"And when I've found him?"
Bernard drew an arrow and set it to the string of his bow, finally. "Point me at him. They should come in any moment now. Good fortune, Cursor."
"And you, Steadholder."
On her other side, Pirellus leaned a hand against a merlon and leaned a bit forward. "Ready," he whispered. "Come on. We're ready."
They came without warning. The Marat surged forward, thousands of screaming throats with one voice, plunging into the cold furylight like a sudden, living tide of muscle and bone. Their battle roar washed over Amara, deafening, terrifying, more sound than she would have believed could happen. Before she realized what she was doing, she was screaming, too, shouting out her fear and defiance, her sword in her hand, though she didn't remember drawing it-and beside her, Pirellus, sword held high, did the same.
"Archers!" he thundered, voice stentorian on the wall. "Loose!"
And with the thrum of a hundred heavy bows, death went flying into the ranks of the charging Marat.
Amara watched as the first rank of the enemy bucked and went down, only to be crushed by those coming behind them. Twice more, Pirellus cried to the archers, and twice more arrows flickered into their ranks, sending Marat sprawling and screaming, but doing nothing to stop the tide of bodies flooding toward Garrison's walls.
"Spears!" Pirellus barked, and along the walls the archers stepped back, while legionares bearing heavy shields and long, wickedly pointed spears stepped forward.
Arrows driven by short, heavy Marat bows began to flicker over the tops of the walls, and Amara had to jerk her head to one side while a stone-tipped shaft flew past her face. Her heart surged with terror, and she crouched down enough to take her head from view as a prime target, while Pirellus, in
his helmet, stood staring down at the oncoming Marat, ignoring the arrows that buzzed past him.
The ground shook as the Marat reached the wall, a physical trembling that traveled up through the stones to Amara's feet. She could see them, a sea of wild, inhuman eyes, teeth that stretched into animal's fangs, and wolves ran beside them, among them, like great, gaunt shadows. The Marat reached the wall, where the gate suddenly shook with the blow of a tree trunk being held by a dozen hands, used as a ram. Several long, slender poles arched up into the air, studded along their lengths with short spikes, and once they came to rest against the walls, Marat began to climb the poles, nimble and swift, their weapons held in their hands, while companions beneath them fired arrows up at the defenders on the walls.
It was too loud to be believed, screams splitting the air, making any kind of communication nearly impossible. Arrows flew thicker than raindrops in a storm, their dark heads gleaming in the furylight, shattering where they struck stone or good Aleran steel-but Amara watched as one grizzled old veteran pitched back from the wall, the dark shaft of an arrow piercing his throat, and another man dropped motionless in his tracks, six inches of haft and fletching showing from the burst socket of his eye.
"Hold!" Pirellus bellowed. "Hold!"
The legionares fought with ruthless efficiency. Regardless of the incredible grace of the Marat rushing up the scaling poles, they thrust home spears with deadly accuracy into Marat flesh. Pale barbarians fell from the walls, back into the savage throng beneath, drawing further cries from those below. Again and again, Legion spearmen repelled the Marat assaults, shoving the scaling poles back down, driving the warriors clambering up them back with cold steel. The legionares fought together, each man with his shield partner, so that while one would engage the enemy's weapon, the other would drive a spear home with a short, hard thrust at the vitals or a leg, toppling the attacker from their precarious position atop the walls. Blood stained the Aleran spears, the legionares' shields and armor, and spattered thick on the battlements, mute testimony to the courage of the Marat attackers.
Below Amara's feet, she could hear the steady thud and thump of the ram being driven at the gates-but suddenly found herself whirling to the walls as a savage-eyed Marat swung himself up between two merlons from a scaling pole and swept a heavy wooden club at her head.
Amara ducked the blow, dodged a second swipe that came straight
down at her shoulder and whirled to whip her blade across the Marat's heavy thighs, opening the pale flesh in a sudden river of blood. The Marat screamed and toppled toward her, club flailing. Amara moved lightly to one side, thrusting her short blade at the Marat's ribs as he fell past, feeling the weapon sink home, the quivering, twisting jerk of the Marat's scream something that coursed through the metal and into her hands. Half-revolted, exultant at having survived the exchange, she let out a scream and jerked the sword back, leaping back from the Marat warrior as he tumbled limply down to the courtyard beneath the wall.
She looked up, panting, to find Pirellus staring at her. He nodded, once, and then called, "Try to throw them back down the wall on the outside. We don't want clutter where our own troops are moving around." Then he turned back to his study of the ground below, almost absently frowning when a stone arrow-tip shattered against the crest of his helmet.
Amara chanced a look over the wall, out at the chaos below, and arrows whistled through the air toward her as soon as she did. She jerked her head back and down, to find Bernard crouched next to her. The Steadholder, too, took a glance over the wall, before half-rising to a crouch, to lift his bow, drawing the arrow back to his cheek. He aimed for a breath, then loosed the arrow, which threaded its way between a pair of legionares to sink into the ribs of a Marat with a steel axe who had gained the wall over a stunned legionare with a dent in his helmet. The force of the arrow's impact drove the Marat back over the wall, and he vanished as he fell.
"Spotted their general yet?" Bernard called to her.
"I can't see anything!" Amara shouted. "They shoot whenever I look!"
"No helmet," Bernard said. "I'd shoot at you, too."
"That's a comfort, thanks," Amara said, wry, and the Steadholder grinned at her, before standing up to loose another arrow into the crowd below and drop back down behind the wall again.
Amara stood up to take another look-but Bernard caught her wrist. "Don't," he said. "They're getting packed in down there. Keep your head down."
"What?"
In answer, he nodded toward Pirellus. Amara turned her head to look at the man and saw him point a finger off to one side at a pair of men, standing behind heavy ceramic pots, and three armored Knights who stood behind them, with no weapons in their hands.
"Firepots?" Amara asked, and Bernard nodded. She watched, as Pirellus lifted his sword and then dropped it, a swift signal.
The two men with the firepots-earthcrafters, surely, for only they could lift the man-sized pots of coals so easily-heaved them up and over the wall, to crash down into the Marat on either side of the gate.
Pirellus signaled the three men behind them, and the Knights, as one, lifted their arms and faces to the sky, crying out over the screams and din of battle.
The fire answered them in a roar that deafened Amara and rattled her teeth against one another. Heat swept up, and sudden, brilliant light, scarlet and murderous in contrast to the cool blue furylights, a wind that roared upward, lifting Amara's hair up off her neck. A column of fire shaped like some huge winged serpent rose above the battlements, curled back down, and crashed to the earth below.
The battlements mercifully shielded her from seeing what happened to the Marat caught in the sudden storm of living flame, but in the wake of that fire, as its roar died away to echoes, she heard them screaming, men and wolves alike, screaming in terror and in pain, high and breathless. There was madness in those screams, frustration, futility, terror beyond anything that she had heard before-and there was something else: the sure and certain knowledge of death, death as a release from an agony as pure and hot as the flames that had caused it.