her side in the heart of battle, but he had pledged his troth to her. He turned and barked out the names of squad leaders as he hurried down the steps.
With a squeal of tormented metal, the gates began to open beneath Zaranda's feet. Surprise gone, the remaining raiders had to get inside as quickly as possible. Some still clambered up the ladder. Zaranda leaned down to help Fiora over the top.
She heard a deep hum and the plangent clatter of a steel-tipped quarrel striking rock. Even as the metal rang, a longbow uttered a deep-voiced twang of response and a scream spurted from the tower. A cross-bowman had tried to mark her down from the safety of an arrow loop.
Stillhawk stood behind her, bow still upheld. He nodded acknowledgment to her grin of thanks. At this range, the narrow shooting loops gave only an illusion of cover where the woodsman was concerned; if you could see to shoot through it, he could put an arrow in your eye.
Unfortunately, with the exception of Farlorn sober, the ranger was the only marksman among them with nearly the skill for that feat. A few crossbowmen in the keep could massacre her youthful volunteers in the open courtyard. She dashed downstairs and toward the keep, Crackletongue in hand.
The door at the tower's base was iron-bound oak, and likely a hand or more in thickness. The hinges were on the inside-which meant the door opened inward, a weakness, but likewise prevented an attacker from forcing it open with two quick strokes of a sledgehammer to burst the hinges. Doubtless a massive beam set in brackets barred it within. It would take long minutes for the strongest man to batter through it with an axe.
Zaranda was prepared for this one. She flung forth her left hand, spoke words of command. She felt the heavy beam, bound it to her will, willed it to rise, heard the startled outcries from within.
She felt the bar come free, let it drop outside the brackets, powerless to do more. She raised a foot and gave the door a furious kick.
Her door-opening spell had dumbfounded the defenders; none thought to hurl his weight against the door. It swung ponderously open. Zaranda charged inside.
A pale blur in candlelit gloom, a face startled beneath a steel cap and within a mail fringe. Zaranda slashed it across. Its owner staggered back, howling. Zaranda caught him by the hauberk and shoved him against mates trying to close from her left, while Crackletongue, alive with blue-white fire, did deadly work to her right.
A clang, a clash, a bellowing cry, and she was through to the steps that wound upward. She lunged up three, turned back to parry a spear thrust with her blade, grabbed the ashen haft, and slew the wielder with a forehand stroke. Reversing her grip on the spear, she threw it.
It was a clumsy cast, left-handed, and did no one harm. It wasn't intended to. It did make the clot of guards jump back, which was her intent. Before they could recover, she reached in her pouch and flung a fistful of skunk- cabbage leaves in their faces, uttering an incantation. Thick green smoke swirled up from the leaves, surrounding the guardsmen, who began to cough, retch, and weep uncontrollably. Her own eyes streaming from the fringe effects, Zaranda bolted up the stairs.
A story up, she came upon a guard swinging a cocked crossbow away from a firing loop to aim at her. She hurled herself at his legs and tackled him. They lay on the floor writhing. The man was shorter than she but had strength on her, and kept stupidly trying to force his weapon to bear on her instead of beating her over the head with it. His breath and body stank in her nostrils, and his garb was greasy to her touch.
She succeeded in rolling atop him. At once she saw a second soldier standing in the middle of the round chamber, pointing a crossbow at her by the light of a single reed torch. Frantically she threw herself to the right, dragging her opponent's body over hers by sheer force of will. The crossbow thumped. The man Zaranda was wrestling with yelled in anguish as the bolt pierced his back and pinned him to the wood-plank floor.
Fortunately it missed Zaranda. She eeled out from under him and lunged for the other. This one had wit to drop his now-useless weapon and grab for his dirk. Crackletongue's point took him in the throat before he could draw.
There were straw-stuffed pallets strewn about the floor, as well as empty wine bottles and discarded crusts of bread and cheese. Breathing through her mouth, Zaranda grabbed up one of the pallets. Hoping few vermin were migrating into her hair and clothing, she continued up the stairs that wound around the inner side of the keep wall, holding the pallet before her.
As she came to the next level, she cast it up and into the chamber. Crossbows twanged. Zaranda popped up, flung a pinch of fine sand from the river bottom, shouted words. Three guards collapsed into slumber.
Rubber-legged more from magic-making than exertion, Zaranda caught up the pallet again. A blue flash split the night outside, the glare through the arrow loop turning the chamber momentarily day-bright. Thunder cracked like the world breaking open.
Through ringing in her ears, Zaranda heard screams from outside. Someone was loosing potent magic against her people. As she paused, the lightning lashed out again.
Frantic, she dashed upstairs. A guard waited at the next floor. She threw the pallet over his head and put her shoulder into him, thrusting him back against the wall. His helmeted head struck stone with a clang.
Ten feet away, another soldier had just finished hooking the thick string of a crossbow into the claw that held it cocked. He had not had time to drop in a bolt. As Zaranda rushed him he threw the weapon down and snatched up a spear.
He thrust at her. She put her weight back, skidded, stopped. He jabbed at her again. She parried. Behind her, she heard the first soldier cursing and floundering. Apparently he was coming out second-best in his contest with the pallet.
Zaranda threw a looping wild cut at the man's eyes.
He ducked his head back out of harm's way and, whooping with triumph, drove his point for her unprotected body. Crackletongue whirled around and slashed his leading arm. He howled, and lost his grip with that hand. She cut him down before he could shift grip for a one-handed stab.
The other guard finally escaped the pallet. Zaranda knelt, caught up the fallen crossbow, plucked a quarrel from a wall-mounted rack, and slotted it home. As the guard charged, she shot him through the body. He cried out and fell backward down the stairs.
Blue lightnings stabbed and crashed outside. Some sort of potent magic artifact was clearly in play here. No one's mind could hold so many spells of such cogency. At least, no one who'd be keeping the company of a hedge- robber like Lutwill.
Her urgent mission had abruptly changed from an effort to safeguard her youthful warriors from cross- bowmen to stopping whatever magic was being unleashed against them. For the first time, she wished she'd actually brought helpers with her into the tower, rather than charging in alone-and sealing the entrance behind her with a persistent stinking cloud spell.
More cautiously, she advanced up the final set of stairs, sword in hand. Blue flames danced along both edges of Crackletongue's blade. There was evil afoot here.
What she most feared was to find another stout door sealed against her; she had used up her magic for that. But the heavy trapdoor that might seal off the penthouse from the rest of the keep was thrown open, inviting.
Too inviting; she wasn't that ingenuous. She gathered herself, pantherish on strong haunches, then launched herself upward in a mighty leap. It carried her up through the entry hole and beyond. She tucked a shoulder and rolled as a blade clashed on the floor behind her.
She fetched up against the wall amid a pile of furs that smelled worse than they had when attached to their original owners. Clearly hygiene was not a matter much on Baron Lutwill's mind. A young woman cowered nearby, naked but for a bearskin clutched against her, straw-colored hair hanging limp in a scared, blank face.
'Keep out of the way,' Zaranda told her. 'We'll get you free of this.'
The penthouse was a larger version of the filthy barracks on the second floor, though more sumptuously furnished. Instead of straw pallets, furs and stained cushions lay scattered across the floor. On the walls hung once-fine tapestries that, it appeared, had seen much use for the wiping of greasy fingers. The discarded wine bottles were of a better vintage than the ones on the lower floor, but the crusts and mold-green cheese rinds and gnawed joints were much the same.
The windows were much larger than the arrow loops below, glazed with heavy age-wavy panes set in lead. These were apparently stout; an arrow crashed against the pane and made a mere bird-beak clack before it fell harmlessly away.
A slight man in a black robe stood by the window. He was a mage, to judge by the large sphere he held up to
