The tower groaned.
Then it remembered that it was made of things pulled too far away from their original shapes.
The jar went, not with a thunderclap, but with a deep, belly-felt whump that snapped the main brace and jolted both the front and rear supports off true. The tower lurched. For a heartbeat, it tried to pretend nothing had changed. Then weight said otherwise.
It listed left, then forward, then surrendered to gravity with the slow, horrifying inevitability of a falling tree. Men inside had just enough time to shout before the entire mass tipped backward off the half-mount it had made, crashing into the ranks behind. Wood splintered. Armor buckled. The front axle spun free, wheel rolling aimlessly across the churned ground before collapsing into shattered rim.
The cheer from the wall was ragged, astonished, wild. Wei hollered himself hoarse. Han grunted something that might have been a laugh. Even some of the civilians manning sand-buckets allowed themselves half a grin.
Ziyan did not cheer. She watched the line of Xia's center, watched General Ren lower his brass tube and speak to the rider at his side. Orders flowed down the chain; men fanned out, tightening their shield wall, reforming without panic.
"Good," she whispered. "Be as careful as you like. It still won't save you."
She felt eyes on her and turned to find Lin Tao at the foot of the battlement stairs, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. He had a bucket in each hand—sand in one, water in the other. His face was pale, but he did not look away when she met his gaze.
At his back, three children ran along the line with fresh bundles of arrows, handing them up as carefully as if they were noodles to be sold. The woman with the shawl—his wife or his neighbor—was stationed beside a brazier, feeding in kindling, keeping the flames ready to answer when pitch needed a tongue.
They had seen what Xia offered in the night. They had seen what Ziyan threatened in reply. And still they were here.
Feiyan followed her gaze. "You tied them to you," she said.
"They tied themselves," Ziyan replied. "I only made the knot visible."
An hour passed like that, then another: assault, counter, shouted orders, the hot metal taste of fear that never quite became panic. Xia probed other parts of the wall, found them bristling, left men behind and revised plans. The sun climbed grudgingly, more gray than gold.
By midday, the field before the north gate was a patchwork of burned wood, trampled bodies, broken ladders, and the scorched remains of what had nearly become their doom. The immediate pressure eased.
"Pull back," Ziyan ordered. "Rotate the watch. Eat. Drink. Change the bandages that need changing. The next wave will find us standing."
Wei sagged against a merlon, then straightened. "You're assuming they'll give us time to breathe."
"They'll have to," she said. "Even wolves get tired of breaking teeth."
Feiyan wiped her blade on a strip of cloth, slit her eyes toward the east. "Their general will try something less blunt next."
"Good," Ziyan said. "Blunt was costing us less."
The lull, small as it was, rippled through the city.
Word of the toppled tower ran ahead of runners: children shouted that the wolves' house had fallen; old women muttered that perhaps the ancestors were finally paying attention. A group of apprentices in the potters' quarter started painting small phoenixes on the sides of water jugs, not quite admitting why.
In the lower hall, Ren assembled a rough tally of injured and dead, his characters more jagged than usual. He handed the scrap to Shuye, who frowned.
"You're not writing the names," Shuye observed. "Just numbers."
Ren's mouth tightened. "If I write the names, I remember all their faces. I have only so much room inside my skull and still need some for maps and orders."
Shuye considered that, then took the charcoal from him and wrote a single line at the bottom: Not numbers.
Ren rolled his eyes. "Poet."
"Potter," Shuye corrected. "We both hate waste."
By late afternoon, the snow began again—fine, dusty, more like flour than flakes. It settled on armor, on hair, on the blackened stones of the courtyard.
Ziyan stood in what had once been a garden—the trees there reduced to scorched trunks, the pond a cracked basin of dirty ice. Li Qiang reported on the southern and western sectors; Han added word of skirmishes along the river. Zhao had not defected. Yet.
"They respect you more when they're tired," Han said. "Less energy left for plots."
"Good," Ziyan said. "I'll keep them exhausted until this war ends."