back, "but the gate is our weak point. They attack the walls only to keep most of our men busy up here. There are too few men at the gate. They'll force the barricade sooner or later."
"Why didn't they craft the gate closed?"
"Can't," Giraldi reported. "Engineer told me. No foundation under it for extra wall, and the interior surface is lined with metal."
From below them there came a crunching sound and a sudden chorus of mixed Aleran war cries of, "Riva for Alera!" and "Calderon for Alera!"
Giraldi glanced out over the field again. "They must have gotten part of the barricade down. The hordemaster has ordered the rest of his troops in, and they're on the move. They'll try to put pressure on the gate until the defense breaks." Giraldi grimaced. "If they don't repel this first thrust, we're done for."
Amara nodded to him. "All right. Almost time, then. I'll be back up as soon as I can." She leaned out to look down into the courtyard below. She could just make out the forms of a couple of legionares standing their ground almost within the gate itself, spears thrusting. There were shrieks and cries from below, and Amara's eyes caught a flash of motion, a dark blade seen for only a second as its wielder spun it out behind him. Pirellus was holding the gate once more.
Amara hurried to the nearest stairs and pelted down them to the courtyard, looking around wildly. Hay from the bales she had crashed through earlier that morning lay scattered everywhere over the courtyard. All but a few of the wounded had been pulled back to the west courtyard, and the last of them were being loaded onto stretchers. She started across the courtyard toward the stables. As she did, she saw Pluvus Pentius emerge from one of the
barracks, white-faced and nervous, one hand wrapped around the hand of a little boy, whose hand stretched back behind to another child, and so on, until the truthfinder was leading half a dozen children across the courtyard.
Amara hurried to him. "Pluvus! What are these children still doing here?"
"H-hiding," Pluvus stuttered. "I found them hiding under their fathers' bunks in the barracks."
"Crows," Amara spat. "Get them to the west courtyard with the wounded. They're supposed to be fortifying one of the barracks to hold them. And hurry."
"Yes, right," Pluvus said, his skinny shoulders tightening. "Come on, children. Hold hands, and stay together."
Amara dashed to the stables and found Bernard sitting with his back to the wall just inside one of the doors, his eyes half-closed. "Bernard," she called. "The gate is under attack. They'll be coming."
"We're ready," Bernard mumbled. "Just say when."
Amara nodded to him and turned, focusing her attention on Cirrus, then sent him up and out into the sky, feeling for the windcrafters she knew would be carrying Fidelias's rogue Knights toward the fortress.
She felt it a moment later, a tension in the air that spoke of a coming stream of wind. Amara called Cirrus back and worked another sightcrafting, sweeping the sky, searching for the incoming troops.
She spotted them while they were still half a mile from the fortress, dark shapes against the morning sky. "There," she shouted. "They're coming in from the west. Half a minute at the most."
"All right," Bernard murmured.
Amara stepped out into the open, as the Knights Aeris with their transport litters swept down from the skies, diving for the fortress. A wedge of Knights Aeris flew before the litters, weapons ready, and the sun gleamed on the metal of their armor. They headed toward the gate in a steep dive.
"Ready!" Amara shouted, and drew her sword. "Ready!" She waited a pair of heartbeats more, until the enemy reached the valley-side wall and passed over the western courtyard then the garrison commander's building. She took a breath, willing her hands to stop shaking. "Loose!"
All around her in the courtyard, hummocks and lumps of scattered hay shook and shimmered, and a full fifty holder bowmen, covered with hand-fuls of hay and by the woodcrafting Bernard had worked over them, became
vaguely visible. As one, they lifted their great bows and opened fire directly up at the underside of the incoming Knights.
The holders' aim proved deadly, and their attack had taken the mercenaries completely by surprise. Knights Aeris in their armor cried out in sudden shock and pain, and men began to plummet from the skies like living hailstones. The archers stood their ground, shooting, even as the stunned mercenaries began to recover.