Ten minutes turned out to be a pretty good estimate, or guess, or trained evaluation from experienced warders. Whatever you want to call it. Our people from the stable hadn’t made it back so we were all using the bows the town guard had provided. We took out probably half of the drants before they even reached the wall, if two dozen or so is half of three hundred. I’m not very good at math, obviously. I was among the first to drop my bow and draw my sword. It felt like old times on the walls of Ansdron except for three things. One, instead of Delik Slin with me I had Venzik on my left and my father, of all people, on my right. Two, the walls were a lot smaller, which meant it was going to be much easier for the drants to get to us. And three, in Ansdron I knew that I might die, but I never felt like the entire city was going to be wiped out if I did. Or when I did. I wasn’t feeling very optimistic.

The first three drants popped their heads up at about the same time. None of them were directly in front of me. One was in front of my father, one was a little to the left of Venzik and the third was even farther to the left in front of a couple of town guards. I decided to help my father since Venzik is more than capable of taking care of himself, what’s one drant to him? My father yelled and with both hands swung his sword straight down on top of the drant’s dented helmet with a mighty blow. Or, he tried to. His aim wasn’t that great so his mighty blow hit the side of the helmet and glanced off, leaving one angry and excited drant who was yelling right back at us as he pulled himself up. I moved over to the right a little and stabbed him in the face with my own sword. I don’t know if it killed him or not, but he lost his grip and fell off the wall. So, hopefully, either the fall killed him or his drant buddies killed him by stepping on his face while they made their own way up the wall.

As is usual during a battle things got pretty crazy. Padral and his elvish apprentice, Loberth, were behind me, my father and Venzik and they helped out by occasionally setting some of the drants on fire or hitting them in the face with magical darts or something. It was nice, but it meant I not only had to protect my father I also had to keep any drants from getting to them. Having to worry about all that put a real crimp in my fighting style, if it’s worthy of being called that. It’s always annoying to have to worry about more than just surviving a battle but I was starting to get used to it.

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I had killed, or knocked from the wall, what seemed like all three hundred and fifty drants before the rest of our people returned from the stable. That only left the three I had sent out to gather help from the inns and taverns who weren’t with us. Sir Aryoss, Vone and Stegen showed up with some of my guards. We were holding our own on this side of the gate and I was about to send them over to the other side with Thilos and Imprid when I realized we probably couldn’t afford to have them out of the fight that long. I sent them further to the left of us, away from the gate a little ways, instead.

None of the drants that had made it over the wall had lived very long yet. I guessed that we were winning. That made me smile until my father lost his footing and fell on his ass, losing his sword in the process. I abandoned the drant whose head had just popped up over the edge of the wall in front of me. I had been about to try to decapitate him. I had been trying that a lot this morning and had never quite succeeded, but I gave up the opportunity to try to save my father’s life. The drant he had fallen down in front of was, naturally, planning on taking advantage of it by cutting him in half as much as possible with the scimitar he had raised over his head. As it came down I blocked it with my own. The strength of its blow forced my sword down, even though I was using two hands on my blade and he was only using one. Leverage or something, I suppose. I didn’t have much time to consider it because his free hand soon smashed into the side of my head, knocking me to myside, into Padral.