She struggled and fought against him, letting out a furious, futile cry, but he had gotten inside her guard and pinned her sword arm to the ground. He lifted his fist, his face emotionless, and drove a blow into her mouth that stunned her for a moment, left her silent. Then he said something in a guttural tongue, satisfaction in the tone, as his hand gripped her hair, hard, and he turned her head slightly toward the woman, who lifted the old saber for a downward blow.
Scalping me, Amara thought. They're taking my hair.
There was a sudden shriek, high-pitched and panicked. The Marat warrior leapt back and off Amara, even as his companion lifted her saber and engaged the furious, reckless assault of one of the young legionares. The young man hacked and chopped with his Legion blade, more in elemental fury and brutality than in any coherent assault, and drove the pair away from Amara.
He turned back to the other young legionares, and Amara recognized the young man who had been on guard at the gates the day before from the purpling bruise on his jaw. "Come on!" he snarled, to his companions. "Are you going to stand there while a woman fights?" He turned back to his opponents with a cry of, "Riva for Alera!" and attacked again.
First one, then two, then several more legionares surged forward with sharp cries of fury, joining together in a shieldwall that contained the tide of Marat struggling to pour in through the shattered gates. But the young legionares, though they acted in concert, began to be driven back step by steady step.
Amara felt herself hauled back along the ground by one elbow and barely managed to keep hold of her sword. She looked up, dazedly, to find Healer Harger crouching over her, fingers touched lightly to her temples.
"The arm's broke," he said a second later, voice rough. "Maybe some of your teeth, too. There are broken rings in the mail over your back that are
cutting into it, and something is sprained. But you'll live." He shot a glance up at the embattled gate, then gave her a quick smile and said, "Bravely done, girl. Shamed those city boys into the fight at last."
"Pirellus," Amara managed to gasp. "Other side of the gate. Stunned."
Harger's eyes widened. "Great furies, he lived through that?"
"Bernard. Pulled him off the wall."
Harger nodded, tense, and hauled her to her feet. "Show me. If anyone can do anything, it will be Pirellus."
Amara gasped with the pain and saw the Healer wince and draw in a quick breath of his own. He steadied her, and then she lead him forward, around the slow pressure of bodies and the desperate thrust and hack of weapons at the gate, to where she'd seen Bernard and Pirellus moments before.
She found them, Bernard just now starting to stagger to his feet, Pirellus still on his hands and knees. Harger went to the Knight at once, touching fingers lightly to his temples, then grunting and shaking the man roughly. Harger hauled back a hand to deliver a slap to the Knight Commander's face, but Pirellus caught the Healer's wrist as it swept toward him. He shook his head once, blinked his eyes, looked up at the gates, and then staggered to his feet to stare up at the walls.
Then he spun, looking around the courtyard, and nodded to Amara. "Countess," he said, voice haggard. "That blast will have heated the stones, but they'll cool quickly, and Marat will be coming over them even if we hold the gate."
Amara swallowed. "What do we do?"
"Move these legionares up to the walls," Pirellus said.
"Then who will hold the gate?"
His chin lifted a fraction. "I will."
Amara stared at him. "Alone? Who will command the Legion?"
"They won't need much commanding in this," Pirellus said. "They'll hold the walls, and I'll hold the gate, or we'll all be dead in the next few moments."
"How can they hold the walls?"
"They can't for long," he said. "You'll have to figure out something."
Amara snapped, "What? That's not a plan!"
"It's all I have," Pirellus said. "Countess, I hope to the furies you're clever as well as brave. If you don't find some way to get them off of us, we're dead, right here, right now." And with that, he nodded to Amara and
stepped toward the melee at the gate. He paused, halfway there, to pick up a long, heavy length of wood that had been one of the drawing traces of a cart crushed