Mistborn #02 The Well of Ascension

attacking?" Lord Janarle asked, moving his horse up beside Straff's. The handsome lord frowned, then eyed Straff. "You expected this, my lord?"
    "Of course," Straff said, smiling.
    Janarle looked impressed.
    "Pass an order to the men, Janarle," Straff said. "I want this column turned back toward Luthadel."
    "We can be there in an hour, my lord!" Janarle said.
    "No," Straff said. "Let's take our time. We wouldn't want to overwork our troops, would we?"
    Janarle smiled. "Of course not, my lord."

    Arrows seemed to have little effect on the koloss.
    Sazed stood, transfixed and appalled, atop his gate's watchtower. He wasn't officially in charge of the men, so he didn't have any orders to give. He simply stood with the scouts and messengers, waiting to see if he was needed or not.
    That left him plenty of time to watch the horror unfolding. The koloss weren't charging his section of the wall yet, thankfully, and his men stood watching tensely as the creatures barreled toward Tin Gate and Pewter Gate in the distance.
    Even far away—the tower letting him see over a section of the city to where Tin Gate lay—Sazed could see the koloss running straight through hailstorms of arrows. Some of the smaller ones appeared to fall dead or wounded, but most just continued to charge. Men murmured on the tower near him.
    We aren't ready for this , Sazed thought. Even with months to plan and anticipate, we aren't ready .
    This is what we get, being ruled over by a god for a thousand years. A thousand years of peace—tyrannical peace, but peace nonetheless. We don't have generals, we have men who know how to order a bath drawn. We don't have tacticians, we have bureaucrats. We don't have warriors, we have boys with sticks .
    Even as he watched the oncoming doom, his scholar's mind was analytical. Tapping sight, he could see that many of the distant creatures—especially the larger ones—carried small uprooted trees. They were ready, in their own way, to break into the city. The trees wouldn't be as effective as real battering rams—but then, the city gates weren't built to withstand a real battering in the first place.
    Those koloss are smarter than we give them credit for , he thought. They can recognize the abstract value of coins, even if they don't have an economy. They can see that they'll need tools to break down our doors, even if they don't know how to make those tools .
    The first koloss wave reached the wall. Men began to toss down rocks and other items. Sazed's own section had similar piles, one just next to the gate arch, beside which he stood. But arrows had almost no effect; what good would a few rocks do? Koloss clumped around the base of the wall, like the water of a dammed-up river. Distant thumps sounded as the creatures began to beat against the gates.
    "Battalion sixteen!" a messenger called from below, riding up to Sazed's gate. "Lord Culee!"
    "Here!" a man called from the wall top beside Sazed's tower.
    "Pewter Gate needs reinforcements immediately! Lord Penrod commands you to bring six companies and follow me!"
    Lord Culee began to give the orders. Six companies. . . Sazed thought. Six hundred of our thousand . Clubs's words from earlier returned to him: Twenty thousand men might seem like a lot, until one saw how thinly they had to be stretched.
    The six companies marched away, leaving the courtyard before Sazed's gate disturbingly empty. The four hundred remaining men—three hundred in the courtyard, one hundred on the wall—shuffled quietly.
    Sazed closed his eyes and tapped his hearing tinmind. He could hear. . .wood beating on wood. Screams. Human screams. He released the tinmind quickly, then tapped eyesight again, leaning out and looking toward the section of the wall where the battle was being fought. The koloss were throwing back the fallen rocks—and they were far more accurate than the defenders. Sazed jumped as he saw a young soldier's face crushed, his body thrown back off the wall top by the rock's force. Sazed released his tinmind, breathing quickly.
    "Be firm, men!" called one of the soldiers on the wall. He was barely a youth—a nobleman, but he couldn't be more than sixteen. Of course, a lot of the men in the army were that age.
    "Stand firm. . ." the young commander repeated. His voice sounded uncertain, and it trailed off as he noticed something in the distance. Sazed turned, following the man's gaze.
    The koloss had gotten tired of standing around, piling up at a single gate. They