As Feathers Fall

by Chris Galford

  Voren managed to crawl behind one such boulder, screening him from the mob. The Zuti crawled up beside him, and slid his spear after. They were just east of the sellswords, the road cutting south and away from them. What’s more: their backs were turned.

  If only I had a crossbow… He would be dead, he knew. He glanced again and cursed. If they had a dozen men with crossbows, maybe. Instead, they were two against thirty. Or forty. His mind ran rampant with the details.

  The Zuti slapped him and motioned to the crowd. “Back. I go back. May-be way in. I see. You, wait.” He slapped the earth with the same hand he had struck Voren. When Voren made no reply, another slap caught his cheek. This time he nodded, and the Zuti, frowning, shimmied into the grass. Like a snake. Or a tiger.

  In his wake, Voren grew acutely aware of his own isolation. He tried to get his bearings, but it was difficult. He could angle back to the road easily enough, try to make a run for it and, hopefully, lose himself in the crowds. Some had begun to hesitantly edge back, curious at the scene playing out at the church. Most had fled. The detritus of their flight was everywhere.

  Holding his breath, he skittered sideways around the rock-face and peered out at the group. So much shouting. The figure at the group’s head twisted, barking something—and in the same breath rode drakkonfire. He ducked instinctively. The figure bobbed forward, his horse startled, and his men scattered in a panic. Uproar followed: clattering iron and cries for blood.

  “So ugly even bullets won’t touch your face, Orif. Kind of a double-edged thing, isn’t it?”

  That voice was cold water lancing up Voren’s spine. Can he be so foolish? It was a rhetorical question, of course. He could. He knew he could. He had hoped…

  He could crawl up or he could go around, following the same trail Chigenda had taken. He gritted his teeth and whispered a quick prayer to Assal. This was no place for a baker. He dropped flat on his stomach and began to crawl, though he shouted inwardly all the while. There was more than one fool here today.

  It was hard, sweaty going—the pressure of it, rather than the land. Men began to roar still louder, and though he was too far to do anything about them, he saw the torches rise. And this, more than anything, stilled him. There were few worse ways to die that he could think of. Even the winter chill had only taken a finger—and it numbed a person before it killed them. But this? This was cruelty for the sake of cruelty.

  What am I to do anything about it? This occurred to him as he huddled in the dirt, alongside the marvel that the dirt, the mud, though it all spun his mind into a panic still, seemed lessened. It was beneath his terror. He swallowed. What is a baker’s place in this? He was not a sellsword. He was not a warrior. His only contributions to war had been bread and poison.

  The sun moved behind a cloud and he could see the first flames lick the planks that gave the church form. Outside, men laughed and howled; from inside, beneath the rush of the wind, he could hear weeping. Essa weeping, or Rurik—again his imagination was running. Iron in his gut, a river down his skin, and he breathed, impossibly, in the face of it all. He breathed.

  He still had the pistol. That, and the little knife he had stolen from camp. His heart was pounding. He wiped his damp palms against his breeches and bundled his legs under him, back to the road that could carry him away—it was not too late. Above him were the sun and the fire that would consume. A part of him regretted there was no flour at hand. It would have dried his hands, given him a firm grip.

  Voren knew what he had to do.

  The nearest men were not far. They stood back a ways from the other Gorjes, tending steeds. Voren crept behind them, silently praying that the gryphons should not panic—he did not wish to die in a hail of claws.

  As he neared them, he stood tall, groped a hand around his half-dulled knife, and drove it into the side of one man’s neck. Even as the other turned, shocked, Voren jammed the pistol up under his chin. The man put up his hands, but Voren kept the pistol to his skin as he swept behind him. A couple men had noticed something amiss—they were already walking back to see what the birds were squawking about.

  His prisoner didn’t know he had no fuse to light his pistol. In rifling through the man’s pockets, though, he found one, and he figured there would be more on his friend. That one still writhed, and his blood leaked everywhere. Already Voren was paling, but he was committed. Another match, another fuse; the air was still dry here, and none of the gryphons were tied.

  He slapped one on the rear, slapped another—ignored the shout his prisoner gave. A spark was all he needed, and he struck it to the quick, and where the fire caught, it spread toward the dying man’s powderhorn, and proved sufficient to spook the other gryphons.

  They bolted, rearing and screeching. One hit them both, trampling them down. He was deadweight, but he started to rise. “You little shit!” someone shouted. About the same moment, something hit him. Hard. It jerked him, forced him to sink. He looked down and saw a bolt in his bowels and he thought—“Oh”—but it was another instant before the pain caught up with it.

  They were everywhere when he looked up. Them and a black splotch in the distance, pulling another man down. Black smoke billowed overhead and the fire somehow seemed to have gotten inside. Voren shuddered, on hands and knees—he could not understand how all those soldiers had managed to move after such as this. He closed his eyes, ignoring the tears that rained down.

  A boot kicked him, and swords followed. He smelled saltpeter and brimstone and he thought Hell had come for him, but also none of this, was really so bad. Not so bad. There was suffering and there was the suffering that came from the fear of suffering, and as he realized that the latter was what he had suffered all his life, he choked on blood, but he saw that fear bred worse agonies than pain itself. At least this had a purpose, and achieved.

  There was a little hiss, and the searing kiss of eternity. But no more pain.

  * *

  Freedom was a hail of holy books thumping against a glass ceiling. Most glanced off or lacked the force. It only took one to shatter it, to rain shards of sanctified scenery upon their heads and bare grey light to suckle at the suffocating smoke.

  “I need a boost,” she said.

  Rurik was beside her, bending knee. As though she were a lady, and this, some stately nonsense. She put boot to palm and hoisted herself onto his shoulders. Swaying, he rose, and she stood tall praying only that his muscles would hold her meager weight for long enough to—

  Got it.

  Blood tickled her fingertips as they wrapped around the cracked edge-shards of the ceiling. It was an effort not to flinch; she feared what she would lose if she did. Instead, she bit her lip and pulled herself up. For a moment she dangled above flames, and she felt as if she were rising into some celestial mockery. Her head felt light as a feather, but she emerged, coughing as she sucked desperately at fresh air.

  With a boot, she kicked away the rest of the glass and swung back over the ledge to offer her arms. “Grab my hands,” she cried. Though she spoke to Rurik, he stepped back—gave another woman his shoulders. She swayed, all tears and disbelief, as Essa caught her and pulled her the rest of the way. It made her shoulders burn, but this, she told herself, was nothing. If after fifteen years of using a longbow hadn’t built her up for this, then she deserved to be called a damned princess and kicked back into those flames.

  Three times, they repeated this routine, until one of the farmers had scrambled up the chain. “Help,” she demanded of the man, but the others took it for gospel as well, throwing their hands to any that grabbed for them. By this point, however, Essa had one fear, and it wasn’t the flames bearing down on them.

  They’ll see us for sure. How could they not already?

  Finally, Rowan took her hands and she yanked her scrawny cousin up. He glided over the roof, sweat pouring down his skin. He started to say something, but she reached back…only to find two of the farmers were already helping a visibly spent Rurik up.

 
; “We need—” Rowan began to say.

  Then everything slanted as the roof creaked and snapped. She scrabbled against the boards, and just barely avoided a roll back into the abyss. A tuft of flame burned her hot enough that she yelped and heaved her momentum against it—struck solid board, and limped aside. Above her panic-stirred senses, she saw the others scrambling down the side of the roof after her. From below, someone shouted, and she vaguely registered a screeching bang followed by another rush of searing wind. Her nails dug into the boards, but she would not look down.

  “Don’t look, Essa, for the love of Assal don’t look,” a breathless Rowan chanted like a mantra above her. He reached and she seized his hand. Something clattered off the roof beside them and Rowan pitched back, suddenly off-footed.

  Then they were falling again. The difference: this time someone else was there to break their fall. Bodies rushed up at them, then all was the less than cushiony embrace of bone and flesh. Rurik and some local woman crooned beneath them, all a tangle of limbs.

  She barely registered the pain. The smell of scorched skin—that she registered. The fact that they were one less than they had been when they ascended the roof—that she registered.

  A leg under her was all she needed. It hurt like Hell, but she managed it. At the same time, someone was howling around the side of the church, an axe raised above his head. She didn’t have time for grace, so instead she just hurled a knife at him. The butt clocked him on the head and stunned him long enough for one of their half-dazed farmers to close the gap and bludgeon him off his startled steed with a club. The others swarmed him where he fell.

  People were remarkably resourceful when it came to killing, she had found. All the armor in the world wouldn’t save a man on his back.

  Speaking of which…She pulled Rowan and then Rurik to their feet, each blackened with soot and smoke. Neither sounded like their lungs had taken any better to near immolation.

  “Only one?” Rurik asked.

  True enough, there was only the one rider. Yet they had just the one building between them, and only barely that.

  “They’re…distracted,” Rowan concluded, though her cousin looked to be the distracted one. Pallid, even by his standards, he drew his rapier and shoved them on. “Don’t ask. Just go. They’ll be on us s—”

  A moment’s grace was too much to ask. Two, then three men hustled around the other side of the church, and their party was already scattering. The crows on the corpse of the sellswords’ compatriot broke at first sight. It left just the Company and a single farmer at their back. Yet there was no mirth in their killers’ eyes—the men were haggard, and hungry for more than just blood.

  There was no time for her bow, and with her hands the way they were, she was not sure she could manage a solid draw. She pulled another pair of knives from her belt, noting with some distaste that they were the last. Years of accumulation, moments to dispense. She did not look to Rurik—she did not want him to fight at all.

  They broke around Rowan’s back to either side, to meet the charging Gorjes. When they were close enough, she sprang suddenly forward, hoping to off-step their rush with a feint.

  It didn’t work. Her man hesitated—the others swept straight in. The Gorjes man snarled and lifted his left arm which, to her dismay, bore a shield. It was she that might have snarled—a poor choice on her part. Gripping her knives, she let him come on then, let him bask in the notion of a warrior’s fight.

  This was no duel. She was no warrior. To Hell with any man fool enough to think it.

  The man thrust ahead with his blade; a timely, professional thing that left little of him exposed. She twisted hard to one side, let the thrust come. Knives were not meant to guard against such. He reversed, swung down on her, and she fell forward, cutting for the unprotected rear of his knee. The scream was more solid than the cut, but she still pulled away red. He pitched forward, carved another stroke that nearly caught her. She rolled frantically away, and came up, dizzy and giddy and with knives whetted but hungry still.

  The man clawed to his feet, leaning heavily to his left side. She quick-stepped to that side, let him turtle up, and swung around instead to fling a knife just beneath his chin. The strap of it deflected it down, but the weight behind it held true. The man choked, seemed to goggle through his own disbelief, and went down like a sack of potatoes.

  Rowan was pulling his slender sword out of a second man by the time hers fell. Barely keeping his own sword abreast, Rurik by contrast looked already winded, and the fire in his eyes had sputtered. She hesitated. There were men here that deserved—nay, needed—to die, but she could not lead him into such. He would go too willingly, and die too ignobly.

  That was, perhaps, exactly what he had wanted with this mad dash all along.

  “If we run, they’ll just run us down,” she said, gulping for air all the while.

  Rurik, mimicking the gesture, hobbled past them. “I can fight,” he spat.

  It was a body, not a man, which rounded the church next. Whether he had been running, or fighting, she could not say. It was a spear that did him in, though, and she had a much better idea what that meant. “Chigenda,” she murmured, and sure enough, a half-second later the Zuti tumbled into sight, riding another body, and breaking loose the blade of his dull machete in the man’s ribcage. Animal ferocity—that, more than any texture of skin, any look in his eyes or weapon in his hand—was what she saw in him, and precisely the thing she had always dreaded.

  She did not lower her weapon. He did not lower his. “I’ll be damned,” Rowan muttered, but the Zuti came on regardless. Avenging spirit or spiteful killer, he had returned to them, and his deft fingers sprung his spear from a dying man’s chest as he ran. The question of where the other men had gone was answered, as they hurdled through the shadows of his passing.

  Not all of them. Not even most of them. But enough. There were maybe ten men, some with bows but all with instruments of war, and charging ahead of them was the greyish-skinned figure of death itself, an arrow still protruding from its girth. A mace swept the passage before it, but Hell sang in its passing. Orif’s orjuk, come to fight and come to die, as its people always did.

  The Zuti was halfway to them when he pivoted sharply, slamming a heel down and vaulting back with spear leading. The orjuk held not the same agility. It skidded, bellowed, but though it flung its arms back and tried to halt itself, the tip of the spear sank in and sucked back out of its chest, and it was diminished in blood.

  Only, it still was not dead. A mace in one hand, an axe in the other—it snapped the spear away. Its motions were wild, but not nearly so wild as they seemed. She saw a hail of iron as the Zuti dropped back, and back, on light steps, and then the others were swarming over them.

  She slashed hard at the first man who, bearded and helmetless, came at her with a short sword. He might have killed her—he had the range and the arm—but she stepped quicker than he, and when one of his mates fired off a pistol, it was he that cried out, not her. “Back!” Rowan cried, and she twisted on a coin, coming so suddenly at the next man that he reeled back.

  The blade of her knife rattled him so hard on the helmet that it shattered the blade, but it also skewed his helmet in the process. She came up under him as he fiddled with it and stabbed him in the gut until he stopped squirming. Then she realized she had no knife and too many people to fight, and through the haze of killing she looked to the others to find her bearing.

  Four of the Gorjes had closed with Rowan, coming at him from three sides. Panic threatened her, forced her feet back under her, but panic was death to the mind—she had forgotten what it meant to be Rowan, that her cousin was something more than the fop so many took him to be. So much of his life was spent toying with others. Not so, now.

  Though he had struck a defensive pose, Rowan had not waited for the men to reach him. He stepped light as a cat, and as she watched he checked a thrust, whirled aside from another, and booted the second into a third. When the four
th man swung down at him, Rowan moved just enough to let it graze, and put his own sword up to let the man’s force work against him. This one bore no helm, and it was his downfall—a screaming, bloody downfall.

  By then the others were recovering, but for a second time he seized a man—the dying man—and hurled him at them, and with that he purchased a moment to rap the man overpowering Rurik across the back of the neck. It bore no more strength to it than a wasp’s sting, but the man bled, and bled, and when he put a hand to it, Rurik tackled him into the dust.

  As the others came on, though, she snatched up an arrow and fell on one of them from behind, stabbing wherever she could see a chink in his armor. Patchwork and piecemeal, there were a lot of holes to plug—and though she felt the sickness well in her, she plugged them all. It half-turned one of the others, and so she was his death as well, for Rowan saw this and ended him by the point of his sword, leaving him with just one.

  Then a bolt spun him; she screamed for him as he twisted, grimacing, but he still had the wherewithal to come around this last man, to undermine his quick cuts and punch out his knee with the guard of his rapier. He didn’t bother killing him. He was faltering, by then, but he gestured to the archers—two men that had held back, one with a crossbow and one with a pistol.

  Between them, a mass of brown and grey-green flesh tussled in the grass, bruises already purpling and yellowing where other blows had fallen. She staggered forward, past them, moving for the archers because no one else could. The pistoleer saw her coming, though, and pulled a dirk from his belt; there was no time to finish ram-rodding a shot down his gun.

  Keep it quick. Her eyes darted to the other man—the bowman. Too much of a threat. She wished she had another knife—the others had been wastes of good knives, knives she needed now. One knife against a dirk? Doable, not pleasant. This last one she had to keep for the kill. Up close. Personal. The man wore only leather, like her—it was possible.

  Essa danced a path toward the man, to keep him off balance. He tracked her though, made a cut at just the right moment. Careless, she cursed, but danced back again, weaving away with nothing more than a long, shallow cut along her forearm. Not hurt, she demanded of herself, forced herself to focus. She had been in street brawls before. That was all this was.