by Jim Butcher
Bernard blew out a breath. "An hour." Something else slammed against his shield, shoving his shoulder into Tavi's. "We aren't going to last that long. My sister?"
"She's in one of the barracks in the east courtyard, with Gram. Giraldi said that he saw her go in with him."
"Good," Bernard rumbled. "Good."
Down the wall, one of the legionares cried out. Tavi looked up and saw an arrow protruding from the man's upper shoulder. It didn't look like a life-threatening wound, but within a few seconds, the man's head rolled on his neck and he fell quietly to his side.
Bernard grabbed Tavi's arm and crab walked down the battlements behind his shield, keeping it over both of them. He checked the man's throat
and grimaced. "Must have hit the artery. He's gone." Then he frowned and leaned closer. "This isn't a Marat arrow."
The next legionare on the wall abruptly jerked. His head snapped back, where a few scant inches of his helmet showed over his shield. He blinked, a few times, and then blood ran down between his eyes and over one temple. His eyes unfocused, and then he toppled to his side as well, the arrow piercing his helmet.
Amara dragged Fade down the wall and flicked a glance around his shield. "It's him," she hissed.
The third man crouched behind his shield, tucking everything in close-too close. The next arrow slammed into the shield itself, pierced it, and went on into the man's chest, at his ribs. He let out a wheezing cry, blood suddenly a froth on his mouth.
Tavi stared in horror at the legionares dying on the wall beside him. It had happened so fast. It hadn't taken half a minute for the unseen archer to kill three men.
"We have to get out of here," the last of the legionares stammered. He started to rise. "We can't stay here."
"Stay down, you fool," Bernard shouted.
But the legionare turned to run down the wall, toward the rope that lay coiled by the gap. As soon as he rose, he cried out, and Tavi saw a thick black arrow impaling the man's leg. He fell to the ground with a shout, landing on top of his shield.
The next arrow struck square against his ear. The man folded quietly down, as though going to sleep, and didn't move again.
"Damn you, Fidelias!" Amara shouted, her voice raw.
Tavi looked up and down the wall. Behind him, the battlements abruptly ended at the gap Doroga had crushed into the wall. Before him, the battlements ran steadily along until they reached a wall of solid rock. The builders of Garrison had used the old granite bones of the hills on either side of the fortress to serve as its north and south walls, and they were little more than a sharply sloped face of rock. "Can we climb that? Can we get out that way?"
"With all those Knights Aeris?" Amara shook her head. "We wouldn't stand a chance."
The courtyard itself, Tavi could hear, seethed with the cries of Marat and their beasts, the occasional scream of a horse, the snarling of wolves,
the whistling shrieks of herdbane. Even if they did climb down the rope, they would only be falling from the frying pan and into the fire.
"We're trapped," Tavi breathed.
Another arrow slammed into Bernard's shield, its steel tip bursting through the metal lining and wood of the shield, sharp point emerging for the width of several fingers and barely falling short of his temple. Bernard went white, but his expression didn't change, and he covered himself and Tavi with the shield resolutely.
Wind howled at the gap in the wall, and Tavi looked back to see the man who had ordered the Knights Aeris earlier being dropped off on the battlements by one of the airborne Knights. A moment later, the huge swordsman landed next to him.
Amara drew in a breath, her face pale. "Get away from here, Fidelias."
The innocuous-looking man regarded those crouching on the walls with a flat, neutral gaze. "Give me the dagger."
"It isn't yours."
"Give me the dagger, Amara."
For an answer, Amara rose, and drew the sword from her side. She took the dagger from her belt and tossed it onto the stones behind her. "Come take it, if you can. I'm surprised you didn't kill everyone while you had the chance."
"I ran out of arrows," the man said. "Aldrick. Kill them."
The swordsman drew his blade and began walking down the wall.
Amara licked her lips and held her guardsman's blade low, parallel to her thigh. Tavi could see her hand trembling.
Beside him, he heard his uncle growl. Bernard jerked at the straps of the shield and loosened it from his arm. Then he handed the straps to Tavi and said, "Hold on to this." Bernard rose, taking up the double-bitted axe, and moved down the wall to stand beside Amara.
Tavi swallowed, staring.
Aldrick paused several feet away, abruptly becoming absolutely still.
Bernard shrugged one of his shoulders and then let out a shout and rolled forward, axe sweeping across his body in a vicious arc at the swordsman's head. Aldrick ducked beneath the blow, and the axe bit into the stones of one of the merlons, shattering it into flying bits of rock and powder. Bernard spun, using the momentum, and brought the axe sweeping down in a blow meant to split the swordsman's body in two.
Aldrick waited until the very last second to move and then hardly
seemed to move at all. He twisted his hips to one side, drawing the line of his body away from the descending axe, so that it whipped past his chest by the breadth of a hair.
As he did, his sword rose. The tip plunged into Bernard's flank, just above the belt of his trousers. Bernard stiffened, his eyes widening. He let out a short, harsh groan, and his fingers loosened from the handle of the axe. It fell to the battlements with a thump.
Tavi stared in horror. Aldrick twisted the blade as he tore it back out of Bernard's flank, then casually let him fall from the battlements, toward the chaos of the courtyard below.
"Uncle!" Tavi screamed.
Amara reached out a hand toward him as he fell. "Bernard!"
Fade let out a shriek, dropping his shield, and ran back to Tavi, clutching to the boy and gibbering incoherently.
Aldrick flicked his weapon to one side, and droplets of blood, of his uncle's blood, splattered against the stones of the battlements.
Amara's face set into a sudden mask of cold disdain. "Crows take you, Fidelias," she said in a cool, quiet voice. "Crows take you all."
Tavi didn't see her strike, so much as he saw a blur of color the same shade as the cloak the Cursor wore. She moved toward the swordsman with her guardsman's blade, and the sword made the air whistle as it darted at Aldrick.
The swordsman took a pair of quick steps back, no surprise on his face, no emotion. He lifted his blade, and caught Amara's blow on it. Three more blows followed, so fast that they chimed in what almost seemed a single tone, but the swordsman stopped them all, despite Amara's sheer speed, his blade close to his body, his movements very short, quick.
Tavi crawled forward, tears blurring his eyes, lugging the huge shield and the sobbing Fade with him. He recovered the dropped dagger and shoved it through his belt again, watching the battle, helpless and terrified.
Amara whirled and crouched and whirled again, her blade whipping at Aldrick's throat, knees, and throat again. The swordsman blocked each strike and then with a sudden, hard smile, his blade lashed out. Amara hissed, and the sword tumbled from her hands, falling to the stones near Tavi.
Aldrick whipped his blade in a horizontal line, and Amara let out a harsh cry, staggering against the battlements, her hair fallen around her face. Tavi could see blood on the mail around her belly. Amara turned toward Aldrick, unsteady on her feet and swung her arm at him in a strike. The swordsman
slapped her hand aside, and his foot lashed out at her knee. Amara gasped and fell to the stone. She struggled to rise again.
Aldrick shook his head, as though disgusted, and slammed one heavy boot down onto Amara's splinted arm. She let out a cry and jerked. She looked up at Tavi, her eyes not focused, her face bedsheet-white.
Aldrick did not pause. He drew bac
k his blade, crouching, and with two hands swung it toward the paralyzed Cursor.
Tavi didn't stop to think. He seized the fallen sword in his left hand and lunged forward from his knees, toward the swordsman. The guardsman's blade flicked out and found the gap between the swordsman's mail and the tops of his boots, drawing an insignificant cut across the skin. But it was enough to make Aldrick divert the blow aimed for Amara's neck, to parry Tavi's clumsy thrust aside.
Aldrick snarled, his face suddenly suffused with scarlet anger, making an old scar stand out white against his cheek. He slammed his weapon against Tavi's. Tavi felt the jolt of it in his shoulders and chest, and his arm went numb in a tingling wash of sensation, from fingertip to elbow. The sword flew off somewhere behind him.
He rolled back and tried to lift the shield to cover himself, but the swordsman kicked it aside, and it tumbled out of Tavi's grasp and into the courtyard below.
"Stupid boy," Aldrick said, eyes cold. "Give me the dagger."
Tavi clutched his hand on the dagger's hilt and started worming his way back along the wall. "You killed him," Tavi shouted, his voice hoarse. "You killed my uncle!"
"And what happened to my Odiana is your fault. I should kill you right here," Aldrick growled. "Give up. You can't win."
"Go to the crows! If I don't beat you, someone else will!"
"Have it your way," the swordsman said. He whirled the sword in his fingers and closed toward Tavi, lifting the blade, eyes cold. "If Araris Valerian himself was here, he couldn't beat me. And you aren't Araris."
The swordsman brought both hands to the hilt of the sword and struck. Tavi saw the cold, bloodied metal of the blade falling toward him and knew that he was about to die. He screamed and lifted a hand, knowing full well that it would do him no good, but he was unable to do anything else.
The sword came down in the death stroke.
And met steel in a cold, clear chime, like a bell. A cloud of silver sparks
rained down where Aldrick's blade had met the steel of the guardsman's sword.
Fade stood over Tavi, both hands on the hilt of the short blade, his legs spread out wide, knees bent, his body relaxed. The swordsman bore down on his weapon, but Fade seemed able to hold it away from Tavi with little effort, and after a scant pair of heartbeats, Fade twisted his body. Aldrick's blade slid to one side, and he skipped back from a counterstroke-but not fast enough. Fade's sword whipped toward Aldrick's face, and split the white scar there open anew, blood flowing.
Aldrick dropped back into a guard position, watching Fade, his eyes wide, his reddened face going pale. "No," he said. "No."
Fade took a step forward and stood between Tavi and the other two men on the wall. His voice came out quiet, low, steady. "Stay behind me, Tavi."
Tavi stared in shock. He clutched the dagger and scooted back from the two men.
"You aren't," Aldrick snarled. "You can't be. You're dead."
Fade said, "You talk too much."
Then he spun forward, deftly stepping over Amara's unmoving form, his sword gliding toward the swordsman. Aldrick parried in a shower of scarlet sparks, slid a thrust to his belly aside, and cut at the slave's head. Fade dropped to a crouch, and the blow struck cleanly through two feet of furycrafted battlement stone. A chunk of stone the size of a big washtub slid down the wall and fell into the battle outside the fortress.
Fade rose, blade dancing, and pressed the swordsman back, down the battlements, his ragged and unkempt hair flying about his head, his scarred face set in an expression of cool detachment. When his sword struck Aldrick's, scarlet fire rained down, and when he caught one of the swordsman's strikes, clouds of silver-white motes flew forth in a flash.
Tavi saw Aldrick begin to panic, his movements becoming jerkier, faster, less elegant. He retreated step by step, and Fade pressed him relentlessly. The slave swept one blow at Aldrick that missed altogether, throwing up another shower of sparks as the blade cut through the stone near Aldrick's feet, but the slave seemed to recover rapidly, and he began to push Aldrick down the wall once again.
Tavi had never seen anything so graceful, so terrifying, as the two men clashing together. Though Aldrick was the larger of the pair, Fade seemed more nimble, his movements more fluid, again and again blocking blows
that might have killed him to miss by the barest margin. He leapt over one strike, ducked under another, and thrust at Aldrick's belly once more. The swordsman parried him aside, spinning on his feet to reverse positions with Fade on the narrow battlements, so that he now stood with his back to Tavi.
Aldrick rained a pair of heavy blows down on Fade, who danced aside from one and slid the other off the guardsman's blade. Fade countered with a volley of cuts and thrusts too swift for Tavi to follow, and Aldrick once again backed down the wall, defending himself.
Fade's blade whipped at Aldrick's foot and missed, slashing stone. Aldrick kicked the slave in the face with one heavy boot, and Fade's face snapped to one side. He turned the motion into an upward slash, but that blow too missed Aldrick altogether, instead slashing through the massive merlon beside him.
Aldrick's sword darted down to Fade's wrist, a swift cut that drew blood and threw the sword from the slave's hands and down into the courtyard below. Fade cried out and fell to his knees, clutching the hand to his chest.
Aldrick stood over Fade, panting, white around the eyes, and drew his sword slowly up behind him. "Over," he said. "Finally over. You lose."
Fade said, "Look where you're standing."
Tavi looked down at Aldrick's feet, at the deep slashes in the battlements where Fade's sword had cut through the stone.
Aldrick looked down, and his face went white.
The merlon beside him slid to one side along the upward-sweeping line Fade had cut in it, the stone falling with a ponderous grace to the weakened floor of the battlement. It struck, and the two slashes Fade had made in the stone became a sudden myriad of crumbling cracks. Aldrick tried to step back, but the stone beneath his feet gave way like a rotten board, and with a howl Aldrick ex Gladius and a thousand pounds of stone went crashing down to the courtyard below.
Fade closed his eyes for a moment, panting, then looked up at Tavi.
The boy stared at him. "How?"
Fade moved one shoulder in a shrug. "Aldrick has always thought in lines. So I thought in curves."
Tavi saw a movement behind Fade and shouted, "Fade! Look out!"
The slave whirled, but not before Fidelias, holding the rope they had used to climb to the wall, had tossed a loop of it over Fade's head. Fidelias jerked on the rope, and it tightened. Then the man planted his feet and hauled.
Fade struggled, but he had no leverage. The rope hauled him off the battlement. Fidelias let go of the rope, and Fade fell out of sight. The end of the rope had been tied off to one of the crenellations, and the rope tightened with a sudden, snapping jerk.
"No," Tavi breathed.
Fidelias turned toward Tavi.
"No!" The boy rose to his feet and threw himself at the man on the wall, brandishing the dagger. He leapt at Fidelias, knife extended.
Fidelias caught Tavi by his shirt, and without any effort spun him around and threw him to the stones of the battlement. Tavi felt the rock hit his back with an impact that stole his breath and turned the steady, hot sting of his wounded arm into a raging fire.
He let out a weak sound of pain and tried to struggle away from Fidelias, but within a few inches he felt the crumbling edge of the shattered battlement behind him. He looked back and down on a drop into the hard, jagged rubble of the fallen section of wall, where Marat and beasts fought in savage efficiency, killing.
He turned back to Fidelias, clutching the dagger.
"Give me the knife," Fidelias said, his voice quiet, his eyes dead. "Give me the knife, or I'll kill you."
"No," Tavi wheezed.
"You don't have to die, boy."
Tavi swallowed. He squirmed out as far as he could on the broken battlements an
d heard the stones begin to crackle and groan beneath him. "Stay away from me."
Fidelias's face twisted in anger, and he jerked his hand in a sudden gesture. The stone rippled, as if it had been a sheet snapped by a holdwife, and threw Tavi a few feet toward Fidelias, stunning the boy.
Fidelias reached for the knife. Tavi swept it at him in a desperate cut. Fidelias clutched the boy's throat, and Tavi felt his breath cut off with a sudden jerk.
"Just as well," Fidelias said. "No witnesses."
Tavi's vision began to dim. He felt his grip on the dagger begin to loosen.
Fidelias shook his head, and the pressure on Tavi's throat began to increase. "You should have given me the knife."
Tavi struggled uselessly, until his arms and legs seemed to forget how to move. He stared up into Fidelias's hard eyes and felt his body going limp.
And so it was that he saw Amara weakly stir and lift her head. He saw her writhe, lifting one knee beneath her, and reaching back to draw a short, small knife from her boot. She clenched her jaw and shoved her broken arm beneath her, her forearm across the floor, lifting her body.
Then, in one motion, she drew back the knife and flicked it at Fidelias's back. A sudden jet of wind propelled the knife toward him.
Tavi saw the man jerk suddenly, startled surprise on his features. He stiffened, fingers loosening from Tavi's throat, and reached a hand up toward his back, his expression twisting with sudden agony.
"You wanted a knife, Fidelias," Amara hissed. "There's the one I took from you."
Fidelias, his face blank, frightened, turned back to Tavi and clutched at his hand, at the dagger.
There was a frantic moment of scrambling, and Fidelias let out a gasping cry of pain. Tavi felt a hand around his wrist, a sudden pressure, heard the crack of breaking bones. Agony roared over him, and he saw his hand dangle uselessly.
Fidelias reached for the dagger and grabbed its hilt.