Warriors fell to the ground within the hot press of the formation either the victims of blind sword thrusts through the shield wall or because they had been brutally hauled out into the encircling mob and hacked to pieces. Gaps in the shield wall were filled as quickly as possible, but it was hard to keep up with the rapidly appearing vacancies in the outer rim of the formation.
I narrowly side stepped a sudden sword swipe at my ankles from beneath my shield even as the warrior beside of me was pulled out into the mob. We wouldn't hold up to much more of this kind of pressure. I had no idea if the other formations had even reached position yet, but I hoped that they had because I had caught a glimpse of the white paint on the ground just up ahead of us.
The command would be given to fire when our formation reached its target goal, regardless of whether or not the other groups had reached theirs yet.
"Twenty more feet men! Twenty more feet and we have it!" I screamed out in encouragement as I struggled to hold onto my shield and maintain a forward circular motion.
There was the huff of renewed struggle as warriors all around me saw the white arcing lines of paint on the bloodstained ground too. It seemed like an hour went by instead of probably just the few minutes it took us to center overtop the scuffed white paint circle on the ground. We slammed our shields down and stopped even as warriors behind the outer rim raised shields overhead to form a canopy of dented steel over top of us.
Other warriors moved within the canopied formation to brace and hold on to those of us on the outer rim, who were struggling to keep from being ripped from the safety of our huddle of shields into the certain death of the enemy's voracious hacking blades beyond.
It felt like we were inside a bell that was ringing loudly, as the enemy beat on our shields unmercifully. I barely heard the sound of our horns on the ramparts sound out again. There was a questioning breakup of the intensity of the assault upon us as the enemy soldiers heard the sound of the horns too.
Panicked shouts rang out, but it was too late as a massive perfectly timed barrage of stone rained down upon the enemy ranks in a perfectly calibrated pattern of crushing force. Stones pelted down all around us, with one stray stone taking out several of our number, but that was the extent of our losses to the barrage. We waited, our breathing tight within our chests, as within minutes of the first barrage another came as coordinated as the first, only this time it wasn't stone but fire that fell instead.