Torren had thought getting inside would feel like victory.
It did not.
The service room was too small for victory. Too low, too loud, too full of men who had no room to swing and no room to fall. Ash buckets lay overturned near the wall. Firewood had spilled across the floor and rolled under boots. A dead Andal sat against the woodpile with his head tipped forward as if he were only tired, while two Painted Dogs used his body to brace a shield against the next rush from the inner corridor.
Men were still coming through the ash stair behind Torren, but too slowly. One at a time. Two if they came bent and desperate. A shield caught on the doorframe and held up three men behind it until Sella cursed from the stair and kicked the bearer hard enough to make him move. The whole breach lived by breaths and gaps.
Outside, more than a thousand men waited in the snow.
Inside, Torren could count fewer than a hundred.
That number mattered more than the blood on the floor.
Harrag knew it too.
He stood near the middle of the room, axe in hand, not fighting unless a man came too close. His eyes moved instead: ash stair, woodpile, inner corridor, side passage, the broken door, the men coming in too slowly. Rusk was at the left of the room with six Painted Dogs, shoving Andals back from a pile of split oak. Kedge had three Stone Crows low near the wall, watching a narrow side passage where steps climbed into darkness. The Andal commander had pulled his men away from the first room and was trying to make a new line beyond it.
Torren saw him through smoke and moving shoulders.
The Andal was not the largest man there. He did not need to be. Men turned when he spoke. Even wounded men tried to stand straighter when his eyes found them. He had blood on one sleeve and a dark cloak thrown over mail, but he moved like the room belonged to him even while it was being taken.
"Harrag!" Rusk shouted.
A crossbow snapped from the inner corridor. The bolt struck a Painted Dog shield and drove through far enough to bite the arm behind it. The man screamed and dropped. Rusk caught the shield before it fell, shoved it into another man's hands, and slammed his shoulder into the next guard.
"We need room!" Rusk barked.
Harrag looked at the service room. There was none.
Men kept pressing in from the ash stair because men behind them had nowhere else to put fear. The ones already inside were shoved forward whether they wanted it or not. Another few moments and the mountain men would clog their own breach. Then the Andals would only need to push the mass back into the stair and shut the last door over the dead.
Torren gripped the shield Sella had given him and tried not to think about the keys slick in his other hand.
A Moon Brother stumbled through the ash door behind him, looked around, and spat blood onto the floor.
"Ulmar holds outside," he said. "He says arrows still own the main way."
Harrag's head turned sharply. "He moved men to the gate?"
"No. He keeps them back. Stones and dark. Says no man crawls under bowmen for a half-raised grate."
Grate.
Torren looked toward the inner wall. Past the service room, past the shouting, somewhere beyond all that stone, the main passage of the Bloody Gate waited with its iron teeth down. He had seen portcullises from below before, though he had never known the proper Andal word. A heavy falling gate of wood and iron, set in grooves, dropped from above to make a road into a cage. You could not argue with it. You could not stab it. You could only lift it from the place that controlled its chain.
Harrag said the same thing in fewer words.
"The grate stays down, we die in here."
Kedge looked from the side passage to the inner corridor. "Then where is its chain?"
Oren would have known more. Oren was not there.
The captured ash-carrier had said something about the wood store, the side stair, the wall way. Torren tried to remember every word, but all he could hear was the press in the stair and the bolt that had hit the shield.
The voice came, cold under the noise.
Gatehouses often place lifting mechanisms above or beside the main passage.
Torren blinked. Speak like a man.
Find the room with the chain.
He looked up.
Above the inner corridor, thick links disappeared through a slot in the stone ceiling, black with grease and old dust. Not moving. Not yet. The chain ran along an iron guide and vanished through a narrow doorway half-hidden behind stacked wood and a hanging strip of filthy canvas.
Torren pointed before he spoke.
"There."
Harrag followed his hand.
The Andal commander saw the movement too.
His face changed.
Not much.
Enough.
"Winch room!" he shouted. "Hold the winch! Keep the grate down!"
The words struck the room like a thrown spear.
Harrag moved at once. "Rusk!"
Rusk turned, blood on his teeth. "What?"
"With me. We take the chain room."
Kedge stepped toward the side passage. "My people take the wall."
Harrag looked at him.
Kedge pointed upward with his knife. "Your Moon men cannot come to the gate while bowmen sit above. My people make them look behind."
Harrag nodded once. "Not glory. Bows."
Kedge's mouth twisted. "Bows bleed."
"Sella!" he called.
She had just come through the ash door with three Stone Crows and a shield in each hand. "What?"
"Wall passage."
Her eyes went to the narrow stair. "Good."
"Bowmen first," Harrag said. "Do not chase men into towers."
Sella gave him a look. "You worry like a mother with ugly children."
"Go."
She went.
The Stone Crows slipped into the side passage with her, low and quick, vanishing up the stair where broader men would have scraped both shoulders raw. Kedge followed last, then stopped and looked once at Torren.
"Keys," he said.
Torren lifted his bloody hand.
"Keep them where Harrag can reach."
Then Kedge disappeared into the wall passage.
Harrag turned to Torren. "With me."
Torren swallowed. "To the winch?"
"Yes."
"I can stay by the stair."
"You called men in. Now you see where they go."
There was no time to answer.
Rusk took the first men toward the hidden doorway by the woodpile. Two Painted Dogs shoved the canvas aside. A guard on the other side tried to slam the door shut. Rusk put his axe through the man's forearm. The guard shrieked and lost the grip. Another Andal behind him drove a spear through the gap, catching Rusk high in the shoulder.
Rusk roared, grabbed the shaft with his free hand, and pulled.
The man on the other side came with it.
Painted Dogs dragged him through the half-open door and beat him down with shield rims because no one had room for a clean swing.
Harrag shoved Torren forward. "Key."
The door was banded with iron, heavier than the ash door but smaller than a true gate. A lock sat under the handle, dark and square. Torren fumbled the ring. The long key was still in Harrag's hand. Two shorter keys remained with Torren. His fingers were stiff and slick.
The first key did not fit.
Behind him, a crossbow bolt cracked against the wall.
"Fast," Rusk snapped.
"I know."
The second key slid halfway, caught, then turned with a hard little click.
Torren nearly dropped the ring from relief.
Harrag pushed the door open with his shoulder.
The winch room was low and round, built into the thickness of the gatehouse wall. A great wooden drum filled the center, banded with iron and wrapped in chain thick as a man's wrist. A crank-beam jutted from one side. Two Andals stood near it, one with a hammer, the other with an axe raised over the locking teeth that held the drum from spinning. A third man had both hands on the brake lever, face white, waiting for an order he had not received.
Harrag saw the axe.
"No chain!" he shouted.
The axe man swung anyway.
Not at the chain.
At the wooden teeth.
Rusk hit him before the blow landed clean. They crashed into the drum together. The axe struck iron, sparked, and bounced away. The hammer man turned and took a Stone Crow knife in the ribs from someone Torren had not even seen enter behind him.
The third Andal let go of the brake.
The drum jerked.
Somewhere below, the portcullis groaned.
The whole room moved with it.
A terrible grinding came from the wall, metal complaining inside stone. The chain twitched around the drum, then held. Men shouted below, both inside and outside, as if the Gate itself had spoken.
Harrag grabbed the brake lever and forced it back down before the drum could spin free.
"Hold it!" he shouted.
Two Painted Dogs threw their weight onto the crank-beam. It did not move.
"Other way?" one grunted.
Torren looked at the drum, the chain, the angle of the teeth. He did not understand machines. But he understood weight. The grate below was heavy. The drum had teeth to stop it falling. The crank had to pull the chain up, not let it run.
The voice spoke.
Counterclockwise.
Torren stared.
Which way is that?
A pause.
Left from your position.
Torren almost cursed aloud.
"Left!" he shouted. "Push it left!"
The nearest Painted Dog looked back. "What?"
"Left! The other way!"
Harrag did not ask how he knew. "Left!"
Men shifted.
Rusk, blood running down his arm, put his good shoulder to the beam. Two Moon Brothers forced into the doorway and joined him. The beam moved an inch. Then another. The drum groaned. Chain tightened. Dust fell from the ceiling.
Below, something screamed in iron.
Outside the room, the fighting swelled.
Harlan had seen the room taken.
"Winch!" the Andal commander shouted from the service chamber. "Back to the winch!"
Crossbows cracked from the inner corridor. One Moon Brother at the doorway spun and fell against Torren, knocking him into the wall. Torren's shield jammed between them. He pushed the man off and saw the bolt through the man's throat.
There was no room to lay him down.
The body stayed half-upright against the wall until someone stepped over him.
Harrag pointed to the doorway. "Hold there!"
Rusk snarled. "With what? My charm?"
"With your body if needed."
Rusk laughed once and rammed his shield into the next Andal trying to enter.
The crank moved again.
Slow.
Too slow.
The portcullis was not a door that opened because a man wished it. It rose by inches, each one bought by backs and legs and hands slipping on iron. The drum turned with a heavy wooden groan. The chain climbed link by link, grease and old dust flaking from it.
A runner shoved into the winch room, eyes wide. "Outside says the grate moved!"
"How much?" Harrag demanded.
"A hand. Maybe two."
"Not enough."
"No," the runner said. "Ulmar keeps them back. Arrows still coming from the wall."
The wall.
Torren looked toward the ceiling as if he could see through it. Somewhere above, Sella and Kedge were in the passages among the bowmen. If they failed, the grate could rise and still become a killing mouth. Men crawling under iron teeth while arrows fell from above would only pile bodies in the main way.
A shout came from above them.
Not from the service room.
From the wall passage.
Then another.
Closer to panic.
Harrag heard it. "Stone Crows?"
Torren did not know.
A moment later, a shape fell past the narrow murder slot near the winch room ceiling. Not into the room; past it, outside the wall. A man screaming downward into the night, arms flailing, then gone. Andal or Stone Crow, Torren could not tell.
The arrows from the wall did not stop.
But they changed.
Fewer came down toward the main way. More shouting rose above, men calling to each other, boots running over stone. The bowmen had begun looking behind them.
Harrag bared his teeth. "Good."
"Good?" Rusk shouted from the door, holding back two men with a shield that had begun to split. "Come say good over here!"
"Hold!"
"I am holding!"
The crank-beam moved another half turn.
Below, the portcullis groaned louder.
Outside the Gate, men shouted for wood.
Torren heard them faintly through the stone and iron. Moon Brothers, Painted Dogs, maybe both.
"Do not run!" someone roared outside. Ulmar, perhaps. "Stay back!"
Then Sarra's voice, sharper: "Wait for the bows!"
Another shout from below: "It's rising!"
"Wood under it!"
"No! Not yet!"
The grate was becoming visible from outside.
Not passable. Not safe.
Visible.
That alone could kill men if they lost patience.
Harrag seemed to understand without hearing every word.
"Send down," he told Torren.
Torren stared. "Me?"
"No. Your mouth. Use it."
Torren caught the nearest unhurt boy by the shoulder. He was Stone Crow, maybe fourteen, eyes black with ash.
"Go to Ulmar. Tell him: not yet. Wait until Stone Crows bite the wall. Wait until the grate is waist high. If men crawl, they die."
The boy looked at Harrag.
Harrag said, "Run."
The boy ran.
Harlan's men hit the winch room again.
This time they came with a shield first, low and hard. Rusk took the blow and went down to one knee. A spear came over the shield and drove into the shoulder of the Moon Brother beside him. The man fell backward into the crank-beam. The beam jerked. The drum slipped half a tooth.
The portcullis dropped with a crash.
Not all the way.
A foot, maybe.
Enough for the whole room to feel the failure.
Outside, men shouted in alarm.
Harrag slammed the brake lever down. "Hold the drum!"
Two Painted Dogs threw themselves onto the chain, uselessly, hands burning against grease and iron. The drum held because the brake teeth caught again, not because men could stop that much weight with fingers.
Torren saw the problem.
If the Andals got one clean strike at the teeth, or one axe into the pawl, the grate would fall and stay. Maybe not forever. Long enough. Long enough for Harlan to fill the service room with spears and bodies. Long enough for the men inside to become a story told outside by those who had not reached them.
The voice came.
Protect the locking mechanism.
Torren looked at the wooden teeth, the iron catch, the brake lever under Harrag's hand.
I know.
This time he did not hate the answer.
He stepped closer to the brake, shield raised badly, body between the mechanism and the doorway. It was stupid. It was too little. But the next Andal who tried to throw an axe at the teeth would have to throw through him or around him.
Harrag saw him.
For once, he did not tell him to move.
"Crank!" Harrag shouted.
Men leaned into the beam again.
Rusk rose from one knee with blood running down his arm and shoved the cracked shield forward. "If this thing opens, I am taking credit."
"No one will believe you," Torren said before he could stop himself.
Rusk laughed like a madman and slammed his shield into the doorway.
The drum turned.
One tooth.
Another.
The chain climbed.
From above came a Stone Crow signal: three sharp knocks, then two.
Torren did not know that one.
Kedge's voice followed from somewhere beyond the ceiling, faint but clear enough.
"Wall's bleeding!"
Harrag heard.
"Again!" he roared. "Raise it!"
The men pushed.
The portcullis groaned upward through its grooves, iron and oak dragging against stone, slow as winter and just as merciless. Outside, the great force in the dark still waited under Ulmar's hand. Inside, the winch room shook. Between the two, the Bloody Gate held its teeth clenched.
For now.