The barges glided forward, out of the hail of deadly crossbow bolts and into an enormous stone room lit by torches mounted on the walls.

At the far end of the room, the water in the canal flowed through another lowered gate, this one a portcullis from top to bottom. Through the latticework of wood and metal, Roran could see buildings within the city proper.

Extending from both sides of the room were stone quays for loading and unloading cargo. Pulleys, ropes, and empty nets hung from the ceiling, and a crane was mounted upon a high stone platform in the middle of each artificial shore. At the front of the room and at the back, stairs and walkways protruding from the mold-covered walls would allow a person to cross over the water without getting wet. The rear walkway also granted access to the guardrooms above the tunnel the barges had entered through, as well as, Roran assumed, to the upper part of the city’s defenses, such as the parapet where he had seen the soldier.

Frustration welled up inside of Roran as he beheld the lowered gate. He had hoped to be able to sail straight into the main body of the city and avoid getting trapped on the water by the guards.

Well, it can’t be helped now, he thought.

Behind them, crimson-clad soldiers poured out of the guardrooms onto the walkway, where they knelt and began to crank on their crossbows, readying them for another volley.

“Over!” Roran shouted, waving his arm toward the docks on the left. The warriors grabbed their poles once more and pushed the interlocked barges toward the edge of the canal. The dozens and dozens of bolts that protruded from their shields gave the company the appearance of a hedgehog.

As the barge neared the docks, twenty of the defending soldiers drew their swords and ran down the stairs off the walkway to intercept the Varden before they could land.

“Hurry!” he shouted.

A bolt buried itself in his shield, the diamond-shaped tip boring through the inch-and-a-half-thick wood to protrude over his forearm. He stumbled and caught himself, knowing that he had only moments before more archers fired on him.

Then Roran jumped for the dock, arms spread wide for balance. He landed heavily, one knee striking the floor, and only just had time to pull his hammer from his belt before the soldiers were upon him.

It was with a sense of relief and savage joy that Roran met them. He was sick of plotting and planning and worrying about what might be. Here at last were honest foes—not creeping assassins—that he could fight and kill.

The encounter was short, fierce, and bloody. Roran slew or incapacitated three of the soldiers within the first few seconds. Then Baldor, Delwin, Hamund, Mandel, and others joined him to force the soldiers away from the water.

Roran was no swordsman, so he made no attempt to fence with his opponents. Instead, he let them hit his shield all they wanted, while he used his hammer to break their bones in return. Occasionally, he had to parry a cut or a stab, but he tried to avoid exchanging more than a few blows with any one person, because he knew his lack of experience would soon prove fatal. The most useful trick of fighting, he had discovered, was not some fancy twirl of the sword or some complicated feint that took years to master, but rather seizing the initiative and doing whatever his enemy least expected.

Breaking free of the brawl, Roran sprinted toward the stairs that led to the walkway where the archers knelt, firing at the men scrambling off the barges.

Roran bounded up the stairs three at a time and, swinging his hammer, caught the first archer full in the face. The next soldier in line had already fired his crossbow, so he dropped it and reached for the hilt of his short sword, retreating backward as he did.

The soldier only managed to pull his blade partway out of its sheath before Roran struck him in the chest, breaking his ribs.

One of the things Roran liked about fighting with a hammer was that he did not have to pay much attention to what kind of armor his opponents were wearing. A hammer, like any blunt weapon, inflicted injuries by the strength of its impact, not by the cutting or piercing of flesh. The simplicity of the approach appealed to him.

The third soldier on the walkway managed to shoot a bolt at him before he took another step. This time the shaft of the quarrel made it halfway through his shield and almost poked him in the chest. Keeping the deadly point well away from his body, Roran charged the man and swung at his shoulder. The soldier used his crossbow to block the attack, so Roran immediately followed with a backhand blow of his shield, which knocked the soldier screaming and flailing over the railing of the walkway.

The maneuver left Roran wholly exposed, however, and as he returned his attention to the five soldiers who remained on the walkway, he saw three of them aiming straight at his heart.

The soldiers fired.

Just before the bolts tore through him, they veered to the right and skittered across the blackened walls, like giant angry wasps.

Roran knew it was Carn who had saved him, and he resolved to find some way to thank the magician once they were no longer in mortal danger.

He charged the remaining soldiers and dispatched them with a furious volley of strikes, as if they were so many bent nails he was hammering down. Then he broke off the crossbow bolt that was sticking through his shield and turned to see how the battle below was progressing.

The last soldier on the docks crumpled to the blood-streaked floor at that very moment, and his head rolled away from his body and dropped into the canal, where it sank beneath a plume of bubbles.

Roughly two-thirds of the Varden had disembarked and were gathering in orderly ranks along the edge of the water.

Roran opened his mouth, intending to order them to move back from the canal—so that the men still on the barges had more room to get off—when the doors set into the left wall burst open and a horde of soldiers poured into the room.