Jim Butcher - Academ's Fury

"They're children," she snapped to Giraldi.

"Move it," Giraldi barked. "Move it, boys, you heard the Countess."

Legionares stomped into the chamber, seized the still forms in it at random, and hurried out again. Amara left the chamber last, and just as she did, the smooth stone floor suddenly bulged upward just as the ceiling swelled downward. Amara shot a look over her shoulder, and was uncomfortably reminded of the hungry maw of a direwolf as the bedrock flowed and moved like a living thing. The opening to the room contracted, and the walls on either side of the ramp suddenly got narrower. "Hurry!" she shouted to the men ahead of her.

"I can't!" Frederic groaned.

Legionares sprinted up the ramp, but the stone was collapsing inward again too quickly. Scarcely noticing the weight of the limp child she carried, Amara cried out to Cirrus, and her fury came howling down into the slot in the stone like a hurricane. Vicious, dangerous winds abruptly swept down the ramp beneath and behind them, and then rushed up toward the surface like a maddened gargant. The winds threw Amara into the back of the legionare in front of her before it caught the man and his charge up, and sent them both into the next man in line, until in all a half dozen legionares flew wildly up the ramp and out of the grasp of the closing stone.

The ground grated again, a harsh, hateful sound, and the stone closed seamlessly back into its original shape, catching the end of Amara's braid as it did. The braid snared her as strongly as any rope, and the winds propelling her swung her feet out and up into the air as her hair was seized by the rock. She thumped back down to the stone flat on her back, and got the wind knocked out of her in a rush of breathless, stunned pain.

"Watercrafter!" bellowed Giraldi. "Healers!"

Someone took the child gently from Amara's arms, and she became vaguely aware of the infantry's watercrafter and several grizzled soldiers with healer's bags draped over one shoulder rushing over to them.

"Easy, easy," Bernard said from somewhere nearby. He sounded winded. Amara felt his hand on her shoulder.

"Are they all right?" she gasped. "The children?"

"They're looking at them," Bernard said gently. His hands touched her head briefly, then ran back around the back of her head, gently probing. "You hit your head?"

Amara shook her head. "No. My braid caught in the rock."

She heard him let out a slow breath of relief, then felt him feeling his way along the length of the braid. When he got to the end of it, he said, "It's only an inch or two. It's right at the tie."

"Fine," Amara said.

She heard the rasp of Bernard's dagger being drawn from his belt. He applied the honed edge of the knife to the end of her braid and cut it loose from the rock.

Amara sighed as the pressure on her scalp eased. "Help me sit up," she said.

Bernard gave her his hand and pulled her to sit on the courtyard. Amara tried to get her breath back, and began methodically to work the now-loose braid out before it started tangling in knots.

"Sir?" Janus said. "Looks like we got here in time."

Bernard closed his eyes. "Thank the great furies. Who do we have here?"

"Children," Janus reported. "None of them over the age of eight or nine, and two infants. Four boys, five girls-and a young lady. They're unconscious but breathing, and their pulses are strong."

"A young lady?" Amara asked. "The steadholt's caretaker?"

Bernard squinted up at the sun and nodded. "It would make sense." He got up and paced over to the recumbent forms of the children and of one young woman. Amara rose , paused while her balance swayed a little, then followed him over.

Bernard grimaced. "It's Heddy. Aric's wife."

Amara stared down at a frail-looking young woman with pale blond hair and fair skin, only lightly weathered by sun and wind. "Sealed them in," she murmured. "And set their furies to make sure they stayed that way. Why would they do such a thing?"

"To make it impossible for anyone to get to them but the people who put them there," Bernard rumbled.

"But why?"

Bernard shrugged. "Maybe the holders figured that if they weren't around to get their children out, they didn't want whoever was attacking them to have the chance."

"Even if they died?"

"There are worse things than death," Doroga said. His rumbling basso startled Amara into a twitch of reflexive tension. The huge Marat headman had moved up behind them more silently than an Amaranth grass lion. "Some of them much worse."

One of the babies started squeaking out a stuttering little cry of complaint, and a moment later the infant was joined by the exhausted sobs of another child. Amara glanced up to find the children all beginning to stir.

Giraldi's watercrafter, a veteran named Harger, rose from the child beside Heddy and knelt over the young woman. He put his fingertips lightly on Heddy's temples, his eyes closed for a moment. Then he glanced up at Bernard, and said, "Her body is extremely strained. I don't know that her mind is straight right now, either. It might be better to give her the chance to sleep."

Bernard frowned and glanced at Amara, an eyebrow lifted.

She grimaced. "We need to talk to her. Find out what happened."

"Maybe one of the children could tell us," Bernard said.

"Do you think they could have understood what was going on?"

Bernard glanced at them, his frown deepening, and shook his head. "Probably not. Not well enough to risk more lives on what a small child remembers."

Amara nodded her agreement.

"Wake her up, Harger," Bernard said gently. "Careful as you can."

The old watercrafter nodded, his misgivings clear in his eyes, but he turned back to Heddy, touched her temples again, and frowned in concentration.

Heddy awoke instantly and violently, screaming in a raw, tortured wail. Her pale blue eyes flew open-torturously wide-the panicked eyes of an animal certain that its hungry pursuer had moved in for the kill. She thrashed her arms and legs wildly, and a sharp and sudden breeze, strong but unfocused, swept through the courtyard. It spun wildly, throwing up dust, straw, and small stones. "No!" Heddy shrieked. "No, no, no!"

She went on screaming the same word, over and over, and it sounded like she was tearing her own throat raw as she did.

"Heddy!" Bernard rumbled, eyes half-squinted against the wind-driven debris. "Heddy! It's all right. You're safe!"

She went on screaming, struggling, kicking, and bit the hand of one legionare who knelt along with Harger and Bernard in an attempt to restrain her. She struggled with a strength born of a fear so severe that it was its own kind of madness.

Crows take it!" Harger snarled. "We'll have to sedate her." Wait," Amara snapped. She knelt beside the struggling holder. "Heddy," she said in the softest voice she could to be heard over the screams. "Heddy, its all right. Heddy, the children are all right. The Count is here with the guard from Garrison. They're safe. The children are safe."

Heddy's panicked eyes flicked over to Amara, and her eyes focused on someone for the first time since she'd awoken. Her screams slowed a little, and her expression was tortured, desperate. It raked at Amara to see a woman in so much pain. But she kept her voice gentle, repeating quiet reassurances to the terrified holder. When Heddy had quieted even more, Amara put her hand on the young woman's head, stroking her cobweb-fine hair back from her forehead, never stopping.

It took nearly half an hour, but Heddy's screams died out into cries, then into groans, and finally into a series of piteous whimpering sounds. Her eyes stayed locked on Amara's face, as if desperate to find some kind of reference point. With a final shudder, Heddy fell silent, and her eyes closed, tears welling.