When distant shouts at last sounded from the outer courtyard, Selida was through the door, down the stairs, and across the inner bailey as if swept there by storm currents. "Slow down," Emmeline called from somewhere behind her, sweet voice chiding. "If I did not know better, I would think you awaited a lover's return."
Selida ungrit her teeth and turned so that her voice would carry back the way she had come. "No love could possibly be worth this much frustration." She winced as her words echoed against the stones. "I merely wish to see Ser Aegison's sour face when he is forced to admit that I was correct."
Emmeline came into view. "No, Lydris," she was saying, hauling on the young boy's arm, "you must walkâwalkâwith me."
Then her gaze slid past and as Selida watched, Emmeline's placid amusement drained into a slow, ashen crumbling â eyebrows rising, lips parting.
The bottom dropped out of Selida's stomach. She whipped around. Men had filled the courtyard by the guardhouse, disorganized horses blowing hard.
Kahldar's voice carried clearly to her: "âclose the portcullis. Raise the drawbridge. Archers to the south wall. Ready the oil; there will be ladders. Aim the arbalests at the shore; reinforcements are coming from their ships. This is a full counterattack!"
Beside her, Emmeline hoisted her struggling son into her arms. Her face had set, her lovely eyes hard. "I will barricade our people into the larders, so the kitchen and hall will be free for whatever needs the soldiers have."
Selida's heart beat in her throat. "Will youâ"
"I will. Go see our defenders."
***
Selida was among them in a moment. Her practiced eye counted their numbers, comparing the ones who had gone out to the ones who now returned. They were missing a dozen or more of their original complement. She touched the man who had lost an eye with Aluna's blessing. Though it did not restore his sight nor interrupt his shudders, it at least stopped the horrendous bleeding. She sent the man with the broken arm to await her at the chapel.
A stable hand swiped at the reins of Ser Aegison's horse, which squealed and pranced and snapped all who came near. It still bore its grisly load, and Selida saw up close at what Emmeline had known the moment she'd seen the cavalcade enter the castle. Ser Aegison had tied himself into the saddle, but based on the splinters of spear protruding from the gaping hole in his side, she guessed he had bled to death not long after they had left the clearing. His horse's sides gleamed crimson, as if barded.
As she stared, Kahldar stepped inside the beast's prancing hooves. He grabbed the reins away from the stableboy before the horse could haul the lad off his feet. He forced the destrier's head down and breathed deep into its nostrils. It came to a shuddering, gasping halt beside him, foam from its mouth falling onto the ground to mingle with Ser Aegison's blood. Selida saw Kahldar close his eyes for a moment, mouthing silent Welded words of prayer.
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He straightened. "Cut him down and lay out his body." The stableboy leapt to obey. Kahldar glanced down at Selida, and she could tell from his eyes that there was nothing in him now except the need to impose order on the present moment. "Lady Cleric, please fetch your supplies and await us at the guardhouse. The men will be in need of your skill before dawn."
"Kahldarâ"
For a bare moment his expression softened, before closing again into a mask of efficiency. "Later," he said. She took it into her heart like a promise.
A bugle of alarm sounded on the parapet. Selida ran for the chapel.
***
Kahldar did not see the enormous mace until it flared with inner light. It arced like a comet into his vision; the goliath wielding it soaring up over the edge of the wall as if Aluna had given him wings.
It was past midnight. Spatterings of intermittent rain slicked the parapet. They had repelled the first two waves of attackers, and the arbalests forced the reinforcements to dock further down the peninsula. The bulk of his guardsmen fell back to take a breather. Selida had been among them earlier, dragging the most wounded back to the hall. He ordered her back to the chapel as soon as he heard her say she was out of prayers.
A new wave of ladders appeared. Kahldar and three of the squires shoved two Tideland knights off the first of them. He heard a shout and turned his head.
The blow landed. The angle was particularly unlucky. His breastplate crumpled. The squires screamed warning, too late.
His chest imploded into spears of fireâand fused. He landed hard on his back, sparks flying through his visionâand then could not draw breath. The squires staggered back from him.
He heard her voice thenâwhy had she returned?âheard her scream his name âand suddenly every archer on the wall was screaming too as adders swarmed out of their quivers. Through a numbing black, he saw asps hurl themselves at his attacker. The mace went over the wall, the man shortly afterwards. His own men hauled him back, out of the fray.
***
A rough ceiling: the sentry post.
"I don't care. Cut it off if you have to," Kahldar heard Selida bark at a squire. His dented breastplate clattered to the side, exposing his mangled chest and chain.
"Lady, do you needâ"
"No," she snarled. Her face came into his vision: flushed skin, hair falling down in blood-matted coils. Then the burning agony in his body transformed into an ice so sharp he would have cried out, if his body were not already shattered and useless. The cold retreated as suddenly as it had come, washing out of him with a fizzing sensation that left his lungs prickling with pins and needles.
"Find him a replacement cuirass," she ordered over his shoulder. "I don't care whose." Then with shocking strength, she heaved him over, and he was coughing blood onto the stone floor. He gulped in air. His lungs felt itchy, wet, and full of splinters. His ribs were iron lacework. He struggled to get back onto his feet.
Selida shoved him back down onto the floor. "You. Don't you dare stand up until that child arrives with replacement armor."
"Selida," he breathed, "I have to. The wall is falling."
The page returned, and when she slammed the new cuirass over his bloodied mail, her eyes burned with unshed tears.
"If you must," she snapped. "But: By Law of Salvage, your life now belongs to Aluna." She leaned close. "Don't. Die."