And then it was. It had been given twice since Oliver's arrival. The front two rows would begin to run, carrying ladders between them, and they'd race towards the wall, under the spray of catapult fire and ballista fire. They ignored the arrows that were sent their way, and focused only on running as fast as they could, trusting in the short shields that they carried.
If the rows of men were fifty by twenty, it seemed to Oliver that the corpses numbered just as much. They were strewn all over the sandy dirt. Wherever there was a patch of ground, a man could not walk even a handful of steps before he stumbled over another body, and another patch of ruby blood, with crushed ringmail filled with arrows, and poked through by broken bones. Those were only the men of that morning too.
