Furies of Calderon (72 page)

Amara climbed back down off the wall, taking absent note of the courtyard. Fidelias and his men were nowhere in sight, probably gone again, safely lofted up by their Knights Aeris. At the barricade, more Marat had pushed through, and though they had trouble advancing over the corpses fallen on the ground, yet they came on, despite the desperate cries of the Alerans pitted against them.

She drew her sword, the sword from the fallen guardsman in the Princeps Memorium, and stared at its workmanship. Then she looked up, at the Marat pushing through the gates, sure that in time she would see their horde-master, here to claim the fortress for himself.

Bernard stepped up beside her, still looking tired, but holding a double bladed woodsman’s axe in his broad hands. “Do we have a plan?”

“The horde-master. I saw him. I want to take him down.” She told him about the dagger at his waist, the second horde coming on.

Bernard nodded, slowly. “If we get to him,” he said, “I’m going to try a wood-crafting on you. Take the knife and run. Get it back to the First Lord, if you can.”

“You’re exhausted. If you try to work another crafting it could k—” She stopped herself and took a slow breath.

“Pirellus was right,” Bernard commented. “The good part of being doomed is that you have nothing left to lose.”

Then he turned to her, slipping an arm around her waist, and kissed her on the mouth, with no hesitation, no self-consciousness, nothing but a raw hunger tempered with a kind of exquisite gentleness. Amara let out a soft sound and threw herself into the kiss, suddenly frantic, and felt tears threaten her eyes again.

She drew back from the kiss far too soon, looking up at him. Bernard smiled at her and said, “I didn’t want to leave that undone.”

She felt a tired smile on her own mouth, and she turned from him to face the gates.

Outside, there came a blaring of horns, deeper, somehow more violent, more angry than the first ones had been. The ground began to shake once again, and shouts and rumbles outside the walls rose into a tidal wave of sound that pounded at her ears, her throat, her chest. She thought she could feel her cheeks vibrating from the sheer volume.

The final defense at the gate began to crumble. The Marat began to force their way into the courtyard, their eyes wild, weapons bloodied, pale hair and skin speckled with scarlet. One armed holder went down before a pair of enormous wolves and a Marat fighting with nothing but his own teeth. A great herd-bane pinned a crawling Aleran to the ground and with a birdlike bob of its head seized the Aleran’s neck and broke it with a quick shake. The Marat poured in, and there was sudden bedlam in the courtyard, lines disintegrating into dozens of separate smaller battles, pure chaos.

“There,” Amara said, and jabbed her finger forward. “Coming through the gate right now.”

Atsurak strode through the gates, his beasts all around him. With a casual motion of his captured Aleran spear, he thrust it through the back of a fighting
legionare
and then, without watching the man die, withdrew the spear to test its edge against his thumb. Several Alerans rushed him. One was torn to shreds by one of the huge birds. Another dropped to the earth before he got close to Atsurak, black-feathered Marat arrows sprouting from both eyes. No one got within striking distance of the horde-master.

Sudden thunder shook the air in a roar that made what came before sound like nothing more than the rumbling of an empty belly. Screams, frantic, howling cries, rose in a symphony. The walls
themselves
shook, just beside the gates. They shook again, beneath a thunderous impact, and a web of cracks spread out through them. Again, the thunder rammed against the outer walls, and with a roar an entire section gave in. Alerans on the battlements had to scramble to either side, stone tumbling down in huge and uneven sections, dust flooding out, light from the newly risen sun pouring through the dust in a sudden flood of terrible golden splendor.

Through the sudden gap in the walls came a thunderous bellow, and the vast shape of a black-coated gargant, a gargant bigger than any such beast Amara had ever seen. Bloodied, painted in wild and garish colors, the beast seemed something out of a madman’s nightmare. It lifted its head and let out another bellowing roar and tore down another ten feet of wall with its vast digging claws. The gargant bellowed again and shouldered its way through the wall and into the courtyard itself.

A Marat warrior sat upon the gargant’s back, pale of hair and dark of eye, with shoulders so broad and chest so deep not even the largest breastplate could have fit him. He bore a long-handled cudgel in his hand, and with an almost casual sweep he leaned to one side and smote it down onto the head of a Wolf Clan warrior strangling a downed Aleran, dropping the Marat to the earth with a broken skull.

“ATSURAK!” bellowed the Marat on the back of the maddened gargant. His voice, deep, rich, furious, shook the stones of the courtyard. “ATSURAK OF HERD-BANE! DOROGA OF GARGANT CALLS YOU MISTAKEN BEFORE WE-THE-MARAT! COME OUT, YOU MURDEROUS DOG! COME AND FACE ME BEFORE THE ONE!”

Whirling with insane grace, the gargant spun to one side, great forelegs rising together. The beast brought his clawed feet down on top of a charging herd-bane Clan warrior, simply smashing him flat against the courtyard’s stones. At that, though the din outside the walls continued to rise, the battle in the courtyard fell into a sudden, shocked silence.

As the great beast turned, letting out another defiant bellow, Amara saw, in the golden light pouring through the breached walls, the boy Tavi clinging to Doroga’s back, behind him on the great gargant, and behind the boy sat the scarred slave, clutching at him and gibbering.

Tavi looked wildly around the courtyard, and when his gaze flicked toward them, his face lit with a ferocious smile. “Uncle Bernard! Uncle Bernard!” he shouted, pointing at Doroga. “He followed me home! Can we keep him?”

Chapter 41

Isana took a pair of quick steps back, pressing Odiana along behind her, and lifted her chin. “I’ve always thought you a pig, Kord, but never an idiot. Do you think you’ll get away with a killing, right here in Garrison?”

Kord laughed, a rough sound. “In case you didn’t notice, they’ve got bigger fish to fry. I just walked right on in like all those other fools who came to die here.”

“It doesn’t mean you can escape, Kord. Assuming that one of us doesn’t get to you when you try it.”

Kord laughed again, the sound of it dry, rasping. “One of you? Which one would that be? Come here, bitch.”

Isana faced him evenly and did not move Kord’s face flushed red and dangerous. “I said come
here.”

But Odiana glanced up at Kord. The murderous expression on his face, a finger he jabbed at the ground in front of him, were apparently enough to activate the discipline collar Odiana let out a sudden breathless shriek and fell to the ground, clawing at the collar. Even as she did, she struggled against her own convulsing body to crawl closer to Kord, to obey the command he’d given her. Isana reached down to hold her back, but the sudden wave of terror and unbearable anguish that washed up through that touch nearly blinded her, and she stumbled back and away.

Kord let out a harsh laugh and took a step forward, taking the woman’s face in his hands. “That’s better,” he said. “You be a good girl. I’m going to break your pretty neck and then put that collar on Isana. Hold still.”

Odiana whimpered, body still twitching, and did not struggle against him.

“Kord, no!” Isana shouted.

The door suddenly rattled on its frame. There was a hesitation, and then it rattled again, as though someone was trying to get in and hadn’t expected to find it bolted. Kord whirled to face it.

Desperate, Isana cast the globe of the fury-lamp in her hand at Kord. It struck the Stead-holder in the back of the head. The fury-lamp shattered, the spark imp inside it flashing into brilliant light for a moment, and then gone. The interior of the warehouse sank into darkness, and Kord began to curse viciously.

Isana swallowed her terror and hurried forward, through the darkness. There was a horrible, frantic moment of feeling in the dark, listening for Odiana’s whimpers and Kord’s heavy, snarling breathing. Her fingers found Odiana’s hair first, and she dragged the slave woman against her. She got the woman to her feet and started dragging her farther back into the warehouse, hoping that she moved in the right direction. Odiana began to whimper, and Isana clapped one hand firmly over the woman’s mouth.

“Don’t do this, Isana,” growled Kord’s voice, from somewhere in the dark, back toward the door. “You’re just drawing things out. We both know how this is going to end.”

Isana felt a ripple in the ground beneath the wooden floorboards, but knew that Kord’s fury would have difficulty locating them through the wood, just as it had through the ice. She continued to draw Odiana deeper back into the warehouse, until she bumped against the back wall. She felt her way with her hands, and though the predawn light was showing through cracks in the wall, there still was not enough light to see. She pressed the woman down into the dubious shelter between two crates, then lifted Odiana’s own hands and pressed them over the woman’s mouth. The slave shook almost violently, but managed to nod. Isana drew her hands away from the woman and turned to face the darkness.

“Come on, Isana,” Kord said, his voice more distant. “The collar’s not so bad. Once you put it on, you won’t have any more doubts. You can see the good part of it, too. I’ll do that for you.”

Isana swallowed, revolted, and debated her options. Simplest was to shout for help. There were hundreds of people within Garrison. Surely some would hear her.

Surely. But at the same time, she would be giving her position away to Kord. She did not know how long it might take help to break down the barred warehouse door, but it surely would not take Kord long to break her neck. Though it made her seethe with frustration, she could do little but remain silent and try to find a way to escape the warehouse or to deal with Kord directly. She crouched in the darkness and struggled to think of other options.

The ground rumbled and shook for perhaps a minute, and then there was a sudden round of cheers and blowing horns from outside. Useless. She didn’t know what had happened, but she would never be heard over that din. She had to find out where Kord was and either circle out to open the door or attack him herself—and that would be mad. Even if she could find him, he was far stronger than she. She could loose Rill on him, but what if she wasn’t fast enough? No, such a confrontation was a last desperate resort.