Title: Return of the Crimson Guard
Author(s): Ian Cameron Esslemont
Release year: 2008
Publisher: Bantam
Why in Database: In this book, we found four turtles fragments, including one in which there are three mentions of turtles, so depending on how you count, there are 4-6 turtle mentions in this position. We quote all of them below:
Shimmer would move her command inside a turtle just like the one the remnants of the 3rd Company reported using to escape their imprisonment.
Eventually a full turtle of hefted tall shields now protected her command. Snipers in the taller buildings would still have line of sight down within, but it was the best they could throw together. The tavern’s front door served as the final rear mantlet closing all egress.
Before them a ragged mob of armed citizen militia struggled to simultaneously fire their crossbows and retreat. It proved too much for them and they melted away in a general panic of falling bodies and dropped weapons. As they passed over the spot the Guardsmen helped themselves to the weapons. Yet the punishment from the rear was intense; the occasional bolt found an opening and men fell.
`Return fire!’ Voss was yelling in the rear.
`Smoky!’ Shimmer called.
`On it.’
Flames roared up behind the turtle of jostled mantlets, cutting off the alley.
`How long?’ she asked.
`Not long.’
They emerged on to a major north-south avenue lined by vendors’ stalls fronting three-storey brick merchants’ shops. Fleeing citizenry thronged its. centre, flowing south to the waterfront. Bands of armed militia crossed the flow, shifting to new hot spots. All of the citizens stopped, stared. at the emerging turtle and fled screaming.
`Left again,’ Shimmer called.
Bumping and banging, the ungainly beast lurched left. Through the gap Shimmer could now see down the long slow descent of the avenue to ship masts lit by the glow of the widespread flames. `I see the harbour!’ she called. A cheer went up within the turtle. The staccato impacts of bolts picked up now that their pursuers had poured into the avenue and flowed to surround them once again. A lantern tossed from a third-storey window burst among them splashing burning oil everywhere.
Rillish drew, but his numb leg couldn’t restore his balance and he slid sideways off his horse. He lay on his back like an upturned turtle, his leg twisted in the stirrup.
