Jim Butcher - Academ's Fury

And then Amara moved, all at once , a concentrated explosion of every nerve and muscle fiber that moved her sword arm alone. She drove the sturdy legionare's blade forward, and its tip dived into the queen's mouth, into her throat, and on through, parting bone and tissue. There was a horrible sensation of impact, hot pain in her arm, her leg, and a shattering collision with the ground.

Amara lay stunned for a confused moment, unable to understand why she suddenly could not see, and why someone was pouring water into her face. Then a weight was lifted from her, and she remembered the cold rain falling from the sky. Bernard lifted her, helped her sit up, and Amara stared for a moment at the unmoving corpse of the queen beside her, a legionare's blade driven to the hilt into her mouth.

"You did it, love," Bernard said. "You did it."

She leaned wearily against him. Around them, she could see perhaps twenty legionares fighting shield to shield. Doroga, wounded with a dozen small cuts, stood beside Walker. Though the beast shook its tusks defiantly, it hardly seemed able to remain standing, much less to fight, and when it lunged at one of the taken, the thing easily evaded the clumsy, limping motion.

Amara blinked the rain out of her eyes and watched as scores of taken fought to overwhelm the exhausted, outnumbered Alerans.

"We did it," she said, and just speaking the words was exhausting. "We did it."

Thunder rolled again, amidst angry lightning, and the firelit clouds of the furystorm rolled down the mountainside toward the embattled scene.

"Hold me?" Amara asked quietly.

"All right," Bernard said.

And then a storm of fire and deafening sound roared down from the low clouds and charred two dozen of the taken holders to ash and blackened bones.

Amara gasped, leaning weakly against Bernard.

"Close in!" Bernard bellowed. "Close in, stay together, stay low!" Amara was aware of the legionares , struggling to obey Bernard's orders, of Doroga urging Walker in one of the Marat tongues. But mostly she was conscious of another flicker of light in the clouds, an eight-pointed star formed of lightning that danced from point to point so swiftly to make it seem a wheel of sudden fire-a fire that coalesced, flashed down, and charred another, even broader swath of the taken to corpses.

She had to have been imagining it. From the furious sky appeared dozens of forms-Knights Aeris, both flying formation and serving as bearers for open aerial litters. Twice more, lightning tore from the heavens, rending the ranks of the taken, and then another eight Knights Aeris descended low enough to be seen, gathering a final burst of lightning into an eight-pointed star between them, and hurling it down at the taken.

Men in armor, mercenaries she thought, dismounted from the litters and engaged the remaining taken. There was a stunned moment of shock. And then came a roar from the surviving legionares as impossible hope washed over them.

Amara struggled to rise, and Bernard supported her, his sword held still in one hand, as the mercenaries and the legionares , between them, shattered the rest of the taken and put them down. Most of the fighting mercenaries wielded blades with the devastating grace and skill of master metalcrafters.

"Knights," Amara whispered. "They're all Knights. Every one of them."

A man cut down three of the taken in as many strokes, then casually turned and began walking toward Bernard before the last one had fully fallen to the ground. He was a giant of a man, heavily armored, and as he approached he took off his helmet and bore it under one arm. He had dark hair, a beard, an angry scar, not too old on one cheek, and his eyes were calm, detached, passionless.

"You," Bernard said to the man.

"Aldrick ex Gladius," Amara said. "Of the Windwolves. In service to the High Lord Aquitaine. I thought you were dead."

The captain of the mercenaries nodded his head. "That was the idea," he said. He gestured around at the mercenaries now engaged in mopping up the last of the enemy and looking for wounded in need of assistance. "Compliments of Steadholder Isana, Lord Count, Countess Amara."

Bernard pursed his lips. "Really? Then she did find help at the capital."

Aldrick nodded once. "We were dispatched here to aid the garrison by whatever means we could. I apologize we were not here sooner, but bad weather slowed us. Though I suppose it meant we had a nice, ripe storm to play with when we did arrive." He glanced up at the skies and mused, "It takes the fun out of things, but it isn't professional to let that kind of resource go to waste."

"I cannot say that I am sorry to have your help, Aldrick," Bernard said. "But neither can I say that I am glad to see you. The last time we met, you all but gutted me on the walls of Garrison."

Aldrick tilted his head to one side, and said, "You've been a soldier. That wasn't personal, Your Excellency. I neither offer you any apology nor take any particular pleasure in what I did. But I need you to tell me if you can live with that, right now. One way or another, it's got to be settled immediately."

Bernard frowned at the man and nodded once. "I can. I would have word of Steadholder Isana."

Aldrick nodded. "Of course, though I have little enough to give you. But first, Your Excellency-"

Bernard slashed a hand at the air. "Bernard. You've saved my men's lives. You don't need to use the title."

Aldrick tilted his head to one side, and his expression changed by some subtle degree. He inclined his head, a minor but significant gesture of respect, and continued, "I suggest that we take shelter in that cave, then. My Knights Aeris stole a great deal of a powerful wind fury's thunder, and it will send windmanes to seek vengeance. With your permission, Count, we'll move into the caves to shelter until the storm is past. My watercrafters can see to your wounded while we are there."

Amara frowned steadily at Aldrick, but when Bernard glanced at her she nodded weakly. "We can sort out our past differences after we've all survived the storm."

"Excellent," Aldrick said, turning away with professional preoccupation. He flipped his hand in a short series of gestures at one of his fellow mercenaries, who spread word to the rest of them. Bernard passed on orders to gather up the Aleran wounded and make for the cave in order to find shelter from the still-coming storm.

"I can walk," Amara told Bernard. She took a step to prove it and almost fell down.

He caught her, and said, "Gently, love. Let me take you. You've hit your head."

"Mmmm," Amara murmured with a sigh. Then she blinked her eyes slowly open and said, "Oh, dear."

"Oh dear?" Bernard asked.

She reached up and touched her throat, where Bernard's ring still hung by its chain. "Oh, dear. We've survived. We're alive. And… and we're wed."

Bernard blinked a few times, then mused, "Why, yes. I suppose that's true. We've lived. And we've married. I suppose now we'll have to stay together. Perhaps even be in love."

"Exactly," Amara repeated, closing her weary eyes with a sigh and leaning against the broad strength of his chest. "This ruins everything."

He walked several steps, carrying her without apparent effort, before he said, "Will you still have me, then?"

She lifted her face to press a kiss against his throat, and murmured, "Forever, my lord, if you will have me."

He answered her with his voice thick with emotion. "Aye, my lady. And honored to."

Tavi went first, rushing back up the winding stairway. The clash of steel on steel warned them that they were drawing near, and several steps later, the steps went dark and slick with spilled blood. Tavi looked up to see Captain Miles holding the stairs against the Canim. One Cane was down, crumpled lifelessly to the stone stairs, and its blood had formed the stream that stained them. The dead Cane's companions had simply walked over the corpse, digging clawed toes into it to secure their footing on the treacherous, slick stairway.