WITHIN THE HOUR, the screaming began to fade. The clash of steel that had echoed through the citadel grew sporadic, then stopped entirely. In the silence that followed, I heard new sounds rising from below. Footsteps. Voices carrying orders.
Looking around, I saw that the tower itself hung like a stone fist thrust from the citadel’s outer wall. Three parapets bound it to the ramparts. One stretched east along the cliff’s edge. Another ran west where the wall curved back toward the courtyard. A third reached inward to kiss the inner wall. Below the eastern parapet there was nothing but air and appetite. A drop so clean and terrible that fog could drift below us.
I moved to an arrow slit for a better view. Below the western parapet lay the courtyard where Fascino’s men now filtered in. Thirty, perhaps. Maybe more. They spread themselves around the tower’s base and stopped. No ladders. No torches. They simply waited.
“We’re trapped, aren’t we?” Sim’s voice came from beside me. Not a question, really. More like the acknowledgment of a truth we both already knew.
I said nothing. What was there to say?
Behind us, Roderic’s breathing had gone quick and shallow. “Lugosi will come.” His voice climbed higher with each word. “He has to. Any hour now.”
“No one’s coming,” I said, the words stopping him mid-breath. “This is what we have.”
Wilem muttered a curse. Sim glanced at him but said nothing, his fingers tracing the worn stone of the window frame. Then he turned to one of the guards who had managed to stay sober enough to stand. “What do we have left?”
The man’s shrug carried the weight of a hundred disappointed mornings. “Oil. Pitch. Some gear upstairs.” He paused, his eyes drifting to the stones beneath our feet. “But like you guessed, no tunnels out.”
Sim nodded slowly, taking in what little we had to work with. Then his attention shifted, settling on me where I leaned against the wall.
I tried to hide it. Tried to keep my breathing even, to stand without the wall bearing half my weight. Tried not to favor my left side where the pain bloomed brightest. But Sim saw the truth anyway. “You’re hurt worse than you’re letting on.”
“I’ll manage.”
“You can barely stand,” he said, and there was an edge to his voice I rarely heard. “Let me help.”
I pushed myself away from the wall to prove him wrong. My shoulder answered with a bright knife of pain that turned my vision white at the edges. The world tilted. I caught myself against the stone again, one hand flat against its patient surface while I waited for the brightness to fade. My pride had kept me standing this long, but my body was too broken for it to hold much longer. “Alright.”
Sim was at my side in a heartbeat. His hand found my good shoulder, and he helped me across the floor to where grain sacks lay stacked against the wall. When I finally sat, the relief was worth whatever pride I’d lost.
We waited there through the long afternoon and into evening. The light changed from gold to amber to ash. No rescue came. The city beyond our walls held its breath and said nothing.
For a time, Roderic paced. Back and forth across the worn stone floor, muttering prayers that grew quieter as the hours passed. The guards found bottles and passed them hand to hand until there was nothing left to pass. In a corner, Auri sat humming something soft I couldn’t name. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe through the pain.
One of the guards sidled over then, twisting his cap in his hands. “Begging your pardon, sir,” he said, not quite meeting my eyes. “My boy’s heading off to the University come autumn. If we make it through this, I don’t suppose you could see to a proper jacket for him? Nothing fancy. Just something that’d hold together through a winter or two.”
It took me a moment to remember what face I was wearing. “I’ll see what I can do,” I said.
He nodded, satisfied, and went back to his post.
Then Sim moved.
He started with the arrow slit, studying the courtyard below with the same focus he once gave to difficult translations. After a long moment, he turned to the nearest guard. “Show me where you keep the oil.”
The man gestured toward the stairs, and Sim disappeared into the darkness above. When he returned, he knelt and began drawing in the dust. After a moment, Wil came closer to watch, then knelt beside him.
“Here,” Sim said, pointing. “And here. We’ll need three men at each position.” His voice carried none of his usual hesitation. “Wil, help me move the cauldron.”
They worked through the failing light. Sim studied the windows, counted arrows, and tested the weight of the pitch pot himself. When one guard protested that it was hopeless, Sim squared his shoulders and picked up the heaviest oil jar, carrying it to the murder hole without a word. He began setting it in place, hands steady despite its weight.
That guard watched for a moment. Then he picked up a jar of his own.
Another guard followed. Then another. The bottles they’d been nursing found the floor. One by one they rose, drawn to someone who refused to surrender when surrender would have been easier. Someone who could have hidden behind his noble name but instead positioned himself at the hardest angles and took on the heaviest loads. As they joined in, he gave no orders. When they looked to him for guidance, he offered it with quiet certainty.
I watched him work in the dimming light, realizing I had never seen him like this. Gone was my friend who laughed at bad jokes and worried about exams. For years I had wondered why Sim never stepped forward when moments called for leadership. Once, over wine and late-night conversation, he’d told me his father tried to shape him into a commander of men. The Duke of Dalonir had pulled and pushed and molded. “Tried and failed,” Sim had said, wearing that self-deprecating smile like armor against old wounds. Still, Sim had no hunger for power. No thirst for control. Kind hearts seldom grasped for reins. They knew too well what holding them could cost.
But perhaps his father had seen something Sim himself had missed. Leaders don’t always grow from ambition’s seed. Sometimes necessity is enough, and the knowledge that someone has to stand when all others have fallen.
Dawn came with the beat of drums.
I pushed myself up from the floor, my shoulder screaming in protest. Sim stood his vigil at the arrow slit. Through the long night he had organized what defense we could manage, rationing our oil and arrows, helping each man find where he could fight best.
“They’re moving.” Sim’s voice cut sharp and clear. “Ready yourselves!”
I made it to the window beside him and looked down. Fascino’s soldiers surged forward. Some carried shields broad as doors. Others bent their backs beneath the ram, straining under its weight. They moved like a centipede scuttling toward our gate, all those legs rippling in waves, relentless and wrong.
Behind us, Roderic tried to rally the already rallied men. “For Vintas! Hold the walls!” His voice climbed too high on the last word, breaking like a boy’s.
The ram reached the bridge.
“Loose!” Sim commanded.
Arrows fell like rain, striking where shields grew thin. Men stumbled, their bodies dragging the great timber sideways for a moment before others stepped forward to take their place. The gate shuddered under the first blow, and I felt it in my bones, in the wound that wept beneath my shirt, in the teeth I clenched against the pain.
The tower groaned, dust drifting down from stones that had stood for centuries. Each strike of the ram was a fist against my chest, driving breath from my lungs.
“Ready the cauldron!” Sim shouted, already moving to help the others wrestle the great pot into position above the gate. His scholar’s hands, more used to holding quills than weapons, gripped the iron without hesitation.
“Now!”
We tipped the cauldron.
The oil found the men below with terrible accuracy. Scalding. Clinging. We threw bottles of dreg before their first scream could form, glass shattering against shields and stone, each one blooming into flame. The oil caught fire, and the courtyard became carnage painted in red and orange.
For a single, perfect moment, hope lived again.
Then I saw what they were building on the far side of the field. A mangonel.
The siege engine stood against the sky like a monument to our coming destruction. Its arm drew back with the slow certainty of winter approaching, ropes singing their strain-song as they pulled taut. The stone settled into its cradle, patient as death. In my chest, something I hadn’t dared call hope guttered like a candle in sudden wind.
“We don’t have defenses for this.” I let my back find the wall again, needing its solidity to keep me upright. Every movement sent fresh lightning through my shoulder, each pulse of pain a reminder of how little I had left to give.
Wil’s hand found my good shoulder, warm and steady. He said nothing, just stood beside me. Sim joined us a moment later. Together we looked out at the mangonel. At the crew working with grim efficiency.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice small and inadequate. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this.”
Sim was quiet for a breath. Then he said, “I have to admit, it’s not exactly how I imagined going out.”
“And how exactly were you planning on going out?” Wil asked. Something almost like amusement colored his voice.
“Old,” Sim said. “Very old. My head pillowed on Fela’s magnificent breasts.”
Despite everything, laughter broke from us. Ragged and raw, but real. It lasted only a moment before the whistle cut through the air. Rising. Growing.
The impact came from above.
The world shook. Stone struck stone with a sound like thunder breaking. The tower lurched beneath us. Dust and debris rained down in a choking cloud. I hit the floor, arms over my head, as fragments of rock clattered around us like hail. The tower groaned, a sound that came up through the floor and into my bones. For a long, terrible moment I thought the whole structure would collapse beneath us.
Then stillness. Dust hung thick in the air, turning the world gray.
“Wil?” I croaked.
Coughing answered me first. Then, “Here.”
“Sim?”
“Still breathing.” Came his voice, hoarse and rough.
I pushed myself to my knees, arms trembling. Above us, a ragged hole gaped where ceiling had been. Blue morning light poured through, sharp against the gray. The edges looked wrong, unstable, like the rest might fall at any moment. Debris littered the floor. The tower had held, but barely.
We pulled ourselves to our feet slowly. Checking limbs. Wiping blood and dust from our faces. The three of us standing in a space where death had passed us overhead.
Then Sim turned from the gaping wound above us. “No.” The word came sharp and clean. “We’re not done. Not yet.”
Wil raised one eyebrow, a gesture that managed to convey both doubt and curiosity. “I’m not sure what you’re seeing that we aren’t, friend.”
Sim turned to face us, and burning conviction stared back. “We still have arrows. Oil. Pitch.” He gestured to the guards flung near the wall. “You’ve faced worse odds on the frontier, haven’t you?”
One of the older guards straightened slightly. “Barely,” he said. Something flickered in his eyes. Not quite hope. But not quite defeat either.
“Wil,” Sim said. “Take three men. Get the cauldron ready again. When I give the word, tip every drop. We hold nothing back.”
Wil gave him a salute that was all flourish and mockery, but his feet moved with real purpose. “On it, Commander Sim.” The jest in his voice couldn’t quite hide the respect underneath.
Sim turned to the guards. “Every bolt. Every arrow. If it flies, we use it. Aim for the siege crew. No mercy. No hesitation. Every one of them that falls is a moment more we live. Understood?”
They nodded. These men who were used to being forgotten, who spent their days ignored in a tower nobody remembered existed, suddenly had someone looking them in the eye and telling them they mattered. Sim wasn’t shouting them into submission. He was offering them something to hold onto when everything else was falling apart.
Then Sim looked at me. Something in his face softened, though his voice remained steady. “I know what I’m asking. I wouldn’t ask if there was another way.” He paused. “I need the Wind.”
“Sim, I don’t know if I can.” My hands trembled, a small betrayal I couldn’t hide. My breath caught on the words I didn’t want to speak aloud. That calling the Name of the Wind again might break me.
“You don’t have to stop it. Just slow it down. A glancing blow. That’s all we need.” He paused. “A little time.”
Something in Sim’s voice found the part of me that still knew how to stand. I forced myself upright. My body protested, but it obeyed. They had followed me here. Wil with his quiet loyalty. Sim with his gentle heart. And if all I could do now was give them a handful of borrowed moments, then I would wring them from the wind itself. “Alright.”
Sim met my eyes, and the question hung between us like morning mist. Would it be enough? We both knew the answer. We didn’t need to say it. It didn’t have to be enough. It only had to buy us time.
The next stone flew.
I was waiting. My hand pressed flat against the cold wall, feeling the sure weight of it beneath my fingers. The stone was steady. The stone was still. I let its stillness settle the unsteady churn of my thoughts as I reached for the Wind.
It came slow at first. Too slow. My body was too battered, my mind too tired, to sing clearly to it. When it finally understood, it rushed in. But the stone hurtling toward us was granite and momentum, a thing of terrible weight screaming through the air. So heavy and fast that I could feel it cutting through the wind.
Panic rose in my throat, but the wall beneath my palm pressed back, patient and certain. The stone remembered standing. It remembered holding against wind and weather and the weight of years. It had been here long before Fascino’s betrayal, before Roderic’s crown, before the first hand laid the first stone of the citadel itself.
It was forgotten and overlooked, like the guards Sim had rallied. But not gone.
I stopped reaching for the Wind and listened instead. The wall sang its slow song, the deep note of stone speaking to stone. And there, hurtling toward us through empty air, another stone sang back. Heavy and ancient, cut from the same bones of the earth.
“Cyaerbasalien” I spoke, and the word felt like bedrock in my mouth.
The flying stone split.
A clean break. It came apart along the lines written into it when it was still part of the mountain, when it knew itself as two pieces waiting to be divided. Both halves wheeled wide, spinning away from the tower. One crashed into the citadel’s inner wall with a sound like thunder. It tore through the parapet that bound us to the citadel’s heart. The other struck where the tower joined the outer wall, tearing through parapet and merlon until half the walkway simply ceased to be. Stone slid down the cliff face in a cascade that ended in silence.
But the tower stood.
I sagged against the wall, my legs gone to water, my shoulder screaming. Through blurring vision I saw what we had become. The tower stood alone now. A peninsula of stone reaching out into empty air. Behind us, only the eastern parapet still bound us to the citadel wall. That narrow bridge along the cliff’s edge was our only tether to the world. On every other side there was nothing. Just the long drop to the courtyard below or the longer drop to death.
Sim was at my side again. His hand found my arm. He said nothing, but his grip was sure.
Then he was gone again, sprinting back toward the defenders. Through the arrow slit I could see movement below. Fresh soldiers streamed into the courtyard, hauling timber. They meant to try again. Already they were lifting the great ram where it had fallen, wrapping chains around its scorched length.
“Oil’s ready!” Wil’s voice rang out as the ram crew gathered themselves below, positioning for another charge. They thought we were spent. They thought we had nothing left to give.
A moment later, I heard the hiss of boiling liquid, the sharp sizzle as it met air. Then came the roar. A rush of sound that filled the courtyard, the hungry crackle of fire finding another feast.
Through the narrow arrow slit, I watched them scatter beneath the falling fire. Men screamed as the oil found them, their bodies painted in flame. The great timber fell from their burned hands a second time and lay abandoned and smoldering in the courtyard.
“They’re still loading the mangonel,” Sim muttered. His face had grown dark.
Far across the field, its crew worked on, cranking the mechanism with grim determination. They were too far for our oil to reach, too far for our arrows to find their mark with any certainty.
The ram was broken. But the stones would keep coming.
The world wavered around me. My shoulder pulsed with every heartbeat. My vision blurred at the edges. But I pressed my palm flat against the wall once more, reaching for that deep place where stone spoke to stone.
Nothing answered.
I reached deeper still, but the Name slipped away like sand through my fingertips. Stone speaks slowly. It demands patience. It requires a quiet mind to hear its slow song. And I had nothing quiet left in me. Only pain. Only desperation. Only the ragged edges of a breaking body.
I turned my focus downward, reaching for something close. Something already awake and hungry. The flames painting the courtyard spoke to me in their crackling voice, and I knew their name the way you know a song you learned as a child.
Fire does not need coaxing. Fire only needs permission. I spoke its name, and the flames leapt like hounds released from leash, racing across the field toward the distant siege engine. The mangonel’s crew saw them coming but had no time to run. The fire pounced upon them. Ravaged them. Consumed them.
The ropes snapped with sounds like bowstrings breaking. The mangonel’s arm lurched, shuddered, then fell slack. The stone rolled free from its cradle, tumbling down to thud against the earth with a sound like a body falling. Dead weight, useless.
The mechanism itself groaned as fire climbed its frame, finding footholds in the wooden supports. Smoke rose thick and black. The crew that could scattered as flames claimed what was left, running from the wreckage of their siege engine.
My legs buckled. Sim caught me before I hit the floor, lowering me against the wall with surprising gentleness.
“I’ve got you,” he said quietly.
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