Amara did, kneeling down by the bed and holding the torch out to the wounded Count.
Gram closed his eyes and reached his bare palm into the flame. Amara winced, almost drawing the torch away, but Gram did not stir or flinch, and his flesh remained, it would seem, untouched by the fire.
Amara felt it inside of her first, a panicky little thrill that raced through her belly and thighs, turned her legs watery and uncertain. Her hand started to shake, and she lifted her other to hold the torch steady. Gram let out a slow, quiet sound of pain, and the sensation in her redoubled, mindless and sudden fear, so that she had to fight to keep from bolting from the room. Her heart abruptly raced, pounding frantically, the pain of her wounds seemed to increase, and she suddenly could not get a breath.
“Girl,” Gram rasped, opening his eyes again. “Listen to me. Get this out to the front. Out in front of all of the Marat. Get it to where they can see it.” He let out a wheezing breath, his eyes closing. “Don’t drop it. And don’t let the panic take you. Hurry.”
Amara nodded, rising to feel her body trembling, weak with fright.
“Steady,” Harger said. “Get out there. Hurry. I’m not sure how long he can hold the crafting.”
Amara had to stammer twice before she managed to say, “All right.” She turned and walked from the chamber, fighting to control her breathing, to keep her paces steady, even. The fear flowed through her like winter ice, cold little chips of it flowing in her blood, making her heart skip painful beats. She could barely keep her thoughts focused on the gates, on carrying the torch without dropping it — though she struggled to remember that if she dropped it, or if she surrendered to the fear and fled, that Gram’s efforts would be for nothing.
She felt herself begin to sob as she walked into the courtyard, felt her body begin to weaken with the mind-numbing terror. More than anything, she wanted to turn away from the gate, to flee, to take to the air and leave their savage enemies far behind.
Instead, she kept on, toward the gates, growing weaker, less steady, by the step. Part of the way there, she swayed and fell, and her tears blinded her. But she kept moving forward, crawling on her knees and her wounded arm, clutching at the torch and keeping it from falling to the ground.
Suddenly, from right in front of her someone screamed, and she felt herself hauled to her feet with terrifying strength, facing a towering giant with blazing eyes bearing a cudgel the size of a tree in one fist.
She fought against the terror, against the sobs that choked in her throat. “Bernard,” she said. “Bernard. The torch. Get me to the walls. Get me to the walls!”
The giant scowled and roared something at her that had her choking down a hysterical scream. Then he simply picked her up under one arm and carried her to the stairs and up them, to the frantic, screaming panic of the battlements. She felt herself come down on her feet again, and she staggered forward, toward the walls above the gates.
She could not think, could not control herself over the last few feet. She staggered forward, screaming and sobbing, bearing the torch aloft and certain that death was there for her, breathing softly, black wings rustling like those of the crows that waited, waited somewhere in the predawn darkness to sweep down on the eyes of the dead.
Somehow, she gained the battlements over the gate and stood above them, a sure and simple target for Marat archers, the torch held aloft.
It went up in a sudden furnace of sound and heat, an abrupt river of roaring light that shot into the sky and lit the ground for a mile in every direction. All of that terror, all of that fear in her blossomed out with the torch, poured out with the sudden, raging flames, swept out of her, magnified a thousandfold, onto the ground beneath.
There was an instant, horrible stillness, as the power of the firecrafting swept over the Marat below. And then a scream, born in one moment from thousands of throats, rose up into the air. The pressure of the Marat assault vanished, more quickly than it had arrived. The pale tide of Marat warriorsabruptly flooded back from the walls of Garrison, howling in terror, joined by the whistling, panicked shrieks of the fleeing warbirds. The battered legionares defending the walls began to cheer, as the Marat were swept under by the firecrafting and broke and ran.
Amara saw them go, even as the terror flowed out of her, poured out together with whatever strength she had left. She staggered and nearly fell from the battlements, only to be supported by Bernard, who had appeared behind her. She leaned back against him, exhausted and barely able to keep her eyes open, while all around her Aleran warriors threw defiant cheers after the fleeing enemy.
She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, the sky was lighter. She sat on the battlements, wrapped in Bernard’s cloak. Numb, aching, she swayed to her feet and looked up and down the wall and down into the courtyard below.
The wounded, the dying, and the dead lay everywhere. Healers and surgeons alike labored with the fallen, with men burned so badly that they could hardly be recognized as human. Amara watched as one man let out a choking shriek and then stiffened, a blackened hand curled into a claw. The legionare with him, himself sporting a scarlet-stained bandage, drew a cloak over the man’s head. Then, with the help of another legionare, he carried the body to a growing number of rows of corpses on the other side of the courtyard.
She turned and looked down the walls. Perhaps a dozen legionares stood along them, young, strained, unwounded, holding their spears at attention.
On the battlefield below the walls, the crows had come for the dead.
They swarmed over them in a croaking black carpet, wings flapping, eyes glittering with glassy hunger, uncaring of the loyalties of the fallen. They hopped from body to body, tearing at tongues, eyes, and when Amara saw one of the bodies stir, only to be buried in the winged beasts, she felt her numb belly twist and turned away.
Bernard appeared a moment later, his face strained, and handed her a ladle of cold water. She drank.
“It’s bad,” she said, quietly.
“Bad,” he agreed. “Even once we get the lightly wounded back on their feet, the garrison lost two-thirds. There are only three Knights still alive, counting Pirellus. The gates are broken, and there’s no way to replace them — and the enemy can jump the walls in any case.”
“How’s Gram?”
“Harger says he isn’t likely to wake up again before he dies. That last crafting took too much out of him.”
“Crows,” Amara swore softly. “He’s a brave man.”
“Yes.”
“The Marat are coming back then,” Amara said.
“Soon.”
She closed her eyes, wearily. “What else can we do?”
Bernard said, “I don’t know.”