Codex Alera Book 1 - Chapter 40

Amara rushed back to the battlements with Giraldi beside her and watched as the Marat horde, beneath the droning yawls of huge, hollowed animal horns, began a determined advance, moving forward at a steady trot, with wolves and herdbane loping along beside them.

"Crows," whispered one of the legionares beside Amara She saw the man reach for his spear, fumble it, and drop it She flinched, hand flashing out and batting the falling weapon away from her

Giraldi caught it in one scar-knuckled hand "Steady," he growled, eyes on Amara He pa.s.sed the spear back to the legionare "Steady, lads "

The horde grew closer The sounds of thousands of feet hitting the ground as they ran rose like far off thunder

"Steady," Giraldi said He looked up and down the line and barked, "Archers' Shields'"

The legionares stepped up to the battlements In each crenellation stood a man with one of the huge Legion wall shields Behind each, another legionare, armed with a bow and a thick war-quiver of arrows, strung his bow and took position Most of the archers were holders from the Valley

The Marat grew closer, the eerie droning of their horns growing louder, more unnerving A restless shuffle went down the line of shieldmen

"Steady," Giraldi commanded He glanced at the young holder in borrowed armor beside him "You sure you lads can shoot that far'"

The holder peeked around the edge of the shield of the burly legionare in front of him "Yes They're in range "

Giraldi nodded "Archers!" he growled "Fire at will!"

All up and down the line, archers set arrows to their bows, their tips pointing up at the sky, standing close to their shield man Amara watched the nearest young man half-draw his bow, then b.u.mp his partner with his hip The legionare knelt, lowering the shield, and the archer drew as he lowered the bow, took quick aim, and loosed at the oncoming Marat His partner stood up again swiftly, bringing his shield back into position

All along the wall, the archers began shooting Each man loosed an arrow every five or six breaths, or even faster Amara stood beside Giraldi in the one crenellation not occupied by a shieldman and watched the arrows slither through the air and into the oncoming Marat ranks The deadly aim of the Aleran holders dropped Marat and beast alike with equal ferocity, littering the ground with fresh corpses, making the eager crows swoop and dive in a swarm over the charging horde

But still the horde came on

The archers had begun shooting at close to six hundred yards-an incredible distance, Amara knew They had to have been woodcrafters of nearly a Knight's skill to manage such a feat For perhaps a minute, there

was no sound but the grunt of archers drawing bows, legionares kneeling and standing again, the droning blare of Marat horns, and the rumbling of thousands of feet.

But when the Marat closed to charging range of the walls, the entire horde erupted in a sudden shout that hit Amara like a wall of cold water- chilling, terrifying in its sheer intensity. At the same moment, the war birds let out a shrill, piercing shriek, terrifying from one such beast, but from the thousands below, the sound almost seemed a living thing all its own. At the same moment, the sun broke the horizon across the distant plains, a sudden harsh light that swept over the top of the battlements first, and made archers flinch and squint as they attempted their next shot.

"Steady!" Giraldi bellowed, voice barely carrying over the din. "Spears!"

The shield-bearing centurions gripped their spears, faces set in a fighting grimace.

Below, the Marat charge hit the first razor-edged defensive spikes the holders had crafted out of the earth itself. Amara watched closely, her heart in her throat. The leaders in the Marat charge began to leap and skip among the spikes, looking for all the world like children playing at hopping games. Behind them leapt their animals. Amara saw some of the Marat, with heavy, knotted cudgels, begin to strike the spikes from the sides, shattering them.

"The ones with clubs," Amara said. "Tell the archers to aim for them. The longer we can keep the spikes in place, the harder it will be for them to pressure the gate."

Giraldi grunted and relayed her order up and down the walls, and the archers, instead of firing into the enemy at random, began to pick their targets.

Scaling poles and ropes with hooks fashioned of some kind of antlers or bone began to lift toward the wall. Legionares thrust at the poles with the crossguards of their spears, pushing them away, and some drew their swords to hack at ropes as they came up, while the archers continued to fire on the enemy. Arrows began to flicker up from the horde below, short, heavy arrows launched from oddly shaped bows. One of the archers beside Amara lingered in aiming his shot for too long, and an arrow struck him through both cheeks in a sudden welter of blood. The holder choked, dropping.

"Surgeon!" Amara yelled, and a pair of men on the wall moved quickly to the fallen man, dragging him down before going to work on removing the arrow.

Amara stepped back to the battlements. She swept her gaze over the

enemy below, but she couldn't see anything beyond a horde of Marat and their beasts, so many thousands of them that it was difficult to tell where one left off and the other began.

Giraldi abruptly seized her shoulder and dragged her back from the edge. "Not without a helmet," he growled.

"I can't tell what's happening," Amara panted. She had to shout to make herself heard. "There are too many of them."

Giraldi squinted out at the enemy, then drew his head prudently back. "About half of their force is here. They're holding the rest back, ready to bring them in when they get an opening."

"Are we holding them?"

"The walls are doing all right," Giraldi called back, "but the gate is our weak point. They attack the walls only to keep most of our men busy up here. There are too few men at the gate. They'll force the barricade sooner or later."

"Why didn't they craft the gate closed?"

"Can't," Giraldi reported. "Engineer told me. No foundation under it for extra wall, and the interior surface is lined with metal."

From below them there came a crunching sound and a sudden chorus of mixed Aleran war cries of, "Riva for Alera!" and "Calderon for Alera!"

Giraldi glanced out over the field again. "They must have gotten part of the barricade down. The hordemaster has ordered the rest of his troops in, and they're on the move. They'll try to put pressure on the gate until the defense breaks." Giraldi grimaced. "If they don't repel this first thrust, we're done for."

Amara nodded to him. "All right. Almost time, then. I'll be back up as soon as I can." She leaned out to look down into the courtyard below. She could just make out the forms of a couple of legionares standing their ground almost within the gate itself, spears thrusting. There were shrieks and cries from below, and Amara's eyes caught a flash of motion, a dark blade seen for only a second as its wielder spun it out behind him. Pirellus was holding the gate once more.

Amara hurried to the nearest stairs and pelted down them to the courtyard, looking around wildly. Hay from the bales she had crashed through earlier that morning lay scattered everywhere over the courtyard. All but a few of the wounded had been pulled back to the west courtyard, and the last of them were being loaded onto stretchers. She started across the courtyard toward the stables. As she did, she saw Pluvus Pentius emerge from one of the

barracks, white-faced and nervous, one hand wrapped around the hand of a little boy, whose hand stretched back behind to another child, and so on, until the truthfinder was leading half a dozen children across the courtyard.

Amara hurried to him. "Pluvus! What are these children still doing here?"

"H-hiding," Pluvus stuttered. "I found them hiding under their fathers' bunks in the barracks."

"Crows," Amara spat. "Get them to the west courtyard with the wounded. They're supposed to be fortifying one of the barracks to hold them. And hurry."

"Yes, right," Pluvus said, his skinny shoulders tightening. "Come on, children. Hold hands, and stay together."

Amara dashed to the stables and found Bernard sitting with his back to the wall just inside one of the doors, his eyes half-closed. "Bernard," she called. "The gate is under attack. They'll be coming."

"We're ready," Bernard mumbled. "Just say when."

Amara nodded to him and turned, focusing her attention on Cirrus, then sent him up and out into the sky, feeling for the windcrafters she knew would be carrying Fidelias's rogue Knights toward the fortress.

She felt it a moment later, a tension in the air that spoke of a coming stream of wind. Amara called Cirrus back and worked another sightcrafting, sweeping the sky, searching for the incoming troops.

She spotted them while they were still half a mile from the fortress, dark shapes against the morning sky. "There," she shouted. "They're coming in from the west. Half a minute at the most."

"All right," Bernard murmured.

Amara stepped out into the open, as the Knights Aeris with their transport litters swept down from the skies, diving for the fortress. A wedge of Knights Aeris flew before the litters, weapons ready, and the sun gleamed on the metal of their armor. They headed toward the gate in a steep dive.

"Ready!" Amara shouted, and drew her sword. "Ready!" She waited a pair of heartbeats more, until the enemy reached the valley-side wall and pa.s.sed over the western courtyard then the garrison commander's building. She took a breath, willing her hands to stop shaking. "Loose!"

All around her in the courtyard, hummocks and lumps of scattered hay shook and shimmered, and a full fifty holder bowmen, covered with hand-fuls of hay and by the woodcrafting Bernard had worked over them, became

vaguely visible. As one, they lifted their great bows and opened fire directly up at the underside of the incoming Knights.

The holders' aim proved deadly, and their attack had taken the mercenaries completely by surprise. Knights Aeris in their armor cried out in sudden shock and pain, and men began to plummet from the skies like living hailstones. The archers stood their ground, shooting, even as the stunned mercenaries began to recover. One of the Knights Aeris who had not been hit began to weave the air into a shield of turbulence, and arrows began to abruptly veer and miss. Amara focused on the man and sent Cirrus toward his windstream. The Knight let out a cry of surprise and fell like a stone.

The second and third litters listed and began to spin out of control toward the ground, while injured and surprised bearers struggled to keep them from simply dropping. The first litter, though one of its bearers had taken an arrow through the thigh, made it through the withering cloud of arrow fire, though it had to veer to one side, and dropped onto the roof of one of the barracks on the opposite side of the courtyard.

Knights Aeris began to swoop and dive toward the courtyard, attacking, and though the holders' archery had done well when the Knights had not been prepared to face it, the air shortly became a howling cloud of shrieking furies, rendering the holders' arrows all but useless.

"Fall back!" Amara shouted, and the holders began to withdraw, harried by the airborne Knights, toward the stables. The Knights gathered together for a charge, their intention evidently to take the courtyard and hold it, and rushed at the retreating archers in a swift and deadly dive. Amara hurled Cirrus at the opposing furies, and though she was able to do little more than disrupt the formation of the Knights Aeris, they broke off the charge, swooping back up into the sky above the fortress, enabling the archers to retreat into the carrion-stink of the stables.

Amara herself turned and pelted toward the legionares stationed outside the gate. She caught a glimpse of the Knight Commander standing beside the makeshift wooden barricade. The Marat had managed to find two or three ways to crawl through it, and Pirellus danced from one spot to the next, his blade, and the spears of the two men backing him up, keeping the Marat at bay. "Pirellus!" she shouted. "Pirellus!"

"A moment, Lady," he called, and whipped his sword out in a blinding thrust. The Marat who received it died without so much as a struggle, simply

collapsing in the gap among the various wooden objects Pirellus took a pair of steps back and nodded to the spearmen and to a few of the other le-gionares standing by The men moved forward to hold the barricade, and Pirellus turned to Amara "I heard you calling The mercenaries attacked?"

"Two of their litters went down outside the walls," she said, and pointed, "But a third landed on the roof of that barracks "

Pirellus nodded once "Very well Stay here and-Countess!" The black blade swept out and something shattered with a brittle sound Amara, who had begun to turn, felt splinters of wood flickering against her cheek, and the broken fletchmg of an arrow rebounded from her mail She lifted her eyes to the barracks and saw Fidelias there, calmly drawing another arrow to his stout, short bow and taking aim, even as behind him, several men began to clamber down from the roof The former Cursor's thin hair blew in the cold wind, and though he stood in the shadow of the newly risen walls, Amara could see his eyes on hers, calm and cool, even as he drew back the second shaft, aimed, and loosed

Pirellus stepped in the way of the shot, cutting it from the air with a contemptuous slap of his blade, and called to the men behind him Fidelias's soldiers were joined by the Knights Aeris who circled back above the fortress and then dove toward the gates

Pirellus dragged Amara back to the stables and growled, "Stay down " Even as he did, Amara could see the legionares form into a ragged rank that met the oncoming troops and the Knights above with an uncertain tenacity Fidelias, on the barracks roof, climbed down to the ground, his eyes flickering over the hay scattered there He knelt into it There came a blurring in the air, and then he simply vanished, covered by a woodcraftmg of his own

"There!" Amara cried, grabbing at Pirellus's arm "The one who shot me! He's covered with a woodcraftmg and headed for the gates " She pointed at a flickering over at one side of the courtyard, hardly visible behind the struggling legionares with their backs to the gate

"I see him," Pirellus replied He glanced down at Amara and said, "The Steadholder exhausted himself with that woodcrafting Good luck " Then he rose and stalked out into din and whirl and scream of the fight in the courtyard

Amara looked behind her to find Bernard sitting where she had left him, his eyes open but not focused, his chest heaving with labored breaths She

went to his side and took her canteen from her belt, pressing it against his hands. "Here, Bernard. Drink."

He obeyed, numbly, and she remained beside him, turning to watch the fight. The legionares were having a hard time of it. Even as she watched, a giant of a swordsman, Aldrick ex Gladius, closed in on the shieldwall, swept one blade aside, danced past another, and killed a man in the center of the line with a sweeping cut that sheered through his helmet and skull, dropping him to the ground on immediately senseless legs. Without pausing, he engaged the two men on either side of the first. One of the men moved quickly and got away with no more than a crippling thrust to his biceps. The other lifted his shield too high in a parry, and Aldrick spun, sweeping his leg off at the knee. The man screamed and toppled, and the mercenaries surged forward hard against the shields.

Pirellus appeared among the Legion ranks, his black blade flickering. One of the Knights Aeris, his dive too low, clutched at his belly with a sudden scream, and tumbled to the courtyard. One of the mercenaries on the ground, wielding a forty-pound maul in one hand as though it weighed no more than a willow switch, swung his huge weapon at Pirellus. The Knight commander slipped to one side with a deceptively lazy motion, and his return blow struck off the man's hand at the wrist. The maul fell heavily to the ground. A third mercenary darted his blade at Pirellus, only to be parried and almost casually disarmed, the sword tumbling end over end to rattle against the wall of the stable not far from Amara.

"Fall back to the gate!" came Aldrick's bellow. "Fall back!" The mercenaries retreated, quickly, dragging their wounded with them, but a similar shout from Pirellus caused the Legion troops to halt their advance as well. Neither Aldrick nor Pirellus retreated, leaving the two men standing a pair of long steps apart.

Pirellus extended his blade toward Aldrick and then swept it up before his face in a gliding salute, which Aldrick mirrored. Then the two men dropped into a relaxed on guard position.

"Aldrick ex Gladius," Pirellus said. "I've heard about you. The Crown has a pretty bounty on your head."

"I'll be sure to check the wanted posters next time I go through a town," Aldrick responded. "Do you want to settle this, or do you need me to go through another few dozen of your legionares?"

"My name is Pirellus of the Black Blade," Pirellus said. "And I'm the man who will end your career."

Aldrick shrugged. "Never heard of you, kid. You're not Araris."

Pirellus scowled and moved, a sudden liquid blur of muscle and steel. Aldrick parried the Parcian's first thrust in a sudden shower of silver sparks, countered with one of his own that proved to be a feint, and whirled in circle, blade lashing out. Pirellus ducked under it, though the blow struck sparks from his helmet and clove away part of its crest, to lie glowing and smoldering on the straw-strewn ground.

The two men faced one another again, and Pirellus smiled. "Fast for an old man," he said. "But you missed."

Aldrick said nothing. A heartbeat later, a slow trickle of blood dribbled down from beneath the rim of Pirellus's helmet, and toward his eye.

The swordsman must have driven the helmet's rim into the cut Pirellus had taken earlier, Amara reasoned, opening it again.

Now Aldrick smiled. Pirellus's face had gone sallow beneath his brown skin. He lifted his lips at Aldrick and came forward, sword lashing out in swift blows, high, low, high again. Aldrick parried him in showers of silver sparks. The swordsman shifted onto the offensive himself, blade sweeping in short, hard cuts at the smaller warrior. Pirellus's black blade intercepted each blow, sparks of a purple so dark as to hardly be visible exploding at each point of impact. The blows drove the Parcian back a number of steps, and Aldrick pressed forward ruthlessly.

As Amara watched, Pirellus almost took down the swordsman. He slipped beneath a cut, slammed the swordsman's arm aside with his open hand, and drove his blade at Aldrick's belly. Aldrick twisted aside, and the Parcian's blade struck more dark sparks from Aldrick's armor, cutting through it like paper. The thrust missed, though it drew blood in a long scarlet line across Aldrick's belly. Aldrick recovered, parrying another thrust, and another, while Pirellus followed him up with determined strokes.

The swordsman seemed, to Amara, to be waiting for something. It became apparent what, in the next few seconds. Blood, running over Pirellus's eye, forced him to blink it closed, and he snapped his head to one side in an effort to clear it.

In that moment, the swordsman moved. Aldrick slipped inside the Parcian's slow thrust and lashed out with his foot in a short, hard kick, a simple stomp, as though he'd been driving a spade into the earth. But it wasn't a

spade his boot hit. It was Pirellus's already wounded knee. The bones broke with a clean, sharp crack, and Aldrick drove his shoulder into Pirellus's, throwing him to one side.

The Knight Commander's face showed nothing but determination, but as he stumbled, he put weight on his knee, and it simply could not support his body any longer. He crumpled to the ground, turning for another cut at Aldrick as the swordsman stepped toward him.

Aldrick parried the blow aside with casual power, more indigo sparks erupting.

Then, with a step to one side and a swift cut, he took Pirellus's head from his shoulders.

Blood spurted in an arch as the Knight Commander's body fell to the stones of the courtyard. His head rolled to a stop several yards away. His body lay twitching, his sword arm, even in death, slashing left and right.

Amara stared at the fallen Knight in horror, as her instincts screamed at her, forced her to remember that Fidelias was still on the move and had not been stopped. She rose, uncertain what she could do to stop what was happening in the courtyard. Aldrick turned on a heel and, without even pausing, began to stalk, alone, toward the legionares guarding the gates.

Before he could reach them, the wood of the barricade groaned, let out a tortured scream, and began to warp and writhe. Splinters and shards of wood exploded out, sending legionares reeling back from them in stunned horror. Then the wood itself began to writhe and move, the legs of tables twisting and clutching, planks shattering, the wagon letting out a tortured scream and then collapsing upon itself.

The Marat, on the other side, began to shove hard against the barricade, and without the hastily constructed stability of the various pieces, the barricade itself began to wobble and crumble in.

Fidelias appeared, not far from Aldrick, and then turned to signal one of the Knights in the air. The man swept down and grabbed Fidelias beneath the arms, lifting him back to the roof of the barracks, and Aldrick ex Gladius stepped over Pirellus's fallen corpse to lead the other handful of mercenaries after them.

The legionares at the gate formed up to face the incoming Marat, but the invaders leapt on them with an unyielding savagery and began to drive the men near the gates back step by slow step.

Amara rose and rushed into the stable to shout to the archers, "Take up

a shield and sword! Hold the gate!" Men rushed about in the stable's interior, taking up weapons and rushing outside to join the defense at the gate.

When Amara returned to Bernard, he had regained his feet. "What's happening?"

"Their Knights came in. We bloodied them, but they managed to weaken the barricade. Pirellus is dead." She looked at him. "I'm not a soldier. What do we do?"

"Giraldi," Bernard said. "Get to Giraldi. He'll send more men to reinforce the gates. Go, I'm not up to running yet."

Amara nodded, and fled, sprinting across the courtyard and up the steps to the wall. The fighting there was more hectic, and she stepped over the body of a Marat, proof that they had gained purchase on the wall at least once.

"Giraldi!" she shouted, when she reached the command area over the gates. "Where are you?"

A grim Legion shieldman, his face half-masked in blood turned to her. It was Giraldi, his eyes calm despite the bloodied sword in his hands. "Countess? You said you were looking for the hordemaster. And there he is, finally," grunted Giraldi. "There, see?"

"It doesn't matter," Amara said, her voice numb. "Pirellus is dead."

"Crows," Giraldi said, but his voice was too tired for it to be much of an oath. "Just seems like someone should pay him back for this."

Amara lifted her head, something hot and hard and terrible pulsing in her belly. The fear, she realized, had vanished. She was too tired to be afraid, too afraid to be afraid anymore. There was a sort of relaxation that came with inevitability, she realized, a sort of mad, silent strength. "Which one is he?"

"There," Giraldi said, pointing. An arrow shattered on his shield, and he didn't flinch, as though he was too tired to let it bother him. "See, the tall one with the birds all around him and the Aleran spear."

Amara focused on him and saw the Marat hordemaster for the first time. He was marching steadily through the ranks of Marat hurling themselves against the walls, his chin lifted, an arrogant smirk on his mouth. Black feathers had been braided into his pale hair, and several of the herdbane stalked behind him like some deadly guard of honor. Other troops went before, chanting.

The hordemaster's troops began to part for him, crying out in a steady chant as they did. "Atsurak! Atsurak! Atsurak!"

Amara brought up Cirrus in a visioncrafting, determined to learn this

man's features, to find him and at all costs to kill him for leading the horde against them this day She memorized the shape of his nose and cruel mouth, the steady breadth of his shoulders beneath a thanadent-hide cowl, the-

Amara caught her breath, staring, and willed Cirrus to bring her vision even closer to the hordemaster

Riding at his hip, through a thin braided twist of cord he used as a belt, was the signet dagger of an Aleran High Lord, its gold and silver hilt gleaming in the morning sun Even as Amara stared, Cirrus let her see the dagger's hilt, the crest wrought in steel upon it Aquitaine's falcon

"Furies," she breathed Aquitaine Aquitaine himself No one more powerful in the realm save the First Lord Aquitaine's Knights, then, Aquitaine who subverted Fidelias, Aquitaine who had attempted to gain knowledge of the palace from her, in order to-

In order to kill Gains He means to take the throne for himself

Amara swallowed She had to recover that dagger at any cost To bring such a d.a.m.ning piece of evidence before the Senate would finish Aquitaine and terrify anyone working with him into loyalty again She could prove who the true culprit behind today's vicious deaths had been, and though she had thought she hated the hordemaster now striding toward the buckling defenses of Garrison's gates, she felt a sudden and furious rage against the man whose ambitions had engineered the events of the past several days

But could she do it? Could she recover the dagger?

She had to try She now realized why Fidelias had wanted her out of the fortress He had wanted to hide this very thing from her, knowing full well that only she and perhaps two or three other people in the fortress would recognize the signet dagger for what it was

She shook her head, forcing her thoughts to focus, to take one thing at a time "Giraldi! We need reinforcements," she stammered "The gate is about to fall'"

Giraldi grimaced, and as she watched, his face fell, the lines in it deepening, making him look as though he had aged years in the s.p.a.ce of a breath "Doesn't matter," he said, and jerked his chin toward the field below the fortress "Look "

Amara looked, and when she did, the strength went out of her legs She leaned hard against the battlements, her head swimming, her heart pounding in light, irregular beats

"No," she breathed "No It's not fair "

Out on the plain, beyond the savage horde of Marat below, there had come another horde, every bit as large as the first. This one included elements of cavalry, though she could make out little beyond that. Cavalry, useless for taking a fortified position, but the ideal troops for raiding into an enemy's lands. Fast, deadly, destructive. The sheer numbers of the newly arrived enemy had, she knew, abruptly changed the fight from a desperate battle to a hopeless one. She looked up at Giraldi and saw it in his eyes.

"We can't win," she said. "We can't hold."

"Against that?" He shook his head. He took his helmet off and wiped sweat from his brow, replacing it as arrows buzzed through the air.

She bowed her head, her shoulders shaking. The tears were hot and bitter. A stone-headed arrow shattered on the merlon above her, but she didn't care.

Amara looked up at the Marat, at Atsurak about to take the gates, at the enormous number of Marat still fresh and unbloodied, now moving quickly over the plains toward the fortress. "Hold," she told Giraldi. "Hold as long as you can. Send someone to make sure the Civilians have started running. Tell the wounded to arm themselves to fight as best they can. Tell them-" She swallowed. "Tell them it looks bad."

'Yes, Countess," Giraldi said, his voice numb. "Heh. I always figured my last order would be 'pa.s.s me another slice of roast.'" He gave her a grim smile, turned to swing his sword at a climbing Marat almost absently, and headed off to follow her commands.

Amara climbed back down off the wall, taking absent note of the courtyard. Fidelias and his men were nowhere in sight, probably gone again, safely lofted up by their Knights Aeris. At the barricade, more Marat had pushed through, and though they had trouble advancing over the corpses fallen on the ground, yet they came on, despite the desperate cries of the Alerans pitted against them.

She drew her sword, the sword from the fallen guardsman in the Princeps Memorium, and stared at its workmanship. Then she looked up, at the Marat pushing through the gates, sure that in time she would see their hordemaster, here to claim the fortress for himself.

Bernard stepped up beside her, still looking tired, but holding a double bladed woodsman's axe in his broad hands. "Do we have a plan?"

"The hordemaster. I saw him. I want to take him down." She told him about the dagger at his waist, the second horde coming on.

Bernard nodded, slowly. "If we get to him," he said, "I'm going to try a

woodcrafting on you. Take the knife and run. Get it back to the First Lord, if you can."

"You're exhausted. If you try to work another crafting it could k-" She stopped herself and took a slow breath.

"Pirellus was right," Bernard commented. "The good part of being doomed is that you have nothing left to lose."

Then he turned to her, slipping an arm around her waist, and kissed her on the mouth, with no hesitation, no self-consciousness, nothing but a raw hunger tempered with a kind of exquisite gentleness. Amara let out a soft sound and threw herself into the kiss, suddenly frantic, and felt tears threaten her eyes again.

She drew back from the kiss far too soon, looking up at him. Bernard smiled at her and said, "I didn't want to leave that undone."

She felt a tired smile on her own mouth, and she turned from him to face the gates.

Outside, there came a blaring of horns, deeper, somehow more violent, more angry than the first ones had been. The ground began to shake once again, and shouts and rumbles outside the walls rose into a tidal wave of sound that pounded at her ears, her throat, her chest. She thought she could feel her cheeks vibrating from the sheer volume.

The final defense at the gate began to crumble. The Marat began to force their way into the courtyard, their eyes wild, weapons bloodied, pale hair and skin speckled with scarlet. One armed holder went down before a pair of enormous wolves and a Marat fighting with nothing but his own teeth. A great herdbane pinned a crawling Aleran to the ground and with a birdlike bob of its head seized the Aleran's neck and broke it with a quick shake. The Marat poured in, and there was sudden bedlam in the courtyard, lines disintegrating into dozens of separate smaller battles, pure chaos.

"There," Amara said, and jabbed her finger forward. "Coming through the gate right now."

Atsurak strode through the gates, his beasts all around him. With a casual motion of his captured Aleran spear, he thrust it through the back of a fighting legionare and then, without watching the man die, withdrew the spear to test its edge against his thumb. Several Alerans rushed him. One was torn to shreds by one of the huge birds. Another dropped to the earth before he got close to Atsurak, black-feathered Marat arrows sprouting from both eyes. No one got within striking distance of the hordemaster.

Bernard growled, "I'm going in first. Get their attention. You come right behind me."

"All right," Amara said, and put her hand on his shoulder.

Bernard gripped the axe and tensed to move forward.

Sudden thunder shook the air in a roar that made what came before sound like nothing more than the rumbling of an empty belly. Screams, frantic, howling cries, rose in a symphony. The walls themselves shook, just beside the gates. They shook again, beneath a thunderous impact, and a web of cracks spread out through them. Again, the thunder rammed against the outer walls, and with a roar an entire section gave in. Alerans on the battlements had to scramble to either side, stone tumbling down in huge and uneven sections, dust flooding out, light from the newly risen sun pouring through the dust in a sudden flood of terrible golden splendor.

Through the sudden gap in the walls came a thunderous bellow, and the vast shape of a black-coated gargant, a gargant bigger than any such beast Amara had ever seen. Bloodied, painted in wild and garish colors, the beast seemed something out of a madman's nightmare. It lifted its head and let out another bellowing roar and tore down another ten feet of wall with its vast digging claws. The gargant bellowed again and shouldered its way through the wall and into the courtyard itself.

A Marat warrior sat upon the gargant's back, pale of hair and dark of eye, with shoulders so broad and chest so deep not even the largest breastplate could have fit him. He bore a long-handled cudgel in his hand, and with an almost casual sweep he leaned to one side and smote it down onto the head of a Wolf Clan warrior strangling a downed Aleran, dropping the Marat to the earth with a broken skull.

"ATSURAK!" bellowed the Marat on the back of the maddened gargant. His voice, deep, rich, furious, shook the stones of the courtyard. "ATSURAK OF HERDBANE! DOROGA OF GARGANT CALLS YOU MISTAKEN BEFORE WE-THE-MARAT! COME OUT, YOU MURDEROUS DOG! COME AND FACE ME BEFORE THE ONE!"

Whirling with insane grace, the gargant spun to one side, great forelegs rising together. The beast brought his clawed feet down on top of a charging Herdbane Clan warrior, simply smashing him flat against the courtyard's stones. At that, though the din outside the walls continued to rise, the battle in the courtyard fell into a sudden, shocked silence.

As the great beast turned, letting out another defiant bellow, Amara saw, in the golden light pouring through the breached walls, the boy Tavi clinging to Doroga's back, behind him on the great gargant, and behind the boy sat the scarred slave, clutching at him and gibbering

Tavi looked wildly around the courtyard, and when his gaze flicked toward them, his face lit with a ferocious smile "Uncle Bernard! Uncle Bernard!" he shouted, pointing at Doroga "He followed me home' Can we keep him'"