Amara struggled to her feet again. Fighting raged all along the wall and had spilled over into the courtyard behind. The reserve troops, after a startled moment, had been ordered forward by their young officers and engaged those Marat who either leapt from the wall or followed the bounds of their warbirds down into the courtyard.
More screams, frantic and terrified and wild with battle-rage, whirled around her, disorienting, terrifying. On the other side of the gate, the Marat had taken a section of the wall and held it tenaciously, more of their number pouring in at every moment, until Pirellus himself entered the fray.
The golden-skinned Parcian drew his dark sword and started what could only be described as a deliberate stalk down the length of the wall, calling legionares out of his way as he went. He met the first Marat with a blow so swift that Amara never saw it begin. She only saw blood flicker out in an arc, while the Marat tumbled down to the earth below, lifeless. One of the great birds lost its talon when it raked at Pirellus, and its head followed it to the stones a breath later.
More Marat threw themselves at the master metalcrafter, both man and beast in a furious wave, but the swordsman was their match. Every motion
avoided a blow or enabled him to deal out a stroke of his own-and none failed to be lethal With a calculated precision, Pirellus swept down the occupied section of the wall, brushing away the enemy like cobwebs, and the Legions flooded back into the space, kicking bodies clear of the battlements, fighting savagely to hold the regained section of the walls
Pirellus shook the blood from his sword, expression neutral, remote, and pointed a finger again at the men with the firepots The earthcrafters removed the lids and prepared to hurl the pots over the battlements to the ground below The firecrafters behind them stood with their expressions distant, mouths moving silently, calling to their furies in preparation of the hellish storm they prepared to unleash on the enemy
And that was when Amara felt it When she felt the currents of air thrumming with tension, heard with some part of her that she could not fully describe the rising tide of wind moving in the darkness above
She turned her face up, only to be blinded by the furylights mounted above the battlements, veiling the skies above-but all along the wall, the winds rose, whipping wildly back and forth Amara thought she could hear cries above, where Garrison's few Knights Aeris should have been patrolling Something sprinkled down from above, and for a moment she thought that more rain had begun to fall But the sensation was hot, not cold, and when Amara wiped at her cheek, she saw blood smeared upon her fingers
"Bernard'" she shouted "They're here'" She didn't have time to make sure she had been heard Instead, she called to Cirrus and leapt into the air, felt the roar of wind enfold her as she hurtled up, above the battlements and into the darkened sky over the besieged fortress
The air teemed with Knights Aeris-duelling, whirling pairs of men who swept through the skies in deadly combat, as much between furies as men, each trying to cut off the other's flow of air or to wound their opponents badly enough with their blades to shatter their concentration and send them falling Even as she watched, one of the men in Rivan colors whirled away from a flickering blade, only to let out a sudden, terrified scream and begin to plummet from the sky like a stone He fell past Amara and onto the ground before the walls of Garrison, the thud of impact swallowed by the tumult beneath them
Amara swept her gaze around the sky, picking out the shapes of airborne Knights as much with Cirrus's senses as her own, and found thirty at least, three times the number of the fortress's defenders More graceful battles
played out above and around her, but their outcome was a foregone conclusion: Garrison's Knights Aeris would be driven from the skies or killed, and the enemy would control all movement above the fortress.
Amara spotted, high and at the rear of the enemy positions, what she had dreaded-several litters, borne by more Knights, litters that would carry more of the powerful furycrafters they had faced before. Even as she watched, several Knights formed an escort around three of the litters, and the whole of the group dove toward the embattled fortress.
Specifically, toward the gates where Pirellus and his Knights directed the Aleran defenses.
Amara did not take time to consider her plan. Instead, she gathered Cirrus beneath her and sent herself hurtling up toward the oncoming litters. A startled Knight turned to face her in the air, but with an almost casual gesture, she flashed past him, dealing him a blow that began a cut low on one of his legs and ran all the way up his back to his shoulder, sheering through the leather leggings he wore and even biting through some of the mail upon his back. He let out a cry and fell, his focus fluttering with his pain, dropping toward the earth like a leaf cut from a tree.
Amara hurled herself forward and used a terrific rush of air to catapult her up. Then, while her momentum still carried her toward the foe, she gathered Cirrus's presence up before her and sent the fury lashing out at those supporting one of the litters.
She wasn't strong enough to cut all four of the Knights bearing the litters from their furies, and she hadn't even tried. Instead, she had focused on the two forward Knights, intending only to cut off their wind for a few crucial seconds. She succeeded. The men let out startled cries and fell, straight down, taking the poles whose weight they supported with them.
And dumping a half-dozen screaming men inside the litter into the open air. Two of the men still wore their restraining straps and dangled precariously on the litter as the Knights bearing it struggled to right it again, but the others, evidently anticipating a quick dismount upon the walls, had already unstrapped. Those six plummeted toward the ground, and though a few of the escorting Knights plunged after them, Amara knew that they would never be able to save the men from a fall so close to the earth.
She felt dozens of eyes focus on her at once, as her momentum carried her to the peak of its energy, then let her begin to fall again. She spun in the air, faced down, and kept her limbs in close to her body, to keep from being
slowed as she reached out to gather Cirrus back to her, and to reestablish her own windstream before one of the other Knights of the air cut her off.
Half a dozen windstreams converged on her at once, and she clawed for air in frustrated terror, even as the furylights of the fortress below loomed closer. She got lucky: So many of the enemy had moved to cut her off that she was able to use their own efforts against one another, writhing the wind-streams into a tangle and then altering the direction of her fall with her arms and legs. Cirrus gathered beneath her in a rush, and she gained control of her fall, just as another Knight, less reticent than the others, swept toward her, light gleaming on his drawn sword.
Amara twisted to one side, but he matched her fall, and the sword swept at her. She caught it on her own blade and pressed in close, sword-to-sword, struggling to gain control of the wind around them and turn it to her advantage. Her foe gripped her wrist, and they began to spin wildly, still falling.
Amara shot a glance down at the courtyard welling up before her eyes and looked up to her foe's face just as he did the same. There was a mute moment of concord and then both pushed away from one another, furies gathering beneath them in a roar, attempting to slow their fall.
Amara got one frantic look at Garrison beneath her and guided her fall into a stack of hay bales beside the stables. The bales, solidly packed, would have done little to break her fall without Cirrus rushing currents, both slowing the impact and scattering the bales into loose strands. Amara crashed through the topmost stack of bales and out onto the ground on the far side.