He nodded solemnly, "It will be done as ordered."
He turned back to his command and I mounted Flin. I made my way through one of the still open avenues through the city to the higher ground beyond it. From my vantage point above and behind the city I had a front row seat to watch the battle for the city take place. I wished that I was able to be down there instead of up here, removed from the fighting. But this was the way it had to be.
I was the leader and it did no good to overly expose myself to either injury or death before it was time for such desperate actions. I could tell myself that, but my guts ached within me to be down there doing what I was asking others to do in my place. I contented myself with the knowledge that General Sanjo was an extremely capable leader. His warriors were the best trained in the army. They would make the price of capturing Kingdom Pass a bloody one for the enemy.
The first long ranks of the enemy cleared the summit of the walls and started down through both gaps in the wall. They fell in a shower of arrows as did the ones after them and so on, but they just kept coming getting a little farther down the slope with every minute that passed by.
Siege apparatuses that had been scavenged from the wall during the night fired their short range pay loads of rock into the undulating line of the enemy that continued to pour up and over the gaps in the broken wall. General Sanjo's men were putting up a bitter defense at the base of our side of the wall. I couldn't have asked for any greater effort than what they were doing, with barely seven hundred warriors, against an undulating line of thousands that continuously came pouring up over the top of the wall.
Our warriors were falling though. Most of them from archery fire from archers hidden within the wall of shields that kept relentlessly pressing forward over the bodies of their slain. General Sanjo had held them impressively at bay for almost a full hour now, but his warriors were down by half with more falling every second.
"Sound the horn for General Sanjo's retreat!" I barked out harshly, as the bitter taste of watching good warriors die lay heavy on my soul.
They'd heard the call for retreat and I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw the General call off the defense and order a retreat through the city. They retreated down the streets of the city not bothering to put up any kind organized retreat. From the perspective of the enemy it would appear that they were routing in a panic to save their lives, when in reality I knew it burned at the heart of every warrior who was mock fleeing to do so as they would have rather stayed and fought. But they were good warriors and they had obeyed their orders, which was crucial.