Akella and the woman archer ducked down behind the safety of the merlons, panting.
“Arrows!” called the woman with the long braid. “More arrows!”
The call was repeated down the line, and Akella saw someone – a boy no older than thirteen or fourteen – running towards them with fresh arrows tucked beneath his arm.
“What’s your name?” Akella asked.
“Zandra,” the woman said.
“Zandra, do you know a first sergeant named Megs of Druet Village? Second Brigade of House Druet, Eagle Battalion, blue muster?”
Zandra shook her head, turning away from Akella to take the arrows from the boy. Then she was at it again, her attention off Akella and fully focused on the mountain men below.
A hundred yards to their right, in between Akella’s position and the stone bridge, the mountain men succeeded in getting a ladder up. They began to pour onto the battlement walkway. Archers cried out as they fell beneath spears, clubs, and axes. Zandra didn’t even seem to notice, still focused single-pointedly on the mountain men below. Mountain men charged in their direction, and Akella dropped the bow and picked up the spear she’d been using before. She hurled it at the mountain man in the lead, and it struck him square in the chest, driving him back a few feet before he fell. Zandra finally glanced up. Without missing a beat, she shifted her aim from below her to her right, dropping one, two, then three oncoming mountain men in the time it took Akella to draw a breath.
Something shattered below them, and the courtyard flooded with a fresh wave of tribesmen.
“Zandra! We’ve got to get out of here!” Akella yelled in her ear, but Zandra ignored her.
Tuh-boo! Tuh-boo!
Two short trumpet blasts: fall back. The outer keep was about to fall. Their only hope was refuge inside the inner keep, but Akella knew even the inner keep’s walls wouldn’t be enough. Castle Pellon was going to fall.
“To the inner keep!” Akella heard, shouted by officers scattered all along the walls.
“Protect the inner keep!”
“For the Empire!”
“For Empress Natasia!”
Akella seized Zandra by the back of her leather jerkin and spun her towards the stairs. “Don’t be a martyr! We have to fall back, you idiot!”
Pushing Zandra ahead of her, Akella ran along the walkway. She wanted to get as close to the inner keep as she could before taking the stairs down into the courtyard below. The trumpets blew again, and boots pounded behind Akella and Zandra as all the archers who’d been defending the wall ran for the safety of the inner keep.
Akella desperately scanned the crowd of retreating soldiers below for Megs. Had she fallen? Was she one of the bloodied, crumpled forms lying face down in the courtyard?
Akella and Zandra ran down the stairs closest to the gate leading into the inner keep. The portcullis whined as soldiers on the other side raised it just high enough for their retreating comrades to scramble beneath it. Akella lost Zandra in the crowd as panicked men and women crammed into the narrow passage between the outer and inner keeps.
No matter. Akella didn’t intend to stay and fight. The soldiers were doomed, and like the impressive archer Zandra, they might have the love and loyalty for the Empire that would lead them to die to defend the inner keep, but Akella didn’t. If she couldn’t find Megs, if the first sergeant already lay dead somewhere, then there was only one other person in Castle Pellon who still mattered to Akella – the little seagull.