Amara nodded to Pirellus. "But will they be able to raise the wall?"
Pirellus shrugged. "Again-it can't hurt. The wall isn't going to slow the Marat down as it stands in any case."
Nearby, Bernard and the engineer had led nearly a hundred men and women, ranging in age from those below Legion age to a wizened old grandmother, who doddered along with the help of a cane and the arm of a brawny, serious-looking young man Amara recognized from Bernardholt. "Are you sure it isn't a terrible risk? We held it before," Amara pointed out.
"Against Marat who had never seen a battle," Pirellus said. "Half-trained, green troops. And we were nearly destroyed as it was. Don't fool yourself. We got lucky. There are five times as many of them out there now. They're experienced, and they won't be operating in separate tribes." His fingers drummed on the hilt of his dark blade. "And remember, those Knights are still out there."
Amara shivered and abruptly looked behind her. "Exactly. Which is why, Mistress Isana, we should-" She broke off abruptly. "Where'd she go?"
Pirellus looked around behind him, then shrugged. "Don't worry about it. There's a very limited amount of trouble the woman can make in any case. That's the advantage of certain death, Cursor-it's difficult to become impressed by further risks."
Amara frowned at him. "But with this help-"
"Doomed," Pirellus said, flatly. "We'd need three times that many troops to hold, Cursor. What these holders are doing is admirable, but unless one of their messengers got through to Riva..." He shook his head. "Without reinforcements, without more Knights, we're just killing time until sunrise. See if you can spot the hordemaster, and I'll try to help them sort out the wounded and get more men back on their feet."
She started to speak to him, but Pirellus spun on his heel and walked back to the other courtyard. His knee was swollen and purpling, but he did not allow himself to limp. Another talent she envied in metalcrafters. Amara grimaced and wished she could will away the pain of her broken arm so easily.
Or the fear that still weakened her knees.
She shivered and turned to walk toward the gates, purposefully. The barricade had been hastily removed, as the earthcrafters had begun to set up for their attempt on the walls. A squad of twenty legionares stood outside the broken gates in formation, on guard, lest any Marat should try to slip through undetected. The possibility seemed unlikely. Even as Amara walked beneath the walls and out into the open plain beyond, stepping around the grim and silent young men, she could see the Marat horde in the slowly growing light, like some vast field of living snow, marching steadily closer, in no great hurry.
Amara walked out away from the walls by several yards, keeping her
steps light and careful. She tried not to look down at the ground. The blackened remains of the Marat who had perished in the first firestorm lay underfoot and all around, grotesque and stinking. Crows flapped and squabbled everywhere, mercifully covering most of the dead. If she looked, Amara knew, she would be able to see the gaping sockets of the corpses whose eyes had already been eaten away, usually along with parts of the nose and the soft, fleshy lips, but she didn't. The air smelled of snow and blood, of burned flesh and faintly of carrion. Even through the screen Cirrus provided her sense of smell, she could smell it.
Her knees trembled harder, and she grew short of breath. She had to stop and close her eyes for a moment, before lifting them to the oncoming horde again. She lifted her unwounded arm and bade Cirrus make her vision more clear.
The fury bent the air before her, and almost at once she could see the oncoming horde as though she stood close enough to it to hear their footsteps.
Almost at once, she could see what Pirellus had meant. Though the fleeing elements of the Marat horde had rejoined it half an hour before and been absorbed into the oncoming mass, she could see the difference in the warriors now moving toward Garrison, without needing to engage them to understand part of Pirellus's fears. They were older men, heavier with muscle and simple years, but they walked with more of both confidence and caution, ferocity tempered with wisdom.
She shivered.
Women, too, walked among the horde, bearing weapons, wearing the mien of experienced soldiers, which Amara had no doubt that they were. As near as Aleran intelligence could determine, the Marat engaged in almost constant struggles against one another-small-scale conflicts that lasted only briefly and seemed to result in few lasting hostilities, almost ritual combat. Deadly enough, though. She focused on the horde grimly. The dead behind the walls of Garrison proved that.
As she watched them come on, Amara was struck by a sudden sense that she had not felt in a long time, not since, as a small child, she had first been allowed out onto the open sea with her father in his fishing boat. A sense of being outside, a sense of standing balanced at the precipice of a world wholly alien to her own. She glanced at the walls behind her, eyes twinging as they refocused. There stood the border of the mighty Realm of
Alera, a land that had withstood its enemies for a thousand years, overcome a hostile world to build a prosperous nation.
And she stood outside it, all but naked, despite her armor. The sheer size and scope of the rolling plains that lay beyond this last bastion of Aleran strength made her feel suddenly small.
The voice that came to her whispered in the rustle of the lonely wind, low, indistinct. "Never be intimidated by size itself. I taught you better than that."
Amara stiffened, dropping the visioncrafting before her hand, glancing around. "Fidelias?"
"You always hold your legs stiffly when you're afraid, Amara. You never learned to hide it. Oh, and I can hear you," the voice responded. "One of my men is crafting my voice to you, and listening for your replies."
"I have nothing to say to you," Amara whispered, heated. She glanced at the legionares too close behind her and stepped forward, away from them, so that they couldn't overhear. She lifted her hand again, focusing on the oncoming horde, searching through their ranks for one who might be their leader.
"Useless," Fidelias commented. "You can't hold the walls. And even if you do, we'll break the gate again."
"Which part of 'I have nothing to say to you' did you not understand?" She paused a moment and then added as viciously as she knew how, "Traitor."
"Then listen," Fidelias said. "I know you don't agree with me, but I want you to think about this. Gaius is going to fall. You know it. If he doesn't fall cleanly, he'll crush thousands on his way down. He might even weaken the Realm to the point that it can be destroyed."
"How can you dare speak to me of the safety of the Realm? Because of you, her sons and daughters lie dead behind that wall."
"We kill people," Fidelias said. "It's what we do. I have dead of my own to bury, thanks to you. If you like, I'll tell you about the families of the men you made fall to their deaths. At least the dead inside had a chance to fight for their lives. The ones you murdered didn't. Don't be too liberal with that particular brush, apprentice."
Amara abruptly remembered the men screaming, falling. She remembered the terror on their faces, though she hadn't taken much note of it at the time.
She closed her eyes. Her stomach turned over on itself.
"If you have something to say, say it and have done. I have work to do."
"I've heard dying can be quite the chore," Fidelias's voice noted. "I wanted to make you an offer."
"No," Amara said. "Stop wasting my time. I won't take it."
"Yes you will," Fidelias said. "Because you don't want the women and children behind those walls to be murdered with the rest of you."
Amara stiffened. She felt suddenly cold.
"Leave," Fidelias said. "You. Lead the women and children away. I'll have my Knights see that the Marat are delayed long enough to give you a safe lead."
"No," she whispered. "You're lying. You can't control the Marat."
"Don't be so sure," Fidelias said. "Amara, I don't like what has to be done. But you can make a difference. You can save the lives of innocent people of the Realm. You lead them. If you don't, personally, then there's no deal." There was silence for a moment, before he said, weariness in his voice, "You don't know what you're doing, girl. I don't want to see you die for it. And if I can save the lives of some noncombatants while protecting you, so much the better."
Amara closed her eyes, her head spinning. The stench of the burned corpses, of the carrion the crows had torn into, came to her again. She was a Cursor, a skilled fencer, an agent of the Crown, a decorated heroine of the Realm-but she did not want to die. It terrified her. She had seen the men the Marat had killed, and none of them had gone pleasantly. She had joked before, lightly, that she would never want to end her life in less than a viciously bloody fashion, as alive as she could possibly be, but the reality of it was different. There wasn't any consideration in it, no abstract philosophy. Just glittering, animal eyes and terror and pain.
It made sense, she reasoned. Fidelias wasn't a monster. He was a man like any other. He had cared about her, when they worked together. Almost more than her father had, in some ways. It was reasonable to assume that he did not want to see her die if he could avoid it.
And if she could save some more people, if she could lead those who would surely die away from the coming struggle, surely it would be worth it. Surely there would be no shame for her in fleeing, no dishonor before the Crown.
Or before Bernard's memory.
It wouldn't be wrong. Fidelias was giving her a way out. An escape.
"Amara," Fidelias's voice said, gently. "There isn't much time. You must go quickly, if you are to save them."
She abruptly saw the trap. Though she didn't understand it yet, though she wasn't sure exactly where it lay, she recognized what he had scattered out to blind her-raw emotions, fear, the desire to protect, the need to save her own pride. He had played on them, just as he had tried to put her into a raw, emotional state of terror and grief when he had betrayed her before.
"I must go quickly," she said, quietly. "I must go. Me. Or there's no deal." She took a breath and said, "Why would you want to make sure I was not a part of this battle, Fidelias? Why now, instead of an hour ago? Why did you make this offer only after you saw me observing the enemy?"
"Don't do this to yourself, Amara," he said. "Don't rationalize your way out of life. Don't let it kill those children."
She swallowed. He was right, of course. Perhaps she was being manipulated. Perhaps accepting his offer would mean that she had sacrificed some unknown advantage. But could she really argue against that statement? Could she make some attempt to play at maneuvers against him, here, now, when she would almost certainly die? And when it would cost the lives of children.
Run. Save them. Grieve with the Crown over the Valley's loss.
"Your purpose as a Cursor is to save lives, Amara. Stay true to your purpose. And let me stay true to my choice."
The crows croaked and swooped all around her. She opened her mouth to agree.
But a sudden sound stopped her. Without warning, the ground began to rumble, low, hard, rhythmic. She staggered and had to crouch to keep her balance. She looked back at the walls of Garrison.
A shout went up from the legionares, who immediately marched forward, away from the walls, breaking into ragged formation as the pitching of the earth made them stagger left and right. They came out to the same distance she stood at and turned to stare at the walls with her.
The walls of Garrison heaved and shuddered, like a sleeper stirring. They rippled, a slow wave rolling through the seamless grey stone. And then, with a screeching of breaking earth, they began to grow.
Amara stared at it in sudden wonder. She had never seen any such feat done on such a scale before. The walls rolled up, higher, like a wave
approaching the shore. They ground forward several paces toward the enemy, until Amara realized that they were growing thicker at the base, to support the greater height. The walls grew, and the grim grey stone began to streak with ribbons of scarlet and azure, twined within the rock, the colors of Alera proper, and then with scarlet bound with gold, the colors of the Legion's home city of Riva. The battlements grew higher, and with an abrupt shriek of stone, spikes erupted at the summit of the battlements and then sprang out all along the walls themselves, long, slender daggers of some dark stone that gleamed in the growing light. The spikes spread, as though they were tendrils sprung from some deadly vines beneath the surface of the wall, and raced out over the ground before the walls as well, rippling into place like blades of grass growing all in an instant, their gleaming tips pointing out at the oncoming horde.
The crows, dismayed, flew into the sky in a sudden storm of black wings and raucous cawing, circling around the field of battle like wreathes of panicked smoke.
The rumbling eased. The walls of Garrison stood, thirty feet high and grim, and bristled with razor-edged daggers of the same black stone, Amara could now see, that the Marat used for their own weapons. The ground itself lay ready to impale any attackers.
And, in the stunned silence, she heard Fidelias's voice whisper, "Bloody crows."
The legionares beside her erupted into sudden cheers, and she was barely able to hold back the shout of defiance that came to her own throat. She snapped an order to the men, to send them back inside, and they began picking their way painfully across the field of spikes before the wall. One of the men slipped and cut his leg, drawing, of all things, a sudden and enthusiastic discussion about how sharp the spikes were and how well they'd cut him. The loudest voice of praise was from the injured man. More cheers rose up from inside the fortress, and as Amara watched, more legionares crowded the wall, and someone raised the banners of the Legion and of Riva into position above the gates. Within, one of the musicians began to trumpet the call to arms, and the legionares, professional and holder alike, answered it in a sudden roar that shook the stone of the hills framing the fortress.
Amara spun back out to face the horde coming over the plains and hissed, "Fight for what you want, Fidelias, but it will not be handed to you. The future of these men and women, children and soldier alike, is not cast in stone. If you want the fortress, then come and take it."
There was a long and terrible silence before Fidelias responded, and when he did, his voice was calm, even. "Good-bye, Amara."
With the softest whisper of wind, the contact faded.
Amara turned and called to Cirrus. She stepped forward and leapt lightly over the field of spikes, thirty yards or more, landing in the gate ahead of the legionares returning from outside. Her heart pounded in swift, hot defiance, determination.
She tried not to notice that it made her broken arm throb as well, with pain.
Amara moved quickly into the courtyard, and the shadows of the now-higher walls had changed the perspective of the entire place. It took her a moment to orient herself, but she spotted Bernard sitting at the base of the new wall with a group of jubilant-faced, panting men, talking. Shields and weaponry and breastplates lay near each man, and one of the women had brought water to them. As much seemed to have been tossed over their heads as down their throats, and their tunics were splotched with water, their breath turned to steam before smiling mouths. Pirellus stood nearby Bernard and nodded to her when he saw her.
"Interesting," Pirellus said, jerking his head back toward the wall. "It's going to force them to use their scaling poles and to try to take the gate. We'll be able to make a good fight of it, at least."
"Incredible," Amara said, grinning first at Pirellus and then at Bernard. "I've never seen anything like it."
Bernard looked up with a tired smile of his own. "Always amazing what you can do when you must."
Pirellus asked, "Did you spot anything?"
"No," Amara said, "but I believe our opposition was afraid that I would." She told them, in brief, about the conversation with Fidelias.
Bernard frowned. "You know. Maybe we should get as many people as we can into the wagons and get them on the road again. Can we hold long enough to let them get away?"
Pirellus looked at the wall and then at the other side of the courtyard. "It's a risk worth taking. I'll see to it," he said, shortly. "There won't be enough room for everyone, but we could get the children out, at least."
"Thank you," Amara told him.
Pirellus nodded to her. "You were right last night," he said. "I was
wrong." Then he headed out across the courtyard, steps steady despite his wounded leg.
Bernard whistled and said to Amara, "That cost him something, I think."
"Nothing he couldn't do without anyway," Amara said, her voice dry. "Bernard, those Knights are still out there, and they're going to be coming in on us again."
"I know," Bernard said. "But we don't have enough Knights Aeris to hold the sky. We don't know when or where they'll come."
Amara nodded to him. "But I think I have a good guess. Here's what I want you to do."
She laid out brief instructions for him, and he nodded, gathered up some more of the holders with him, and hurried off to carry out her plan. Amara checked in with Harger and then headed up onto the wall. The battlements were crowded with men, but she located Giraldi, standing soberly in position at the center of the wall, over the gate.
"Centurion," she greeted him.
"Countess."
"How does it look?"
He nodded out toward the oncoming Marat, hardly more than a mile away now. "They've stopped," he told her. "Out past our best bow range, even for these holder boys. They're waiting."
"For what?"
He shrugged. "Sunrise maybe. If they give it a few minutes, the sun will be in our eyes when it comes up."
"Will it hurt us much?"
He shrugged. "It won't help."
She nodded. "How long can we expect to hold them?"
"No telling with these things. If we can keep them off the walls, out of the gates, a good long while."
"Long enough to give a group of wagons a running start?"
He glanced at her. "The holders' wagons?"
Amara nodded. "We're loading them with the women and children right now."
Giraldi looked at her steadily for a moment, then nodded. "All right then. We'll hold them long enough. Excuse me." He turned and stepped back from the battlements to meet a panting legionare who had made his
way down the wall. Amara followed him. Giraldi frowned and asked, "Where are those canteens, man?"
The legionare saluted. "Sorry, sir. They're in the east warehouse, and it's already been secured."
"Already been secured," Giraldi growled. "How do you know?"
"Door was locked."
Giraldi frowned at the man. "Well, find Harger and get him to-what's that on your shoes?"
"Hay, sir."
"Where did you get hay in your boots, legionare?"
"One of the holders threw it there, sir. They're tossing it all over the courtyard."
"What?"
Amara stepped in. "My orders, Centurion."
"Uh," Giraldi said. He swept off his helmet and rubbed at his short-cropped hair. "With all due respect, Your Ladyship, what kind of idiot order is that? If you put hay all over the courtyard, it'll make the prettiest fire you ever saw, and among our own, to boot. For all we know they're going to be shooting flame arrows over the wall."
"It's a calculated risk, Centurion, that I cannot explain here."
"Lady," Giraldi began to protest.
From down the wall, someone shouted, "Sir!"
Amara and Giraldi both turned to look down the wall.
A pale-faced young legionare jerked his chin out toward the plains beyond the fortress. "Here they come."