Isaac, Slate and Teacher hid themselves behind the room’s second door, open just a crack, Alocar and Crymson left to sit in the preceding room alone.
“You stay behind the door, all right, Teach? You’re in no condition to fight, not with those hands.” Isaac wisely neglected to point out Slate’s neck, no better off than Teacher’s fingers, reinforced by Slate’s harsh breath in the cool dungeon air.
In the other room, a door creaked open, and footsteps sounded. Possibly two, maybe more people walked in before Isaac heard a click and then a voice.
“I trust you have had ample time to think about your situation, so let me ask: are you ready to tell me the rest of the details? Your pain can end; you can be set free with nothing else to disturb you ever. Why prolong it when, in the end, we will have it out of you?”
Isaac listened for Alocar’s response. His nails drew blood from his palm. Waited, waited . . .
And then he could wait no longer, for with a roar, Slate broke free from the door and charged into the room, a dagger filling each of his hands, picked up from the back room’s table of torture instruments.
Shit. Isaac placated Teacher, hushing him and placing a hand against his chest as he tried to follow Slate. “Stay here, okay?” Teacher didn’t reply, his eyes following the scene breaking out in front of him.
Isaac turned and slipped into the room, stopping short of the two guards fronting the Queen, each with swords drawn. Slate barreled into their center, forcing them to turn and confront him, frenetic energy more of a surprise than a danger. Crymson joined the fray, a heretic’s fork in her right hand, as did Alocar, wielding a short sword he’d hidden beneath his chair, one Isaac had found in the old Priest’s adjoining room.
The Queen turn to bolt, but Isaac threw his shoe and hit the back of her head, causing her to trip and fall as the long dress snagged her feet. And then Isaac was past, his nimble feet carrying him around the beleaguered guards. A quick breath, and Isaac heated the door’s handle until it glowed red-hot. The Queen recovered and pushed by him, grabbing the handle and then shrieking uncontrollably as it burned through nerve endings.
The others had surrounded the guards, feinting in and out, pulling back just in time to avoid the worst of the cuts, but the guards had the edge in freshness and weaponry, and Isaac had little doubt concerning the battle’s end.
“My Queen,” yelled one of the guards, “we can hold them off! Run!!”
Isaac moved left, and then right, fretting. He couldn’t get a clear aim on either of the guards, not enough to avoid risking burning one of his friends, so he ran to the back room and grabbed an armful of tools off the table, dumping them a few feet past the door.
Small daggers, thumbscrews, metal cages, and more flew at the two guards. They relocated, attempting move out of harm’s way, but Isaac switched positions and continued his barrage of torture tools so that they backed against the rearward door.
A slipper to the back of his knee sent Isaac to the floor, and he had to roll to avoid a stomp from the Queen. He flipped to his feet, took a punch, and then hit the Queen in the face with the butt end of a dagger, bloodying her nose and sending her reeling against the table.
“Little help!” Alocar deflected a sword careening toward Slate, his stump flinging blood.
Isaac turned back to the fight, his hand already afire, when Teacher kicked the door open, catching the leftmost guard in his mid-back and sending him stumbling forward.
Crymson, quick to take advantage, thrust the heretic’s fork deep into the fallen guard’s eye, and then again into his throat. Alone, five against one, the remaining guard threw down his sword, reprieve on his lips.
“Forgive me, my Queen! I plead mercy!”
Alocar stopped, but his face didn’t alter, his short sword scant inches from cleaving into the guard’s unprotected neck.
“A man on his knees is no man at all,” He swung, the sword taking half the guard’s neck from his body in a spray of blood.
Slate looked at Alocar, a word on his lips, one that he swallowed as he turned away, catching Isaac’s eyes on him but not saying a word.
Their job done, the five of them turned toward the Queen, still on the floor, her hand pressed against the chest of her dress. “And I hold even less pity for traitors and liars,” said Alocar, walking toward the Queen, his sword tip dragging the floor.
Melanie watched Alocar step toward her, the torchlight catching and reflecting madness in one eye, his other hidden in shadows, black as a feather dipped in tar. Her guards lay dead, Talliver the last to fall, the one she’d thought would never betray her. She cursed his lifeless body, knowing she’d soon join him in whatever hell traitors and dead queens occupied. “I only did what I had to do, Alocar. You should understand that.”
He stopped, his sword point languishing against the floor.
Continuing, she said, “I only had two options: let Prolifia fall nobly, or take the route that would bring us short-term harm but let us live. What choice did I have?”
Alocar raised the sword to his shoulder, trying and attempting to fasten his missing hand around its pommel. “We all have choices, and you chose wrongly.”
“And so what, you’ll kill me for it? Just because you think it’s wrong? You don’t have all the facts. If you knew what lay before Prolifia, you’d be on my side.”
“Then tell me, what are we fighting against? What’s so important that you have to betray Prolifia?” Alocar asked.
“I’m not betraying anybody.” She propped herself on her elbows, hitting the wall at the room’s end. “And I’ll be damned if you’re going to question me without knowing what I know.”
Moving to the chair she’d used during her last visit, Melanie sat, her hands scalded free of skin from grabbing the door handle. “Since when did the great and honorable General Alocar begin stooping to take the lives of those who have surrendered?”
“A man giving up his sword on the field of battle is just that: a man, but a person who guards a woman with a soul as black as yours is no man, though he may speak like one.” Now both eyes were shadowed. “Would you still like to know of our plans?”
“Doesn’t matter, I’ll give it to you anyway: we’re here to kill you, and then your husband, and finally, your son. One. By. One.” Alocar punctuated each word with a step forward, inching ever nearer.
“I know.” A truthful statement, but now that they were loosed, she felt a cold flake of fear run through her body, knowing that her family lay vulnerable, all because of her failure here. But then she remembered the guards she’d placed around Olen, the spell she’d had the Cao Fen weave around him, and she was reassured.
“What do you mean, you know?” asked Alocar. The others had gathered behind him, watching the conversation.
“Oh?” Melanie prepared herself to plunge the blade. “Your friend, Rupert? He was mine since the day I removed you.”
Knife inserted, she twisted it, grinning fiercely. “That friendship of yours? A farce. You did not think that I let you run free all these years, did you?”
Wrinkled face a mottled pink, Alocar stopped. He breathed deeply a few times, the hand on the sword slowly unclenching until it drooped in his grasp and he looked down at the floor, as if just truly understanding.
Melanie laughed, playing her last card. “Pathetic. The once-great Alocar: friendless, old, washed up and now lacking a hand. You might as well let me go, retain what little bit of honor you have left and let me defend this country, defend it as you cannot. An honorless, friendless, has-been general has no right to kill a queen.”
The room fell silent, nothing but the rattling breaths coming from Alocar’s chest to fill it. Melanie realized that her fingers were gnarled in her skirt, burns a distant sensation.
“You’re right,” Alocar said. Melanie felt hope rise, only to be expunged at his next words. “A retired, friendless, honorless general has no right taking the life of a queen. But you must be referring to someone else, I have friends, s
tanding here before you. And I may not be a general any longer, but I’ve never lost my honor, you just never understood the difference between being loyal to you and being loyal to Proflia and its people.”
“If it’s any consolation, your family’s end will be quick.” The short sword dove and cut into Melanie’s stomach. “But yours won’t.”
It ripped horizontally across her navel, deep. She fell to the ground, her entrails spilling onto the floor. Screaming, all thoughts of Olen and Remson fleeing her mind, Melanie attempted to stuff her guts back into her stomach. Distantly, she heard a blade clatter to the ground, and then she was left alone, the traitor Talliver her only company in a land of the dead and the soon-to-die.
Crymson
The screams of the Queen echoed off the walls around them, giving Crymson a slightly disturbing sense of satisfaction, one that pulsed in rhythm with the cuts and bruises on her face. Isaac led, somehow more confident than when she’d last seen him, Alocar behind him, refusing to bow to the agony of his nonexistent hand.
Bedraggled, each of their clothes spotted or soaked with somebody’s blood, they walked past a painting of a small, peeling boat in stormy waters and then past the yellowed light of waning torches. Outside the last door, a woman sat on a bench, secreted in the recesses of the blank walls. Small, her hair barely extended past her somewhat pointy ears, studded and ringed all the way through. Slate drew the daggers he’d appropriated from the dungeon and advanced, but the woman raised a hand.
“Hold. I’m from Angras, and I’m here to lend you my aid.” She nodded toward a small pile at the bench’s end, where sat Crymson’s blue dress and leather slip-ons, along with her brace of throwing knives and her thigh sheath. “Your clothes, as well as your weapons.”
“Prove it,” said Slate, still holding his daggers.
“I’ve nothing to prove. It’s your choice whether you want to live or die.”
Crymson shrugged and then grabbed the cloth and water bucket that sat on the floor in front of the pointy-eared woman. Unselfconsciously, she scrubbed, vigorously ridding herself of the stains from the dungeon and the odor of unwashed skin. After a minute, the others joined, shedding their clothes with varying degrees of abandon. Isaac alone didn’t take part, hanging back, his eyes averted.
“What’s your name? Not that it matters.
“Willow,” the pointy-eared woman replied.
Finishing first, Crymson seated herself next to Willow, watching. With a sort of quiet dignity, Alocar closed his shirt, his one hand fumbling with the buttons, two, three times before securing them.
Slate, after quickly dressing himself, stole away the water bucket and sponged his neck wound. Broadsword resettled between his shoulders, he swabbed the cloth over Teacher’s face and arms, and then forced the big man to submerge his hands in the bucket, after which he wrapped them with strips of his own shirt sleeve.
Soon, they were ready, and though they didn’t look like a group of well-to-do nobles, neither would they be easily mistaken for a group of newly released torture victims, provided one didn’t look too closely.
“May I?” Crymson pointed to Alocar’s sleeve. For an instant, she feared he’d say no, but then he nodded, gruffly, and held it out for her. She grabbed it, end dangling where his hand should be, and pinned it back, securing it with a few small needles she kept in her dress collar.
Clearing her throat, Willow stood. “I’ve been instructed to guide you to the King’s private chambers, where they shall be dining. Angras owns a few of the guards, but you’ll have to make it quick.” A scream. Willow cocked her head. “You should not have left her in such a position.”
“She deserves it,” Alocar said.
Willow looked at him incredulously. “I meant alive.”
“At any rate, time is of essence, so let’s be off. Talk to nobody. Ears open, heads down, especially you, priestess,” said Willow, nodding to Crymson’s bruised face.
Leaving the hallway behind, they walked up a set of stairs that turned at sharp angles and through three doors that Willow unlocked with a key on a necklace. People passed to either side, some dressed in noble’s splendor, noses in the air, others obviously servants, bustling by with diverted eyes.
They even passed a few guards, their attention gliding over Crymson and the others as if they were nothing more than objects in a room. Good for nothings. The only thing all had in common with each other was that they gave Crymson and the others no more attention than they would a passing stranger, only occasionally nodding at their guide.
The flooring leveled out, and daylight from huge windows suffused Crymson with a feeling of warmth, a relief after the cool dungeon. To the left, she saw Isaac walking alongside, his eyes almost closed and a hum on his lips.
Soon, they arrived at a set of double doors, gold painted metal outlining them, square panels inlaying its interior, each depicting part of a story, the last panel showcasing a knight holding the severed head of some sort of beast, fur sprouting from its cheeks and incisors long as a man’s pointer finger.
Two guards stood in front of the doors. One lifted a hand in greeting. “Hey, Rodnick, the Prince is expecting their company,” Willow said. Rodnick, an average-sized man with a blonde beard and the world’s least interesting hazel eyes, nodded, and then drew his sword and ran it through his companion’s neck. Crymson dropped into a crouch, looking down the hallway, but Willow put up a hand. The stabbed guard fell, blood leaking down the sword and onto the floor.
“I’ll take care of the body,” said Willow, fingering a stud in her ear. “I can give you a while. Another couple of our men are on their way to fill in, make it look like nothing is amiss, but the change of guard will take place at some point, so don’t dally.”
Willow hesitated. She put a hand Rodnick’s forearm. “Good luck.”
The room wasn’t large, but its grandeur more than made up for its lack of size. Their heels resonated on a tiled floor composed of geometrically precise cubes, each interconnected with another, whites twisting into blacks so that it looked like the ground was rising into the air, a heady feeling that Crymson only avoided by focusing on the scene before her.
At the front of the room was a set of small stairs, each only a few inches tall, leading up to a table behind a railing, where sat who Crymson could only assume was Prince Remson, a young man with black hair and a slightly too strong jaw, his eyes a penetratingly stark blue. Before him sat his father, thinner than she’d imagined a king would be but possessed of an expression she thought a king might have at finding his dinner interrupted.
Guards, dressed in black with traces of silver, stood around the table, five of them in all. Their faces were expressionless, almost slack, even as their eyes shifted to take in the newcomers.
“Rodnick, what is the meaning of this?”
“You’ll have to ask them, Your Majesty.”
“Alocar Leyton?” The King squinted, as if disbelieving his eyes. “Is that you?”
“It is, Olen. I’m sad to say it’s come to this.”
“Come to what? Where is Melanie? Where is my wife?”
Ignoring him, Alocar continued. “You showed such promise as a boy. And yet here I stand.”
Remembering Willow’s warning and knowing the best attack is one of surprise, Crymson stepped around Rodnick, past Alocar, pulling a knife from her sheath and launching in at the King, but one of the guards stepped in front of him and the knife stuck near his heart, nothing showing but the hilt.
Bemusedly, the guard looked down at the knife, and without even a tic of his face, tugged it free and tossed it at Crymson’s feet.
Oh, shit.
The guards charged, black and silver blurs, one staying behind to protect the King and his son. Crymson drew twin daggers from her thigh sheath, the others around her tensing. She shifted, opening the gap between her and the group, preparing to meet the charge, her heart pounding.
“Fight back to back,” she heard Alocar call out. “Protect each
other!”
With a roar, broadsword out, Slate blew past her, Teacher behind him, both hands still wrapped. And then Crymson lost sight of the duo as the first of the guards, spinning to avoid Slate’s swing, settled his gaze on her.
The Prince joined his father at the railing, curly black hair falling over his eyes.
Metal knuckles glinted as the guard skidded to a stop and dropped to the ground. Hands splayed on the floor for balance, he swung his leg in a vicious arc, nearly taking Crymson out at the knees and ending the fight before it’d begun.
She jumped, bringing her knees to her chest, but not quickly enough. Her left foot clipped the swinging leg and she stumbled forward, her neck bowed at a perfect height for a finishing blow, so she turned it into a roll, coming up behind the guard and thrusting, knife even with the small of his back.
But the guard used his swinging leg’s momentum to carry him low and out of reach. Crymson’s thrust caught nothing but air, and she felt a brief flash of intense heat as a jet of flame blew past, missing a dodging guard and blowing a crater in the wall.
The guard looked at the hole, and then at Isaac, but didn’t change his course. His eyes were peculiar, devoid of emotion, flatlined, even in this charged atmosphere. He feinted left, and then turned a one-eighty, a powerful backhand driving toward her face.
Crymson plunged her knife into his bicep, but almost like the guard had expected it, he accepted the wound, wrenching the knife from her hand and continuing forward with his other arm in a fierce uppercut that collided with her ribs, knocking the breath from her and sending her backward, free hand clutched around her torso.
“These fuckers don’t bleed!” Slate yelled.
“Then cut their goddammned heads off!” Alocar followed his own advice, swinging at and missing his opponent’s neck.
Knife stuck in his arm, the guard advanced, no blood falling to the floor. Crymson attempted and failed to draw a deep breath. It felt like the blow had cracked a few ribs. She risked a glance to the right, anticipating relief. Nothing.
Fallen Victors Page 25
