Neversfall - Ed Gentry [50]
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Taennen sprinted forward, dirt flying into the air under his swift feet. Bringing his left arm up to cover his face with his shield, he reached out to grab Adeenya's belt. One arm would not carry her, but his momentum dragged her from her place out in the open courtyard just as an arrow struck the space. She continued to shout an alarm to the rest of the citadel.
Taennen dragged her several paces, stopped, and yelled for her to regain her feet. He looked over his shoulder to see the attackers, perhaps a dozen of the same masked invaders as before, in the middle of the courtyard. They carried long bows and loosed their arrows in every direction, showering the interior of the fortress with deadly shafts. They stood back to back in small groups, covering every direction, protecting one another from unseen reprisals. The invaders looked like statues in the garden of a wealthy merchant.
"Get down!" Adeenya knocked Taennen's leg from underneath him, toppling him to the ground. An arrow struck the building nearby. The archers had spotted them.
"Move!" she shouted. He rolled to his feet, and they ducked into the cover of the nearest building.
Taennen peered through to the other side to find two of the enemy archers had fallen to bowshots from the defenders, but sprawled about the courtyard at least three times that many Maquar and Durpari were dead or injured. Taennen stood flat against the wall again and forced a deep breath. His eyes came to rest at the top of the northern wall where he saw Loraica positioning Maquar archers. He made hand signs indicating that he would try to make it to the western wall to muster more fire power from there. Loraica nodded at this communication and turned her attention back to the men with her.
"Get to the eastern wall. I'll head for the western," Taennen said to Adeenya.
Adeenya nodded. She patted his shoulder and ran east, leaving the safe cover of the structure. He watched her dash across the courtyard, arrows thunking into the dirt behind her as though she were dropping them as she ran to make a trail she could follow back.
Loraica's archers loosed enough arrows to cover Taennen as he made his move to the western wall. He breathed a sigh of relief as his foot made the bottom step of the northwest stairwell. He scanned the area for ally troops and saw a pair of Durpari soldiers running toward him. Taennen waved the men on and ordered the two to follow him up the stairs.
When they reached the top of the wall, they found that more of the enemy bowmen had fallen, but over half a dozen still remained. Taennen ran along the wall, the Durpari soldiers following him. He stopped at a point from where the two soldiers with him would have clean shots to the center of the courtyard and barked the order for them to attack. Farther down the wall, several Maquar were already loosing their weapons at the invaders.
At least ten Durpari and Maquar soldiers were dead in the courtyard, having attempted to charge the enemy archers. An arrow sailed high toward the wall, and Taennen shouted for the two Durpari men to lie flat. The missile flew wide of its target and bounced off the wall behind him. The Durpari men found their feet, offering their thanks for his intervention, and set about firing at the invaders.
Two more enemies fell. Their attack would have to end soon. One of the invaders made a noise, an unintelligible shout to the others. Two of the archers shouted back and pulled arrows from their boots, firing the missiles perhaps twenty paces from their position, straight into the ground. The courtyard suddenly filled with an unnatural darkness, which covered a large portion of the interior of the fortress from the ground to halfway up the walls. The citadel defenders stopped firing, no longer able to see their targets within.
Many tense moments passed before the uncanny darkness dissipated. Taennen loosed a breath and felt his shoulders relax,