Amara dragged Fade down the wall and flicked a glance around his shield. "It's him," she hissed.
The third man crouched behind his shield, tucking everything in close-too close. The next arrow slammed into the shield itself, pierced it, and went on into the man's chest, at his ribs. He let out a wheezing cry, blood suddenly a froth on his mouth.
Tavi stared in horror at the legionares dying on the wall beside him. It had happened so fast. It hadn't taken half a minute for the unseen archer to kill three men.
"We have to get out of here," the last of the legionares stammered. He started to rise. "We can't stay here."
"Stay down, you fool," Bernard shouted.
But the legionare turned to run down the wall, toward the rope that lay coiled by the gap. As soon as he rose, he cried out, and Tavi saw a thick black arrow impaling the man's leg. He fell to the ground with a shout, landing on top of his shield.
The next arrow struck square against his ear. The man folded quietly down, as though going to sleep, and didn't move again.
"Damn you, Fidelias!" Amara shouted, her voice raw.
Tavi looked up and down the wall. Behind him, the battlements abruptly ended at the gap Doroga had crushed into the wall. Before him, the battlements ran steadily along until they reached a wall of solid rock. The builders of Garrison had used the old granite bones of the hills on either side of the fortress to serve as its north and south walls, and they were little more than a sharply sloped face of rock. "Can we climb that? Can we get out that way?"
"With all those Knights Aeris?" Amara shook her head. "We wouldn't stand a chance."
The courtyard itself, Tavi could hear, seethed with the cries of Marat and their beasts, the occasional scream of a horse, the snarling of wolves,
the whistling shrieks of herdbane. Even if they did climb down the rope, they would only be falling from the frying pan and into the fire.
"We're trapped," Tavi breathed.
Another arrow slammed into Bernard's shield, its steel tip bursting through the metal lining and wood of the shield, sharp point emerging for the width of several fingers and barely falling short of his temple. Bernard went white, but his expression didn't change, and he covered himself and Tavi with the shield resolutely.
Wind howled at the gap in the wall, and Tavi looked back to see the man who had ordered the Knights Aeris earlier being dropped off on the battlements by one of the airborne Knights. A moment later, the huge swordsman landed next to him.
Amara drew in a breath, her face pale. "Get away from here, Fidelias."
The innocuous-looking man regarded those crouching on the walls with a flat, neutral gaze. "Give me the dagger."
"It isn't yours."
"Give me the dagger, Amara."
For an answer, Amara rose, and drew the sword from her side. She took the dagger from her belt and tossed it onto the stones behind her. "Come take it, if you can. I'm surprised you didn't kill everyone while you had the chance."
"I ran out of arrows," the man said. "Aldrick. Kill them."
The swordsman drew his blade and began walking down the wall.
Amara licked her lips and held her guardsman's blade low, parallel to her thigh. Tavi could see her hand trembling.
Beside him, he heard his uncle growl. Bernard jerked at the straps of the shield and loosened it from his arm. Then he handed the straps to Tavi and said, "Hold on to this." Bernard rose, taking up the double-bitted axe, and moved down the wall to stand beside Amara.
Tavi swallowed, staring.
Aldrick paused several feet away, abruptly becoming absolutely still.
Bernard shrugged one of his shoulders and then let out a shout and rolled forward, axe sweeping across his body in a vicious arc at the swordsman's head. Aldrick ducked beneath the blow, and the axe bit into the stones of one of the merlons, shattering it into flying bits of rock and powder. Bernard spun, using the momentum, and brought the axe sweeping down in a blow meant to split the swordsman's body in two.
Aldrick waited until the very last second to move and then hardly
seemed to move at all. He twisted his hips to one side, drawing the line of his body away from the descending axe, so that it whipped past his chest by the breadth of a hair.
As he did, his sword rose. The tip plunged into Bernard's flank, just above the belt of his trousers. Bernard stiffened, his eyes widening. He let out a short, harsh groan, and his fingers loosened from the handle of the axe. It fell to the battlements with a thump.
Tavi stared in horror. Aldrick twisted the blade as he tore it back out of Bernard's flank, then casually let him fall from the battlements, toward the chaos of the courtyard below.
"Uncle!" Tavi screamed.
Amara reached out a hand toward him as he fell. "Bernard!"
Fade let out a shriek, dropping his shield, and ran back to Tavi, clutching to the boy and gibbering incoherently.
Aldrick flicked his weapon to one side, and droplets of blood, of his uncle's blood, splattered against the stones of the battlements.
Amara's face set into a sudden mask of cold disdain. "Crows take you, Fidelias," she said in a cool, quiet voice. "Crows take you all."
Tavi didn't see her strike, so much as he saw a blur of color the same shade as the cloak the Cursor wore. She moved toward the swordsman with her guardsman's blade, and the sword made the air whistle as it darted at Aldrick.
The swordsman took a pair of quick steps back, no surprise on his face, no emotion. He lifted his blade, and caught Amara's blow on it. Three more blows followed, so fast that they chimed in what almost seemed a single tone, but the swordsman stopped them all, despite Amara's sheer speed, his blade close to his body, his movements very short, quick.
Tavi crawled forward, tears blurring his eyes, lugging the huge shield and the sobbing Fade with him. He recovered the dropped dagger and shoved it through his belt again, watching the battle, helpless and terrified.
Amara whirled and crouched and whirled again, her blade whipping at Aldrick's throat, knees, and throat again. The swordsman blocked each strike and then with a sudden, hard smile, his blade lashed out. Amara hissed, and the sword tumbled from her hands, falling to the stones near Tavi.
Aldrick whipped his blade in a horizontal line, and Amara let out a harsh cry, staggering against the battlements, her hair fallen around her face. Tavi could see blood on the mail around her belly. Amara turned toward Aldrick, unsteady on her feet and swung her arm at him in a strike. The swordsman
slapped her hand aside, and his foot lashed out at her knee. Amara gasped and fell to the stone. She struggled to rise again.
Aldrick shook his head, as though disgusted, and slammed one heavy boot down onto Amara's splinted arm. She let out a cry and jerked. She looked up at Tavi, her eyes not focused, her face bedsheet-white.
Aldrick did not pause. He drew back his blade, crouching, and with two hands swung it toward the paralyzed Cursor.
Tavi didn't stop to think. He seized the fallen sword in his left hand and lunged forward from his knees, toward the swordsman. The guardsman's blade flicked out and found the gap between the swordsman's mail and the tops of his boots, drawing an insignificant cut across the skin. But it was enough to make Aldrick divert the blow aimed for Amara's neck, to parry Tavi's clumsy thrust aside.
Aldrick snarled, his face suddenly suffused with scarlet anger, making an old scar stand out white against his cheek. He slammed his weapon against Tavi's. Tavi felt the jolt of it in his shoulders and chest, and his arm went numb in a tingling wash of sensation, from fingertip to elbow. The sword flew off somewhere behind him.
He rolled back and tried to lift the shield to cover himself, but the swordsman kicked it aside, and it tumbled out of Tavi's grasp and into the courtyard below.