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 passed 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