“Stand back!” she shouted, her larynx burning with the force of her cry; and she drew her pistol. She shouldered her way through the milling hostages, hearing the arrows smacking solidly into the shields, trying to get a clear shot. At last she was at the front of the narrow line, seeing Capiscu, nonchalantly disregarding an arrow jutting from his shoulder, looping his line around a merlon, dropping the length to the ground below. Too slow, she thought. If we go down that way we’ll be cut up one by one.
Sethaltin was still smashing at the door, hoping to convince the enemy they were still interested in making their escape that way. There was a Classanu trying frantic-eyed to shield both her and Capiscu, and she pushed him away. “Stand back!” Fiona shouted, and when Sethaltin didn’t pay any attention she seized him by the collar and dragged him back, hearing him snarl. “Shield your eyes!” she commanded, feeling an arrow snap madly off her hood, and then she pointed the pistol at the door and fired.
The door was blown apart with the roar of lightnings, and before the echo died away Fiona was in motion, leaping into the dark gatehouse, stumbling over a blasted figure in blackened, half-molten armor. She looked left and right, seeing the capstan that controlled the drawbridge, its guards sprawled in stunned confusion: she fired, tearing the capstan apart, seeing the long cables slacken. No one had yet made a move to raise the drawbridge: now it was impossible.
The hostages were filling the door behind her; Fiona saw a stair to her left and ran for it, spiraling downward, her pistol outthrust. The forces in the courtyard seemed not to have realized just yet what had happened; as Fiona emerged from the stairway their eyes, blinking with the aftereffects of the flash, were still directed toward the battlements. She faced the soldiers, knowing she would have to keep them back somehow; she couldn’t let them get near her, where they could pin her down by sheer numbers. The lead hostages reached the bottom of the stair, behind her, and began to pelt away over the bridge. There was a sudden snarl from the soldiers; their eyes lowered; there was a clash as their arms were raised. Again, they gave a unanimous, terrible moan, composed of a hundred separate elements all giving the alarm at once, that almost froze Fiona in place; and then they began to dash forward.
Fiona raised her pistol. She could feel her lips curling back in a death’s head angry grin and felt a sudden flood of angry joy, knowing Kira would have her revenge: she burned the first rank down, hearing shrieks and wails and claps of thunder, flagstones torn upward to clang against shields and armor. She thought it would have discouraged the rest; but these were Brodaini whose instincts, when threatened, were to attack, and they kept coming, a wall of armored figures, no one of them was a threat to her; but all together they could knock her flat and pin her down by weight of numbers, and then they could get her coat open and kill her as they pleased. Fiona’s madness turned to horror as she realized what was happening; there could be no joy in this insanity. She shrieked at them to run and save themselves, but still they came on: Fiona fired until the courtyard was a mass of blackened corpses and upflung flagstones, until the surviving Brodaini were deafened and confused and running, or praying or staggering in lunatic circles — and then, as the last of the hostages came running from the stair behind her, she followed them, dashing into the sunlight.
Arrows were hissing down on their backs from the gatehouse and she could see the Classani were carrying at least four wounded hostages, and that several others were limping or had arrows sticking out of their armor. The hostages were moving with painful slowness, their leaders flashing weapons at a threatening, fleeing population. Fiona ran to the head of the column, where Capiscu and one of the Classani were dealing with a militiaman who had, bravely but foolishly, tried to impede their way. An arrow sped down between them, striking sparks from the cobbles. Fiona ran on, the streets clearing ahead of her.
She spun around a corner to find the Long Bridge Gate looming ahead, its battlements crowded with black, busy figures trying to determine the origin of the alarms ringing out from the citadel. The inner doors were securely shut. Above, on the battlements, war engines stood massively against the sky — they were dangerous for Fiona; her coat could not protect her against a big enough stone, or a giant arrow. Behind her she heard panting as Capiscu ran on, burdened by his armor and wounds. She raised her pistol and fired.
It took several shots to blow down the huge inner gate, militia, Brodaini, and the civilian population scattering before her fires. The hostages halted behind her, gazing in awe at the lancing thunders, the ruination of the massive gate. Fiona saw the siege engines moving on their rumbling pivots, coming to bear on her: she blew them to splinters. And then she was running, her panting breaths echoing in her closed hood, and she heard the hostages following.
She blew the outer gate off its hinges, ignoring the arrow that whistled down from the murder holes above, and then aimed at the massive iron staples that held the drawbridge cables. Two high-power blasts and they were gone, the drawbridge crashing down with a noise that rivaled her weapon’s; and then she was running across, arrows whipping down around her, with her feet on the solid stone of the Neda Long Bridge.
After two hundred yards she turned to make certain the siege engines on the gatehouse had been thoroughly wrecked, and she saw the hostages scattered out behind her, moving with agonizing slowness as they bore their wounded away from the enemy city. The mad flight for safety was over: now they were conserving their strength, hoping to last long enough to cross the bridge. Capiscu was still in the lead, half a dozen arrows jabbing from his brigandine — at least one had got through, penetrating to the hamstring: he was limping badly. Triumph filled her as she saw them. It hadn’t been her task to rescue them — she had done it almost by accident, while rescuing herself — but she was glad to have brought them out, fellow victims of Tastis’ treachery.
She holstered her pistol and walked back, taking Capiscu’s arm over her shoulder, helping him keep moving. Two Classani, bearing a burden, rushed past her, and she saw with a shock that it was Grendis, lying white-faced in their arms with a feathered shaft pinning her side, her armor penetrated. She heard Capiscu cry out as his leg gave way altogether: she bore his shocking weight until a Classanu came up on his other side, and they carried him away.
There was a clattering sound ahead, and dully she recognized the sound of the Calacas drawbridge coming down — and then there was the thunder of hooves on the bridge, and she looked up to see a moving wall of horsemen advancing. Rescuers, she thought at first, and then she saw the glitter of their lance points and knew they wouldn’t stop.
“Off the road!” she called, surprised at the weakness of her voice, and she and the Classanu bore Capiscu into the shelter of one of the stalls that clung to the flanks of the bridge. Grendis was already there, her Classani bent over her, holding her head as she vomited blood onto the dusty planks. Careful of his injuries, Fiona and the Classanu laid Capiscu down, awkwardly due to the jutting arrows, and then Fiona turned toward the roadway again, and watched Tegestu’s army come.
She thought she recognized Dellila and his huge horse in the lead, but he was encased entirely in steel and she could not be certain. The lancers thundered past, ignoring the ineffectual arrow fire that dribbled out of the gatehouse, and rode without stopping across the Neda bridge and into the city. They were followed by other horsemen, heavy and light and mounted archers, and then there came others, footsoldiers bearing their sword-bladed spears on high. Tegestu’s entire army seemed to be on the move.