by Lucas Thorn
Nysta watched Flin's eyes, which never softened as they drilled into her own. It wasn't hate which burned there, though. It was instead the frustration of feeling there was a debt to be paid.
And, thinking of the past few days, the elf knew that frustration well.
“If that's how you feel, then stay close,” the elf said softly. “Because I reckon you'll get a chance to pay me back a whole lot sooner than you think.”
Flin chewed at the inside of her cheek before giving a sharp nod. She sat down, cross-legged in front of the elf, and placed her spear across her lap with a stubborn growl. “Then I'll be at your side today. I'll save your life, and then we'll be square.”
Eli chuckled at the girl's seriousness. “It is a wonderful thing to be so young.”
“I'm not young,” the girl scowled. “I'm sixteen. You only have to be fifteen to get into the Imperial Guard.”
“Sixteen, is it? Then I'm a Deathpriest,” Eli returned. “No, don't look at me that way, my new friend. I do not mean to say you are not able to look after yourself. That you lived through yesterday's fight on the wall is good enough for Eli. No, it is that you expect to survive today that makes me feel the years have stripped me of even the smallest grain of hope. That I have seen too many bad things to expect a good thing. A miracle. You see, I fully expect to die today. I am simply jealous of your belief.”
“I don't know what to think,” Flin said, looking down at her spear. “I just fight. I won't hide behind the guards like all the others in this town. I'll fight. This is my home.”
And with those words, the elf's mood soured. It'd been years since she'd felt the need to truly defend anything. Maybe even longer than that.
Maybe she'd never felt that desire to defend something.
For her, it had always been the murky desire to survive. A desire which held with it no chance of a moral cause.
But here, this girl who'd barely touched fifteen summers, was filled with the determination to defend her home.
Home.
Maybe that was it, the elf allowed.
She'd never felt she'd ever had a home. Not even the crude cabin she'd built in a valley far to the south. That hadn't been home, either. Just a place to rest her head. Too many years on the street had made her think of a roof as just a place she might rest her head for a few hours.
Not a place to live in.
And that was something Talek had never understood about her.
Looking away from the girl's challenging gaze, the elf found herself staring into Ffloyd's frightened one.
And saw the other side of the townsfolk.
The total helplessness of fear.
Yet, there he was, struggling to reinforce the defences of the fort. Even the old lady, now scrubbing her pot, had been doing her best to ensure those who were about die to protect her today would die on a full stomach.
It seemed everyone in the town had a reason to fight.
Except her.
And that's what suddenly confused her the most.
Why was she fighting? Because General Storr was hunting her?
How could the man know if she slipped out the back wall and made her way stealthily into the mountains? She'd be lost by evening. He'd never find her once she was in the relative safety of the Bloods. She had little doubt she could evade the Dhampirs.
But an army?
They'd never make it. They'd draw every bloodsucking monster from the entire range and be dead by nightfall.
In every way, a flight into the Bloods was the sensible choice.
So why did she stay?
Ffloyd's fear visibly retreated a little as he caught her empty stare. He gave her a solemn nod, patting the heavy mallet at his hip. As if to say he was prepared to fight for the fort.
Fight not just for his life, but the lives of those inside. Even though his entire body was still shaking with terror.
Tearing her eyes from his, she looked back at Flin.
She'd taken a small stone from a pouch on her thigh and was busy sharpening the spear's long blade. It was a better weapon than she'd had on the wall. Something one of the guards might have carried. A heavier shaft and a brutal curved blade.
The girl's expression was one of deep concentration, as though she knew the method of how to sharpen the blade but not the application.
Her fingers gripped the stone so tight her knuckles were white.
With a quickness that startled the elf, the girl snapped her head up to look at her.
“You think we'll lose, don't you?” Flin demanded, almost an accusation.
“Ain't so much about winning and losing. It's about surviving. There's a lot of fellers out there,” the elf said. “And there ain't many in here. I figure they'll get to the gate as quick as they got to the walls. Ain't nothing out there to stop them. We'll run out of arrows pretty quick. Then they'll start on the gate. We'll drop some fire, maybe some of this powdered shit Pad likes so much. We'll drive them back.”
“You think so?”
“Sure, girl,” Nysta lifted her gaze to the steely grey sky, still frowning. “For about ten minutes. Then their fucking cleric will heal them up and they'll be back, probably with their ram to breach the gates. Which they'll do. They ain't been too smart so far, and I ain't expecting them to be any smarter. But they don't need to be. They just need to keep coming. Which they will.”
“What can we do, then?”
“Fight the bastards,” Eli grinned.
“But it's hopeless. We'll still lose?” The girl's voice held a note of challenge to it, expecting the elf to somehow rally some defiance of her own.
But Nysta was tired. And the fog wasn't lifting.
Rather, it was winding tighter around her brain, gripping deeper. Burrowing like worms into the depths of her skull.
Making hopelessness flower.
And before she could answer, a man on the wall lifted a horn to his lips and let out a long frantic blast.
“They are coming now, my friend,” Eli said, voice filled with a cold calm.
He dropped his hand to his knife. The elf watched coolly as he considered drawing it. Her own hand slid to her hip.
Then he decided he'd need something else. Began searching around for a more appropriate weapon.
The elf lifted her head at the sound of the second note trumpeted from the horn, though her gaze remained trapped by Flin's youthful eyes. She could feel the girl's inner struggle to comprehend the situation.
In her life, Flin had seen a lot of violence. Had been part of it sometimes.
But the scuffles of a few mercenaries in a town like Tannen's Run were nothing compared to the chaos of a real battle. The kind which was now marching relentlessly toward the gate.
The elf's lip curled cruelly as, suddenly, the fog paused its probing.
The pain in her temples froze.
As though the exploring darkness inside her skull had taken notice. Had felt the elf's chilling hopelessness, and had panicked enough to rear up like a cobra to get a good look at what was happening outside.
Sweat trickled down the elf's armpits.
Something else, possibly a ghost from her tormented mind, slithered across her ribs and down her belly. Where it stopped, frozen by the cold ball of fear which rolled inside. The sharp icy edges scraped against her guts.
And hunger was edged out by something more desperate.
There was no time to wonder what was happening inside her. No time to sit in awe as her strength returned and her eyesight seemed to sharpen to the point where everything appeared so much more real. The smell of ice and steel on the wind.
Her heart raced. Her palm itched.
Then Sharpe screamed for the few archers to take aim.
Pad bellowed at the men above the gate.
Bill led a handful of guards into position in front of the gate, a little to the side.
Pryke stayed where he was, monitoring the heavy mechanism which kept the gate shut. A quick turn on one of the wheels beside
his arm would send spikes rippling out of their homes in the wall. Spikes sharp enough to drill into anyone attacking the heavy gates. The only real defence after everything else failed.
His back to them now. Trembling as he waited for the first ram to hit home.
The barrels were lifted. Their contents prepared.
A heartbeat's silence exploded across the fort.
And in that silence, the elf's eyes glittered as she glanced at Flin. Tried answering the frightened girls question. “Told you before. Ain't about winning and losing. Surviving is a whole different kind of game.” She stuck a thumb toward Eli, who was testing the weight of a woodcutter's axe. “Feller over there said if Grim was still around, he'd want me as a Herald. Now, I ain't the religious type. But you know, it's kind of funny. It's been that kind of year for me. Makes you want to try it out. What do you say? Reckon it's time?”
A thunderous sound shook the fort as the Caspiellan cleric hurled magic at the walls. A few guards crumpled.
“I don't understand,” Flin, wide-eyed with shock at the dreadful noise, shook her head at the elf. “Time for what?”
Nysta moved forward, her lip twisting cruelly up toward her scar. Drew Kindness in one hand, Entrance Exam in the other. “Time to prey.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Grey Jackets hit the gates like a living storm.
A wave of steel surrounding a battering ram with a head of iron shaped like a fist. The Fist of Rule, they called it. It took more than a dozen men strapped into position either side to manoeuvre the heavy machine of war.
Its thick wooden wheels rumbled across the wet ground, which was the only reason the ram would need more than a few good shots at the gate. It couldn't pick up enough speed, and needed wrestling to position it properly.
When positioned, they could wind the chains to start the machine swinging the ram at the gate. But first, they figured they weren't right, so began hauling it back for one more charge. Hoping to aim the ram where it would do the most damage.
Pryke, surprised by the savage impact, fell backwards onto his rump and forgot to turn the wheel.
As she'd predicted, the Caspiellans threw away any semblance of tactics and relied on brute force. The presence of their cleric made them confidant. Their archers stormed up behind the ram and fired arrows upward. They fired blindly, arrows searching for targets beyond their vision.
One found the throat of the young boy who'd been serving the stew. The elf watched impassively as he writhed in the mud, his mouth open in a wet gurgling scream.
No one moved to help him.
She waited.
Eli was swinging the long-bladed woodcutter's axe. Testing it. He didn't look happy, but she noted he seemed to know what he was doing.
Pad, on the wall, was upending jugs of water onto the soldiers below. Beside him, several townsfolk were doing the same, including Ffloyd. Throwing the last jug over the wall, Pad then levered the first of the barrels into position and upended them on the Grey Jackets below.
His roar of glee mingled with the screams below as quicklime did its work, burning through skin and eyes.
It didn't seem to slow them down, though. The gate shuddered again as the ram outside smashed hard into its face. Again, their commander wasn't happy and shouted for them to back up. Try again.
Pryke, lifting himself from the ground where he'd been sprawled, clutched at his wounded side. Took a step toward the gate. Reached out.
He put his hand on the wheel which would send spikes ripping into the Caspiellans manning their ram. Something about the hesitant way he moved didn't look right, but her gaze was torn to the wall again as Sharpe let out a bellow for the townsfolk to start throwing over their pots of coals.
The archers were conserving their arrows. No longer shooting madly over the wall. Realising the fighting would soon be inside the fort, Boe snatched at the Count's arm to bring him down into the cluster of mercenaries waiting for the gate to fall. Everyone knew it wouldn't be long.
The guards, too, began to trickle down as Sharpe sent them away. Clearing space for whatever trick Pad had planned next.
The big guard was using a hammer and chisel at the heavy stone blocks which formed the crenels along the wall above the gate. He seemed to be taking great delight in the job.
The gate's massive iron hinges let out a rumbling groan as the ram did its job again.
Bill screamed at Pryke to spin the wheel. Pryke slowly turned, eyes bright, but his expression dazed.
“It won't hold them back for long,” Eli said. He shivered with a heady mix of anticipation and dread. “Are you ready, my friend?”
The elf grimaced. Her mouth tasted metallic. A rush of blood sent spots of colour rippling across her vision, and her whole world seemed to be too sharp. Too focussed.
She wanted to throw up.
Eyes unblinking, too afraid to close even for a fraction of a moment just in case she missed something and paid the ultimate price for it, the elf forced herself to breathe slowly.
Not trusting herself to speak, she nodded.
Flin gripped her spear in both hands, frowning at the gate. “What's he doing?”
The elf looked back at the gate to see Pryke fumbling not with the wheel, but with the mechanism which kept it barred. Another guard rushed up to him, shouting something.
Pryke's knife flashed, and the guard fell. Spots of blood flickered across the young guard's face. A face twisted in hatred.
Bill spat curses.
“Pryke!” Nysta exploded into movement, pushing past the horrified guards in front of her.
The wounded young man glanced at her, eyes red with fury and pain. “You treated me like nothing, you Tainted bitch. Now you'll regret it. I told you I'd kill you. Well, I will! I'll kill you. Kill the fucking lot of you!”
And he gave the mechanism another turn.
Nysta sprinted forward, Entrance Exam spinning in her hand.
“Nysta!” Eli shouted. “Stop! It's too late!”
Sharpe looked down. Saw Pryke at the gate. “Pryke, you bastard!”
Pryke's voice was manic. Cackling like an old crone. “Fuck you! Fuck you all!”
And the heavy bars which held the gate lifted.
Silence stretched. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
Then the ram hit the door, sending it exploding inward with a crash and a spray of splinters. Expecting to have met resistance at the gate, the men on the ram stumbled as they fell forward through the destroyed gates.
They tripped on debris and slipped in the mud. Scrambled to unstrap themselves from the siege engine as it settled awkwardly across the threshold and made it difficult for the soldiers behind to get inside to protect them.
Panicked and wide-eyed, they hurriedly drew swords.
One of them saw Pryke, who was leaning against the mechanism, laughing madly.
“No! Stop! I'm on your side!” Pryke screamed shrilly just before his head was lifted from his shoulders by a savage swing of a Caspiellan sword.
“Fuck!” The elf spat, disappointed to not have killed the young man herself.
Skidding to a stop in front of the gate, she sent Entrance Exam into the forehead of the closest Grey Jacket, who was still trying to get free of the ram. Kindness ripped into the belly of the next, even as she had to duck under a sword glittering through the dust. The blade's edge felt so close she thought it took some hair with it.
Eli was fast on her heels, axe splitting the head of the soldier on the other side of the ram. She caught a glimpse of the weasel-faced mercenary's face and almost didn't recognise him. A look of sheer murderous delight had washed the familiar foolish expression from his face.
Several soldiers, horrified by his homicidal glee, tried to get away but were unable to move back for the pushing advance from behind.
They lifted shields, trying to make a wall to keep him back, but the axe-wielding man ploughed into them with a blood-thrilled scream to send them scattering across the floor like do
lls.
Blood sprayed.
A severed arm slapped to the ground at his feet.
More soldiers pushed forward, forced to mount the ram and squirm over the top to get into the fort. They knew their only strength was numbers, so they tried to overwhelm the defenders. Knew they had to, or they'd be bottlenecked and driven back.
“Move that fucking thing out of the way,” she heard one of them shout. Her eyes connected with the speaker, and her heart turned to ice.
Storrson.
Only a few heartbeats away.
She lunged, breath ragged in her ears. Hate streaming through her veins as she remembered how easily he'd captured her.
His eyes widened, startled by the fury of the elf. He grabbed one of his men, flinging the soldier between them before running backward.
Gutting the surprised Grey Jacket with a brutal swipe of her blade, the elf made to follow Storrson, but was pushed back as five new men with swords aimed at her head came yelling through the debris.
Sheer weight of numbers threatened to consume her. Grey shields rushed forward to meet her attack. Slammed into her, sending her reeling back. A sword slashed low, and she had to work hard to spring away and keep her feet from being impaled by the blade.
The mercenaries and guards pressing up behind her stood their ground. They knew to run would mean their deaths, so they chanced life by looking the Shadowed Halls right in the face.
It wasn't too much of a gamble, the elf thought. From what she'd seen, the Grey Jackets were mostly green. Not the hardened force she'd expected. Nor the most tactically sound. Any army worth its pay should have obliterated the town by now.
She should be dead by now.
How Storr had gained a reputation as one of the best generals the Grey Jackets had ever had was quickly becoming a mystery to her. She found it hard to believe the man who'd seemed so calm and efficient when speaking to her only days before could be the same man leading these men to their doom.
A doom she felt certain she was about to share as, gripping Kindness hard in her fist, she thought she heard the shiver of the Shadowed Halls opening their gates ready to devour the souls of all who were about to die. And those gates were opening wide.
