Amara climbed back down off the wall, taking absent note of the courtyard. Fidelias and his men were nowhere in sight, probably gone again, safely lofted up by their Knights Aeris. At the barricade, more Marat had pushed through, and though they had trouble advancing over the corpses fallen on the ground, yet they came on, despite the desperate cries of the Alerans pitted against them.
She drew her sword, the sword from the fallen guardsman in the Princeps Memorium, and stared at its workmanship. Then she looked up, at the Marat pushing through the gates, sure that in time she would see their hordemaster, here to claim the fortress for himself.
Bernard stepped up beside her, still looking tired, but holding a double bladed woodsman’s axe in his broad hands. “Do we have a plan?”
“The hordemaster, I saw him. I want to take him down.” She told him about the dagger at his waist, the second horde coming on.
Bernard nodded, slowly. “If we get to him,” he said, “I’m going to try a woodcrafting on you. Take the knife and run. Get it back to the First Lord, if you can.”
“You’re exhausted. If you try to work another crafting it could k —” She stopped herself and took a slow breath.
“Pirellus was right,” Bernard commented. “The good part of being doomed is that you have nothing left to lose.”
Then he turned to her, slipping an arm around her waist, and kissed her on the mouth, with no hesitation, no self-consciousness, nothing but a raw hunger tempered with a kind of exquisite gentleness. Amara let out a soft sound and threw herself into the kiss, suddenly frantic, and felt tears threaten her eyes again.
She drew back from the kiss far too soon, looking up at him. Bernard smiled at her and said, “I didn’t want to leave that undone.”
She felt a tired smile on her own mouth, and she turned from him to face the gates.
Outside, there came a blaring of horns, deeper, somehow more violent, more angry than the first ones had been. The ground began to shake once again, and shouts and rumbles outside the walls rose into a tidal wave of sound that pounded at her ears, her throat, her chest. She thought she could feel her cheeks vibrating from the sheer volume.
The final defense at the gate began to crumble. The Marat began to force their way into the courtyard, their eyes wild, weapons bloodied, pale hair and skin speckled with scarlet. One armed holder went down before a pair of enormous wolves and a Marat fighting with nothing but his own teeth. A great herdbane pinned a crawling Aleran to the ground and with a birdlike bob of its head seized the Aleran’s neck and broke it with a quick shake. The Marat poured in, and there was sudden bedlam in the courtyard, lines disintegrating into dozens of separate smaller battles, pure chaos.
“There,” Amara said, and jabbed her finger forward. “Coming through the gate right now.”
Atsurak strode through the gates, his beasts all around him. With a casual motion of his captured Aleran spear, he thrust it through the back of a fighting legionare and then, without watching the man die, withdrew the spear to test its edge against his thumb. Several Alerans rushed him. One was torn to shreds by one of the huge birds. Another dropped to the earth before he got close to Atsurak, black-feathered Marat arrows sprouting from both eyes. No one got within striking distance of the hordemaster.
Bernard growled, “I’m going in first. Get their attention. You come right behind me.”
“All right,” Amara said, and put her hand on his shoulder.
Bernard gripped the axe and tensed to move forward.
Sudden thunder shook the air in a roar that made what came before sound like nothing more than the rumbling of an empty belly. Screams, frantic, howling cries, rose in a symphony. The walls themselves shook, just beside the gates. They shook again, beneath a thunderous impact, and a web of cracks spread out through them. Again, the thunder rammed against the outer walls, and with a roar an entire section gave in. Alerans on the battlements had to scramble to either side, stone tumbling down in huge and uneven sections, dust flooding out, light from the newly risen sun pouring through the dust in a sudden flood of terrible golden splendor.
Through the sudden gap in the walls came a thunderous bellow, and the vast shape of a black-coated gargant, a gargant bigger than any such beast Amara had ever seen. Bloodied, painted in wild and garish colors, the beast seemed something out of a madman’s nightmare. It lifted its head and let out another bellowing roar and tore down another ten feet of wall with its vast digging claws. The gargant bellowed again and shouldered its way through the wall and into the courtyard itself.
A Marat warrior sat upon the gargant’s back, pale of hair and dark of eye, with shoulders so broad and chest so deep not even the largest breastplate could have fit him. He bore a long-handled cudgel in his hand, and with an almost casual sweep he leaned to one side and smote it down onto the head of a Wolf Clan warrior strangling a downed Aleran, dropping the Marat to the earth with a broken skull.
“ATSURAK!” bellowed the Marat on the back of the maddened gargant. His voice, deep, rich, furious, shook the stones of the courtyard. “ATSURAK OF HERDBANE! DOROGA OF GARGANT CALLS YOU MISTAKEN BEFORE WE-THE-MARAT! COME OUT, YOU MURDEROUS DOG! COME AND FACE ME BEFORE THE ONE!”
Whirling with insane grace, the gargant spun to one side, great forelegs rising together. The beast brought his clawed feet down on top of a charging Herdbane Clan warrior, simplysmashing him flat against the courtyard’s stones. At that, though the din outside the walls continued to rise, the battle in the courtyard fell into a sudden, shocked silence.
As the great beast turned, letting out another defiant bellow, Amara saw, in the golden light pouring through the breached walls, the boy Tavi clinging to Doroga’s back, behind him on the great gargant, and behind the boy sat the scarred slave, clutching at him and gibbering.
Tavi looked wildly around the courtyard, and when his gaze flicked toward them, his face lit with a ferocious smile. “Uncle Bernard! Uncle Bernard!” he shouted, pointing at Doroga. “He followed me home! Can we keep him?”
CHAPTER 41
Isana took a pair of quick steps back, pressing Odiana along behind her, and lifted her chin. “I’ve always thought you a pig, Kord, but never an idiot. Do you think you’ll get away with a killing, right here in Garrison?”
Kord laughed, a rough sound. “In case you didn’t notice, they’ve got bigger fish to fry. I just walked right on in like all those other fools who came to die here.”
“It doesn’t mean you can escape, Kord. Assuming that one of us doesn’t get to you when you try it.”
Kord laughed again, the sound of it dry, rasping. “One of you. Which one would that be? Come here, bitch.”
Isana faced him evenly and did not move.
Kord’s face flushed red and dangerous. “I said come here.”
“She can’t hear you, Kord. I saw to that.”
“Did you?” His eyes moved from Isana to the huddling woman behind and beside her. Odiana flinched, even at the glance, haunted eyes widening.