by Jim Butcher
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.
A smell rose from the ground before the battlements in those silent moments after, the scent of charred meat. Amara shuddered, sickened.
A silence fell, broken only by screams and moans, coming from the ground below. She rose and looked down, over the ground before the walls. The fire serpent had broken the Marat, sent them and their wolves howling away from the walls of Garrison. At a command from Pirellus, the archers stepped forward and sent arrows arching into the retreating barbarians with deadly accuracy, dropping more to the earth, clutching at the barbs piercing their flesh.
She couldn’t see much of the ground immediately beneath the walls, for which she felt silently grateful. The smell of burned hair and worse nearly overwhelmed her, until she bade Cirrus to keep it from her nostrils and mouth. She leaned a hand against the battlements and stared out at the blood-soaked, scorched earth, littered with a carpet of pale-haired bodies.
“Furies,” she breathed. “They’re not much more than children.”
Bernard stepped up beside her, his face pale, grim, eyes hidden in shadows beneath his helmet. “Young warriors,” Bernard said. “Their first chance to prove themselves in battle. That was Wolf Clan. One more to go.”
Amara glanced at him. “They send their youngest to fight?”
“To fight first. Then, if they survive, they can join the adult warriors in the main battle.”
She looked back at the field and swallowed. “This is only a preliminary to them. It isn’t over.”
“Not without getting the leader,” Bernard said. “Get some water in you. You don’t know how much you need it. Next one won’t be so easy.”
And indeed, a legionare came around carrying a bucket, and a thong threaded through the handles of tin cups, passing water to each man on the walls. More legionares, younger troops from the reserves in the courtyard below, came onto the walls to help carry down the wounded and bear them back to the watercrafters working at the tubs in the courtyard. As usual, those with functional and light injuries were treated first, a round of swift crafting that bound closed bleeding wounds, mended over simple broken bones, and restored a whole, if weary, fighting man to the defense of the garrison. The more seriously injured were remanded to the care of surgeons, men and women skilled in more pedantic medicinal practices, who labored to keep them alive and stable until one of the watercrafters had the time to attend to their injuries.
“Pretty much like we expected,” Pirellus was saying, on the wall somewhere nearby. She focused on the conversation, listening. “Though the ram was a new technique for them. They learn fast.”
Giraldi grunted. “Children. Crows, but I don’t like this kind of bloodletting.”
“How are the men?”
“Well enough, for not having slept a full night. Light casualties on the northern side of the wall. Only injuries on the south.”
“Good,” Pirellus said. “Get water to everyone and arrows to the archers. Make sure those new firepots get up here in one piece, and get some food to my firecrafters. They don’t do as well on an empty belly.”
“You want something for that?” Giraldi asked.
“For what?”
“You’re bleeding.”
“Edge of my helmet,” Pirellus said. “Arrow drove it into my skin. Looks worse than it is.”
“You don’t want it bleeding in your eye at the wrong time. Let me get a surgeon up here.”
“Let the surgeons see to the men that are hurt,” Pirellus said, his tone firm. “Get yourself some water, too, centurion.”
“Aye, sir.”
Amara frowned, pensive, and stood up, walking a bit farther down the wall. Bernard sat there, his back against the battlements, frowning down at his hands.
“Something’s occurred to me,” Amara said. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
Bernard squinted up at her. “It’s like that, your first battle.”
She shook her head impatiently. “No, not like that. It doesn’t make sense for the Marat to do this. To send a fraction of their force against us — and the one least experienced and capable at that. Why should they fight us piecemeal when they could bring everyone against us at once?”
“Marat don’t think like we do,” Bernard said. “You always get their raw recruits out in front. Sometimes they’re out like velites, skirmishing in front of the larger masses of troops, and sometimes they’re raiding parties that go out the night before, but they’re always in front. This is just another example.”
“They aren’t stupid,” Amara said stubbornly. “How many of their young men died just now? Hundreds? A thousand? For what? They killed half a dozen legionares and wounded more that will be back up on the walls in an hour at most.”
Pirellus stepped down the wall, abruptly standing before Amara, arms akimbo. “You would have preferred it if they had killed more, perhaps?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Amara snapped. “I just think that there must be something else to what they’re doing.” She looked at Bernard. “Where are the Knights we saw before?”
The Steadholder frowned at her, but Pirellus spoke before he could say anything. “Indeed, Countess, where are they? I acknowledge that the Marat are on the move, but we have seen only one warband, thus far, with no hordemaster in evidence. You will be quite the laughingstock if Riva brings both his Legions here only to find no Marat to face.” Amara’s temper flashed, and she faced Pirellus, ready to bring the man to task. Bernard stood up, as though to get between them.
Down the wall, one of the brass horns sounded a call to arms, a clarion note that clove through the cold furylit air and brought the veteran troops on the wall to their feet, shields and weapons ready, before its notes had died away.
“Sir,” snapped Giraldi, from the wall over the gates. “They’re coming again.”
Pirellus turned his back on Amara and leapt up to his position over the gate.
Out at the edge of the light, the Marat appeared again, rushing forward in a howling mob — but this time, their screams were punctuated not by the howling of the great, dark wolves, but by the metallic, whistling shrieks of the giant predator birds that raced beside them as the pale tide charged toward the walls.
“Archers,” Pirellus called again, and once more, in three humming, whistling waves, Marat dropped to the ground, the life driven from them by Aleran shafts. “Spears!” Pirellus called, and once again, the Legions squared up to face the Marat.
But that was where the similarity to the charge of Clan Wolf ended.
There were no scaling poles this time, no ram to assault the gates. Instead, the first rank of the Marat, howling their defiance, simply hurled itself at the walls and, running at a furious pace, leapt up to the top.
If Amara had not seen it happen, she would never have believed it possible — but the Marat, without aid of any kind, simply hurtled into the air, grasped at the top of the fifteen-foot wall with one hand, and hauled themselves up to fight. The great birds stalking beside them leapt up, too, even higher, furiously beating at the air with their stubby wings and holding themselves aloft just long enough to rake at the defenders atop the walls with their vicious talons, driving Aleran men back long enough for the young Herdbane warriors to haul themselves onto the battlements and throw themselves forward into battle with a fearless, even mindless abandon.
Amara stared in startled horror as a Marat hauled himself onto the wall not ten feet from her, and his great bird landed beside him with a scream, its beak slashing wildly at an
up-raised shield. The Marat lifted his knife and leapt at her, shrieking, while behind him another scrambled atop the wall in his place.
Amara tried to dodge to one side, only to realize that there was nothing but the empty air of the courtyard beneath her. She sent out a frantic call to Cirrus, and, as the Marat rushed her, took two steps out onto the empty air, then sprang back to the stones of the wall behind him. He stared at her, stunned for a moment, even as he spun to pursue her. She thrust with the guardsman’s blade, flat of the weapon parallel to the ground, and it sank home at one side of his chest, sliding between ribs and coming out again smoothly.
Something shrieked behind her, and hot pain flashed across her back. She threw herself forward and down, over the fallen Marat, and turned her head to see the great herdbane lunge toward her, dark eyes glassy and empty of anything like fear, its beak flashing toward her eyes.
She threw up her hands, willing Cirrus out before her, and the fury rushed out, sweeping up the great bird and hurling it into a merlon. It stumbled and spun to reorient on her, but even as it did, a heavyset legionare swept his sword at it in a powerful stroke and, with earth-born strength, swept the herdbane’s head from its neck. The legionare flashed her a smile, then turned and hurled himself toward the newest arrival at the top of the walls.
Amara struggled to her feet again. Fighting raged all along the wall and had spilled over into the courtyard behind. The reserve troops, after a startled moment, had been ordered forward by their young officers and engaged those Marat who either leapt from the wall or followed the bounds of their warbirds down into the courtyard.
More screams, frantic and terrified and wild with battle-rage, whirled around her, disorienting, terrifying. On the other side of the gate, the Marat had taken a section of the wall and held it tenaciously, more of their number pouring in at every moment, until Pirellus himself entered the fray.
The golden-skinned Parcian drew his dark sword and started what could only be described as a deliberate stalk down the length of the wall, calling legionares out of his way as he went. He met the first Marat with a blow so swift that Amara never saw it begin. She only saw blood flicker out in an arc, while the Marat tumbled down to the earth below, lifeless. One of the great birds lost its talon when it raked at Pirellus, and its head followed it to the stones a breath later.
More Marat threw themselves at the master metalcrafter, both man and beast in a furious wave, but the swordsman was their match. Every motion avoided a blow or enabled him to deal out a stroke of his own—and none failed to be lethal. With a calculated precision, Pirellus swept down the occupied section of the wall, brushing away the enemy like cobwebs, and the Legions flooded back into the space, kicking bodies clear of the battlements, fighting savagely to hold the regained section of the walls.
Pirellus shook the blood from his sword, expression neutral, remote, and pointed a finger again at the men with the firepots. The earthcrafters removed the lids and prepared to hurl the pots over the battlements to the ground below. The firecrafters behind them stood with their expressions distant, mouths moving silently, calling to their furies in preparation of the hellish storm they prepared to unleash on the enemy.
And that was when Amara felt it. When she felt the currents of air thrumming with tension, heard with some part of her that she could not fully describe the rising tide of wind moving in the darkness above.
She turned her face up, only to be blinded by the furylights mounted above the battlements, veiling the skies above—but all along the wall, the winds rose, whipping wildly back and forth. Amara thought she could hear cries above, where Garrison’s few Knights Aeris should have been patrolling. Something sprinkled down from above, and for a moment she thought that more rain had begun to fall. But the sensation was hot, not cold, and when Amara wiped at her cheek, she saw blood smeared upon her fingers.
“Bernard!” she shouted. “They’re here!” She didn’t have time to make sure she had been heard. Instead, she called to Cirrus and leapt into the air, felt the roar of wind enfold her as she hurtled up, above the battlements and into the darkened sky over the besieged fortress.
The air teemed with Knights Aeris—duelling, whirling pairs of men who swept through the skies in deadly combat, as much between furies as men, each trying to cut off the other’s flow of air or to wound their opponents badly enough with their blades to shatter their concentration and send them falling. Even as she watched, one of the men in Rivan colors whirled away from a flickering blade, only to let out a sudden, terrified scream and begin to plummet from the sky like a stone. He fell past Amara and onto the ground before the walls of Garrison, the thud of impact swallowed by the tumult beneath them.
Amara swept her gaze around the sky, picking out the shapes of airborne Knights as much with Cirrus’s senses as her own, and found thirty at least, three times the number of the fortress’s defenders. More graceful battles played out above and around her, but their outcome was a foregone conclusion: Garrison’s Knights Aeris would be driven from the skies or killed, and the enemy would control all movement above the fortress.
Amara spotted, high and at the rear of the enemy positions, what she had dreaded—several litters, borne by more Knights, litters that would carry more of the powerful furycrafters they had faced before. Even as she watched, several Knights formed an escort around three of the litters, and the whole of the group dove toward the embattled fortress.
Specifically, toward the gates where Pirellus and his Knights directed the Aleran defenses.
Amara did not take time to consider her plan. Instead, she gathered Cirrus beneath her and sent herself hurtling up toward the oncoming litters. A startled Knight turned to face her in the air, but with an almost casual gesture, she flashed past him, dealing him a blow that began a cut low on one of his legs and ran all the way up his back to his shoulder, sheering through the leather leggings he wore and even biting through some of the mail upon his back. He let out a cry and fell, his focus fluttering with his pain, dropping toward the earth like a leaf cut from a tree.
Amara hurled herself forward and used a terrific rush of air to catapult her up. Then, while her momentum still carried her toward the foe, she gathered Cirrus’s presence up before her and sent the fury lashing out at those supporting one of the litters.
She wasn’t strong enough to cut all four of the Knights bearing the litters from their furies, and she hadn’t even tried. Instead, she had focused on the two forward Knights, intending only to cut off their wind for a few crucial seconds. She succeeded. The men let out startled cries and fell, straight down, taking the poles whose weight they supported with them.
And dumping a half-dozen screaming men inside the litter into the open air. Two of the men still wore their restraining straps and dangled precariously on the litter as the Knights bearing it struggled to right it again, but the others, evidently anticipating a quick dismount upon the walls, had already unstrapped. Those six plummeted toward the ground, and though a few of the escorting Knights plunged after them, Amara knew that they would never be able to save the men from a fall so close to the earth.
She felt dozens of eyes focus on her at once, as her momentum carried her to the peak of its energy, then let her begin to fall again. She spun in the air, faced down, and kept her limbs in close to her body, to keep from being slowed as she reached out to gather Cirrus back to her, and to reestablish her own windstream before one of the other Knights of the air cut her off.
Half a dozen windstreams converged on her at once, and she clawed for air in frustrated terror, even as the furylights of the fortress below loomed closer. She got lucky: So many of the enemy had moved to cut her off that she was able to use their own efforts against one another, writhing the windstreams into a tangle and then altering the direction of her fall with her arms and legs. Cirrus gathered beneath her in a rush, and she gained control of her fall, just as another Knight, less reticent than the others, swept toward her, light gleaming on his drawn sword.
Amara twisted to one side, but he matched her fall, and the sword swept at her. She caught it on her own blade and pressed in close, sword-to-sword, struggling to gain control of the wind around them and turn it to her advantage. Her foe gripped her wrist, and they began to spin wildly, still falling.
Amara shot a glance down at the courtyard welling up before her eyes and looked up to her foe’s face just as he did the same. There was a mute moment of concord and then both pushed away from one another, furies gathering beneath them in a roar, attempting to slow their fall.
Amara got one frantic look at Garrison beneath her and guided her fall into a stack of hay bales beside the stables. The bales, solidly packed, would have done little to break her fall without Cirrus rushing currents, both slowing the impact and scattering the bales into loose strands. Amara crashed through the topmost stack of bales and out onto the ground on the far side.
Her foe, more able than she, or less tired, landed neatly on the ground beside her and pivoted to drive his blade at her throat. She caught the thrust on her own sword, barely, parrying the blade into the bale of hay beside her, while her other hand dragged the short knife she’d stolen from Fidelias from her belt and drove it back into the windcrafter’s boot.
He fell back with a yelp, then gestured with his hand, expression murderous. The wind roared, and Amara felt pressure pin her hard to the ground. She struggled to move, or to lift her sword, but the man’s fury kept her from doing it. She reached for Cirrus, but she knew she had been too slow, and she could only watch as he lifted his blade again.
There was a buzzing hiss, and an arrow drove through the Knight’s mail shirt where it crossed just beneath his throat. The arrow drove him back a pair of jerking steps, before he fell dead to the stones.
The pressure on Amara abruptly eased, and she could breathe again, move again. She started struggling to her feet, but, still dizzy from the fall and her efforts to control it, had only got partway there when Bernard reached her, his bow still in hand, and said, “Crows and furies, are you all right? Where are they coming in?”