At least he was safe, for now.
Chapter 82: Kirby
Kirby stuffed her pistol back in its holster as a few Halifax men screamed and fell to the ground around her. Her ammunition was gone. She took to her sword, jabbing several islanders as she steered into the thick fray, mostly relying on trampling the island soldiers under the horse's hooves. More than one fled at the sight of the frothing beast, but others tried attacking the beast from the side. A few times, when she was overwhelmed, the Halifax man assisted, striking them back so she could take another diagonal pass, trying to push the battle farther down the sloping road and toward the island.
Pain shot through her leg with each jostle of the horse. She winced and gritted her teeth at the arrow stuck there. The Halifax men had evened out some of the numbers on the sloping road, but there were more islanders than Halifax men. Each of the Halifax men fought two or more islanders. Some, the bravest or the most skilled, managed to slay their opponents, but too many were screaming and dying.
Bodies littered the road, making movement difficult.
Those mortally wounded, or wounded enough to remove themselves from fighting, limped or crawled to the sides of the road, slumping against the walls, waiting for a natural death, or a particularly cruel enemy to take them out. Kirby knew she had to stay close to the Halifax men. Straying too far was likely to get her killed, horse or not.
Diagonal to her, she saw Enoch swinging his sword, but he was obviously weak. His sword swung at far less speed than the others. In between opponents, he held his stomach, wetting his hand with his blood. Halifax men surrounded him as the islanders tried to kill an easy target.
They were making some progress on the road, but not enough to break through the islanders, who fought to preserve the last stretch of road. Kirby grunted as she jabbed an islander that had broken through some Halifax men and charged her. He pitched to the ground. Her horse swayed as it almost missed a step over a dead body. The steed was as tired as she was, as tired as all of them.
Kirby was starting to accept that the best result of the battle was Deacon's death. She couldn't see a favorable end to the battle in which the struggling, overwhelmed Halifax people won.
War cries filled the air.
Kirby looked up from the man she'd speared to see many of the islander's heads turning. Some of the pushing, fighting crowd looked behind them as a group of bellowing men ran from around a distant curve on the islands, visible from her height in the sloping road. They were headed for the fight.
Halifax men.
Staring into the crowd of advancing men, she recognized a familiar figure in the lead.
Bray.
The islanders in the middle grew frantic as they realized they were walled in. Some of the people in the back of the group fled from the road to somewhere else on the island that might provide safety. Seizing the confusion, Kirby fought harder, slaying those who lowered their guard.
More clangs and cries echoed from the front of the fighting mass as Halifax men followed suit. Islanders screamed. Halifax men roared with cries that reminded her of those she'd heard in that last, inspiring bonfire. More men and women fell, but this time the battle was going in another direction.
They were winning.
"They're here!" Kirby yelled over to Enoch, hoping to spur on what had seemed like a lost hope earlier.
Enoch was immersed in a battle with three islanders. Two Halifax men fought next to him, driving back their attackers. He swung his sword with what was clearly waning strength.
Hang on, Enoch. We are almost there.
Chapter 83: Enoch
Enoch slashed an enemy as he struggled to keep his footing. In the background, down the sloping road and beyond him, he heard the war cries of his men and the groans of fallen enemies. They were shouting a word he had waited his whole life to hear. Victory. Enoch opened his mouth to call the same word, but his voice failed. He looked over to find one of his bravest men propping him up.
"Keep fighting!" the man screamed in his ear. "We're almost there, Enoch!"
Enoch raised his sword at a running enemy, but he only managed to lift it halfway. The darkness and pain were taking over. The people in front of him blended together, a mass of noise and confusion on which he could hardly focus. The burn in his stomach had become a dull, constant ache that he couldn't imagine living without. One of the Halifax men stepped in front of him, taking down an attacker. Another scream pierced the air. A war cry.
Enoch looked for the source.
An islander darted through several other skirmishes, recognizing Enoch.
Someone screamed Enoch's name—a warning, perhaps—and then the islander was in front of him, pulling back an arm and thrusting. Enoch raised his sword to block, waiting for the clang of metal.
The noise never came.
A sharp sword pierced Enoch's stomach, near his other wound.
A gasp escaped his throat.
The islander pulled out the blade, a smile crossing his face as he realized whom he had stabbed.
Too late, Enoch swung his sword to defend himself, but it hit the man weakly, not enough to cut.
Enoch cried out as pain stabbed his chest and he fell. Somewhere in the background, he heard the desperate shouts of his men trying to save him, the clatter of his sword. He blinked, surprised he could see.
He was on the ground.
A face appeared above him. For a moment, he thought it was The Holy One, but it was one of his men. He blinked again as his body went numb and more of his men hovered above him.
"Enoch!" one of his men cried.
"You will pay!" shouted another Halifax soldier, trading blows with someone out of view.
He heard the enraged cries of some of his men, shouting for vengeance, but also others, shouting the word he'd heard before.
Victory.
Enoch had a second to wonder if they'd won.
And then the world went black.
Chapter 84: Kirby
Distraught, angry men gathered around the fallen Enoch, shouting to the heavens, while others raised their bloodied swords, ready to put an end to what had been a vicious war.
Enoch was dead.
Too many had fallen.
But they'd won.
The other side of the crowd was little more than a group of scared, clustered men, raising their swords. The remaining islanders—mostly peasants—stood in the middle of two approaching groups. Kirby's group stood on one end, facing the now-outnumbered islanders, while Bray and Samron's men stood on the other.
"Bray!" Kirby shouted, unable to believe he was alive, that they'd succeeded.
He shouted her name. A relieved expression crossed his face as he raised his sword. But they weren't quite done.
The islanders in the middle looked from one group to the next, looking as if they might flee rather than fight. Kirby surveyed the sloping road, a graveyard for the unburied: bodies everywhere, riddled with bullet wounds, cuts, or arrows. Most of the wounded had perished, but a few were alive, watching with glazed eyes as they waited for help, or a merciful end.
The Halifax men prepared to charge, but Kirby stopped them.
"Deacon is dead!" she yelled, halting them with a raised hand. "The war is done."
The islanders looked from Kirby to the Halifax men, certain they were in a trap of which there was no way out. One woman, wearing farmer's clothing, found a break in the crowd and ran. She gasped for breath as she made headway down the road, her sword swinging at her side. Bray and Samron's group quickly swarmed her.
"Let her go!" Kirby cried to Samron, to the confused looks of the others. "There is no need for more bloodshed."
The Halifax men watched Samron. His face was grave as he looked past the crowd and at the fallen body of Enoch. He stepped toward the men holding the scared, fleeing farmer woman.
"Enoch will be dead, whether you kill these people or not," Kirby called. "So will Deacon. Let them go."
After a moment's pause, Sam
ron said something to the men.
The restraining men released her.
Everyone watched the woman run down the road and onto the island, looking over her shoulder with every step. Clearly, the peasants wanted to join her. They watched Samron with expectant, hopeful faces.
"You are right," Samron said, directing his comment to everyone. "The war is over. We have won." He said something to the Halifax men in their language, who lowered their swords halfway.
Slowly, the men rose from Enoch, their faces painted with grief. They looked at each other with uncontained emotion. Seeing their expressions, Samron said a single word in their language. Hearing it, the men looked up. Samron repeated the word. They looked at each other, raised their swords back in the air, and put their grief into a shout, repeating the word louder, and louder, until the bridge was a single mass of chants. Kirby didn't need to know the word to understand its meaning.
Victory! Victory! Victory!
She felt a swell of something she hadn't felt in a long while, the emotion of a battle won, but more importantly, the end of spilled blood. The cries tapered off as the men lowered their swords and the attention turned to the group of peasants, still in the middle of the descending road, fearful.
Samron watched them as he made a determination.
"I would keep them here," Kirby suggested. "Perhaps they can help you tend to the wounded. At the very least, you can keep track of them, while you determine what is next."
Samron nodded. He relayed some instructions to his men, who surrounded the group. "Drop your weapons. We will not harm you."
The peasants hesitated, clearly not believing him. He repeated the instruction. Swords clattered to the ground. The islanders looked around the road, clearly grief-stricken by their own losses, and still scared.
Kirby rode her horse around the scattered bodies, the dropped weapons, and the people in the middle of the sloping road, to meet Bray. He strode toward her with a look of tired determination. His clothes were ripped and dirty. Blood spattered his shirt and his face. She scanned a few bleeding wounds on his arm, and on his legs.
"Are you okay?"
"A few days' rest will heal me," he said with a half-smile. Pointing at her leg, still stuck with half an arrow, he said, "But you look in worse shape. You were shot."
Kirby looked down at the protruding shaft. "I'll get a healer to dig this out. Or I'll do it myself."
"A moment ago, you said Deacon was killed. Was that a lie you told to stop the war?"
Kirby looked behind her at the sprawling, magnificent bridge that rose above the descending road, where the first rays of sunlight speared through the bottom of The Arches. She looked to the water, churning underneath and spilling from the dam a way behind it, seeing nothing but the river. "He fell from the bridge. Flora knocked him into the water with her horse."
Bray processed the information.
"All of them are gone," Kirby said sadly. "The horse, and Flora. They went over with him."
"Gone," he said simply.
A faraway look crossed Bray's eyes as he looked from the bridge, to the river, to the fallen men and women lying in all directions.
"I hope she can find a peace the islands could not give her," Kirby said.
Bray held an expression of sadness she hadn't seen him wear. "As do I." Looking at the horse on top of which she was riding, he said, "I will miss the other steed. He accompanied us through a lot. He was a good horse."
"I will miss him, as well." Kirby shook her head. "But we need to find William."
Hearing their conversation, Samron walked over to join them. "If you are going to find William, I will come with you, with a group of my remaining men. I will leave the rest here."
Bray looked around. About two hundred of the Halifax men remained, as blood spattered as him.
"Thank you," Bray said. To Kirby, he said, "We should check the second island, if that is where you last saw him. We can search the houses closest to the road on the way."
"I thought the same. Why don't you ride with me?" Kirby said, beckoning to a spot on the horse behind her.
Bray hopped on the stirrup. Forcing a smile through his trepidation, he said, "Let's go."
**
Kirby, Bray, Samron, and a group of fifty Halifax men walked or rode the long road through the islands, surveying the aftermath of a hard-fought war. Bodies lay in all directions. Islanders and Halifax men were sprawled on top of one another, their blood mixed in puddles. Bray guessed about five or six hundred islanders had fallen in total. Several times, the Halifax men stopped next to the body of a fallen friend, saying some quiet words before moving on.
"We will burn the bodies later," Samron said. "First, we will find your friend."
They continued walking. The Halifax men split off from the road as they encountered each house, looking through the doorways, determining they were empty before moving on. Once, Bray got off his horse and went to the woods as he spotted someone through the trees, but it ended up being a young, scared woman. She ran when she saw them.
"My guess is many of the islanders are still in hiding," Samron said. "We will need to speak with them. I am not sure what we will say."
"Some of the islands might be grateful to be rid of a leader such as Deacon," Bray said, with an air of hope he wanted to believe, even though he didn't fully.
"Even still, they will harbor thoughts of revenge," Samron said. He looked as if he was working through something. "I never thought I would live to see this day, walking a road that our ancestors must have walked when they were at peace." He stared down at a body of one of the Halifax men, whose mouth was agape in death. "And now it holds the blood of our generation, as well as our ancestors'."
"Perhaps the blood of this new war will be for a reason," Bray suggested. "Perhaps it will lead to peace."
"We will see," Samron said.
Riding past the open door of a butcher's shop, Bray looked inside, surprised to see a body he recognized. A man hung half in and out of a doorway, looking as if he had gotten as far as he could before collapsing. He had fallen on his side, clutching a string of beads around his neck.
"You look as if you recognize that person," Kirby said to Bray.
"Levi, one of the hunters I accompanied," Bray said with a nod.
"He gave information about you to Bartholomew," Kirby remembered, "right before the soldiers attacked you."
"Yes."
"What are those beads around his neck?"
"They contain the dirt of The Arches," Bray said. "They carry them with them on the hunt. Or, they did." Bray fell silent, walking away without a word as he got back on the horse.
They moved on until they passed a body lying in the street among the others, a sword stuck in his gut. Half of his face was blackened by fire. It took Kirby a moment to recognize Bartholomew's body. She noticed Bray staring at him from the back of her horse.
"That revenge will be worthless without William," Kirby said over her shoulder.
"You are right," Bray agreed.
"Let's get moving."
Chapter 85: Bray
The sun shined over the wooden bridge as they crossed the small patch of water that ran in between the islands. Bray inhaled an odor that he hadn't smelled since they'd been off the islands. Demons. The Halifax men, and Samron, looked around.
"I smell the twisted men," Bray said, scanning the ground as they passed a few dead island soldiers.
The soldiers appeared to have been half-eaten, but he saw a few demon carcasses among them, as well.
"They must have heard the noise," Kirby guessed. "Perhaps they crossed the river, as you did."
"Perhaps. We should keep vigilant, just in case there are more."
They kept a keen alert as they traveled onto the second island, passing a few more soldiers who had been killed by the twisted men, ripped open and partially consumed. Farther up on the island, in the land before the buildings, they saw more demon bodies, struck down by swords. Several had sm
aller stab wounds. Some looked as if they had been bludgeoned.
"Strange," Bray said aloud, as they looked between the bodies.
Pointing to the buildings they approached, Kirby said to Samron, "Perhaps we can check the building where we stayed, while you check the other."
Before Samron could agree, the door of the right-hand building opened and people streamed from the inside, carrying knives, swords, and long, sharp sticks. They took positions in the yard, lining up in defensive rows. Some hobbled, while others used contraptions meant to hold them up as they walked. A younger man missing a leg limped out to join the others. Bray recognized some of The Important Ones he'd seen in the yard. About fifty or so people exited the building before the door closed. An old woman with white hair and a knife in her hand, stepping in front of the others, put up a shaky hand, and yelled, "Do not come closer!"
Samron and the Halifax men paused, confused, or perhaps gauging the threat of the elderly and disabled.
"We mean no harm," Bray said. "The battle is over. We are here for our friend, the boy, William."
The woman with white hair surveyed them for a quiet moment. "You are the strangers. You have brought death to our door. You have come to finish us off."
"That is not our intention," Bray returned. "We are in search of our friend, that is all."
"He is no longer here," the woman said.
"Where is he?" Kirby asked, bristling as some anger entered her voice.
"Deacon took him, according to the whispers," the woman said. "We do not know to where he was taken."
"Deacon is dead. And so are his soldiers," Bray said, motioning to the bodies behind him, as if to prove his point. "Though we didn't kill these men."
"We know that," the woman said. "The Savages did. The wild men came over the water. The soldiers killed most of them, before they died, but we took care of the rest. It has been a long time since we have seen Savages here. It took the strongest of us to best them, and several died, but we had to protect ourselves, and the children inside. We will do what we have to, so you do not get to them."
The Ruins Book 2: A Dystopian Society in a Post-Apocalyptic World (The Ruins Series) Page 26
