“We're looking for a piece of jewelry, love,” he said, sneering down at her. “One gifted to your mother by the King of Cambrell upon her wedding day. Seen anything like that lying around, sweet-meats?”
“Her armlet,” Shawna said, surprised at how steady her voice sounded. She turned her eyes up to the man, who had removed his helmet. His hair was dark, and he had the beginnings of a beard on his dirty face.
“Where is it? Tell me that, and I'll let you live.”
No matter what they tell you, you will not leave this house alive.
“Let me live?” Shawna repeated. “You'll take what you want and leave this place?”
“Not for me to decide, love, but I'll tell you this—if you want to play games, I'll tie you to that bed over there and let my men all take turns with you. A young thing like you, unmarried...they're all just itching to get a taste. Is that what you want?” He moved toward her, his bastard eyes running over her body again.
Cold fear blossomed in Shawna's stomach, but she forced herself not to look away, even if she could find no words to reply. She wanted to scream, wanted to run, wanted to rip the man’s throat out. The words were frozen like a block of ice in her throat, though, holding her inner storm at bay.
“Of course that’s not what you want, pretty little thing that you are. They've got one downstairs, love. If you help me, I can protect you, but you've got to give me a reason to help you. Are we clear?” he asked, a smug grin on his face.
“Yes,” she said through her teeth.
“Good. Now—where is it?”
Shawna kept her eyes on him as she slowly began to get to her feet. His hand tightened on the dagger, but he made no move toward her as she rose. The man's eyes slithered up and down her legs as she moved, and Shawna felt a fresh bout of disgust wring its way through her bones. The leather riding pants she was wearing did little to obscure her legs, though she had never worried about such a thing until this man had leered at her in that terrible, hungry way. Her legs were so full of the urge to run that they quivered.
“It's in the shrine,” she said, feeling horrible as the words passed her lips. “The thing you seek is inside my mother's shrine.”
The Galanian gave her a considering look before his eyes shot to the low table that sat in the corner of the room, and what sat upon it. Three candles surrounded a clay obelisk that held a plaster mask of her mother's face. Her father used to keep the candles burning night and day, as he had never gotten over the death of his wife. They flickered back and forth in the dusty air as the sounds of things being ransacked drifted in through the open doorway. Shawna had always imagined those flames to be the only light to point her mother’s way back from the Void, so strong and constant. Now, before the Galanian intruder, they seemed terribly fragile.
The corporal kept one eye on Shawna as he approached the shrine, giving it a strange look. His people probably had no such custom, and the obelisk confused him. It was nearly six hands tall, and stood at head-height to the Galanian. He grimaced at the plaster mask, and took in the whole shrine with a look of disgust. Then, without so much as a pause for reverence, he smashed her mother’s obelisk with the pommel of his dagger. The clay shattered, falling into dust and shards over the remains of the shrine. Shawna bit down on her tongue, trying to stifle the anger at the sight of the man rooting through its remains.
“Ah,” he smiled, pulling a small, silver box up from the detritus. “This must be it. This has to be it.”
The corporal carefully opened the tiny latch on the box, reaching inside with more care than he had shown the shrine to Shawna’s mother. He pulled the armlet out, turning it to the light streaming in through the windows. The morning sun caught the sinuous bands of silver, and glittered off the large ruby set into its center. The man stared at it with greedy awe.
“I’m getting a promotion for this one, alright,” he muttered. “From my hand to the colonel’s.”
Shawna had never liked her mother's armlet. Something about the thing gave her an odd feeling, as if it was cursed. Even now she felt anxious looking at it, though the man holding it was clearly the danger in the room.
Such a small thing, she thought. Just a piece of jewelry, yet now everyone I love is dead because of it.
Shawna began to inch toward the corporal as his eyes stayed locked to the gem. If she could reach him and attack before he noticed, then she may have a chance of winning through. She had to do it quietly, though, or the rest of the men below would hear. Heart beating hard into her ears, she stepped cautiously toward the man.
He saw her coming and pointed the dagger at her throat.
“Hold right there, sweet-meats,” he said, grimacing in her direction. “Get any funny ideas, and we'll revisit the deal we made. Got it?”
“You've got what you want,” Shawna said through her teeth. “Now go!”
The corporal smiled.
“Aye, you kept your end of the deal, didn't you?” His eyes crawled over her body again, and Shawna felt cold dread wash down her shoulders. She had known that her father had been right, but some part of her had held out hope that the gods would take pity on her. “See, now I think it's time we revisited the terms of our agreement.”
“You bastard,” she whispered.
“Aye, that I definitely am—a bastard with a knife to your throat, though. Don't forget that, sweet-meats,” he smiled.
“Please...just let me go,” she tried, feeling an involuntary shiver start in her stomach.
“Oh, I'll let you go, love. I promise you will be free when all of this is over,” he chuckled. The Galanian came closer, pointing the knife at the exposed part of her chest. “Watching you walk up those stairs, though, that just did something to me, see? Those pants you're wearing really do the trick. Women don't wear those back home. It's improper, isn't it? You Cambrellian women, though...you're another thing entirely.”
“No,” she whimpered, feeling a new wave of nausea wash through her.
“Keep saying that, love. I like to hear it,” he laughed.
She started to run, but he grabbed her roughly around the waist and pulled her into him. He smelled like steel oil and horseflesh, and Shawna pushed away from him as he struggled with her arms. She thought she might win free of him, but he reached back and slammed the back of his hand into her face, and her legs went weak with the force of the blow. She kept blindly flailing at him until she felt the cold steel point of his knife pressed into her throat.
“There now,” he grunted, pawing at the ties to her breeches as he pulled her close again. “That's a good girl. You're going to be a good girl, right?”
Her hands went reflexively to the hand that held the knife, clutching his rough hand tentatively.
“Wait! Wait—please!”
“Truth told, I've been waiting all day, love. That's long enough,” he grunted. The knife went to move away, but she clutched it desperately.
“Please! Please...I'll let you. I'll let you!” she whimpered.
His struggles quieted for a moment and he looked into her eyes. The dagger pressed harder into her neck as his expression conveyed a warning. She pleaded with her expression and clutched to the hand that held the knife.
“You'll let me, will you?”
“Just you,” she breathed. “Just you, not them. I'll let you if you don't give me to them.”
She pulled on the hand that held the knife to her, as if to pull it away from her neck. His face took on a grim smile as his hand relaxed, and the tension on his arm disappeared. His eyes left hers to slither over her body again.
It was that moment that killed him.
Shawna moved with all the desperate speed and strength she could summon. She grasped hard to his hand and shoved it upward as he was pulling against her, using his distraction as an opening. The dagger went into his eye with a wet squelch, and blood flicked over Shawna's white shirt.
The corporal released her and shrieked in surprised pain, but Shawna was already moving. She gra
sped the hilt of his belted longsword and planted her foot into his gut, pushing him backward with a kick. The sword came free as he stumbled back, but he was too busy pulling the dagger from his eye socket to notice. Shawna gripped the heavy blade at half-sword, and with a practiced thrust, slid the steel easily into the front of the Galanian's throat. His body crumpled as blood gurgled out from the wound.
Shawna stood for a moment, staring at the man as he kicked the last seconds of his life out onto the floor. Blood pooled beneath him in a steadily growing puddle, and the one eye he had left regarded her with a mystified expression. Shawna was breathing hard, clutching the unfamiliar longsword in white-knuckled hands as a shout rang into the hallway.
“Corporal! Corporal, is everything alright? I told you not to kill her until—,” the man whom she'd seen downstairs stepped into the room and caught sight of what had happened. The color drained from his face as his eyes took in the scene, and he cursed loudly as he reached to his side for the sword belted there.
Shawna didn't let him pull it. She moved in a flash and licked out with the heavy blade, chopping into the man's hand as it found the hilt of his sword. He screamed as blood flew from the ruined thing that had been his hand a half-second before, but his screams ended abruptly as Shawna thrust the end of the blade under his jaw and up into his skull.
He hit the floor in a clatter of steel and leather, and lay still, eyes staring at nothing.
She heard a commotion downstairs in response to the screams, and knew that she had to move quickly. These Galanians wouldn't have expected a girl such as her to know the sword, but once the men below discovered the bodies of their comrades, her element of surprise would be forfeit. Her eyes tracked over the white sheets of her father's bed, now covered with the spattered blood of the two intruders. She looked to the busted obelisk to her mother, and felt a swell of rage and heartbreak wrapped up together.
Take the armlet, and go!
Upon hearing her father's voice again, she rushed over to where the first man had dropped the armlet. It lay amongst the busted remains of the shrine and the pooled blood of the corporal, shining merrily into the daylight. Shawna felt an odd repulsion as she picked it up and placed it back into the silver box. She hesitated upon seeing the rest of the things her father had put in the shrine—an old letter, and a lock of her mother's red-golden hair. Grimacing, she grabbed the lock of hair and stuffed it into her pocket. There was no time to clean up the rest.
Shawna rushed from the room and down the long hallway toward her own chambers. She could hear the men just below her grumbling back and forth as they moved toward the stairs, and her stomach tried to climb into her throat. She had never done more than wound someone in a contest before today, and that only lightly. Now, in the space of a short morning, all of her friends and family lay dead, and the blood of two men stained her hands.
Shawna made it to her rooms and ducked through the entry, shutting the door behind her as quietly as she could. She wanted to scream, but her throat was clamped shut on her emotions. Her stomach fluttered so hard that it nearly caused her to vomit, but she took a few deep breaths and tried to steel herself for what was to come. She knew that she was nowhere close to making it out of here alive.
“Calm down, girl,” she whispered to herself, trying to still her breathing. “Pull this together!”
She heard the men—two by the sound of it—clamber up the stairs and stride past her doorway, moving for her father's rooms down the hall. Shawna held her breath until she knew they were gone, and then moved for the corner of her room. There was no time to sit in the corner with her eyes closed and pout like some simpering fool. Though every part of her wanted to curl up, scream at the gods, and cry, she knew she couldn’t.
Shawna tossed the box with her mother's armlet and the bloody longsword onto her bed, resisting the urge to drop the sword onto the floor instead. She realized how odd it was to be so concerned with tidiness when everything in her life had gone to ashes, but she couldn't control the impulse to cringe as the bloody sword soiled her bedsheets. It wasn't as if she would ever sleep there again, anyway.
Her father had built a crude arming stand for her, which sat in the corner of her room. Upon it hung a leather arming kit that she'd never had to wear. Her father had indulged her with the sword lessons, but he had given her an angry look when she had purchased the armor. She almost smiled to remember the tirade he'd given her about how no daughter of his would be seen striding about in a ridiculous set of leather armor like some hunter, or highway brigand.
Then she remembered that her father was lying dead in the kitchens below, and the smile died on her lips.
She had no time to don the armor, but what she sought hung around the leather cuirass on twin arming belts. Two scabbards held her most prized possessions—twin short swords her father had commissioned for her upon the day she had won her Mark. They were wide, straight blades in the Sheran fashion, a style to which she had taken during her training. Forged at the Mage Tower in Lesmira—the only kingdom in Alderak to tolerate sorcery—the swords were imbued with that ephemeral force that most in her homeland decried as evil.
The swords were unadorned with markings or jewels, save for large, smooth onyxes worked into the pommels. The hilts were wrapped in black leather tooled with silver wire. She grasped the hilts of the swords and pulled them free as she heard the men down the hallway discover the bodies of their fellows. Her blades uttered a low, musical tone as she slid them from their sheaths—a result of the sorcery. She regarded them in the morning light streaming in through her windows, and grimaced at her reflection in the metal. Shawna had no idea what strange mix of metals resulted in the smooth, reflective sheen, or how effective the steel would be against that wielded by the Galanians. She could only assume—hope—that it would be better. Shawna took a deep breath, and clamped down on her fluttering stomach.
It was time to make her stand.
Shawna turned and strode out into the hallway, taking a deep breath and squaring her shoulders. The muscles in the middle of her back wanted to knot up fiercely, and her legs were still quivering. She turned toward her father's room just in time to see the first Galanian emerge through the doorway.
“There!” he growled, pointing at her with his bared longsword. A shadow appeared in the room just over his shoulder, but the first man was already advancing on her. Shawna’s heart thundered into her ears.
She had a moment of stark clarity as she watched the man come toward her. He was a big fellow, fully two heads over Shawna's modest height, and he was carrying his longsword as if it were no more than a willow switch. Her blood ran cold as she realized that she was wearing nothing more than a thin cotton shirt and leather riding pants, while these men were equipped for war. She clenched her teeth and tightened her grip on her twin blades.
Strength is a great thing, but its counter is simple—greater skill. You should treat every blade as a deadly thing, no matter the arm wielding it. If you are wielding your swords correctly, you should have no need to worry about being touched at all. Do not whine to me of strength, of size, or youth. Only skill should concern a true Blademaster.
Shawna felt the tension in her muscles sharpen to something deadly as her lessons came flooding back to her. She glanced down at the man's wrist and took in the way he was holding his sword, as if it were a cudgel and he was wading into a tavern brawl. He had no awareness of the point of his blade as he came for her, holding it like a stick rather than a deadly length of steel. She took a deep breath, and slipped into motion.
She closed the distance to the big man in two quick steps, and licked out with one of her blades to slash across his sword hand. He wasn't fast enough to avoid the quick attack, and he let out a cry of pain as her magical sword went through his fingers with ease. Shawna's other sword took his throat in an almost contemptuous flick, and he went down gurgling blood.
Shawna had no time to recover. The second man—a smaller, more lithe opponent—thrust tow
ard her eyes as the behemoth fell to the floor. She slipped backward, putting the kicking body of the first man between them as she danced out of range. The man screamed in rage as he came at her, thrusting high and low, forcing her back toward the stairs. Some part of her was amused at the man's clumsy advance, but the larger part was filled with a cold, righteous anger.
She slid his next thrust aside, causing a singing musical note to ring out from her magical steel. She smiled at him as his eyes grew wide with the realization of what was about to happen. Her second blade slipped easily into his guts, the chainmail no obstacle to its path. His sword clattered to the floor, and his face twisted with pain. His eyes went to her blades, and then they fell upon the small tattoos that decorated each of her wrists—twin representations of a grapevine twisted around a bared sword.
“Bugger the gods,” he sputtered.
Shawna put her second blade through his heart, and left him to die with an incredulous look on his face.
She stood for a moment, surveying the chaos around her. The two Galanians lay motionless, and blood was everywhere. Shawna looked down at her white shirt, and was unsurprised to find it spattered with the bright red evidence of her killings. She couldn't hear any more noise in the immediate vicinity, but she knew there were at least three or four more men around somewhere. Shawna took a deep breath, and flicked her swords to the side. The blood flew from the quicksilver surface of the steel, and she turned to head back to her room.
This time she did don the armor, nearly forgetting to shrug her way into the arming tunic first. The boiled leather was made to her measurements, and relatively easy to buckle. She rustled around for her saddlebags and threw handfuls of things inside. Shawna was barely looking at what she was packing, bending her ears instead to listen for anyone approaching.
The Seven Signs: Three Book Collection Page 2
