We had this exact situation last week and this week--one player couldn't make it last week, we stopped mid-battle, and another player couldn't make it this week.
I retconned that they had planned on having the missing character from last week assault the keep from the other side, and in the dark he got lost and was a little over a minute late. He'll arrive at tonight's session at the very end of the 12th round.
The PC whose player will be out this week is a little trickier. He's going to be run for a few rounds by another player and, once they breach the keep, he'll stand guard outside to make sure no reinforcements show up.
It's tricky. Sometimes, if I can't come up with a good reason, it just sort of happens that the other guy shows up mid-combat. I prefer to have a reason, but sometimes you just gotta wave them hands hard till the problem goes away...
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One of my player's characters is dimensionally and temporally challenged after a bad encounter with the outer planes. This is because he's particularly likely to not be able to make it, so his character is liable just to poof out of existence at any time : )
For mid battle additions I like to have them appear as if they were Fire Emblem reinforcements, appearing in a corner of the map in a diagonal formation. My players immediately caught on to what I was doing, and by linking it to a game where that sort of thing is common, I feel it feels a tad less artificial.