Furies of Calderon (67 page)

“Right,” Otto said, and took Isana’s arm. He reached down for Odiana’s, but the woman flinched from him and let out a high-pitched little sound.

“I’ll do it,” Isana told him and leaned down to touch Odiana’s chin.

A broiling storm of emotion flowed up her from the touch, and Isana had to work to hold it away. She lifted Odiana’s face to hers and murmured, only moving her lips, “Get in the wagon.”

Odiana stared blankly at her, but rose when Isana tugged on her arm, and climbed up into the wagon willingly enough, settling in a back corner, eyes flicking out from behind her tangled hair to watch the other holders in it. Isana climbed in beside her, and a moment later, the wagon began rattling down the causeway again.

Someone passed her a heavy blanket, which she draped over the both of them, and a moment later a flask of something hot. She drank, some kind of spiced wine that burned in her belly but made her limbs feel warm and less tired. She passed the flask to Odiana, who had to hold it in her hands for a long moment, as though she had to work up the courage to drink, and who curled up beneath the blanket and dropped into what seemed to be an exhausted sleep a moment after.

“You look exhausted,” Otto said, from across the cart, his face sympathetic. “Try to get some rest. We’ll be in Garrison soon, but try.”

Isana passed him the flask and shook her head. “I’m not tired, Otto, honestly. I’ve too much on my mind.”

But after she sat back again, she leaned her head against the back of the cart, and didn’t wake up until the driver called back to Otto, “Holder! There it is!”

Isana jerked awake and sat up enough to see ahead of the cart. The morning was cold on her face and throat, and the icy coating on the ground gleamed in the pale light of a dawn that was not far away.

Smoke hung over Garrison like a funeral shroud.

Isana’s heart lurched into her throat. Were they too late? Had the fort already been attacked? She climbed up onto the driver’s seat of the wagon, even as the driver, one of Otto’s holders, began to cluck to the horses that pulled the wagon, slowing them from their fury-enhanced speed. Their breath steamed in the dim light.

As they approached, Isana saw a single young
legionare
on guard duty above the western gate of Garrison. A second look showed that he wore a heavy swath of bandages over his forehead and left eye, and that those bandages were so recent that they were still spotted with blood. A dark bruise discolored his cheek, though it looked a day old, at least. As the group of wagons and horses closed, the young soldier leaned out, staring at them.

Warner raised a hand to the guard. “Hello the gate! Let us in!”

The young man stammered, “Sir, you shouldn’t be here. The Marat are attacking, sir. You shouldn’t be bringing holders here right now.”

“I know the Marat are attacking,” Warner snapped. “We’ve come to help, and everyone here has something they can do. Let us in.”

The young
legionare
hesitated, but there was a motion on the wall behind him, and a man in a dented Centurion’s helmet appeared. “Holder Warner?”

“Giraldi,” Warner said, with a curt nod. “We heard you were having company and thought we’d invite ourselves over to help you entertain them.”

Giraldi stared down at them for a moment and then nodded. “Warner,” he said, “you’d be better off turning around and heading for Riva while you still can.”

His words silenced every holder on the ground below.

Isana stood up in the wagon’s seat. “Good morning, Centurion. Have you seen my brother?”

Giraldi squinted down and then his eyes widened. “Isana? Oh, thank the furies. Your brother is here. He’s inside at the east gate. Isana, the Count’s been badly wounded, and Livia is back in Riva with her daughter. Harger and the legion crafters did what they could, but they say without more skilled help he won’t live.”

Isana nodded, calmly. She let her awareness slowly out toward Giraldi, gaining the sense of the man’s emotions. Anger, weariness, and most of all despair hung on him like a coating of thick, cold mud, and Isana shivered. “I take it the Marat have already attacked.”

“The Count has no say in this,” Isana said. “And if the Marat take Garrison, they’ll be able to destroy everything we have. We’ve the right to fight to defend our homes and families as well, Giraldi, and every man here who is of age is a Legion veteran. Open the gates.”

Giraldi bowed his head and nodded to the young
legionare
. “Furies know we need the help. Do it.”

The holders moved into Garrison in short order, and Isana noticed that adult men—the veterans—drove all the wagons. They pulled into the fortress as though part of the Legion on duty there, lining up their wagons in neat rows in the westernmost courtyard. Men started caring for the horses at once, unhitching them and leading them to be watered and sheltered from the winter winds. Every Legion camp was laid out identically, enabling veterans and newly transferred units to be exactly aware of the operations and layout of any camp they came to. Even as some men picketed the horses, others began forming up the veterans into files outside the armory, and Giraldi and another young
legionare
began to outfit them with shields, swords, spears, breastplates, helmets.

Isana stepped down from the wagon, holding Odiana’s hand and leading the dazed woman, who kept the blanket wrapped around her like a sleepy child. “Harger,” Isana called, spotting the healer supervising a number of young women, barely more than children really, who were shredding bed-sheets into bandages.

The old healer turned when he saw her, a tired smile touching his face. “Help,” he said. “Well, maybe we can make a fight of it after all.”

She moved to him and embraced him quietly. “Are you all right?”

“Tired,” he said. He looked around them and then said, “This is bad, Isana. Our wall isn’t high enough, and our Knights went down in the first attack.”

Isana’s throat tightened. “My brother?”

“A little banged up, but well,” Harger said. “Isana, we’ve got less than an hour. By the time the sun rises, you’ll be able to walk from here to the watchtowers on Marat shoulders.”

She nodded. “There, see Stead-holder Otto? He’s a strong crafter. Not too delicate, because he mostly crafts injured livestock rather than people, but he can mend broken bones better than anyone I’ve ever seen, and he can do it from dawn to dark. There are one or two other men at least as skilled as a Legion water-crafter, and many of the woman are better. You have injured?”

“Plenty,” Harger said, his eyes calculating. “Really? Women better than a Legion water-crafter?”

“See Otto. He’ll get our healers over to help yours. You’re in the eastern courtyard?”

Harger nodded, blinking his eyes a few times. Then he clasped Isana’s shoulder. “Thank you. I don’t know if it will do any good in the long run, but there are men dying who won’t have to now.”

Isana touched her hand with his and said, “Where can I find Bernard?”

“On the wall above the gate,” Harger said.

Isana nodded to him and started toward the far side of the fort. She passed the commander’s quarters and the officers’ barracks at the center of the fort, then walked briskly past barracks after barracks. She found the first bodies at the near side of the eastern courtyard, in the stables. Dead horses lay inside, crows already darting in and out of the stable’s doors, their raucous cries rising from their darkened interiors. More bodies littered the courtyard around her—Marat, and the great predator birds had been tossed into a rough heap at one side of the courtyard, where they would be out of the way of the troops moving about inside. Legion casualties were laid out in neat rows on the other, troops wrapped in their cloaks, heads covered to keep the crows from their eyes.

The rest of the courtyard was filled with the wounded and the dying. A bare scattering of
legionares
stood watch on the walls, but there seemed to be so
few
of them.

Isana walked forward, stunned at the carnage. She had never seen anything like it. Pain pressed on her, sensed from the wounded like heat radiating out from an oven. She shivered and folded her arms. Behind her, Odiana, still following closely and holding her hand, let out a small, frightened whimper and did not lift her head.

“Isana!”

She looked up to see her brother running toward her, and she didn’t fight either the tears that sprang to her eyes or the smile that touched her mouth. He embraced her, hugging hard, and lifted her up off the ground as he did it.

“Thank the furies,” he rumbled. “I was so afraid for you.”

She hugged him back, hard. “Tavi?” He froze for a moment, and the motion sent ice running through her. She leaned back, taking his face between her hands. “What happened?”

“After the flood, I lost him. I couldn’t track him in the storm. I managed to get the Cursor girl out of the water, and then we came here.”

“It’s all right,” she assured him, though she folded her hands over a little quiver of fear in her belly at the memory of Kord s smokehouse. “His son, Aric, helped us escape I got away from him.”

“Those
idiots
,” Bernard sputtered. But his eyes glittered, and he looked back toward the wall and the shattered gates leading into the fort. A rough barricade had been shoved into place, consisting of a pair of wagons upended, barrels, and bunks. “How many did he bring?”

“Everyone,” Isana said. “Nearly five hundred people.”

“The women, too?”

Isana nodded. Bernard grimaced. “I guess we’ve got it all resting on one throw, then.” His eyes went past her to Odiana. “Who’s this?”

Amara swallowed. “One of Kord’s slaves,” she lied. “She saved my life. That’s a discipline collar on her, Bernard. I couldn’t leave her there.”

“It might,” Bernard said. “It might, it might.” He looked around. “There. That centurion there, he’s the engineer. See the braid on his tunic? We’ll need his help. You tell him, and I’m going to round up our earth-crafters.”

Bernard hurried off Isana approached the man, who glanced up, blinked at her, and then scowled at her from over a bristling grey mustache. He listened to her without speaking while she told him of her plan.

“Impossible,” he said. “It can’t be done, girl.”

“I’ve forty summers, Centurion,” Isana retorted. “And it must be done. My brother is bringing our earth-crafters right now.”

The Centurion faced her more squarely, his face and throat flushing a deep red. “Hold-folk crafters,” he said. “This isn’t a barn raising. These are siege walls.”

“I don’t see how that matters.”

The man snorted in an explosion of breath. “These walls are made of layers of interlocking strata, girl. They’re hard, flexible, heavy, and can stand up to any kind of pounding you care to dish out. But you can’t just make them higher once they’re in place, like some pasture fence. If you go toying with the wall, you’ll disrupt the foundation, and the whole thing will collapse. We won’t have a wall at
all
, much less a taller one.”

“As I understand it,” Isana said. “You might as well not have the wall as it stands in any case.”

The man blinked at her for a moment, then scowled and bowed his head, snorting from beneath his mustache.

“I understand that it might be difficult, but it’s worth a try, isn’t it? If it works, we might be able to hold out against them. If it doesn’t…” Isana shivered. “If it doesn’t, then I’d just as soon it didn’t take too long in any case.”

“No,” the engineer said, finally. “If there was a chance, it might be worth the risk. But these aren’t engineers. They’re
holders
. They don’t have the kind of strength it takes.”

“You’ve never had to live in this valley, have you?” Isana said, her voice wry. “Not everyone with a strong fury wants to be a Knight. There are boys barely more than children in my stead-holt who can tear boulders larger than a man out of the ground. And as I see it, we have nothing to lose.”

The engineer eyed her. “Impossible,” he said, then. “It can’t be done. If I had a full corps of Legion engineers, it would still take me half a day to get that wall higher.”

“Then it’s a good thing we’re not a corps of Legion engineers,” Isana said. “Will you try?”

A new voice cut into the conversation. “He’ll try.”