Amara walked out away from the walls by several yards, keeping her
steps light and careful. She tried not to look down at the ground. The blackened remains of the Marat who had perished in the first firestorm lay underfoot and all around, grotesque and stinking. Crows flapped and squabbled everywhere, mercifully covering most of the dead. If she looked, Amara knew, she would be able to see the gaping sockets of the corpses whose eyes had already been eaten away, usually along with parts of the nose and the soft, fleshy lips, but she didn't. The air smelled of snow and blood, of burned flesh and faintly of carrion. Even through the screen Cirrus provided her sense of smell, she could smell it.
Her knees trembled harder, and she grew short of breath. She had to stop and close her eyes for a moment, before lifting them to the oncoming horde again. She lifted her unwounded arm and bade Cirrus make her vision more clear.
The fury bent the air before her, and almost at once she could see the oncoming horde as though she stood close enough to it to hear their footsteps.
Almost at once, she could see what Pirellus had meant. Though the fleeing elements of the Marat horde had rejoined it half an hour before and been absorbed into the oncoming mass, she could see the difference in the warriors now moving toward Garrison, without needing to engage them to understand part of Pirellus's fears. They were older men, heavier with muscle and simple years, but they walked with more of both confidence and caution, ferocity tempered with wisdom.
She shivered.
Women, too, walked among the horde, bearing weapons, wearing the mien of experienced soldiers, which Amara had no doubt that they were. As near as Aleran intelligence could determine, the Marat engaged in almost constant struggles against one another-small-scale conflicts that lasted only briefly and seemed to result in few lasting hostilities, almost ritual combat. Deadly enough, though. She focused on the horde grimly. The dead behind the walls of Garrison proved that.
As she watched them come on, Amara was struck by a sudden sense that she had not felt in a long time, not since, as a small child, she had first been allowed out onto the open sea with her father in his fishing boat. A sense of being outside, a sense of standing balanced at the precipice of a world wholly alien to her own. She glanced at the walls behind her, eyes twinging as they refocused. There stood the border of the mighty Realm of
Alera, a land that had withstood its enemies for a thousand years, overcome a hostile world to build a prosperous nation.
And she stood outside it, all but naked, despite her armor. The sheer size and scope of the rolling plains that lay beyond this last bastion of Aleran strength made her feel suddenly small.
The voice that came to her whispered in the rustle of the lonely wind, low, indistinct. "Never be intimidated by size itself. I taught you better than that."
Amara stiffened, dropping the visioncrafting before her hand, glancing around. "Fidelias?"
"You always hold your legs stiffly when you're afraid, Amara. You never learned to hide it. Oh, and I can hear you," the voice responded. "One of my men is crafting my voice to you, and listening for your replies."
"I have nothing to say to you," Amara whispered, heated. She glanced at the legionares too close behind her and stepped forward, away from them, so that they couldn't overhear. She lifted her hand again, focusing on the oncoming horde, searching through their ranks for one who might be their leader.
"Useless," Fidelias commented. "You can't hold the walls. And even if you do, we'll break the gate again."
"Which part of 'I have nothing to say to you' did you not understand?" She paused a moment and then added as viciously as she knew how, "Traitor."
"Then listen," Fidelias said. "I know you don't agree with me, but I want you to think about this. Gaius is going to fall. You know it. If he doesn't fall cleanly, he'll crush thousands on his way down. He might even weaken the Realm to the point that it can be destroyed."
"How can you dare speak to me of the safety of the Realm? Because of you, her sons and daughters lie dead behind that wall."
"We kill people," Fidelias said. "It's what we do. I have dead of my own to bury, thanks to you. If you like, I'll tell you about the families of the men you made fall to their deaths. At least the dead inside had a chance to fight for their lives. The ones you murdered didn't. Don't be too liberal with that particular brush, apprentice."
Amara abruptly remembered the men screaming, falling. She remembered the terror on their faces, though she hadn't taken much note of it at the time.
She closed her eyes. Her stomach turned over on itself.
"If you have something to say, say it and have done. I have work to do."
"I've heard dying can be quite the chore," Fidelias's voice noted. "I wanted to make you an offer."
"No," Amara said. "Stop wasting my time. I won't take it."
"Yes you will," Fidelias said. "Because you don't want the women and children behind those walls to be murdered with the rest of you."
Amara stiffened. She felt suddenly cold.
"Leave," Fidelias said. "You. Lead the women and children away. I'll have my Knights see that the Marat are delayed long enough to give you a safe lead."
"No," she whispered. "You're lying. You can't control the Marat."
"Don't be so sure," Fidelias said. "Amara, I don't like what has to be done. But you can make a difference. You can save the lives of innocent people of the Realm. You lead them. If you don't, personally, then there's no deal." There was silence for a moment, before he said, weariness in his voice, "You don't know what you're doing, girl. I don't want to see you die for it. And if I can save the lives of some noncombatants while protecting you, so much the better."
Amara closed her eyes, her head spinning. The stench of the burned corpses, of the carrion the crows had torn into, came to her again. She was a Cursor, a skilled fencer, an agent of the Crown, a decorated heroine of the Realm-but she did not want to die. It terrified her. She had seen the men the Marat had killed, and none of them had gone pleasantly. She had joked before, lightly, that she would never want to end her life in less than a viciously bloody fashion, as alive as she could possibly be, but the reality of it was different. There wasn't any consideration in it, no abstract philosophy. Just glittering, animal eyes and terror and pain.
It made sense, she reasoned. Fidelias wasn't a monster. He was a man like any other. He had cared about her, when they worked together. Almost more than her father had, in some ways. It was reasonable to assume that he did not want to see her die if he could avoid it.
And if she could save some more people, if she could lead those who would surely die away from the coming struggle, surely it would be worth it. Surely there would be no shame for her in fleeing, no dishonor before the Crown.
Or before Bernard's memory.
It wouldn't be wrong. Fidelias was giving her a way out. An escape.
"Amara," Fidelias's voice said, gently. "There isn't much time. You must go quickly, if you are to save them."
She abruptly saw the trap. Though she didn't understand it yet, though she wasn't sure exactly where it lay, she recognized what he had scattered out to blind her-raw emotions, fear, the desire to protect, the need to save her own pride. He had played on them, just as he had tried to put her into a raw, emotional state of terror and grief when he had betrayed her before.