Gwynne was in the middle of a three on one spar, and winning it too, when a great crackle and snap thundered through the air. He paused and so too did the men he was fighting, all turning back to where the sound had originated. The Gate.
The formidably large wooden gates had been aflame for the better half of an hour, and it was no small flame that had caught. While the duke's men had pillaged the outer rings of the city, it had burned, and now whilst the main chunk of the wooden gate was still intact, the beams on the gigantic hinges of the right side door, the ones that kept it secured to the wall and mechanism, broke. Split, snapped, weakened by flame and the lack of a base to support it, the several dozen metric tons of oak fell from the wall with a creaking roar that silenced all but the monstrous whispering of the flame. The sounds of war died, in exception of a few clangs and yells. It was almost like slow motion, every eye in the city and out watching the gate fall. It never made it to the ground in one piece, crashing into the left door and taking a chunk of the left-hand wall with it. Dozens of voices called out, screaming their last breaths and cutting the silence before the erupting crunch of the gate drowned out all other noise. The gargantuan oaken door splintered into thousands of pieces, almost exploding on impact, and letting out a billowing cloud of shadowy black smoke. Along with the newly formed pillar of black, hundreds of thousands of sparks flitted up with it, like tiny fiery faeries swarming up and out of existence.
The clink of mail behind him shook Gwynne from the spectacle, reminding him that he was in combat with three other men, all of whom were behind him. He swung his hammer, wide and sweeping. He meant to catch one of them on the turnaround, and the spike war hammer found its mark in the cheekbone of the man closest to him. He jabbed for the helm of the man on the far right, twisting on his steed. The oversized charger gave a few panicked kicks at the center man's position, and Gwynne spun back towards the gate, giving the men no more thought.
The gate had fallen, crushing at least thirty of his men, perhaps forty. That wasn't his concern. His concern was that the wall, the stone that had fallen, and they only proved his worried theory. They were trapped. Most of his men outside the wall, and his small raiding party inside the city. He didn't worry too much about his men's chances, overall, but if his lieutenants were killed, and his army destabilised, their numbers wouldn't matter. His faith in Perrin's abilities didn't suggest that, but stranger things had happened. What he worried about was the infiltration force. If the Stark bitch could find a way into her goddamned city, which she could, for there were always dozens of backdoors, he could only stand so long without reinforcements. They were playing on her field, without the muscle he'd brought. Perhaps three hundred men were in the city. Too many of them were simply foot soldiers. Gwynne scowled, turned back into the city, and rode for the fortress in which the Starks made their home.
"Fall in, men!" he cried, ragged and commanding amidst the newly sparked chaos, "We take the castle!"
