Above them, Elivira worked the walls.
Not burning — not yet, not indiscriminately. Aragon had been precise about this. The castle was the foothold. Burning the walls down would give them rubble instead of a fortification. What he needed was the walls cleared — the sentries driven down, the organized defensive response broken before it could organize.
He gave them himself.
Three passes along the north wall. Elivira flying low and fast, the fire coming in controlled bursts — here, at the cluster of five soldiers taking position behind the battlements, the fire hitting the stone in front of them and the explosion of heated rock sending them scrambling backward, down off the walls, into the interior. There, at the gate mechanism — not to destroy it, but to cook the mechanism that held it closed, the metal components warping, the gate grinding, jolting, beginning to give.
The Arakenys returned fire.
