Pyra caught the banner before she caught the soldier.
The pole struck her palm. The soldier struck the road, and a white-blue bolt tore through the space where his head had been.
For one ridiculous moment she stood holding the Crimson standard while he tried to drag himself out from under a fallen shield.
Then she threw the banner down.
“Leave it,” she said.
“My foot.”
“Not you. The flag.”
She hauled the shield aside, caught him beneath the arms, and dropped behind the broken wall as the next bolt struck. Stone chips rattled across her shoulders. The air smelled of hot metal and singed cloth.
The soldier stared at her. His mouth moved twice before anything came out.
“General.”
“Usually.”
He laughed once, by accident.
“What’s your name?”
“Tavin.”
“Can you stand, Tavin?”
“I think so.”
“Think quickly.”
He planted a boot. His knee buckled. Pyra caught him again.
Above the wall, the Augmenter gun turned with a dry mechanical whine.
Three breaths between shots. There had been two when the assault began.
She listened.
The gun fired. Somewhere behind her, someone screamed for a stretcher.
Three breaths.
A second shot split the wall a handspan above Tavin’s head.
Pyra looked uphill.
The storehouse stood at the crown of the ridge, its walls reinforced with blue-gray plates. Beyond the gate, rows of broad roofs sheltered the things the Crimson Hosts had come to take: fuel, metal, provisions. Enough, their scouts had promised, to keep this front alive.
Below, across the ravine, red cloth marked their own camp. Cookfires had gone unlit that morning. There had been too little to cook.
The gun whined again.
“Tavin. When I move, you go downhill. Stay behind the wall.”
“My orders are to keep the standard visible.”
“Your orders have improved.”
She pulled a strip from its torn edge and pressed it into his hand.
“There. Still carrying it.”
Then she rose.
The shot came where she had been.
Pyra crossed the open road in its wake, boots striking sparks from exposed stone. The next charge gathered overhead. Too slow. She reached the gun’s blind angle and drove her shoulder into the defender beneath it.
They hit the ground together.
A blade scraped across her armor. She struck the wrist holding it, kicked the weapon away, and rolled clear as another Augmenter lunged from the stairs.
For a heartbeat the whole battle narrowed to weight, distance, breath.
She loved that heartbeat.
The admission never grew more comfortable.
Her axe met the second fighter’s weapon. Fire ran briefly along the locked edges. The Augmenter staggered, and Pyra drove forward before the guard could recover.
Behind her, Crimson fighters poured into the space she had opened.
“Leave the gun,” she shouted. “Gate first.”
Someone cheered her name.
She wished they would save their breath.
They still had the gate to reach.
Warlord Kael stood beneath the shattered gun emplacement, studying the storehouse through the smoke.
A messenger waited nearby, holding one arm against his chest. Kael took the message with one hand and tightened the soldier’s slipping sling with the other.
“The reserve?” Pyra asked.
“Coming across.”
“All of it?”
“The gate must fall before they repair their outer guns.”
Pyra looked down the road. The last formed ranks were leaving the camp and climbing toward them. Behind those ranks remained the transport crews, the cooks, the people who could still walk but could no longer hold a shield.
“There’s less protection down there than I’d like.”
“There is less of everything than I’d like.” Kael folded the message. “You saw their fire slacken?”
“Yes.”
“So did I. We have a chance now. We may not have one tomorrow.”
Beyond the gate, a blue banner snapped above a roof. Wind pulled it straight, then let it hang.
Pyra had spent the last climb imagining the food beneath that roof. She disliked herself for it. Fighters lay on the road behind her, and she had been thinking about bread.
“How much fuel do we have left?” she asked.
“For the gate?”
“For after.”
Kael did not answer immediately.
A stretcher passed between them. One of its bearers had no helmet. The other had no boots.
“We take this place intact,” Kael said. “Then there can be an after.”
Pyra looked at the storehouse again.
No thunder of engines came from inside. No cranes moved above the roofs. The yard looked quieter than a supply station should, even under attack.
“Something’s wrong.”
“Something is wrong everywhere.”
“The yard.”
Kael followed her gaze. “Tell me what you need.”
It was why she could never dismiss the warlord, however much easier that might have made their arguments.
“No fire into the buildings. Break the hinge. Let me open it from within.”
A long pause.
“Once the reserve reaches the wall, you have your opening.”
“And if I need longer?”
“Give me a reason I can see.”