Trinton gawked at the woman, "test it on one of them?" he asked in confusion. 

"RARDARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!"

The Captain looked across at the gate, saw the barbarians thundering towards him and his band of men, and shrugged. "Alright, but whatever this is, it better work or I'll have you lashed ten a dozen for distracting me with your nonsense." 

Blowing his whistle a few more times in hopes of garnering more troops to his cause, Trinton looked back up at the keep's battlements. He scowled at the fluttering green banner of Lord Polvark, and the gleaming breastplates of his hundred-strong personal guard. Castle Rivergate needed those fighters down in the courtyard; they were formiddable warriors, each one of them, all having served their terms in the [i]real[/i] legions. For whatever reason however, they weren't prepared to move an inch to intervene - the 13th Auxillary was on its own. The Captain was not one for dispairing.

"On me, on me!" He called, stopping to blast another lungful of air down the mouthpiece of his whistle. "Spears up front, archers behind, swords on the flanks!" He barked, batting his breastplate with the flat of his hatchet as if it were a drum. "Come on you whoresons, you wanna live? Or you wanna die? Choose quickly, now." 

A core of the garrisons more experienced troops, two dozen or so, herded the newer recruits into position. A score of men holding short spears, perhaps six to eight feet in length, lined the front of Trinton's makeshift regiment. A dozen or so others, armed with the short recurved bows of the imperial legions, ran to the nearby stables, and hefted back with them two large hollow wooden platforms. These stood only two feet high, four feet wide and ten feet long, and were designed to give the archers at the rear of a battle line the ability to shoot over the heads of their comrades in front. The rest of Trinton's men, baring a wide variety of swords, shields, maces and axes headed for the flanks of the spearmen. 

"We let them come!" Trinton yelled, his voice becoming hoarse, "they crash into the spears, the swords close in from the sides. If you're any good at what you're supposed to be doing, we'll have them contained long enough for those tits up on the wall to get down here and help us. Archers, wait until those black eyed bastards are crammed in the gateway, then let 'em have it. Less chance of missing that way, ya see?" 

The barbarians were only a hundred yards off now, and even as the archers on the northern wall rained arrows down on them, their advanced continued at a disheartening rate. In mere moments, they would be upon the Captain and his soldiers. 

"Steady," said the Captain; his grizzly voice now of an almost soothing fatherly quality, "steady."