"And these last swear that when they sleep again it will be beyond the wall," the engineer added.
"Many of them, poor chaps, are likely to sleep there forever," said Everson. "Where is the king?"
"With the zinds."
The lieutenant arose and went out on the hillside; for he knew that the time had come.
Calling a messenger, he told him to go and summon the skirmishers from the camp. Presently he saw them coming, long, silent files of men, ghostly in the gray light, picking their way over the snow-covered slopes and among the trees, some of the lines led by zinds and others by their captains.
In the forests opposite the wall, Everson posted a wedge of five thousand javelin men, who were armed also with short swords. These were to rush the breach in the wall and deploy on the other side to hold the gap from any assault from beyond until the gap could be cleared and the roadway brought up and through the breach to connect with the Maeronican highway which lay on the other side of the barrier. Back of that force gathered the miners and road-builders.
Right and left along the wall the lieutenant sent bodies of archers and slingers, so they might command the top of the wall and prevent the garrisons of the watchtowers from galling the men at work in the breach.
At each of the sixty towers along the stretch of the wall were stationed some twenty men—a force of nearly twelve hundred in all. Everson foresaw that these in all probability, or most of them, would come to the breach from either side, leaving but few soldiers to man the towers. So he sent two parties of a thousand men each east and west, to lie in the forests near the wall. These were heavy-armed swordsmen and spearsmen. They bore long ladders with them, and it was to be their task to scale the wall, flank the men of Bel-Ar at its summit, and take and hold the watchtowers.
A few miles below the wall lay a Maeronican hilltown, and there Bel-Ar maintained a prominent garrison, composed of a section of his standing army, some ten thousand men strong. These soldiers had proved the bane of many a Rutharian raiding party, and they now gave Everson much trouble in his mind. If they should come up quickly to the wall and drive back his force or retake the towers, his thrust would be all but ill delivered and fail of much of its power. That must be chanced—and he judged by the look of these fighting men of Ruthar that they would stand considerable driving and still not be driven.