The fire-arrow riders covered the first hundred meters before the defenders realized what was happening.
A hundred arrows crossed the air, each wrapped with pitch cord lit from live coals, each trailing smoke through the pale morning sky.
The release moved down the front rank like a practiced signal, staggered across perhaps four seconds from left to right.
The burning shafts climbed, reached the peak of their arcs, then dropped across the full width of the gate and the palisade on either side.
Some buried themselves in the planking and continued burning where they struck. Some passed through gaps near the gate's edge.
Three hit the base posts within moments of one another.
One found a pitch-filled joint in the left post's cross-brace, a section treated before construction and never fully dried.
The flame that followed spread differently from the others.
It caught the joint and held there.
