Cursor's Fury (Codex Alera #3)(127)

"What's happening?" she asked.

"Kalare brought his firecrafters up. Looks like they're blasting the walls."

"Aren't they too thick to blast through?" Isana asked.

Giraldi grunted in the affirmative. "But it creates rough spots to help troops climb ropes and ladders. If they get lucky, they might crack the wall. Then they could bring in watercrafters and use them to widen the break or undermine the wall."

A brilliant glow suddenly poured through the windows, the light a cool, bluish color rather than the orange-gold of dawn.

Giraldi grunted. "Nice."

"Centurion?"

He glanced at her over his shoulder. "Cereus let the firecrafters go to town until he could tell where most of them were. Then he moved his Knights Flora to the walls and turned on every furylight and lamp in the city so they could see to shoot."

"Did it work?"

"Can't see from here," Giraldi said. "But the legionares on the walls are cheering them on."

"Perhaps they've killed Kalare's firecrafters, then."

"They didn't get all of them."

"How do you know?"

Giraldi shrugged. "You never get them all. But it looks like they've given Kalare's forces something to think about."

Isana frowned. "What happens now?"

Giraldi frowned. "Depends on how bloody they're willing to get. Cereus and his people are on their home ground, familiar with the local furies. It gives them an advantage over Kalare's Knights. They tried a lightning assault and failed. Now as long as Cereus keeps his Knights intact and uses them well, Kalare's forces will get massacred if they charge in against Cereus's Knights."

"If they want to storm the city, they must destroy its Knights," Isana said. "Is that it?"

"Pretty much. They've got to know that time isn't on their side, too. They've got to take the city before reinforcements arrive. The only way to do it fast is to do it bloody." The old soldier shook his head. "This is going to be a bad one. Like Second Calderon."

Isana's memory flashed back to the battle. The corpses had been burned in bonfires that reached forty feet into the sky. It had taken most of a year to clean the blood and filth from the stones of Garrison. She could still hear screams, moans, cries of the wounded and dying. It had been a nightmare.

Only this time, it would not be a few hundred noncombatants in peril, but thousands, tens of thousands.

Isana shuddered.

Giraldi finally turned from the window, shaking his head. "You need anything from me? "

Isana drew in a deep breath and shook her head. "Not now."

"I'll leave you to it, then," Giraldi said. "Ill be right outside."

Isana nodded and bit her lip.

Giraldi paused at the door. "Steadholder. You thinking you can't do this?"

"I... " Isana swallowed. "I've never... I don't think I can do it. '

"You're wrong," Giraldi growled. "Known you for years. Fact of the matter is, you can't not do it." He nodded to her and slipped outside. He shut the door behind him.

Isana bowed her head at Giraldi's words. Then she turned back to her patient.

She had treated infected wounds often, both in her capacity as a steadholt's healer and during her term of service in the Legion camps. Standard practice was to encourage increased blood flow through the site, then to painstakingly focus on the afflicted tissues, destroying the infection a tiny piece at a time. Once Rill had severely weakened the infection, the patient's body itself could eliminate whatever sickness was left in the wound.