As he sat panting, he listened to the shouts and screams coming from the direction of Urû’baen’s ruined front gate. It was difficult to tell what was happening from the general clamor, but he suspected the Varden were getting pushed back, for the noise seemed to be receding slightly. Amid the commotion, he could hear the regular crack of Lord Barst’s mace striking warrior after warrior, and then the increase in cries that invariably followed.
Roran made himself stand. If he sat for much longer, his muscles would start to stiffen. A moment after he moved away from the doorstep, the contents of a chamber pot splashed across the spot where he had just been.
“Murderers!” shouted a woman above him, and then a pair of shutters banged shut.
Roran snorted and picked his way around bodies as he led his remaining warriors over to the nearest cross street.
They paused, wary, when a soldier raced past, panic upon his face. Close behind, a pack of yowling housecats chased after him, blood dripping from the fur around their mouths.
Roran smiled and started forward again.
He stopped a second later when a group of dwarves with red beards ran toward them from deeper within the city. “Ready yourself!” one shouted. “We have a whole pack of soldiers nipping at our heels, a few hundred of them, at least.”
Roran looked back up the empty cross street. “Perhaps you lost—” he began to say, and then stopped when a line of crimson tunics appeared around the corner of a building a few hundred feet away. More and more soldiers followed, pouring into the street like a swarm of red ants.
“Back!” Roran shouted. “Back!” We have to find somewhere defensible. The outer wall was too far away, and none of the houses were large enough to have enclosed courtyards.
As Roran ran down the street with his warriors, a dozen or so arrows landed around them.
Roran stumbled and fell, writhing, as a bolt of pain shot up his spine from the small of his back. It felt as if someone had jabbed him with a large iron bar.
A second later, the herbalist was by his side. She tugged at something behind him, and Roran screamed. Then the pain decreased, and he found himself able to see clearly again.
The herbalist showed him an arrow with a bloody tip before throwing it away. “Your mail stopped most of it,” she said as she helped him to his feet.
Gritting his teeth, Roran ran with her to rejoin their group. Every step pained him now, and if he bent at the waist too far, his back spasmed and he found it almost impossible to move.
He saw no good places to make a stand, and the soldiers were getting closer, so at last he shouted, “Stop! Form up! Elves to the sides! Urgals front and center!”
Roran took his place near the front, along with Darmmen, Albriech, the Urgals, and one of the red-bearded dwarves.
“So you are the one they call Stronghammer,” said the dwarf as they watched the advance of the soldiers. “I fought alongside your hearth-brother in Farthen Dûr. It is mine honor to fight with you as well.”
Roran grunted. He just hoped he could stay on his feet.
Then the soldiers crashed into them, shoving them back through sheer weight. Roran set his shoulder against his shield and pushed with all his might. Swords and spears stuck through the gaps in the wall of overlapping shields; he felt one scrape against his side, but his hauberk protected him.
The elves and the Urgals proved invaluable. They broke the soldiers’ lines and earned Roran and the other warriors room to swing their weapons. At the edge of his vision, Roran saw the dwarf stabbing the soldiers in the legs, feet, and groin, causing many to fall.
The supply of soldiers seemed endless, however, and Roran found himself forced backward step by step. Not even the elves could stem the tide of men, try though they might. Othíara, the elf woman Roran had spoken to outside the city wall, died from an arrow in the neck, and the remaining elves received many wounds.
Roran was injured several more times himself: a cut on the upper part of his right calf, which would have hamstrung him if it had been a little bit higher; another cut on the thigh of the same leg, where a sword had slipped under the edge of his hauberk; a nasty scrape on his neck, where he hit himself with his own shield; a stab wound on the inner part of his right leg that fortunately missed the major arteries; and more bruises than he could count. He felt as if every part of himself had been beaten soundly with a wooden mallet and then a pair of clumsy men had used him as a target for knife throwing.
He dropped back from the front line a few times to rest his arms and catch his breath, but he always rejoined the fight soon afterward.
Then the buildings opened up around them, and Roran realized that the soldiers had succeeded in driving them into the square before Urû’baen’s broken gate, and that there were now enemies behind them as well as before them.
He chanced a look over his shoulder and saw the elves and the Varden retreating before Barst and his soldiers.
“Right!” shouted Roran. “Right! Up against the buildings!” He pointed with his bloody spear.
With some difficulty, the warriors packed behind him edged to the side and onto the steps of a huge stone building fronted with a double row of pillars as tall as any of the trees in the Spine. Between the pillars, Roran glimpsed the dark, yawning shape of an open archway big enough to accommodate Saphira, if not Shruikan.
“Up! Up!” Roran shouted, and the men, dwarves, elves, and Urgals ran with him to the top of the stairs. There they set themselves among the pillars and repelled the wave of soldiers that charged after them. From their vantage point, which was perhaps twenty feet above the level of the streets, Roran saw that the Empire had nearly forced the Varden and the elves back out the gaping hole in the outer wall.
We’re going to lose, he thought with sudden desperation.
The soldiers charged up the steps once again. Roran dodged a spear and kicked its owner in the belly, knocking the soldier and two other men down the stairs.
From one of the ballistae on a nearby wall tower, a javelin streaked down toward Lord Barst. When it was still a few yards from him, the javelin burst into flames, then crumbled into dust, as did every arrow shot at the armored man.
We have to kill him, thought Roran. If Barst fell, then the soldiers would likely break and lose confidence. But given that both the elves and the Kull had failed to stop him, it seemed doubtful that anyone other than Eragon could.
Even as he continued to fight, Roran kept glancing at the large, armored figure, hoping to see something that might provide a way to defeat him. He noticed that Barst walked with a slight hitch in his stride, as if he had once injured his left knee or hip. And the man seemed a hair slower than before.
So he does have his limits, thought Roran. Or rather, the Eldunarí does.
With a shout, he parried the sword of the soldier who had been pressing him. Jerking his shield up, he caught the soldier underneath the jaw, killing the man instantly.
Roran was out of breath and faint from his wounds, so he withdrew behind one of the pillars and leaned against it. He coughed and spat; his spittle contained blood, but he thought that was just from where he had bitten the inside of his mouth and not from a punctured lung. At least he hoped so. His ribs felt sore enough that one of them might be broken.
A great shout rose from the Varden, and Roran looked around the pillar to see Queen Islanzadí and eleven other elves riding through the battle toward Lord Barst. Again upon Islanzadí’s left shoulder sat the white raven, and he cawed and lifted his wings, the better to balance upon his moving perch. In her hand, Islanzadí carried her sword, while the rest of the elves carried spears with banners attached close to their leaf-shaped blades.