“You are correct,” Deepe said. “But neither of us can do anything about that.” He raised his hand, doing something that Ituralde couldn’t see. A flash of red light appeared over his hand—the signal he used to draw the others to him. “Prepare your men, General, Captain. It will not be long. They cannot continue to hold that kind of Power without…consequences.”
Yoeli nodded, then hurried away. Ituralde took Deepe’s arm, drawing his attention.
“You Asha’man are too important a resource to lose,” Ituralde said. “The Dragon sent us here to help, not to die. If this city falls, I want you to take the others and whatever wounded you can and get out. Do you understand, soldier?”
“Many of my men will not like this.”
“But you know it is for the best,” Ituralde said. “Don’t you?”
Deepe hesitated. “Yes. You are correct, as you so often are. I will get them out.” He spoke in a lower voice. “This is a hopeless resistance, my Lord. Whatever is happening out there, it will be deadly. It galls me to suggest it…but what you have said about my Asha’man applies to your soldiers as well. Let us flee.” He said the word “flee” with bitterness.
“The Saldaeans wouldn’t leave with us.”
“I know.”
Ituralde considered it. Finally, he shook his head. “Every day we delay up here keeps these monsters away from my homeland a day longer. No, I cannot go, Deepe. This is still the best place to fight. You’ve seen how fortified those buildings are; we can hold inside for a few days, split apart, keep the army busy.”
“Then my Asha’man could stay and help.”
“You have your orders, son. You follow them. Understand?”
Deepe snapped his jaw shut, then nodded curtly. “I will take—”
Ituralde didn’t hear the rest. An explosion hit.
He didn’t feel it arrive. He was standing with Deepe one moment, then found himself on the floor of the wall walk, the world strangely silent around him. His head screamed with pain and he coughed, raising a trembling hand to find his face bleeding. There was something in his right eye; it seared with pain when he blinked. Why was everything so quiet?
He rolled over, coughing again, right eye squeezed shut, the other watering. The wall ended a few inches away from him.
He gasped. An enormous chunk of the northern wall was simply gone. He groaned, looking back in the other direction. Deepe had been standing beside him…
He found the Asha’man lying on the wall walk nearby, head bleeding. His right leg ended in a ragged rip of flesh and broken bone above where the knee should have been. Ituralde cursed and stumbled forward, dropping to his knees beside the man. Blood was pooling beneath Deepe, but he was still twitching. Alive.
I need to sound the alarm…
Alarm? That explosion would have been alarm enough. Inside the wall, buildings were demolished, crushed by stones flying in a spray away from the hole. Outside, Trollocs were loping forward, carrying rafts to cross the moat.
Ituralde pulled the Asha’man’s belt off and used it to bind his thigh. It was all he could think to do. His head was still throbbing from the explosion.
The city is lost…Light! It’s lost, just like that.
Hands were helping him up. Dazedly he glanced about. Connel; he’d survived the blast, though his coat was torn to shreds. He pulled Ituralde away while a pair of soldiers took Deepe.
The next minutes were a blur. Ituralde stumbled down the stairs from the wall, nearly pitching head first fifteen feet onto the cobbles. Only Connel’s hands kept him from falling. And then…a tent? A large open-sided tent? Ituralde blinked. A battlefield should not be so quiet.
Waves of heat washed over him. He screamed. Sounds assaulted his ears and mind. Screams, rock breaking, trumpets sounding, drums throbbing. Men dying. It all hit him at once, as if plugs had been yanked from his ears.
He shook himself, gasping. He was in the sick tent. Antail—the quiet, thin-haired Asha’man—stood above him. Light, but Ituralde felt exhausted! Too little sleep mixed with the strain of being Healed. As the sounds of battle consumed him, he found his eyelids treacherously heavy.
“Lord Ituralde,” Antail said, “I have a weave that will not make you well, but it will make you think you are well. It could be harmful to you. Do you want me to proceed?”
“I…” Ituralde said. The word came out as a mumble. “It…”
“Blood and bloody ashes,” Antail muttered. He reached forward. Another wave of Power washed through Ituralde. It was like a broom sweeping through him, pushing away all of the fatigue and confusion, restoring his senses and making him feel as if he’d had a perfect night’s rest. His right eye didn’t hurt anymore.
There was something lingering, deep down, an exhaustion in his bones. He could ignore that. He sat up, breathed in and out, then looked to Antail. “Now that is a useful weave, son. You should have told me you could do this!”
“It’s dangerous,” Antail repeated. “More dangerous than the women’s version, I’m told. In some ways more effective. You’re trading alertness now for a more profound exhaustion later on.”
“Later on, we won’t be in the middle of a city that is falling to the Trollocs. Light willing, at least. Deepe?”
“I saw to him first,” Antail said, gesturing to the Asha’man lying on a nearby cot, his clothing singed and his face bloodied. His right leg ended in a healed stump, and he appeared to be breathing, though unconscious.
“Connel!” Ituralde said.
“My Lord,” the soldier said, stepping up. He’d found a squad of soldiers to act as a personal guard.
“Let’s investigate this mess,” Ituralde said. He ran out of the sick tent, toward Cordamora Palace. The city was in chaos, groups of Saldaeans and Domani rushing this way and that. Connel, showing foresight, sent a messenger to find Yoeli.
The palace stood nearby, just before the front gate. Its wall had been damaged in the blast, but the building still looked hale. Ituralde had been using it as a command post. Men would expect to find him here. They ran inside, Connel carrying Ituralde’s sword—the belt had been cut free at some point. They climbed to the third floor, then ran out onto a balcony that surveyed the area broken by the blast.
As he’d originally feared, the city was lost. The swath of broken wall was being defended by a hastily assembled jumble of defenders. A mounting tide of Trollocs were throwing down rafts on the moat, some beginning to surge forward, followed by Fades. Men ran through
