Amara looked left and right as she approached the gate, even as the Marat began to tear their way through it. To one side, several of the young legionares stood, stunned and horrified, staring as the Marat poured in. To the other, scorched bodies and badly burned men lay, scattered as they had
fallen from the walls above, along with a dazed-looking Bernard and Pirellus, gathering themselves together after the explosion on the walls and the fall after.
"Form up!" Amara shouted, toward the legionares, but she wasn't sure the young men even heard her. She singled out one of the young men in a centurion's helmet and barked, "Centurion! Hold the gate!"
The young man in his fine cape looked from her to the gate to the shattered walls above, eyes wide, mouth trembling. "B-back!" he stammered, though it seemed that no one listened to him. "Fall b-back!"
Amara looked to the other side in desperation. "Pirellus!" she shouted. "Get up! Command the Legion!"
Pirellus, his helmet blasted from his head, the hair on one side scorched nearly to his scalp, stared at her in blank incomprehension.
The Marat tore through the last fragments of the remaining gate, and the first, a burly young warrior wielding a stone-headed axe, shoved his way through.
There was no time for anything else. If the Marat gained control of the gates, they would be able to pour into Garrison, and nothing would stop the weight of simple numbers from smothering the Aleran defense. Though her head still spun and though the injury on her back still pained her, Amara threw herself toward the sundered gates.
She heard herself let out a shrill cry, even as the Marat warrior turned to face her and swept the axe in a great flat arc meant to shear her in half at the hips. Instead, she reached out for Cirrus and leapt, throwing herself neatly over the axe, and sweeping her blade out at eye level. The fine steel of the blade bit into the Marat's face, and he dropped to the ground with a scream, even as one of the huge warbirds tore its way through the gates.
Amara tried to dodge from its path, but the beast's beak shot out and gripped her left arm in a sudden, crushing grip. Pain flashed through her, and she knew that only the mail had kept her arm from being snipped off at the elbow. The bird shook its head violently left and right, throwing Amara about like a puppet, until she slashed desperately at the base of the bird's thick neck, eliciting a brassy shriek and causing the bird to hurl her away from it.
Another Marat came through the gates, but the wounded herdbane whipped around at the sudden motion, snapping and lashing with its brassy beak, driving the Marat back. Amara let out a cry and drove forward, thrusting
with the guardsman's sword, sinking it into the bird's vitals and whipping it forth with a half-twist that sent the beast snapping and clawing its way to the ground in a welter of gore.
Amara gasped for breath as the Marat warrior came through, aiming another cut at this one. He dodged to one side, making way for a second, this one a lean young woman carrying an old Aleran saber. The Marat female thrust at Amara's face, and the young Cursor swept the blow aside-only to be hit hard in the flank and thrown to the ground by the first attacker.
She struggled and fought against him, letting out a furious, futile cry, but he had gotten inside her guard and pinned her sword arm to the ground. He lifted his fist, his face emotionless, and drove a blow into her mouth that stunned her for a moment, left her silent. Then he said something in a guttural tongue, satisfaction in the tone, as his hand gripped her hair, hard, and he turned her head slightly toward the woman, who lifted the old saber for a downward blow.
Scalping me, Amara thought. They're taking my hair.
There was a sudden shriek, high-pitched and panicked. The Marat warrior leapt back and off Amara, even as his companion lifted her saber and engaged the furious, reckless assault of one of the young legionares. The young man hacked and chopped with his Legion blade, more in elemental fury and brutality than in any coherent assault, and drove the pair away from Amara.
He turned back to the other young legionares, and Amara recognized the young man who had been on guard at the gates the day before from the purpling bruise on his jaw. "Come on!" he snarled, to his companions. "Are you going to stand there while a woman fights?" He turned back to his opponents with a cry of, "Riva for Alera!" and attacked again.
First one, then two, then several more legionares surged forward with sharp cries of fury, joining together in a shieldwall that contained the tide of Marat struggling to pour in through the shattered gates. But the young legionares, though they acted in concert, began to be driven back step by steady step.
Amara felt herself hauled back along the ground by one elbow and barely managed to keep hold of her sword. She looked up, dazedly, to find Healer Harger crouching over her, fingers touched lightly to her temples.
"The arm's broke," he said a second later, voice rough. "Maybe some of your teeth, too. There are broken rings in the mail over your back that are
cutting into it, and something is sprained. But you'll live." He shot a glance up at the embattled gate, then gave her a quick smile and said, "Bravely done, girl. Shamed those city boys into the fight at last."
"Pirellus," Amara managed to gasp. "Other side of the gate. Stunned."
Harger's eyes widened. "Great furies, he lived through that?"
"Bernard. Pulled him off the wall."
Harger nodded, tense, and hauled her to her feet. "Show me. If anyone can do anything, it will be Pirellus."
Amara gasped with the pain and saw the Healer wince and draw in a quick breath of his own. He steadied her, and then she lead him forward, around the slow pressure of bodies and the desperate thrust and hack of weapons at the gate, to where she'd seen Bernard and Pirellus moments before.
She found them, Bernard just now starting to stagger to his feet, Pirellus still on his hands and knees. Harger went to the Knight at once, touching fingers lightly to his temples, then grunting and shaking the man roughly. Harger hauled back a hand to deliver a slap to the Knight Commander's face, but Pirellus caught the Healer's wrist as it swept toward him. He shook his head once, blinked his eyes, looked up at the gates, and then staggered to his feet to stare up at the walls.
Then he spun, looking around the courtyard, and nodded to Amara. "Countess," he said, voice haggard. "That blast will have heated the stones, but they'll cool quickly, and Marat will be coming over them even if we hold the gate."
Amara swallowed. "What do we do?"
"Move these legionares up to the walls," Pirellus said.
"Then who will hold the gate?"
His chin lifted a fraction. "I will."
Amara stared at him. "Alone? Who will command the Legion?"
"They won't need much commanding in this," Pirellus said. "They'll hold the walls, and I'll hold the gate, or we'll all be dead in the next few moments."
"How can they hold the walls?"
"They can't for long," he said. "You'll have to figure out something."
Amara snapped, "What? That's not a plan!"
"It's all I have," Pirellus said. "Countess, I hope to the furies you're clever as well as brave. If you don't find some way to get them off of us, we're dead, right here, right now." And with that, he nodded to Amara and
stepped toward the melee at the gate. He paused, halfway there, to pick up a long, heavy length of wood that had been one of the drawing traces of a cart crushed by falling debris. He turned crisply and handed it to Bernard as the dazed Steadholder stood up.
"What do you want me to do?" Bernard said.
"Follow me," Pirellus said. "Keep any strays off my back. Stay out of my way." Then he turned and walked into the struggle at the gate. With a few harsh, barked phrases, he stepped up between the young legionares and drew his sword. Within seconds, three Marat warriors lay bleeding on the ground, and their advance halted.
Pirellus snarled orders at the young legionares, and after a frantic half-moment they moved, breaking into a pair of elements and heading up the stone stairs to the battlements, slopping buckets of water ahead of them to cool the heated stones as they went.
Pirellus stood in the gates alone. Amara saw him set a grim, polite little smile onto his lips. He bowed to the Marat standing just beyond the gate and then with the fingers of one hand beckoned them forward.
Bernard gripped the heavy wooden pole and swallowed, looking back at Amara. His eyes were a little wide, and he drew in an unsteady breath, but he turned back to the gate and stood perhaps ten feet behind Pirellus, standing steady.
Amara felt a scream of frustration well up in her, even as the Marat again began to come through the gate, by ones and twos. The Parcian swordsman met them, more than a match, and first one, then another, then another of the barbarians fell to the dark sword. But even Pirellus was not untouchable. A pair of warriors came through together, facing him. Pirellus neatly parried a thrusting spear and spun to thrust toward the other warrior-and suddenly hesitated, faced with a half-naked young Marat woman.
He did not pause for so long as the space of a breath before he lunged forward, driving the dark sword between her breasts, but that hesitation cost him. The Marat beside him swept the butt end of the spear at his leg, striking the side of his knee with a crunch of impact, and if Bernard had not stepped forward to drive the young warrior to the earth with an overhand sweep of the thick wooden pole, Pirellus might have been killed.
Instead, the warrior grimaced, moving with no more than a slight limp, and continued what Amara knew would ultimately be a hopeless, if heroic defense of the gates.
Harger came to her side, his eyes sunken, worried, as they traveled up to the walls, and Amara looked to see the legionares there engaging the enemy, heard the screams of the warbirds and of their Marat masters.
"Lady," Harger growled. "What do we do?"
Amara wanted to scream at the man out of sheer frustration and fear. Even as she watched, a young legionare fell from the wall, screaming and clutching at his face, blood pouring from his fingers. He fell no more than a few feet away. Bernard barely dodged a suddenly thrust spear as he swept another Marat from Pirellus's flank.
How was she to know what to do? She wasn't a military commander. The abrupt destruction of Garrison's Knights had crippled their defenses, she knew. How was she to know how to overcome that loss?
Amara drew in a sudden breath. She wasn't.
She sheathed her sword and seized Harger's sleeve. "Healer. Take me to Count Gram."
He did so at once, leading her to the center of the fortress, where a pair of senior legionares stood guard before the door of a heavy, practical structure of brick. Amara swept past them and into a building, up a flight of stairs, and into the Count's bed chamber.
Gram lay in his bed, his head to one side, his face grey, eyes sunken. There were flecks of some kind of white film on his lips, and his broad, capable hands lay limply on the sheets, looking frail, the skin as thin as parchment.
Amara looked at the man and swallowed. She knew that what she was about to do might kill him. She did it anyway. "Wake him up, Harger."
Harger let out a shaking breath. "Lady. I can, but it could-"
"I know it could kill him, Healer," Amara said. "But if the walls or the gate falls, he'll be dead either way. We need him. The garrison needs him. I do not think that he would wish us to let them fall when he might be able to help."
Harger looked at her for a moment and then shook his head. The old healer sagged for a moment, his face drawn. "No. I don't suppose he would."
"Get him moving," Amara said, quietly. "I'll get the guards to help carry him."
She went downstairs to the two legionares there, returning with them to Gram's bedchamber. She found Harger standing over the old Count, whose face was flushed with unnatural color. Gram dragged in a panting breath
and opened his eyes, squinting at her. He grunted and said, "Harger says my Knights are gone. Just the green troops left."
"Yes," Amara said, her voice tight. "They're on the walls. Pirellus is alive, but wounded, holding the gates alone. We need to get you out there-"
"No," Gram said. "Don't bother. Won't do any good."
"But, sir-"
"Fire," Gram croaked.
"The enemy used the Knight's firepots against them. Made them explode on the walls."
Gram closed his eyes. "Are they all at the gates?"
"No," Amara said. "They're up on the walls again, too. Spread all along them."
"Can't be done," Gram said, sighing. "Even if I wasn't hurt. Even if we had more firepots. Can't call up that much fire, that wide."
"There's got to be something you can do," Amara said, dropping a hand onto his.
"Nothing," Gram whispered. "Can't burn something that wide. Not strong enough."
Amara chewed on her lip. "What about another kind of crafting?"
Gram opened his eyes again. "What?"
"A firecrafting," Amara said. "The Marat can't counter it with anything."
Gram looked from Amara to Harger, then back again. "Fear," he said. Fire.
"I don't know if they're afraid of fire-"
"No," Gram said, his expression weakly irritated. "Get fire. Get a torch. You."
Amara blinked at him. "Me? But I'm no firecrafter."
Gram waved a hand impatiently, cutting her off and fixing her with glittering eyes. "Can't walk. Someone else has to carry. Are you afraid, girl?"
She nodded, tightly, once.
He cackled. "Honest. Good. Get a torch. And get ready to be brave. Braver than you've ever been. Maybe we can do something." Gram broke off, coughing, the sound weak, his face twisting into a grimace of pain.
Amara traded a look with Harger, then nodded to one of the legionares. The man stepped out, returning with a torch a moment later.
"Here, girl," Gram whispered, beckoning with one hand. "Bring it close."
Amara did, kneeling down by the bed and holding the torch out to the wounded Count.
Gram closed his eyes and reached his bare palm into the flame. Amara winced, almost drawing the torch away, but Gram did not stir or flinch, and his flesh remained, it would seem, untouched by the fire.
Amara felt it inside of her first, a panicky little thrill that raced through her belly and thighs, turned her legs watery and uncertain. Her hand started to shake, and she lifted her other to hold the torch steady. Gram let out a slow, quiet sound of pain, and the sensation in her redoubled, mindless and sudden fear, so that she had to fight to keep from bolting from the room. Her heart abruptly raced, pounding frantically, the pain of her wounds seemed to increase, and she suddenly could not get a breath.
"Girl," Gram rasped, opening his eyes again. "Listen to me. Get this out to the front. Out in front of all of the Marat. Get it to where they can see it." He let out a wheezing breath, his eyes closing. "Don't drop it. And don't let the panic take you. Hurry."
Amara nodded, rising to feel her body trembling, weak with fright.
"Steady," Harger said. "Get out there. Hurry. I'm not sure how long he can hold the crafting."
Amara had to stammer twice before she managed to say, "All right." She turned and walked from the chamber, fighting to control her breathing, to keep her paces steady, even. The fear flowed through her like winter ice, cold little chips of it flowing in her blood, making her heart skip painful beats. She could barely keep her thoughts focused on the gates, on carrying the torch without dropping it-though she struggled to remember that if she dropped it, or if she surrendered to the fear and fled, that Gram's efforts would be for nothing.
She felt herself begin to sob as she walked into the courtyard, felt her body begin to weaken with the mind-numbing terror. More than anything, she wanted to turn away from the gate, to flee, to take to the air and leave their savage enemies far behind.
Instead, she kept on, toward the gates, growing weaker, less steady, by the step. Part of the way there, she swayed and fell, and her tears blinded her. But she kept moving forward, crawling on her knees and her wounded arm, clutching at the torch and keeping it from falling to the ground.
Suddenly, from right in front of her someone screamed, and she felt
herself hauled to her feet with terrifying strength, facing a towering giant with blazing eyes bearing a cudgel the size of a tree in one fist.
She fought against the terror, against the sobs that choked in her throat. "Bernard," she said. "Bernard. The torch. Get me to the walls. Get me to the walls!"
The giant scowled and roared something at her that had her choking down a hysterical scream. Then he simply picked her up under one arm and carried her to the stairs and up them, to the frantic, screaming panic of the battlements. She felt herself come down on her feet again, and she staggered forward, toward the walls above the gates.
She could not think, could not control herself over the last few feet. She staggered forward, screaming and sobbing, bearing the torch aloft and certain that death was there for her, breathing softly, black wings rustling like those of the crows that waited, waited somewhere in the predawn darkness to sweep down on the eyes of the dead.
Somehow, she gained the battlements over the gate and stood above them, a sure and simple target for Marat archers, the torch held aloft.
It went up in a sudden furnace of sound and heat, an abrupt river of roaring light that shot into the sky and lit the ground for a mile in every direction. All of that terror, all of that fear in her blossomed out with the torch, poured out with the sudden, raging flames, swept out of her, magnified a thousandfold, onto the ground beneath.
There was an instant, horrible stillness, as the power of the firecrafting swept over the Marat below. And then a scream, born in one moment from thousands of throats, rose up into the air. The pressure of the Marat assault vanished, more quickly than it had arrived. The pale tide of Marat warriors abruptly flooded back from the walls of Garrison, howling in terror, joined by the whistling, panicked shrieks of the fleeing warbirds. The battered legionares defending the walls began to cheer, as the Marat were swept under by the firecrafting and broke and ran.
Amara saw them go, even as the terror flowed out of her, poured out together with whatever strength she had left. She staggered and nearly fell from the battlements, only to be supported by Bernard, who had appeared behind her. She leaned back against him, exhausted and barely able to keep her eyes open, while all around her Aleran warriors threw defiant cheers after the fleeing enemy.
She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, the sky was
lighter. She sat on the battlements, wrapped in Bernard's cloak. Numb, aching, she swayed to her feet and looked up and down the wall and down into the courtyard below.
The wounded, the dying, and the dead lay everywhere. Healers and surgeons alike labored with the fallen, with men burned so badly that they could hardly be recognized as human. Amara watched as one man let out a choking shriek and then stiffened, a blackened hand curled into a claw. The legionare with him, himself sporting a scarlet-stained bandage, drew a cloak over the man's head. Then, with the help of another legionare, he carried the body to a growing number of rows of corpses on the other side of the courtyard.
She turned and looked down the walls. Perhaps a dozen legionares stood along them, young, strained, unwounded, holding their spears at attention.
On the battlefield below the walls, the crows had come for the dead.
They swarmed over them in a croaking black carpet, wings flapping, eyes glittering with glassy hunger, uncaring of the loyalties of the fallen. They hopped from body to body, tearing at tongues, eyes, and when Amara saw one of the bodies stir, only to be buried in the winged beasts, she felt her numb belly twist and turned away.
Bernard appeared a moment later, his face strained, and handed her a ladle of cold water. She drank.
"It's bad," she said, quietly.
"Bad," he agreed. "Even once we get the lightly wounded back on their feet, the garrison lost two-thirds. There are only three Knights still alive, counting Pirellus. The gates are broken, and there's no way to replace them-and the enemy can jump the walls in any case."
"How's Gram?"
"Harger says he isn't likely to wake up again before he dies. That last crafting took too much out of him."
"Crows," Amara swore softly. "He's a brave man."
"Yes."
"The Marat are coming back then," Amara said.
"Soon."
She closed her eyes, wearily. "What else can we do?"
Bernard said, "I don't know."
"We should get the women and children out. The men's families. Put them in wagons and send them toward Riva as fast as they can go."
"We can't. Those Knights didn't just take out the gates. Some others got into the stables and panicked the horses. It drew the attention of maybe half a dozen herdbane. There aren't any horses left."
Amara looked up at him. "Can they flee on foot?"
"I've talked to Pirellus about it, and Giraldi. Even on the causeway, the women and children can't run faster than the Marat. Even if we hold on to Garrison for as long as possible. There just aren't enough men-and most of the families won't leave. They've decided that they'll stay and fight, rather than be killed running. Pirellus is keeping their spirits up. Telling them that reinforcements are bound to come from Riva."
"No," Amara said, numb. "I never thought they'd have so many Knights Aeris to use to cut off the Valley. I don't think anyone could have gotten through that many."
Bernard nodded, once. "We've sent out runners, on foot, to warn the steadholts. We're hoping to buy them some time. If they head for Riva right away, they might make it out of the Valley..." He let his voice trail off, tiredly.
Amara stood up beside him and leaned against him. He leaned back, and the two shared a long moment of silence in the predawn stillness.
"You should go," Bernard said. "You can fly out of here. You should take word to the First Lord."
"Even if I could still fly," Amara said, "my duty is to do what I can to stop what's happening here. To find out who began it. Bring those responsible to justice. I couldn't just leave."
"There's no reason for you to die here, Countess."
"There's no point in this argument, Steadholder. I can't fly. Not now. I'm too tired." She leaned her cheek against his shoulder. He felt strong and warm, and she took whatever comfort she could in that.
After a moment, she felt him move an arm around her, and she pressed closer to him. "I'm sorry, Bernard," she said. "I'm sorry I wasn't faster. I didn't do something differently. I'm sorry about your sister, your nephew."
He swallowed. When he spoke, his voice came out rough, quiet. "Nothing to be sorry for. I just hope to the furies that they're all right."
She touched his arm, and they stood together, quiet, with the caws of the crows before them and the moans of the dying behind.
The sky lightened further, and Amara felt Bernard draw in a sudden breath. "Merciful furies."
She opened her eyes and looked out onto the plains beyond Garrison, now being lit as the sun rose over them, and shone down upon a sea of pale bodies.
The Marat.
Thousands upon thousands of Marat. They stretched from horizon to horizon, as far as the eye could see. Twenty thousand. Thirty. Fifty. She had no way to accurately estimate numbers that vast. She looked out at them as the horde poured slowly closer to Garrison over the plains. Enough to drown the defenders of the little fortress. Enough to swarm over the Calderon Valley. Enough to rampage over the unprepared lands beyond and to destroy thousands of defenseless Aleran communities.
She glanced up at Bernard and then stepped forward, away from him, to lean one hand on the battlements, watching the enemy come on.
"You'd better get Pirellus," she said, quietly. "Tell him to get ready."