Ashes Slowly Fall

by Katya Lebeque

  The duke was galloping alongside her, ashen-faced. On his horse, the tied form of Tarah. Her red hair had come loose and flew behind them. It looked like an open flame, a warning.

  They had left the prince, their most experienced swordsman, behind. They had already got to the stables when the conversation happened. Slowly, Rize went over to one empty stall.

  “I haven’t been here since…”

  “I know,” said the Duke, putting a hand on his shoulder.

  Ash waited for the two a moment, then turned to Walters. “Take off her gag. Tarah, which direction?”

  “North. True North. They’re coming up direct from that way, heading south to you, from the country mansions. They will kill the prince on sight.”

  Rhodopalais area. Maybe they were the ones that killed Vanita. “Gag her again,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. “Prince, she’s right. You’re staying here. And you too Walters. You’re both too valuable to the running of the country, and if we should fail, you’re still here to protect the king and everyone still inside.”

  He hadn’t liked it, none of them had, but she felt some relief. Who knew how many were coming – “at least a hundred’, Tarah had said. More than triple their number. This was likely to be a suicide mission. She still did not know how to speak to the prince, how to look at him. She’d rather die on her knees without that black, piercing gaze.

  Beside her, the duke suddenly disappeared from her line of sight as he slowed his horse to a canter. She did the same and matched him. Behind them, Pescera and the twenty others riding in a bow shape slowed too.

  “We’re still going due north, according to the compass. If what Tarah said holds true, we may meet them on the road soon.”

  Ash looked at Tarah’s white face behind her gag, eyes wide and staring. “It’s true. She’s afraid for her brother.”

  The duke nodded. “I say we keep just going straight.”

  She looked around. Was this where she was going to die? All around them, it was the same featureless dirt and the occasional blackened circle where a home or tree had been.

  Not ten miles later, the featureless dirt stopped without warning, and gave rise to a small broken tower with two corpses swaying gently where they’d been hanged. It didn’t make any sense. Unless…

  “It’s a town,” said Ash disbelieving. There were no farms, not even the ghosts of ones, not one single sign of a wall. This was the first thing that had not been completely wiped from the face of the earth by some other heartless mob pack. When she looked over her shoulder at where the farmlands and houses should be, she could just make out the broken corpse of a mill’s wheel in the distance.

  “I say we keep going. We’re close I think. Let’s just pass through,” the duke whispered.

  Ash nodded, feeling as though she had without warning been trapped under a rock. She had been, largely, in the sheltered confines of the castle, palace and manor houses. She had never seen this, what it had really been like for the normal folk. She urged her horse into a walk, though it seemed as reluctant as she. Even Tarah, for once, went eerily silent as they passed by the men hanging from their shattered remains of the former watchtower. The dirt road led through unrecognisable rubble which must have been houses, once, and widened into a circle of brokenness.

  In the middle lay a largely untouched well, behind it the local gallows stand-cum-stage where two fresh corpses were laying. And around it all the trappings of what once must have been normal life: the splintered remains of a blacksmith’s, an inn, a fairly intact local church.

  Ash let out a sigh. Lying out on the gallows, the two dead men opened their eyes.

  ***

  It was probably safe to say Vanita had never walked so far in her life, she thought to herself, when Rayce finally called for a stop. It was a dismal-looking place – church, gallows stand, inn, blacksmith’s and only one or two scraggly houses remained of the village – but Rayce said they could rest in to ensure they took the castle fresh and rested and that was fine by her.

  She had been given pride of place in the church, had laid down on some hay left over from other vagrants passing through. It seemed only a few moments of uneasy sleep passed before she was woken by shouting outside.

  “Stay here – it’s killers come t’ambush,” said a toothless man near her, as the thirty others crept to the door. Vanita shrugged where once she might have panicked and lay back down.

  ***

  The men on the gallows were sitting bolt upright now, still yelling, and Ash had to acknowledge that they certainly weren’t dead, they had just chosen a rather odd place for a nap. Clumsily, they began drawing battered-looking knives and clubs and Pescera, silent as a wraith, rode out from behind to make short work of them. Good. Ash nodded to herself.

  But the duke wasn’t nodding, he was shaking his head, slowly, then faster, looking puzzledly at the desecrated buildings as though they were talking to him in a language he didn’t understand.

  “Pescera, no!”

  She was halfway to the gallows when the deserted-looking inn, the merchant house remains and the blacksmith’s right in front of them all burst open and the mob streamed out to kill them.

  ***

  “Take her!”

  Ash had not quite processed the sight of these emaciated, screaming, bloodied criminals running towards her when the duke was hauling Tarah off his horse to hand to her, still tied up. Ash stumbled from her horse and took the writhing girl, staring at him as he galloped after Pescera, sword raised, fifty men facing them. The other men around her galloped too, and somehow Derrick was tugging at her arm and yelling.

  She tore her eyes away to look at him. He was standing just slightly behind her at her right. That was what saved them. Derrick saw her expression and his brow creased as, just behind him, three more men with blades in their teeth snuck out from the watchtower behind him.

  And in a heartbeat Tarah was on the floor and Ash with her, as her heart pounded like the horses had on the road, as her head shouted in panic. But her knee met the ground coolly and her arms still gripped her crossbow tight. She only managed to scream once the bolt had gone from her crossbow into the first man and Derrick was spun around to meet the other two.

  Ash looked down at the ground, angry to find tears pouring down her face. She didn’t want to die. But in the dirt beside her, Tarah was smiling, eyes bright. That did it. Rougher than was necessary, she grabbed the girl by her hair, grabbed her dagger in the other hand and ran yelling at the would-be watchmen.

  They were so thin, so tired, despite their blades and ugly grins, that in a few minutes all three were bloodied and on the ground. Without needing to look at each other or say a word, Ash and Derrick took one arm of Tarah’s each and darted towards and up the broken tower.

  It was not much of a vantage point, the inn ruins were higher, but it changed things completely for Ash. Where before she had been a squealing milkmaid filled with fear on the ground, now she felt some of her cool and the fire in her crossbow hand return. Tarah wedged between them, she and her childhood friend began picking off the mob horde one by one.

  A shout from the gallows attracted Ash’s eye. She had forgotten about Pescera. The men were doing well by the smith’s, by the merchant house and even the enormous horde still streaming from the church. They were trained, they were fed, they had someone to fight for even if he wasn’t there. But Ash could see other men from her vantage point. Men in the shadows. These were dressed in leathers, albeit tattered ones, not in rags. Some even had shoes. And they did not move like the panicked girl she had felt to be so recently. They moved like men trained too, and with a sinking feeling in her heart she watched the one with a shaved head and face scars thrown his one arm forward in signal and at least twenty men swamp out of the inn remains to overwhelm both duke and Pescera, standing like little children on a stage on the gallows where so many had died before them.

  The duke had a splash of blood on his check she could see. Just a splash
, perhaps not even his, but mixed with his usually dapper clothing, Ash’s heart suddenly galloped in her chest once again and she found she could not watch him die. Instead, she tore a piece of silk from her dress, tied a struggling Tarah to Derrick’s arm and, without thinking, ran yelling towards almost certain death.

  Chapter Thirty

  That which you most fear

  A woman’s cry. Vanita raised her head. She was still ensconced between two men for her protection in the church, she was safe here from Rayce’s sister-murderers as she would ever be. Still, a woman… She had the sudden overwhelming desire to go outside, though she could not fight much or well.

  “Sit down, Miss,” said one of the men low, as if reading her thoughts. She sat back down.

  ***

  “Bastards!” Ash was yelling, because it was all she could think to say, loosing bolt after bolt without stopping as she ran. “Damn – damn – damn bastards!”

  It worked somewhat, the men surrounding the five or so still standing and Pescera turned towards her, blades up. She did not care. They could all run her through. Vanita was dead. And Rize, well… what did she have to live for?

  She got her answer in the next breath. The burly man sparring with the duke looked up at her, then his eye travelled towards the tower. Where Derrick was standing. And Tarah.

  A scream like a woman’s tore from his mouth and he began running, yelling over his shoulder at someone Ash could not see. A dark-skinned, lithe person, who stepped a little forward and began throwing daggers with expert precision at Derrick where he stood. Ash bit back her surprise as she realised it was a woman. And Derrick was standing a full-on target before her, not willing to shield himself with Tarah, now screaming with her gag free at the man running below. If Derrick had not been trying with all his might to dodge the daggers this man would kill him with, he would’ve seen it: the spark of blood, of family, in the eyes and screams of the marauder below.

  But Ash saw. And before her mind had understood what her heart had seen, she was running through the carnage toward her own family.

  There were just three men between her and the well in the centre of the village square. With a strength she didn’t know she had, she half-ran low to the ground, letting off bolts at an upward angled with a dagger to slice through the thighs of the men as she passed. The men cleared a path for her, even, with their shiny nobles” swords. When she crashed into the stone of the well with her shoulder, it almost took the breath right from her.

  The woman saw her at the last moment and Ash’s bolt went wide. The woman’s deep brown eyes regarded Ash coolly, and without a change in expression she let off two more blades: the one produced a high-pitched scream and Ash whirled around crying as she saw Tarah jolt at the pain of a dagger going into her thigh, throwing both her and Derrick from the tower. And then all the world was white with pain as the second knife found its mark in deep in Ash’s right hand.

  “Aahh!”

  Faster than she could’ve believed, the dusky woman was upon her, new knives gleaming, as Ash clutched her hand to her chest. It did not matter. She was ready to die.

  “For her,” both women said at the same time.

  Ash closed her eyes.

  ***

  Something was wrong. Something, something else, was coming. Vanita knew it. “We need to move,” she said to the men. “We need to! I can feel… It’s… it’s coming!”

  “What’s coming, Miss?”

  A voice that wasn’t quite hers answered them. “That which you most fear.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Carrior

  The blade did not come. Ash opened her eyes to see Pescera falling, gracefully, like a dancer, with the woman’s daggers in her chest. It was a sight enough to allow Ash the distraction, even in her crying, screaming rage, to loose a clumsy crossbow bolt at the woman with her left hand, lodging it firmly in her ankle as the murderess screamed.

  Pescera wasn’t breathing. Ash wanted to hold her, to stroke her face. Instead, she went over to the fallen enemy woman, looking backwards at the church for some reason, and almost tenderly plunged one of her own daggers into her chest again and again and again.

  She looked around. It was almost over for them. There were just two men and the duke left against twelve. And the broad man had a limp Tarah thrown over his shoulder but was still handily beating Derrick, all alone, with just a sword he had no idea as a commoner how to use. He was just a boy and Tarah, she was young for all she had done. Ash ran for the three even as she felt two of the twelve break off to make an end of her. It didn’t matter. She would die with whomever was left of the ones she loved.

  ***

  Rayce almost had him, the little shit, and that felt good. And Tarah was not moving, and he was so scared he felt he couldn’t breathe even though he kept swinging. And then a sight he could not believe.

  ***

  She saw it just as she knew it was too late, it was already here.

  The men sensed it and looked up at her as the doors flew open.

  “Carrior.”

  ***

  The bird looked like a demon from hell, with red around its eyes as it ran up the dirt road and at him from behind the watchtower. And behind, holding the ropes that bound it, yelling, screaming in a makeshift wagon, was the crown prince of all Germania.

  He jumped from the thing, still screaming, and Rayce in his wonder did not even use the moment to attack. He just stared. Then the bird was slapped as though it were a horse to run at his remaining brave men, who scattered like children, screaming.

  With sinking horror, Rayce watched the carrior instead run straight into the church.

  ***

  It was over as it started. Ash stared on from a close distance in bleak admiration as Rize rolled on the ground, springing up with an expert thrust and a feint, a false parry, and swift cut at the mob man’s arm for just long enough to get his dagger in nice and close and then meet it with a graceful flick of his sword up to the man’s throat.

  “Surrender,” the prince panted.

  But Ash wasn’t looking at them. She was looking at someone else. Someone who should be dead.

  ***

  The red-eyed bird came in shrieking as Vanita finished the word it was called, going straight for them. There was a rope streaming behind it as though it were more of a donkey than something that had killed every single person these two men whimpering beside her had ever known.

  “Move, move!” She awkwardly grabbed a sword from the one, shoving them both to the side and screamed at them to make for the door.

  Using every bit of her Path-strength, she tried to see what the bird would do next and raised her borrowed sword and head up high.

  “Come on, birdie.”

  ***

  The duke was running up, yelling, to help his cousin, uncaring of anything else. The two mob men still alive were behind him, their swords raised too. Ash knew with sinking dread that she would never reach him in time.

  ***

  Instead of seeing a dart to the left or a winging coming in to hit her, Vanita saw a dungeon room, dark and cold, and dead eggs left unmourned for some enemy to eat all alone in the middle of nowhere. The bird stopped running and lowered its head.

  Vanita did not think too hard about it, she just dropped her sword and went towards it, pulling on its rope with one hand gently and patting with the other where the poor creature could see it.

  “I’m not going to hurt you. You’ll be safe here. She tied it to a beam and spoke softly, looking it in its red, alien eyes. “I’ll close the doors and come straight back.”

  In the glaring sunlight, with her sword, just to be sure, she looked around. To see the Duke. To see her sister. To see Rize. And to see Rayce and his men about murder them all.

  She ran.

  ***

  It looked just like her. Just, just like her.

  “Stop!” the girl at the church door shouted.

  That voice. It stopped the world. It could onl
y be one person. Distantly, Ash saw the duke beside her crumple to the floor.

  Ash did not care for Rayce’s sword, or his men coming straight at her. She dropped her dagger, she dropped everything in one moment in the shining sun and opened her arms wide as if to welcome the knives and arrows flying.

  She ran.

  ***

  She reached her just as the men did. Just as Rayce’s last desperate dagger, trying to protect his Pathfinder, did too. It didn’t matter. It was enough, it was enough, just to reach her.

  The two sisters crashed into each other’s arms with death on every side. Each of them held the one they thought they’d never see again. And each of them held on.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Ashes say it’s over

  After what could have been moments or years, Vanita at last stood up to face the mobsters coming at them, who faltered at the sight of her.

  “Stop,” she ordered again, quieter this time.

  Somehow, everyone did stop. Even Rayce. And turned meekly towards the author of the voice, all in leathers, with fiery blonde hair streaming behind her. Someone coming from the head of the mob, where the leaders stood.

  Vanita, Ash’s heart said, but her mouth would not work.

  “Do – do you see her too?” she turned to the fallen duke, and found she was crying. But he only had eyes for the woman they’d thought was dead.