Refuge: Kurt's Quest by Doug Dandridge

armed and
armored like Jackie.  Especially since she was a woman.  But not against
someone with her speed, strength and agility, with the heavily enchanted armor
sheathing her body, with blades of almost supreme power.
    She moved into them, both swords taking a life
in a couple of seconds.  She then dodged and parried, foiling the attacks of
the two men who moved forward to take over from the men she had just killed. 
Two more strikes and there was only one man left, who started backing away
while shouting for his fellows to stop shooting at people below and engage this
much more dangerous target.
    Jackie crossed her blades through the soldier’s
chest, the combination great heat and savage cold exploding his body, taking
out his thorax.  The man fell dead to the roof stones with a blank horrific
expression on his face.  Jackie herself thought for a moment about the terrible
ways her blades dealt death, then dismissed that thought as something she
didn’t need to deal with at the moment.  If she didn’t kill these men, and get
her own people into the tower, her friends in the city would be overwhelmed. 
And that was more important to the soldier that she was than in how she
eliminated these enemies.
    Two bowmen turned toward her, raising arrows to
aim at her.  She leapt the distance from where she was standing to them, her
swords swinging in to take their heads off in flashes of cold and heat.  The
smell of sizzling meat and the sight of ice crystals filled the air to her
front.  She moved to the left, taking out the two archers that were still
raining arrows down below, then spun to her right and charged the remaining two
bowmen.
    Arrows started coming at her from the other
tower, as well as from along the wall between the tower she was on and the next
emplacement as well.  She ducked down behind the crenellations to plan her next
move.  I need to keep people from coming up that hatch , she thought,
moving into a crawl and dragging a body with her, until she had it over the
heavy wooden doorway set into the roof.  She did this three more times, until
she had four armored bodies lying directly over the hatch.  As soon as she had
the last body over the hatch something or someone underneath tried to push it
open, and wasn’t able to due to the weight.
    Now to get some people up here , she thought, grabbing
a coil of rope that was sitting by the catapult.  She crouched to the
crenellation, looping it over one of the projections, then tossing the rest of
the rope over.  She did the same with another length of rope, then looked over
to see a couple of her allies trying to ascend.  It was a difficult task in
armor, but without armor they would not have lasted a moment.  As it was, only
one made it up and through the opening, while the other was knocked from the
rope by a pair of arrows, one of which found the gap in his armor.
    “Help me pull the next up,” she told the man, whom
she didn’t recognize.  He looked like a lean and strong warrior, though, and he
grabbed a rope and started working it through his hands.  Again only one man
made it up, the one that Jackie pulled quickly with her superior strength.  The
man climbed through the gap in the crenellation, then helped the other fellow
pull up another man.  It took some minutes, but when they had a dozen men on
the tower they were able to fire arrows back at the enemy, while men with
shields defended them.
    “Sir Gromli,” she said to the Knight when he
made his way up.  “I’m going to do something about those bastards over on the
other tower.”  Those men had poured several vats of steaming oil on the
soldiers below, and were busy heating some more to repeat their performance.
    “Are you sure you want to go it alone, milady?”
asked the Knight, craning his head to look over at the other tower.
    “Do you have anyone who can leap over there
with me?”
    “No.  But when we get some more men up here, we
can take the next level down, then