“There are weapons and armor within,” he shouted to Linsha over the uproar of fighting in the streets ahead. “Get what you need. We will meet you around front.”
From the shouts and clash of weapons, the battle was in the Legion’s front yard. Waving her thanks, Linsha dashed across the weedy yard behind the Legion house and barged in the back door.
Someone nearly nailed her to the door. She heard the peculiar twang of a crossbow and felt a swish of air by her neck as a bolt slammed into the wood of the door. “Don’t do that!” she cried, her voice furious. “I’m with Falaius!”
Distracted though she was by the battle out front, a part of her mind made note that for the second time in a few short days someone had just missed her with a crossbow. If only her luck would hold for the rest of the day!
“Lady Linsha?” cried an incredulous voice. “What are you doing here?”
“Just passing through,” she replied dryly. “I need weapons.”
The Legionnaire with the crossbow was a young man who had recently arrived from Port Balifor. Linsha knew him only vaguely. He pointed to a door in the hallway behind him and without apology, he retrieved his bolt and began to crank his crossbow into firing position.
Linsha hurried. Although most of the Legionnaires had already drawn their weapons and armor in preparation for the expected invasion, there was still enough left to give Linsha a choice. Swords of several lengths, axes, battle stars, helmets, shields, breastplates, greaves, crossbows, spears, lances, and heaps of chain mail lay in haphazard piles. She did not take the time to pick and choose. Her own armor, made and measured specially for her, lay in her room in the Citadel but might as well have been a thousand miles away. All she wanted was a corselet of chain mail, a shield, a better dagger, and a helmet. She found them all in less than two minutes, threw on the corselet and the helmet, and for good measure, stuck a battle star in her belt. The Knights of Solamnia had trained her well, and now she was as ready as she ever would be to face the enemy.
From outside came the sounds of intense fighting. Those few Legionnaires still in the building dashed outside to join their commander. There wasn’t much sense staying to guard the interior of a building if the enemy was at your front door. Linsha swiftly followed across the covered porch and into the street crowded with fighting men and women and the towering forms of the attacking Brutes.
While she was tall for a woman, most of these warriors stood at least seven feet tall, with long arms and a reach that far outstripped hers. As graceful as elves, they were also as muscular as humans, and they fought nearly naked to show off their powerful limbs. They painted their skin blue and plaited their long hair with feathers. For weapons they carried both a short sword and a long sword, and many of them scorned shields.
The Legionnaires and Iyesta’s militia fought with everything they had. Teeth bared, their faces white with fear or red with rage, they hacked and slashed and punched. Sword to abdomen, shield to head, blade to throat, axe to knees. They thrust and danced away and came back roaring. They fought with the courage and tenacity of people defending their homes. The Brutes who faced them fought with equal ferocity. They were the invaders, the seekers of slaves, the plunderers, and the gods knew what else, and they fought with the fury of men who loved war.
Although Linsha had been trained with every weapon available to the Knights of Solamnia, she was intelligent enough to realize that as a woman, she had certain disadvantages in a pitched battle against men. Those disadvantages became even more pronounced when she faced the Brutes. In the first five minutes of vicious fighting, she realized she could not beat these blue barbarians sword to sword. She would have to use her agility, her superb balance, and her sense of timing. Dropping her cumbersome shield, she used her sword and battle star in a primitive dance of thrust and hack and stab. Weaving and swaying, she wove her way around her opponent’s swords until she could make a quick killing thrust and slide out of the way. It was a dangerous dance that left her trembling, pale, and gasping for air, but she fought on, keeping the big form of Falaius in the corner of her vision.
Despite their courage the Legionnaires and the militia were falling back. The second wave of Brutes had arrived, and they swept through the waterfront and the roads closest to the water, overwhelming the roadblocks and pushing the defenders inexorably back toward the city wall. The Legion had to abandon its headquarters, and soon the entire street fell to the marauders. Refugees fled toward the inner city.
Falaius had fought enough battles to know when to retreat. The streets of Mirage were swiftly filling with Brutes, and there was nowhere the outnumbered Legion and its allies could regroup. They would have to fall back on the city gates. He knew all too well that the wall itself was not a final defense. There were gaps in the ancient stonework and places on the north side of the city where entire sections of it had vanished over the centuries, but the gates were strong and the wall would give his fighters a chance to recover their breath.
“Fall back!” he bellowed. “Fall back to the gates!”
The word passed from group to group. Slowly but steadily the defenders disengaged from the fighting, grabbed what wounded they could, and retreated to the towering walls of the Legion Gate. Unconcerned, the Brutes let them go.
Falaius, Linsha, and several Legionnaires were the last to enter the gates. They staggered inside and watched as the gates were swung shut and barred. Linsha listened to the solid thud as the gates closed and the bar fell into place, and she closed her eyes sadly. It seemed to her the final knell for the Knights of Solamnia had been sounded. Even if they wanted to, they could no longer fight their way into the city to help the Legion. They would have to stay within their Citadel or find a way to escape north and join the forces of the militia.
Weary to the bone, Linsha wiped her sword blade clean and pushed it back into the scabbard. A young girl with a pitcher of water offered her a ladle. She drank two full ladles and dumped a third over her head before she regretfully passed it on to someone else. Her head hurt abominably and the soreness returned to her back, yet she felt too tired to do anything about it. She just wanted to lie down and sleep. She cast a look at the sky, hoping it would be dark soon, and was dismayed to see the day had barely passed midafternoon.
“Lord Falaius!” called a sentry from the wall. “Come see this. The Knights are about to join in the battle whether they like it or not.”
Linsha was ahead of Falaius and shot up the stone steps to the battlements like a catapult. She pushed into a crenel and stared out at the fortress on the hill above Mirage. It looked so invulnerable on top of its hill, its defenses strong and its pennants flying defiantly above the towers.
She could see another large group of Brutes had climbed the road to the Citadel and were standing out of arrow range while they looked over the castle.
“Do these Brutes know siege tactics?” Linsha asked the Legion commander as he came to stand beside her.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
Other people crowded up onto the walkway that looked out over Mirage, the harbor, and the distant hill. They watched as the Brutes began to spread out across the practice fields and around the crown of the hill to surround the Citadel. They saw the raiders break into the outbuildings and set fire to the stable-although Linsha knew from Sir Remmik’s constant training that the horses had already been released or removed to the safety of the bailey. They spotted the dark showers of arrows that fell from the walls and the larger missiles that were flung from the high towers, forcing the Brutes to keep their distance.