The first volley hit like rain made of teeth.
Arrows rattled against stone, snapped against shields, drove into the corpses of banners left from Zhang's last stand. Some found flesh. A man three paces from Ziyan jerked, surprised, then sank down with his hand pressed against his neck as though he might tuck the wound back in. Another dropped to his knees and stayed there, staring at the shaft protruding from his thigh as if it were an unexpected guest.
"Down!" Wei shouted along the line. "Shields up, heads low. Don't give them more sky than they paid for!"
Xia's archers loosed again, more measured this time, bows singing in layered rhythm. Their ladder teams advanced under the cover: men with oval shields, thick boots, eyes fixed on the wall they meant to own by evening. Behind them, the siege towers creaked forward, taller than any building in the outer wards, their wooden hides already darkened by fire-wet canvas.
Ziyan waited until the first ladder thudded against stone.
"Now," she said.
Buckets tipped. Sand and water poured, turning the steps beneath advancing boots into treachery. Pitch jars, carefully set into hollows of the parapet, broke and spilled down onto helmets and raised shields. Torches followed, a lazy arc that ended in sudden, hungry light. Men screamed. The ladders did not. They burned as dutifully as they had served.
"Keep your arrows," Ziyan told the archers nearest her. "Wait until you see eyes, not armor. Let waste be theirs."
Feiyan moved like a second thought along the wall, placing knives where gaps opened. A hand reaching for a crenelation lost its fingers. A Xia soldier who had managed to hook an elbow over stone found his wrist pinned by a blade before he could haul himself up.
At the third ladder, a helmeted head rose, mouth opening for a shout. Feiyan's knife flashed, and the shout turned into a wet cough. The man fell back, taking two more with him. The ladder crashed away from the wall with a sound like a temple bell struck wrong.
Wei whooped, spear sweeping another point of ascent clean. "That's right," he yelled over the din. "We told you no door-to-door visits without invitation!"
Li Qiang did not waste breath on taunts. He moved with a cold efficiency, his sword a narrow, decisive line. When a ladder team finally found a section of wall not yet slick with pitch, they managed to bring three men to the top. The first died taking one step; the second lasted for three. The third turned to flee. Li Qiang struck his legs from under him and let him drop headfirst into his own.
"Left tower!" came a cry from further along the parapet. "They're bringing her up!"
Ziyan looked, heart steady, breath not. One of Xia's siege towers had made it across the muddier part of the field, pushed by men whose discipline outweighed their sense. Its armored face loomed, shutters closed, groaning as it bridged onto the lower battlements. In its shadow, ladders seemed almost modest.
Shuye appeared at her elbow, jar in both hands. "The last big one," he said.
She nodded. "We'll need it for better than that."
Feiyan's eyes flicked from tower to jar. "If that thing reaches the wall, we'll be peeling wolves out of our teeth by sunset."
"Then we break its legs before it stands," Ziyan said. "Han!"
The older lord was already moving, his riders off their horses and fighting as heavy infantry on the ward near the tower's approach. At her shout, he looked up, read the line of her arm, and bellowed a string of orders that turned men into a pattern: shields angled, pikes lowered, oil jars rolled into positions that had been empty only a heartbeat before.
Ziyan's gaze slid past the tower, eastward.
Beyond the immediate assault, rank on rank of Xia troops waited—archers, reserves, the steady blocks of spearmen that made empires. And in the center, beneath a modest banner—no gilded embellishment, only the wolf sigil and a neat, uncompromising hand—sat a rider watching through a brass tube.
General Ren.
She could not see his face at this distance, but she felt his attention like a thumb pressing against the line of her throat. He was measuring. Weighing. Learning.
"Let him see," she murmured.
"See what?" Feiyan asked, already half-turned toward the tower.
"That we don't break the way Zhang did," Ziyan said.
The siege tower hit the lower wall with a shudder. Ramps within clanked into place behind thick, charred doors. Soon those doors would drop, and Xia would pour onto the stone.
Ziyan raised her voice. "Archers! Leave the men. Aim for the wheels!"
Confusion rippled; then obedience smoothed it. Arrows rained not on the armored face but into the mud around the tower's base, driving into spokes, lodging in axle-grease, harrying the teams struggling to keep it moving.
"Shuye," she said.
He was already gone, sprinting down the nearest stair, jar hugged tight. She caught glimpses of him between merlons—dark head, slim shoulders, boots slipping once, catching, disappearing into the chaos at the base of the tower.
Feiyan hissed through her teeth. "If he dies, I refuse to build equivalent jars for the next twelve years."
"He won't," Ziyan said, though there was nothing in the world that guaranteed that.
Shuye reached the side of the tower where its flank met the most uneven part of the ground. Men in Xia armor, faces streaked with sweat and soot, strained at levers and pushed at braces, their breath fogging the air as they tried to force the massive structure that last, stubborn yard into place.
Shuye ducked under a misaligned support, hands quick, movements small. He set the jar against the primary brace—wedged exactly where a carpenter would never look and a soldier would never understand. He lit the fuse with a stolen torch, counted three breaths, then flung himself backward into the mud as if propelled by fear alone.