Like fishermen casting their nets by midnight, the defenders atop the wall threw their arrows blind. There was no light ahead, no glint of steel to mark a hit. Only the sounds carried through the profound, consuming darkness: the sickening thwack of wood on bone, the strained groan of splintering oak, the relentless shoveling of feet in wet mud caused by the rain of the earlier day, and the high, broken whimpering of dying men.
The flickering light from the oil pots aflame and the sporadic torches barely illuminated the few poor souls venturing into that maw of death. They moved in slow, shield-armed pairs, each bearing a clay urn . Many fell before their mission was accomplished, their lives claimed by a rogue arrow or a tumbling stone. The pot would crack on the ground, spitting a final tear before being swallowed by the mud.
But for every man who perished, two more stepped up to take his place.They had many of those fodders so it wasn't as much of a loss.
