She let out a deafening shriek and fell into a roll. Amara struck again, inflicting no greater injury than the last; then the queen, Bernard's arrow protruding from both sides of her neck, shot between the ranks of the taken and out of the cave. The queen shrieked again as she went, and the taken let out wailing howls in unison and charged forward with a sudden, vicious ferocity.
Amara heard Bernard order an advance, and the legionares screamed their defiance as they came on. Frederic, blood streaming from his wounded leg, could not rise. He swept the edge of his spade along at ground level, the steel cutting hard into the knee of the nearest Taken, sending it crashing to the floor. Another taken dived and hit Amara at the thighs, knocking her down, and she saw three more already leaping toward her. Beside her, more taken flung themselves upon Frederic.
The legionares were still a dozen strides away. She tried to cut the nearest, but the taken were simply too strong. They smashed her sword arm to the floor, and something slammed into the side of her head with a flash of nauseating pain. Amara could only scream and struggle uselessly as the taken Aric, former Steadholder of Aricholt, bared his teeth and went for her throat with them.
And then Aric went flying away from her, hitting the wall with a bone-crushing impact. There was an enormous roar of sound, and Walker's foot slammed another of the taken holders to the cave floor. Amara saw a heavy war club descend and crush the back of the last Taken attacking her, then Doroga kicked the creature off her, lifted his war cudgel, and finished it with a blow to the skull.
Doroga whirled to strike at another taken before it could crush Frederic's throat, while Walker turned his enormous body about to the front of the cave again, more lithe than Amara would have thought possible. The gargant rumbled its battle cry and slammed into the incoming taken with rage and abandon, ripping and tearing and crushing in a frenzy. The taken attacked with mindless determination, swinging blades, clubs, stones, or simply ripping out scoops of flesh from the gargant with their naked hands.
The legionares thundered forward to support the gargant, but the corpses and spilled blood made it impossible for them to maintain ranks, and the taken that got around Walker tore into them with insane fury.
A strong hand closed on the back of Amara's hauberk, and Giraldi hauled her along the floor, seized Frederic's hauberk in the same way, and pulled them both toward the back of the cave, wounded leg and all.
"They're breaking through!" someone shouted from directly behind her, and Amara looked up to see a legionare fall and half a dozen taken spill past the lines, while outside the cave, even more of them pressed in with inevitable determination, pushing their way through with sheer mass.
"Loose at will!" Bernard called, and suddenly the air of the cave hummed with the passing of the woodcrafters' deadly shafts. The half dozen taken who had broken through fell in their tracks. Then the woodcrafters started threading shots through the battle lines, passing in the space under a legionares arm when he lifted his sword to strike, sailing over one's head when he ducked a swing from a clumsy club, flitting between another's shield and his ear when he lunged forward, changing his center of balance.
It was, barely, enough. Though the Knights Flora's few arrows had been quickly spent, they had checked the taken's assault long enough for more legionares to advance from the rear of the cave, and they filled the weakness in the line, fighting with desperate strength.
The vord queen shrieked again from somewhere outside the cave, the sound loud enough to drown out the noise of battle and put painful pressure on Amara's ears. Instantly, the taken who had been fighting turned to retreat from the cave at a dead run, and the legionares pressed forward with a roar, cutting down the enemy as they fled.
"Halt!" Bernard bellowed. "Stay in the cave! Fall back, Doroga, fall back!"
Doroga flung himself in front of the furious gargant, shoving against Walker's chest while he tried to pursue the enemy. Walker bellowed his anger, but a few feet outside the cave he came to a halt, and at Doroga's urging retreated back to their original position.
The cave was suddenly silent, except for the moans of wounded men and the heavy breathing of winded soldiers. Amara stared around the cave. They'd lost another dozen fighting men, and most of the rest who had engaged the taken were wounded.
"Water," Bernard growled, then. "First spear, collect flasks and fill them up. Second spear, get these wounded to the rear. Third and fourth spears, I want you to clear the floor of these bodies." He turned to the Knights Flora with him, and said, "Help them, and recover every arrow you can while you're at it. Move."
Legionares set about the tasks given them, and Amara was appalled at how few of them were in condition to be up and moving. The wounded at the rear of the cave now outnumbered those still in fighting condition. She simply sat and closed her eyes for a moment.
"How is she?" she heard Bernard rumble.
Her head hurt.
"Lump on her head, there," Giraldi drawled. "See it? Took a pretty good hit. She hasn't been responding to my questions."
"Her face," Bernard said quietly. There was a note of pain in his voice.
Fire chewed steadily, ceaselessly at her cheek.
"Looks worse than it is. Nice clean cut," Giraldi replied. "That thing's claws are sharper than our swords. She was lucky not to lose an eye."
Someone took her hand, and Amara looked up at Bernard. "Can you hear me?" he asked quietly.
"Yes," she said. Her own voice sounded too quiet and weak to be her. "I'm… starting to come back together now. Help me up."
"You've got a head wound," Giraldi said. "It will be safer if you didn't."
"Giraldi," she said quietly, "there are too many wounded already. Bernard, help me up."
Bernard did so without comment. "Giraldi," he said. "Find out who is fit to fight and re-form the squads as necessary to fight in rotation. And get everyone some food."
The grizzled centurion nodded, rose to his feet, and withdrew to the back of the cave again. Moments later, the legionares at the front finished their gruesome task and retreated to the back of the cave, leaving Amara, Bernard, and Doroga the only people near the cave mouth.
Amara walked over to Doroga, and Bernard kept pace.
Walker was lying down again, and breathing heavily. Patches of his thick black fur were plastered down to his body, wet with blood. His breaths sounded odd, raspy. Blood made mud of the dirt floor beneath his chest and chin. Doroga crouched in front of the gargant with a stone jar of something that smelled unpleasantly medicinal, examining Walker's injuries and smearing them with some kind of grease from the jar.
"How is he?" Amara asked.
"Tired," Doroga replied. "Hungry. Hurting."
"Are his injuries serious?"
Doroga pressed his lips together and nodded. "He's had worse. Once." Walker moaned, a low, rumbling, and unhappy sound. Doroga's broad, ugly face contorted with pain, and Amara noticed that Doroga himself had several minor injuries he had not yet seen to.
"Thank you," Amara said quietly. "For being here. You didn't have to come with us. We'd all be dead right now but for you."
Doroga smiled faintly at her and bowed his head a little. Then he went back to his work.
Amara walked to the mouth of the cave and stared out. Bernard joined her a moment later. They watched taken moving purposefully around in a stand of trees on one of the nearby hills.
"What are they doing?" Bernard asked.