“I’m afraid not, my lady.”
The High Lady frowned, eyes calculating. “There’s little chance that she intends to play this through entirely in good faith, Countess.”
“I know,” Amara said. “Could you handle the gargoyles if the child wasn’t part of the equation?”
“I assume there’s at least a chance I could,” Lady Placida said, “or Kalarus wouldn’t have needed to take the additional measure.” She glanced at the child again, tilted her head at each of the statues, and said, “Yes. I can deal with them. But these are close quarters. There won’t be much time for me to act-and I can hardly fight them if I am chained to the floor.”
Amara nodded, thinking furiously. “Then what we must do,” she said, “is determine exactly what your first furycrafting will be.”
“One that will free me, put me in a position to destroy the gargoyles quickly, and allow you to leave the chamber so that I don’t kill you both while I do so, “ Lady Placida said. “And let us not forget that Kalarus will come for me with blood in his eyes if he realizes I’m free.”
“It is my hope that you and Lady Aquitaine will be able to neutralize his crafting until we can escape.”
“Gaius always did favor optimists in the ranks of the Cursors,” Lady Placida said in a dry tone. “I assume you have a brilliant idea of some sort?”
“Well. An idea, at least,” Amara said. She glanced back at Rook to make sure she was listening as well. “There’s little time, and I’m going to have to ask you both to extend some trust to me. This is what I want to do.”
Chapter 45
The night fell, dark and thick beneath the ritualists’ shroud of storm clouds. The night made the Canim battle cries even more terrifying, and Tavi could feel the primal, inescapable dread of fangs and hungry mouths rising in the back of his thoughts. No furylamps lit the walls as he ran to his position above the gate, and the orange band of a fading sunset was the only light. He couldn’t see the men on the wall well enough to make out expressions, but as he walked past them he could hear restless movement among them-and noted that they were uniformly far more slender than most of the more mature ranks of veterans. The First Spear had kept the cohort of fish on the wall.
“Marcus?” Tavi asked as he reached the center wall.
“Sir,” growled a dark form near him.
“Everything set?”
“Yes, sir,” the First Spear said. “We’re ready.”
“Men know the signal?”
“Yes. Sir,” Marcus growled, tone tight. “That’s what I mean when I say we’re ready, sir.”
Tavi started to snap a reply but held his tongue. He stood on the wall in silence as the light continued to fade. Drums rattled outside. Horns blared. Night fell, blackness only broken by flashes of scarlet lightning.
Then there was a sudden silence.
“Here they come,” Tavi breathed.
Howls rose into the air, louder and louder. The ground began to shake.
“Stand by furylamps,” Tavi barked. The order was repeated by spear leaders up and down the wall. A flash of lightning showed Tavi a mass of black-armored Canim closing on the gates, and he called, “Furylamps now!”
A dozen large furylamps, suspended by chains to be hung five feet down the outside of the walls, flared into light. They cast a cold blue light out over the ground before the walls, illuminating the ground for the Aleran defenders while glaring into the eyes of the attacking Canim.
“Engage!” Tavi cried, and legionares snapped into two-man teams, shield-man and archer. Arrows darted down into the heavily armored Canim warriors, but this time, many of the warriors carried heavy shields of scarlet steel, and arrows struck with small effect. The deadly, heavy javelins came next, striking legionares standing between the merlons. One archer took an instant too long to aim, and a spear struck him, its tip exploding from his back, while the force of the impact threw him from the battlements entirely to land on the stones of the courtyard. Another legionare had not properly secured his shield to his arm, and when a spear struck it, the top edge of the shield spun back, striking him in the face and wrenching his arm from its socket in a burst of crackling pops.
“There,” Tavi said, pointing at a tight group of Canim approaching in two rows. “Their first ram. Ready pitch.”
“Ready pitch!” bellowed Marcus.
The ram closed on the gate and slammed against it once. Then the men over the gate dumped pitch down upon the attackers-but something went wrong, for no howls of pain came up. Tavi risked a deadly second leaning out over the battlements to peer down. A long section of wood, no thicker than Tavi’s leg, lay smoldering beneath the splashed pitch, but it was far too light to have been an actual ram. The Canim must have abandoned it after a single strike against the gates for the sake of showmanship.
It had been a decoy, Tavi realized.
A second group surged forward, several Canim beneath some kind of portable canopy constructed from overlapping shields, and made for the gates. Tavi clenched his teeth. Even if they’d had more pitch ready, it might have been useless against the ram’s canopy.
Excellent.
The ram slammed into the gates, hard enough to rattle the battlements beneath Tavi’s boots. Again, in half the time it would have taken a team of Alerans wielding a ram to swing again. Boom, boom, boom, then, with the next strike, there was a single, sharp crack as one of the timbers of the gate gave way.
“That’s it!” Tavi called. “Courtyard!”
The legionares waiting in the courtyard turned and double-timed away from the gates, toward the bridge, following a single row of widely spaced furylamps. As they did, more hooks flew up over the wall, attached to steel chains, and as the gate began to give way, more armored warriors gained the walls beneath the cover of hurtling spears.
“They’re through!” Marcus snapped.
Outside, Canim horns began blaring a charge, and many of the black-armored warriors parted to allow the raiders an unobstructed charge at the gates. Thousands of the inhuman raiders surged forward in a massive wave of fangs and muscle.
“Fall back! Frying pan!” Tavi bellowed. “Fall back! Frying pan!”
The gate gave way, and the Canim let out a roar. Tavi and the legionares on the wall rushed down in frantic, terrified haste. One young legionare stumbled and fell down several stairs and sprawled on the courtyard. There was a sharp, hissing sound, and he cried out in sudden agony. Two of his fellows seized him and began dragging him between them.
“Go!” Tavi shouted, half-pushing legionares past him and down the stairs, while he swept his gaze through the confusion and darkness to make sure none had been left behind. “Go, go, go!”
“That’s all of them!” Marcus shouted.
Together, the pair of them hurried down to the courtyard and sprinted across it. Tavi could feel uncomfortable heat through the soles of his hobnailed boots after half a dozen strides. He could hear the gate fall behind him, and the Canim howled in triumph.
Marcus let out a cry beside him, and Tavi saw the First Spear fall. A Canim javelin had struck his lower leg, sinking into his calf just below the bend of his knee.
Marcus managed to fall on his shield, preventing his flesh from striking the stones and sizzling like a slab of bacon, like the poor legionare who had fallen a few seconds before. He tried to wrench the javelin from his leg, but the tip must have struck bone. He couldn’t pull it fre$.
Tavi slid to a stop and went back for the First Spear. A javelin struck sparks from the stones a few feet away. Tavi grabbed Marcus’s arm and hauled him almost entirely off his feet. The First Spear let out a cry of pain between his clenched teeth, and hobbled along as quickly as he could, until in desperation, Tavi lifted him clear onto one of his shoulders and ran.
Then he reached the edge of the courtyard, and he saw the shapes of Knights Aeris crouched on rooftops. A sudden wind began sweeping down, blowing in a gale at the gates, foiling the accuracy of any further missiles. Tavi looked over his shoulder, to see raiders plunging through the gates the warriors had opened, breaking into sudden howls of agony as their bare feet struck the heated stones of the courtyard. They could no more have turned back against the tide of their own assault than they could have swum up a waterfall. Thousands of their frenzied fellows poured through the breached gates, and their screams split the air.