Fidelias appeared, not far from Aldrick, and then turned to signal one of the Knights in the air. The man swept down and grabbed Fidelias beneath the arms, lifting him back to the roof of the barracks, and Aldrick ex Gladius stepped over Pirellus’s fallen corpse to lead the other handful of mercenaries after them.
The legionares at the gate formed up to face the incoming Marat, but the invaders leapt on them with an unyielding savagery and began to drive the men near the gates back step by slow step.
Amara rose and rushed into the stable to shout to the archers, “Take up a shield and sword! Hold the gate!” Men rushed about in the stable’s interior, taking up weapons and rushing outside to join the defense at the gate.
When Amara returned to Bernard, he had regained his feet. “What’s happening?”
“Their Knights came in. We bloodied them, but they managed to weaken the barricade. Pirellus is dead.” She looked at him. “I’m not a soldier. What do we do?”
“Giraldi,” Bernard said. “Get to Giraldi. He’ll send more men to reinforce the gates. Go, I’m not up to running yet.”
Amara nodded, and fled, sprinting across the courtyard and up the steps to the wall. The fighting there was more hectic, and she stepped over the body of a Marat, proof that they had gained purchase on the wall at least once.
“Giraldi!” she shouted, when she reached the command area over the gates. “Where are you?”
A grim Legion shieldman, his face half-masked in blood turned to her. It was Giraldi, his eyes calm despite the bloodied sword in his hands. “Countess? You said you were looking for the hordemaster. And there he is, finally,” grunted Giraldi. “There, see?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Amara said, her voice numb. “Pirellus is dead.”
“Crows,” Giraldi said, but his voice was too tired for it to be much of an oath. “Just seems like someone should pay him back for this.”
Amara lifted her head, something hot and hard and terrible pulsing in her belly. The fear, she realized, had vanished. She was too tired to be afraid, too afraid to be afraid anymore. There was a sort of relaxation that came with inevitability, she realized, a sort of mad, silent strength. “Which one is he?”
“There,” Giraldi said, pointing. An arrow shattered on his shield, and he didn’t flinch, as though he was too tired to let it bother him. “See, the tall one with the birds all around him and the Aleran spear.”
Amara focused on him and saw the Marat hordemaster for the first time. He was marching steadily through the ranks of Marat hurling themselves against the walls, his chin lifted, an arrogant smirk on his mouth. Black feathers had been braided into his pale hair, and several of the herdbane stalked behind him like some deadly guard of honor. Other troops went before, chanting.
The hordemaster’s troops began to part for him, crying out in a steady chant as they did. “Atsurak! Atsurak! Atsurak!”
Amara brought up Cirrus in a visioncrafting, determined to learn this man’s features, to find him and at all costs to kill him for leading the horde against them this day. She memorized the shape of his nose and cruel mouth, the steady breadth of his shoulders beneath a thanadent-hide cowl, the —
Amara caught her breath, staring, and willed Cirrus to bring her vision even closer to the hordemaster.
Riding at his hip, through a thin braided twist of cord he used as a belt, was the signet dagger of an Aleran High Lord, its gold and silver hilt gleaming in the morning sun. Even as Amara stared, Cirrus let her see the dagger’s hilt, the crest wrought in steel upon it: Aquitaine’s falcon.
“Furies,” she breathed. Aquitaine. Aquitaine himself. No one more powerful in the realm save the First Lord. Aquitaine’s Knights, then, Aquitaine who subverted Fidelias, Aquitaine who had attempted to gain knowledge of the palace from her, in order to—
In order to kill Gaius. He means to take the throne for himself.
Amara swallowed. She had to recover that dagger at any cost. To bring such a damning piece of evidence before the Senate would finish Aquitaine and terrify anyone working with him into loyalty again. She could prove who the true culprit behind today’s vicious deaths had been, and though she had thought she hated the hordemaster now striding toward the buckling defenses of Garrison’s gates, she felt a sudden and furious rage against the man whose ambitions had engineered the events of the past several days.
But could she do it? Could she recover the dagger?
She had to try. She now realized why Fidelias had wanted her out of the fortress. He had wanted to hide this very thing from her, knowing full well that only she and perhaps two or three other people in the fortress would recognize the signet dagger for what it was.
She shook her head, forcing her thoughts to focus, to take one thing at a time. “Giraldi! We need reinforcements,” she stammered. “The gate is about to fall!”
Giraldi grimaced, and as she watched, his face fell, the lines in it deepening, making him look as though he had aged years in the space of a breath. “Doesn’t matter,” he said, and jerked his chin toward the field below the fortress. “Look.”
Amara looked, and when she did, the strength went out of her legs. She leaned hard against the battlements, her head swimming, her heart pounding in light, irregular beats.
“No,” she breathed. “No. It’s not fair.”
Out on the plain, beyond the savage horde of Marat below, there had come another horde, every bit as large as the first. This one included elements of cavalry, though she could make out little beyond that. Cavalry, useless for taking a fortified position, but the ideal troops for raiding into an enemy’s lands. Fast, deadly, destructive. The sheer numbers of the newly arrived enemy had, she knew, abruptly changed the fight from a desperate battle to a hopeless one. She looked up at Giraldi and saw it in his eyes.
“We can’t win,” she said. “We can’t hold.”
“Against that?” He shook his head. He took his helmet off and wiped sweat from his brow, replacing it as arrows buzzed through the air.
She bowed her head, her shoulders shaking. The tears were hot and bitter. A stone-headed arrow shattered on the merlon above her, but she didn’t care.
Amara looked up at the Marat, at Atsurak about to take the gates, at the enormous number of Marat still fresh and un-bloodied, now moving quickly over the plains toward the fortress. “Hold,” she told Giraldi. “Hold as long as you can. Send someone to make sure the Civilians have started running. Tell the wounded to arm themselves to fight as best they can. Tell them—” She swallowed. “Tell them it looks bad.”
“Yes, Countess,” Giraldi said, his voice numb. “Heh. I always figured my last order would be ‘pass me another slice of roast.’ ” He gave her a grim smile, turned to swing his sword at a climbing Marat almost absently, and headed off to follow her commands.