The winch room shook like a living thing.
Every turn of the drum dragged a groan from the stone around them. The chain climbed link by link, thick with old grease, each movement bought by men leaning their whole weight into the crank-beam. Rusk had one shoulder against it, teeth bared, blood running down the other arm. Two Moon Brothers pushed beside him. A Painted Dog with a split scalp had both hands on the beam and his forehead pressed to the wood as if he meant to bite it forward.
The portcullis below did not rise quickly.
It resisted.
Torren had never thought of a gate as something that could resist, but this one did. Iron teeth dragged inside stone grooves. Wood and metal complained together. Dust fell from the ceiling. The chain tightened, jerked, held, then climbed another link. Somewhere far below, outside the room and under their feet, the great iron grate lifted by inches.
Not enough.
Never enough.
Harrag kept one hand on the brake lever and the other on his axe. "Again."
The men pushed.
The drum moved.
The chain climbed.
A crossbow bolt snapped through the doorway and struck the wall beside Torren's head.
He flinched so hard his shield banged against the brake frame.
"Keep it close!" Rusk shouted.
"I am!"
"You're holding it like a cooking board!"
Torren shifted his arm through the straps and put the shield between himself and the door. It was heavy, awkward, slick with blood that had begun to go cold. He had no idea whether he held it properly. He held it anyway.
Outside the winch room, the service chamber had become a knot of smaller fights. The Andals were no longer trying to throw the mountain men back into the ash stair in one shove. They were cutting at the edges now, trying to split the room, trying to reach the winch, trying to hold the inner corridor long enough for Harlan's order to become shape.
Torren saw the commander once through the doorway.
The man with the dark cloak stood beyond a cluster of shields, sword in hand, face hard under blood and lantern smoke. He was shouting names, not just orders. Men moved when he called them. A wounded guard who had been crawling away stopped, turned, and raised a spear with shaking hands because that voice had found him.
Harrag saw him too.
"Commander," he said.
Rusk glanced over his shoulder. "Want him?"
"I want this grate up."
"Dull answer."
"Live long enough to be bored by it."
The door to the winch room bucked under another Andal push. Two guards came behind a shield, low and fast. The first died when a Stone Crow knife came from the side and opened his thigh, but the second pushed over him and swung an axe toward the brake teeth.
Torren saw the axe before anyone else did.
"The teeth!"
He did not know if anyone heard him.
Then Harrag moved.
His axe caught the Andal's forearm before the blow landed. Bone cracked. The man screamed and fell into the drum. Rusk kicked him down and shoved his body back through the doorway with his foot.
"Stop aiming for the clever bits!" Rusk snarled at the Andals outside.
"They are not listening," Torren said.
"They should. I'm charming."
Another bolt came in and struck the Moon Brother beside the crank. The man jerked, looked down at the bolt in his chest, and kept pushing for two more steps before his legs forgot him. He slid down the beam and hit the floor. No one had room to move him. Another Moon Brother stepped over his knees and took his place.
The crank moved again.
The drum turned.
Below, the portcullis groaned louder.
...
Outside the Gate, Ulmar held his men back.
Torren could not see it, but he could hear pieces through the stone whenever the wind and fighting opened a gap. Voices came up from the main passage, muffled by the lowered grate and the thick walls. Moon Brothers shouting. Painted Dogs answering. Sarra cutting through both with a voice sharp enough to split hide.
"Back! Back from the teeth!"
Someone else shouted, "It's rising!"
Ulmar's reply came like a rock falling.
"Not yet!"
A few arrows still fell from the wall. Not as many as before. Enough. One struck the stone somewhere below with a hard spark. Another hit flesh and drew a cry that turned into cursing before it became silence.
The outside force could see the grate moving now. That was dangerous. Men who had waited under snow and hunger saw iron lift and thought the way open. They did not see the murder slits above. They did not see the angle of the wall. They did not see how slowly a man moved when he had to crawl under iron teeth with a shield over his back.
Ulmar saw.
Sarra saw.
So they held them.
For now.
Torren heard a new shout from above the main passage. Not outside. Higher. From the wall walk.
Stone Crows.
Sella's voice carried through stone in broken pieces. She was not speaking; she was snarling orders between blows.
Then a man fell past the outer slit.
This time Torren saw enough through the narrow opening in the winch room wall: a shape dropping from the wall, arms spread, cloak snapping once in the wind before the dark took him. The scream ended below the level of the room.
An Andal, Torren thought.
He hoped it was an Andal.
He hated that he hoped.
More shouts rose from the wall. Boots running above. Men turning away from the main passage to face knives behind them. The arrows below slowed.
Harrag heard it.
"Kedge has the wall looking back."
"Then lift faster!" Rusk barked.
"You push faster."
"I am pushing faster!"
"You are talking faster."
Rusk made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a curse and threw his weight into the crank again.
...
The grate rose to knee height.
A runner came from the service room, ducking low through the winch doorway with blood on both sleeves.
"Outside asks if they come!"
"No," Harrag said.
The runner blinked. "They say men can crawl."
"Crawling men die," Torren said before Harrag could answer.
Harrag looked at him once.
Then to the runner. "Tell Ulmar waist high. Not before. Wood under it when it reaches thigh. Not men. Wood."
The runner nodded and vanished.
A heartbeat later, an Andal spear took him in the back before he reached the room. He dropped in the doorway and blocked half of it.
Rusk swore. "Move him!"
No one could.
The Andals used the body.
A shield slammed into the corpse, shoving it inward. Behind it came a man with a short sword, trying to climb over the dead runner and into the winch room. Torren raised his shield because it was the only thing he knew to do. The sword hit the rim and skidded. The impact drove his arm back into his chest.
The Andal looked just as surprised as Torren felt.
Then Rusk's axe took him in the neck.
Blood sprayed across Torren's shield.
Rusk shoved the dying man away and kicked the runner's body clear enough for one Moon Brother to wedge himself in the doorway.
"Keep the door small!" Harrag shouted.
The Moon Brother understood. He did not try to fight like a hero. He made himself a wall. Shield forward. Shoulder behind. Head low. Men behind him stabbed around the edges when they could. Every few breaths he grunted as another blow landed. Every time, he stayed.
The crank moved.
The portcullis rose.
Thigh height.
Outside, men shouted for wood.
Torren heard the first heavy thing dragged into the gate mouth. A log, maybe. Then stone scraping. Then a scream as an arrow found someone who had come too close.
"Back!" Ulmar roared. "Wood, not bodies!"
Sarra shouted, "Shields over the ones carrying!"
The grate shuddered.
For a moment, the drum slipped half a tooth.
The portcullis dropped.
Not far.
Enough.
Below, a man screamed in a way that made everyone in the winch room hear him. The sound came up through iron, stone, and wood, thin and crushed.
Torren's stomach clenched.
Harrag slammed the brake down. "Hold!"
The men at the crank froze, panting.
"What happened?" Rusk snapped.
"Something under it," one Moon Brother said.
"Someone," Torren said.
No one answered.
The chain held.
The grate did not fall farther.
Outside, Ulmar's voice came again, raw now. "Pull him clear! Pull him clear, damn you!"
Then Sarra: "No hands under it! Use hooks!"
A Stone Crow signal knocked somewhere above: two, then two again.
Sella's voice followed, faint and furious. "Wall turning!"
Harrag bared his teeth. "Again."
Rusk stared. "There's a man under it."
"If we stop, more join him."
Rusk's face twisted.
Then he pushed.
The beam moved.
The drum turned.
The portcullis lifted off whatever it had caught.
The scream below stopped, or moved too far away to hear.
Torren did not know which was better.
...
The Andals made one last hard rush for the winch.
It came with discipline, not panic. Harlan had found men who still obeyed. Four shields came down the service room in a tight block, crossbowmen behind them, spears over. They did not throw themselves at the doorway. They advanced step by step, clearing space, driving mountain men back from the woodpile, trying to open a path to the winch room.
The commander with the dark cloak stood behind them.
"Winch!" he shouted. "Break the catch!"
The word reached every man in the room.
Break the catch.
Not chain.
Catch.
Harlan knew exactly what mattered.
Torren looked at the locking teeth, the brake, the heavy pawl holding the drum from running backward. If that shattered, the grate would fall. If the grate fell, the outside force stayed outside. The men inside became meat in stone.
The crossbowmen fired.
The Moon Brother in the doorway took one bolt in the shield and another in the throat. He folded backward into the winch room. The opening widened.
An Andal with a hammer drove through behind the shields.
Torren saw the hammer rise.
He shouted, but no word came out right.
Rusk moved too late.
Harrag could not leave the brake.
The hammer came down.
Torren stepped into it with the shield.
The blow hit the shield hard enough to numb his whole arm. He fell sideways into the brake frame. The hammer glanced off, struck the edge of the catch, and splintered a piece of wood from the housing but did not break the tooth.
Pain went up Torren's arm like fire.
The Andal raised the hammer again.
Rusk hit him from the side and drove him into the wall. The hammer fell. A Painted Dog grabbed it and swung it back into the man's knee. The sound was wet and wrong.
Torren slid down the brake frame, breathing through his teeth.
Harrag looked at him.
For a breath, his father's face changed.
Then the breath passed.
"Can you stand?"
Torren nodded before he knew if it was true.
"Stand."
He did.
His arm shook. He held the shield anyway.
Harrag turned back to the room. "Crank!"
The beam moved again.
The portcullis rose to waist height.
Outside, Ulmar finally gave the order.
Torren did not hear the words clearly.
He heard the result.
A roar moved under the Gate.
Not the wild roar of men losing sense. This had been held too long and released all at once. Moon Brothers came first under the iron teeth, bent double, shields over their backs, axes held close. Arrows struck shields and stuck there, quivering. One man fell before he cleared the grate and was dragged by the belt by the man behind him. Another shoved a chunk of wood under the portcullis as he passed, wedging it against the stone groove.
"Wood under!" Sarra shouted from outside. "More!"
The first Painted Dogs followed, lower, faster, some on hands and feet, some crouched nearly double. They did not flood yet. The grate still sat too low. But they came.
Five.
Ten.
Twenty.
The main passage of the Bloody Gate, closed for as long as any of them had heard in tales, began swallowing mountain men from the front while the ash passage fed them from behind.
The Andals felt it.
Harlan's shield block faltered for the first time.
Not broke.
Faltered.
Enough for Rusk to see.
He laughed with blood on his teeth. "Now they hear their own door."
Harrag pointed through the winch doorway. "Keep lifting!"
Rusk looked offended again. "I am busy becoming famous."
"You are busy holding a doorway."
"Less famous."
"Alive."
"Fine."
The grate rose another hand.
Then another.
The wood wedges groaned under it. Men outside shoved more beneath, stones, broken poles, a mule yoke, anything they could carry. If the winch failed now, the grate would drop onto a mess of wood and bodies, not cleanly into its groove. It might still kill men. It would not seal the Gate easily.
Torren understood that and nearly laughed from relief.
Then another bolt struck the wall beside him and reminded him relief had poor timing.
From above, Stone Crows screamed and Andals answered. The wall walk had become its own battle. Arrows no longer fell in steady lines. Some still came. One struck a Moon Brother passing under the grate and drove him face-first into the snow. But many bowmen had turned inward, fighting knives in the dark instead of shooting down.
The portcullis reached chest height.
Ulmar's held-back force came harder.
Not all.
Enough.
Men poured under the iron teeth bent low, then stood inside the main passage with shields up, pushing toward the inner gatehouse. The first wave hit the Andal defenders from below the main way while Harrag's men held the service room and winch above. The Gate's defenders now faced two mouths of the same beast.
Harlan saw it.
Torren watched the commander look once toward the main passage, once toward the winch room, once toward the inner corridor behind him.
He did not panic.
That made him more frightening.
He shouted something Torren could not hear over the chain.
The Andals began falling back.
Not fleeing.
Falling back.
Harrag saw it too. "He is making another line."
"Let him," Rusk said.
"He knows where."
"Then stop admiring him."
Harrag looked at the portcullis chain, then toward the main passage where more mountain men came through under iron and wood.
"Hold the winch," he said. "If that grate falls, we lose the mouth."
Torren looked at the drum. The chain. The catch. The brake. The men at the crank, shaking from effort. The dead around their feet.
Then he looked through the doorway at the service room, at the main passage beyond, at the first Moon Brothers standing inside the Bloody Gate with arrows in their shields and snow melting from their cloaks.
They had not taken the Gate.
Not yet.
But the dark outside had begun to pour in.