Codex Alera 01 - Furies of Calderon

by Jim Butcher

  Frederic swallowed, gripping his spade. “Tavi? What do we do?”

  “Give me a minute,” Tavi stammered. “I’m thinking.”

  Without warning, a Marat warrior hurled himself at Tavi, plowing into his side and lifting him, carrying him to slam painfully against the wall of the stable. Tavi let out a croaking shout and swung his knife weakly at the Marat warrior, a blood-smeared member of Clan Wolf, but the knife glanced off, barely breaking the Marat’s skin.

  The warrior tore at Tavi with his fangs, drawing back just enough to slam him against the wall, once, and then again, driving the breath from his lungs and stars into his vision.

  Fred loomed up behind the warrior, shoved one brawny arm beneath his chin, and wrenched the Marat back from Tavi, hauling the Marat off of his feet and eliciting a strangled scream of protest. “Tavi!” Fred shouted. “Run!”

  Tavi landed on the ground, woozily, and pushed himself to his hands and knees. He looked up to see the swordsman still coming for him and turned, the gold-handled dagger still clutched in his fist, and started moving again, staggering off into the wild melee of the courtyard.

  Tavi ducked the butt of a legionare’s spear, slipped on a dark wetness he did not take the time to look at, and scrambled forward. A bloodied holder Tavi recognized from Rothholt turned toward him and lifted his sword, but recognized Tavi before striking and yelled something at him through the tumult and din.

  Wind roared over the courtyard once more, and Tavi looked back to see another Knight Aeris hovering, eyes searching over the courtyard. His gaze swept to Tavi and stopped. The man’s eyes widened, and he dived down toward him.

  Somewhere close, Tavi heard the scream of a horse, and Tavi turned toward it, his eyes widening. He slipped past a stout old holder hauling a wounded legionare back out of the main knot of combat in the courtyard’s center, to find a knot of horses, riders wielding spear and blade and forcing their way across the courtyard.

  “Hashat!” Tavi shouted.

  The Marat’s head whipped around, white mane flying, and she flashed Tavi a fierce smile. “Aleran!” she called, her voice merry. Her eyes snapped into place above him, and she hissed, tightening her legs on the back of her horse. The beast plunged forward, all but bowling Tavi over, then reared. Tavi looked up in time to see the Knight Aeris that had been coming for him slash at Hashat and miss, only to have the Marat’s saber whip across his face. The man shouted, clawing at his eyes, but he managed to thrust himself up higher into the air, bobbing drunkenly away from the courtyard. One of the other warriors spun with one of the heavily curved Marat short bows in his hands, and loosed an arrow that felled the Knight from the sky.

  “Bah!” Hashat shouted at the archer. The man only grinned at her, drawing another arrow. She lifted the bloodied saber to her teeth and extended a hand to Tavi. “Up, Aleran!”

  Tavi took her hand and was startled by the slender woman’s strength. She hauled Tavi up to the light cushion of a saddle the Marat used, wrapped one of his arms around her waist, and shouted to the warriors near her in a tongue he could not understand. Together, the horses turned and plunged toward the outer wall, forcing their way through the crowd of screaming beasts and men.

  “What is happening?” Tavi shouted.

  “Your people have been forced back onto their wall!” Hashat shouted. She shrugged, and Tavi saw a number of loops of black cloth over her shoulder — the dark sashes worn by the enemy Knights. “Wolf and Herdbane were closest to the walls. Our people are fighting their way here through them, but it might take time. We are helping your people get onto the wall or to fall back to the other courtyard!”

  As Tavi watched, the butt end of a spear scythed through the air and took one of the mounted warriors of the Horse Clan from his saddle, dropping him into a knot of Herdbane warriors. One of them plunged a glass knife into his throat, and then as blood fountained from him, grasped his pale mane and cut it from his head together with the scalp.

  Hashat, seeing this, let out a piercing scream of pure rage, her horse rearing and plunging its hooves at the chest of the fallen Herdbane warrior. The man dropped, screaming, one side of his chest warped oddly. One of the other Marat raised his spear, but Hashat lifted a hand, spitting a command. The spearman nodded and whipped the spear down at the Marat, its tip leaving a long cut over the Marat’s ribs. He slashed again, into an X, and then the horses surged on.

  “What was that?” Tavi asked.

  “He took Ishava’s scalp,” Hashat snarled. “Attempted to destroy his strength. That is different than killing, Aleran.”

  “Why didn’t you kill him?”

  “Because we will not lose Ishava’s strength. We marked him. After the fight, Aleran, we will partake of that Herdbane and let Ishava rest.”

  Tavi blinked and stared at Hashat. The Horse headman’s dark eyes gleamed with something hard and savage, and she only smiled when someone hurled another spear at her, and she had to raise up on her stirrups to cut it out of the air with her saber.

  They reached the wall, but the press of the combat had forced them to the northwest corner of the courtyard, where part of the wall had collapsed when Doroga’s gargant had come charging through it.

  “Doroga!” Tavi shouted. “Where is Doroga?”

  “Out!” Hashat responded. “We got him onto his gargant and sent him back to his people.” She looked around the courtyard and shook her head. “We cannot remain here long, Aleran. The Wolves and Herdbane are being forced inside your walls by our people.”

  “My friend!” Tavi said. “Fred! Tall boy carrying a spade! He’s back by the stables! You have to help him!”

  Hashat looked back at Tavi, expression dark. Then flashed him a brilliant smile. “I will help him. Now, Aleran. Stand up. Hold on to my shoulders.”

  Hashat rode close to the crumbled section of the wall and looked up into the sun to see figures moving up there. One of them dropped a rope down. Tavi stood up, his arm throbbing where he had been cut, his feet on the Marat saddle, his hand on Hashat’s slender, strong shoulders. He shoved the gold-handled dagger through his belt and grabbed on to the rope. Hashat glanced up at him, then kicked her horse into motion, leaving him swinging in the air, as whoever was up above began pulling the rope up.

  “Fade!” Tavi exclaimed.

  Fade let out a happy hoot and hauled Tavi up onto the broken section of the wall. The slave’s scarred face twisted into a grotesque smile, as he grasped Tavi’s shoulders and then hurried him up onto the battlements, away from the edge of the broken walls.

  At the top, several legionares crouched upon the battlements, panting and exhausted. None were unwounded. They crouched with their backs against the crenellation, their shields held between them and the courtyard below. Bernard crouched there, too, but rose to come to Tavi and clutched at his arm fiercely. “Tavi!”

  “Uncle! Where’s Aunt Isana?”

  Bernard shook his head, his face pale. “We got separated.” He took the boy’s shoulders and guided him up against the crenellation, pressing him to crouch against the stone, and kneeling with his own body between Tavi and the courtyard. Tavi looked out at the battlefield outside the fortress, awed. He had never seen so many people, much less so many people struggling to kill one another. The battlefield outside was as confusing a jumble as the one in the courtyard, but on a far grander scale. Gargants screamed and bellowed in the distance, plowing a slow but steady path toward the walls, while wheeling groups of mounted Horse Clan dashed and feinted everywhere, engaging packs of Wolf warriors or disorganized bands of Herdbane with their uncontrollable warbirds.

  “Great furies,” Tavi breathed.

  “Get your head down,” Bernard rumbled. He picked up a heavy Legion shield and held it across his body, facing the courtyard. “Someone still stops to shoot an arrow once in a while.”

  “What about Aunt Isana?”

  Bernard grunted, as something struck the metal shield with a hollow, heavy thump. “We’re doing all we can,
boy. Stay down!”

  Fade let out an alarmed cry from behind his shield, and Tavi looked back in time to see someone make a running leap from the other side of the gap in the wall. Amara landed on the battlements beside Fade with a rush of wind and a grunt of effort and wormed her way behind Fade’s shield at once, panting.

  “Tavi?” she said, her eyes widening. “I never thought you’d make it out of that.”

  “I had help.”

  “Do you have it?”

  “Yes,” Tavi said. He turned the knife’s handle toward her and passed it over. Amara took the dagger, paling, and shook her head. “I have to get this to the First Lord.”

  Bernard grimaced. “What’s Giraldi have to say?”

  “We’re cut off,” Amara said. She wiped sweat from her brow, and Tavi saw that her hand was shaking. “Horse and Gargant are pushing the other Marat into Garrison. They hold the west courtyard except for the wall. East courtyard has pulled all its people back into buildings for defense. Giraldi thinks that Doroga’s people will drive a wedge between Herdbane and Wolf within the hour and they’ll have to quit the field.”

  Bernard blew out a breath. “An hour.” Something else slammed against his shield, shoving his shoulder into Tavi’s. “We aren’t going to last that long. My sister?”

  “She’s in one of the barracks in the east courtyard, with Gram. Giraldi said that he saw her go in with him.”

  “Good,” Bernard rumbled. “Good.”

  Down the wall, one of the legionares cried out. Tavi looked up and saw an arrow protruding from the man’s upper shoulder. It didn’t look like a life-threatening wound, but within a few seconds, the man’s head rolled on his neck and he fell quietly to his side.

  Bernard grabbed Tavi’s arm and crab walked down the battlements behind his shield, keeping it over both of them. He checked the man’s throat and grimaced. “Must have hit the artery. He’s gone.” Then he frowned and leaned closer. “This isn’t a Marat arrow.”

  The next legionare on the wall abruptly jerked. His head snapped back, where a few scant inches of his helmet showed over his shield. He blinked, a few times, and then blood ran down between his eyes and over one temple. His eyes unfocused, and then he toppled to his side as well, the arrow piercing his helmet.

  Amara dragged Fade down the wall and flicked a glance around his shield. “It’s him,” she hissed.

  The third man crouched behind his shield, tucking everything in close — too close. The next arrow slammed into the shield itself, pierced it, and went on into the man’s chest, at his ribs. He let out a wheezing cry, blood suddenly a froth on his mouth.

  Tavi stared in horror at the legionares dying on the wall beside him. It had happened so fast. It hadn’t taken half a minute for the unseen archer to kill three men.

  “We have to get out of here,” the last of the legionares stammered. He started to rise. “We can’t stay here.”

  “Stay down, you fool,” Bernard shouted.

  But the legionare turned to run down the wall, toward the rope that lay coiled by the gap. As soon as he rose, he cried out, and Tavi saw a thick black arrow impaling the man’s leg. He fell to the ground with a shout, landing on top of his shield.

  The next arrow struck square against his ear. The man folded quietly down, as though going to sleep, and didn’t move again.

  “Damn you, Fidelias!” Amara shouted, her voice raw.

  Tavi looked up and down the wall. Behind him, the battlements abruptly ended at the gap Doroga had crushed into the wall. Before him, the battlements ran steadily along until they reached a wall of solid rock. The builders of Garrison had used the old granite bones of the hills on either side of the fortress to serve as its north and south walls, and they were little more than a sharply sloped face of rock. “Can we climb that? Can we get out that way?”

  “With all those Knights Aeris?” Amara shook her head. “We wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  The courtyard itself, Tavi could hear, seethed with the cries of Marat and their beasts, the occasional scream of a horse, the snarling of wolves, the whistling shrieks of herdbane. Even if they did climb down the rope, they would only be falling from the frying pan and into the fire.

  “We’re trapped,” Tavi breathed.

  Another arrow slammed into Bernard’s shield, its steel tip bursting through the metal lining and wood of the shield, sharp point emerging for the width of several fingers and barely falling short of his temple. Bernard went white, but his expression didn’t change, and he covered himself and Tavi with the shield resolutely.

  Wind howled at the gap in the wall, and Tavi looked back to see the man who had ordered the Knights Aeris earlier being dropped off on the battlements by one of the airborne Knights. A moment later, the huge swordsman landed next to him.

  Amara drew in a breath, her face pale. “Get away from here, Fidelias.”

  The innocuous-looking man regarded those crouching on the walls with a flat, neutral gaze. “Give me the dagger.”

  “It isn’t yours.”

  “Give me the dagger, Amara.”

  For an answer, Amara rose, and drew the sword from her side. She took the dagger from her belt and tossed it onto the stones behind her. “Come take it, if you can. I’m surprised you didn’t kill everyone while you had the chance.”

  “I ran out of arrows,” the man said. “Aldrick. Kill them.”

  The swordsman drew his blade and began walking down the wall.

  Amara licked her lips and held her guardsman’s blade low, parallel to her thigh. Tavi could see her hand trembling.

  Beside him, he heard his uncle growl. Bernard jerked at the straps of the shield and loosened it from his arm. Then he handed the straps to Tavi and said, “Hold on to this.” Bernard rose, taking up the double-bitted axe, and moved down the wall to stand beside Amara.

  Tavi swallowed, staring.

  Aldrick paused several feet away, abruptly becoming absolutely still.

  Bernard shrugged one of his shoulders and then let out a shout and rolled forward, axe sweeping across his body in a vicious arc at the swordsman’s head. Aldrick ducked beneath the blow, and the axe bit into the stones of one of the merlons, shattering it into flying bits of rock and powder. Bernard spun, using the momentum, and brought the axe sweeping down in a blow meant to split the swordsman’s body in two.

  Aldrick waited until the very last second to move and then hardly seemed to move at all. He twisted his hips to one side, drawing the line of his body away from the descending axe, so that it whipped past his chest by the breadth of a hair.

  As he did, his sword rose. The tip plunged into Bernard’s flank, just above the belt of his trousers. Bernard stiffened, his eyes widening. He let out a short, harsh groan, and his fingers loosened from the handle of the axe. It fell to the battlements with a thump.

  Tavi stared in horror. Aldrick twisted the blade as he tore it back out of Bernard’s flank, then casually let him fall from the battlements, toward the chaos of the courtyard below.

  “Uncle!” Tavi screamed.

  Amara reached out a hand toward him as he fell. “Bernard!”

  Fade let out a shriek, dropping his shield, and ran back to Tavi, clutching to the boy and gibbering incoherently.

  Aldrick flicked his weapon to one side, and droplets of blood, of his uncle’s blood, splattered against the stones of the battlements.

  Amara’s face set into a sudden mask of cold disdain. “Crows take you, Fidelias,” she said in a cool, quiet voice. “Crows take you all.”

  Tavi didn’t see her strike, so much as he saw a blur of color the same shade as the cloak the Cursor wore. She moved toward the swordsman with her guardsman’s blade, and the sword made the air whistle as it darted at Aldrick.

  The swordsman took a pair of quick steps back, no surpriseon his face, no emotion. He lifted his blade, and caught Amara’s blow on it. Three more blows followed, so fast that they chimed in what almost seemed a single tone, but the swordsman stopped them
all, despite Amara’s sheer speed, his blade close to his body, his movements very short, quick.

  Tavi crawled forward, tears blurring his eyes, lugging the huge shield and the sobbing Fade with him. He recovered the dropped dagger and shoved it through his belt again, watching the battle, helpless and terrified.

  Amara whirled and crouched and whirled again, her blade whipping at Aldrick’s throat, knees, and throat again. The swordsman blocked each strike and then with a sudden, hard smile, his blade lashed out. Amara hissed, and the sword tumbled from her hands, falling to the stones near Tavi.

  Aldrick whipped his blade in a horizontal line, and Amara let out a harsh cry, staggering against the battlements, her hair fallen around her face. Tavi could see blood on the mail around her belly. Amara turned toward Aldrick, unsteady on her feet and swung her arm at him in a strike. The swordsman slapped her hand aside, and his foot lashed out at her knee. Amara gasped and fell to the stone. She struggled to rise again.

  Aldrick shook his head, as though disgusted, and slammed one heavy boot down onto Amara’s splinted arm. She let out a cry and jerked. She looked up at Tavi, her eyes not focused, her face bedsheet-white.

  Aldrick did not pause. He drew back his blade, crouching, and with two hands swung it toward the paralyzed Cursor.

  Tavi didn’t stop to think. He seized the fallen sword in his left hand and lunged forward from his knees, toward the swordsman. The guardsman’s blade flicked out and found the gap between the swordsman’s mail and the tops of his boots, drawing an insignificant cut across the skin. But it was enough to make Aldrick divert the blow aimed for Amara’s neck, to parry Tavi’s clumsy thrust aside.

  Aldrick snarled, his face suddenly suffused with scarlet anger, making an old scar stand out white against his cheek. He slammed his weapon against Tavi’s. Tavi felt the jolt of it in his shoulders and chest, and his arm went numb in a tinglingwash of sensation, from fingertip to elbow. The sword flew off somewhere behind him.

  He rolled back and tried to lift the shield to cover himself, but the swordsman kicked it aside, and it tumbled out of Tavi’s grasp and into the courtyard below.