"That arch!" she barked. "Clear ten paces either side—we ride through!"
Tara and Sigrid's shieldmaidens locked together, forming a mobile wall. They advanced under arrow-fire, shields overlapping. When a bolt clanged off Tara's helm, she laughed—high, bright, terrifying—and hammered her axe against her shield three times. The formation surged.
But new troops poured from the mid-ring guardhouse: fresh conscripts in quilted jackets, noble retainers in gilded corslets. Someone dragged a cart into the boulevard, toppling it to form a barricade. Arrows rattled off the cart's sides; one struck a shieldmaiden through the thigh. She roared, snapped the shaft, and kept limping forward.
