around him, eyes quick and hard, and then laid his bare palms against the heavy wood. For perhaps half a minute, he stood there, eyes closed. Then he withdrew, barked an order to his men, and limped back to the litter. Aldrick and the others withdrew to the litter, and the whole of the group swept up into the air again and out of sight.
Amara regained her feet, finally, and recovered her sword. She lifted her head to see what Fidelias had done to the gates.
She saw them shudder. Then she saw dust fly from one of them. And then the cruel, rending talon of one of the herdbane ripped through the heavy beams of wood as though they were paper, and tore its way back out again.
She could only watch in numbed horror as the Marat, howling like madmen, hauled the gates of Garrison to kindling before her eyes, and began to pour into the fortress.
She swallowed, her head still whirling, her hand trembling as she gripped her sword, and stepped forward to meet them.
Chapter 37
Amara looked left and right as she approached the gate, even as the Marat began to tear their way through it. To one side, several of the young legionares stood, stunned and horrified, staring as the Marat poured in. To the other, scorched bodies and badly burned men lay, scattered as they had
fallen from the walls above, along with a dazed-looking Bernard and Pirellus, gathering themselves together after the explosion on the walls and the fall after.
"Form up!" Amara shouted, toward the legionares, but she wasn't sure the young men even heard her. She singled out one of the young men in a centurion's helmet and barked, "Centurion! Hold the gate!"
The young man in his fine cape looked from her to the gate to the shattered walls above, eyes wide, mouth trembling. "B-back!" he stammered, though it seemed that no one listened to him. "Fall b-back!"
Amara looked to the other side in desperation. "Pirellus!" she shouted. "Get up! Command the Legion!"
Pirellus, his helmet blasted from his head, the hair on one side scorched nearly to his scalp, stared at her in blank incomprehension.
The Marat tore through the last fragments of the remaining gate, and the first, a burly young warrior wielding a stone-headed axe, shoved his way through.
There was no time for anything else. If the Marat gained control of the gates, they would be able to pour into Garrison, and nothing would stop the weight of simple numbers from smothering the Aleran defense. Though her head still spun and though the injury on her back still pained her, Amara threw herself toward the sundered gates.
She heard herself let out a shrill cry, even as the Marat warrior turned to face her and swept the axe in a great flat arc meant to shear her in half at the hips. Instead, she reached out for Cirrus and leapt, throwing herself neatly over the axe, and sweeping her blade out at eye level. The fine steel of the blade bit into the Marat's face, and he dropped to the ground with a scream, even as one of the huge warbirds tore its way through the gates.
Amara tried to dodge from its path, but the beast's beak shot out and gripped her left arm in a sudden, crushing grip. Pain flashed through her, and she knew that only the mail had kept her arm from being snipped off at the elbow. The bird shook its head violently left and right, throwing Amara about like a puppet, until she slashed desperately at the base of the bird's thick neck, eliciting a brassy shriek and causing the bird to hurl her away from it.
Another Marat came through the gates, but the wounded herdbane whipped around at the sudden motion, snapping and lashing with its brassy beak, driving the Marat back. Amara let out a cry and drove forward, thrusting
with the guardsman's sword, sinking it into the bird's vitals and whipping it forth with a half-twist that sent the beast snapping and clawing its way to the ground in a welter of gore.
Amara gasped for breath as the Marat warrior came through, aiming another cut at this one. He dodged to one side, making way for a second, this one a lean young woman carrying an old Aleran saber. The Marat female thrust at Amara's face, and the young Cursor swept the blow aside-only to be hit hard in the flank and thrown to the ground by the first