First Lord's Fury (Codex Alera 6)

"Close!" bellowed Bernard back toward Riva over his shoulder. "Can you give them a shake?"

"Aye!" Riva panted, his jaw set. Then he closed his eyes again, speaking to the engineers, and suddenly the earth itself groaned. It jerked and quivered once. Then it lurched abruptly to one side, and Amara staggered against Doroga, who caught her and prevented her from falling.

Out on the field, two more vordbulks, no more than two hundred yards from the walls, screamed and slipped, falling awkwardly. They pitched over toward their sides in motions that were rendered slow-looking by sheer scale. It took them what seemed like seconds to fall, letting out bone-shaking basso calls of distress as they did. They hit the ground hard, driven by their own vast weight, sending tons of water and mud flying into the air with the impact. Dozens, if not hundreds, of vord were crushed beneath each of the monstrous creatures, whose weight was sufficient to leave a deep impression even in the baked clay. They thrashed, their limbs crushing more vord, and moaned out low calls that made the surface of the shallow water around them quiver.

"Good enough," Bernard said. "Good enough. It'll have to be." He looked at Giraldi, suddenly sweating. "Centurion, the stone."

Giraldi reached into his pouch and retrieved a smooth, oblong stone of the same color as the wall. He passed it to Bernard, who placed it upon the ground, and said, "Prepare to sound retreat."

The trumpeter looked nervously out at the field and licked his lips.

Bernard took a deep breath, then drove the heel of his boot down onto the stone, shattering it.

A pulse of cold wind seemed to flow out from the broken stone, raising dust and smearing fresh blood into new streaks. Seconds after it did, one of the merlons, the large blocks of stone atop battlements, suddenly quivered and groaned, its form twisting into a new shape. What looked like a Phrygian sled dog seemed to come shuddering out of the block of stone as if digging its way from a snowbank.

It promptly turned, lunged forward, and crushed a vord warrior against the opposite merlon, splattering the mantis to shards of broken chitin and smears of green-brown blood.

All along the walls, the canine gargoyles came to life and began smashing into the vord with implacable ferocity - and once all of them were free of the merlons, the stone beneath that recently vacated place began to quiver and heave, and more gargoyles began to emerge.

"Sound retreat!" Bernard ordered.

The trumpet began sounding the signal, and the Legions moved back instantly, as if Bernard's voice had carried to each and every one of them. Amara joined her husband and the rest of the command staff as they turned to abandon the walls, while all around them more and more canine gargoyles tore their way free of the stone that made the wall and began killing vord with what looked like ferocious glee, their upcurved stone tails wagging.

The mules and their teams were already on the move, and as Amara reached the Valley floor again, she noticed - the ground was growing soft even on this side of the wall. Riva stayed where he was, gasping, both hands on the ground.

Amara rushed to Riva's side, and said, "Your Grace! We've got to go!"

"In a minute!" he panted. "Ground on this side of the wall is all loose earth. Watering it will slow them down even more."

"Your Grace," Amara said, "we do not have a minute." She turned to the engineers and snapped, "You men heard the signal. Retreat."

Exhausted, only a few of them had enough energy to salute, but they all groaned to their feet to begin shambling away from both the steadily shrinking wall and the steadily growing numbers of gargoyles.

Amara looked wildly around her. Everything was flashing colored lights and screams and confusion. Here and there, vord broke through the living wall of angry gargoyles. Knights Terra and Ferrous would close in on each of them, slowing their progress to give the tired legionares more time to retreat. Men dragged the wounded toward safety. Horses screamed in panic. Vordbulks continued their vast, deep bellowing while the mantises shrieked and screamed fit to pierce Amara's eardrums.

She couldn't see Bernard and the command group.

"My lord!" she screamed. "We must go! Now!"

Riva let out a short, hollow-sounding gasp and sagged to one side, throwing out an arm to catch himself. It was too weak to hold him up, and he crumpled to the steadily dampening ground.

"Get up!" Amara shouted. She knelt and pulled one of the man's shoulders over hers. "Get up!"

Riva blinked and stared at her with glazed eyes.

Amara wanted to scream in frustration, but she managed to get him mostly upright. The two of them began staggering away from the wall, lurching like a pair of drunks. Faster. They had to move faster.

There was a whistling shriek behind her, and Amara turned to see half a dozen mantises rushing her.

Fighting would be impossible. Instead, she flung up a veil around herself and the disoriented High Lord. The charge of the mantises slowed abruptly as it lost a focus, and they began to turn this way and that, each of the six darting forward after the first moving thing it saw.

Unfortunately for mantis number three, the moving thing it saw was Walker the gargant. Though the mantis charged with berserk aggression, Walker barely took notice of it. Instead, he simply lifted one big paw and brought it down in a simple, smashing arc that ended the vord's offensive with abrupt and absolute finality.

"Amara!" boomed Doroga from Walker's back. A pair of gargoyles went hurtling by in pursuit of the vord who had broken through. Walker tossed his head and snorted as Doroga continued to call out. "Amara!"

Amara dropped the veil. "Doroga! Over here!"

The Marat leaned forward, and said something to Walker, and the gargant began striding toward her. Doroga grabbed the saddle rope and swung partway down Walker's side, holding out a hand. Amara guided Riva's arm into the Marat's grip. Doroga hauled the man up with a grunt and dragged him onto the saddle. Amara swarmed up the braided leather rope after them, and Doroga shouted something to Walker. The gargant whirled, both front paws coming up off the ground, and turned to the east. It started forward at a pace Amara had never seen in a gargant before - a kind of lumbering gallop that nearly threw her off its back every couple of steps and covered ground with impressive speed.

Doroga threw back his head in a howl of triumph, and Walker answered him. Amara looked over her shoulder. The wall of gargoyles was holding, but not perfectly. Hundreds of mantises were slipping through, and one of the vordbulks had reached the space where the wall had been, despite the treacherous footing. Walker was moving quickly, but not quickly enough to outrun the oncoming mantises.