards the keep. “That cannon’s done its work, we’re falling back! Handgunners, give us cover as long as you can.” The four surviving handgunners answered with a ragged cheer as the rest of the men reluctantly pulled themselves from their hard-defended parapet. Brandt joined them, keeping close to the Sergeant as they hustled down the stone steps to the mud below. He tried not to look at the corpses that had tumbled to their side of the wall; a few of their own men, and a handful of the enemy that had been shoved over to keep the space cleared for the warriors feet. Brandt saw the gate as they went past. Jagged metal from the outer portcullis reached inward through the mostly shattered oak of the inner gate, and bent cannon balls littered the ground nearby.

There was shouting, and the sounds of horses. Brandt heard a clang and turned to see grapples flight into the wreckage of the gate. There was a barked order he couldn’t quite hear, and the ropes were pulled taught. A great groan went up as the wreckage began to twist away.

“The gate…” Brandt muttered, until the reality of the situation set in. “The gate! Sergeant Hoefler, the gate!”