by Jon Hollins
“Come on,” Will panted. It seemed like fewer shouts were coming from their left. Will started pushing that way.
“Do I have to be explaining about retreating again?” Balur threw his arms up in the air. “Gods, are they removing people’s pride from them at birth outside of the Analesian Desert?”
“Oh shit, Balur.” Lette was staring at the lizard man’s side. And then Will saw the blade jammed hilt-deep in Balur’s flank.
“Is nothing,” Balur told them. He yanked the blade out of his side and pinched the gushing sides of the wound together.
“Gods.” Will blanched.
“Oh crap,” Lette said. Then, “Cyrill, take off your shirt.”
“What?” Cyrill looked up alarmed.
“I need your gods-hexed shirt, Cyrill. And you’re either going to give it to me or I’m going to take it by force.”
“Aren’t we running away?” The old man was panting.
“I am not running away.” Balur seemed to be far more concerned about that than he was about bleeding out.
“Tactical regrouping!” Lette snapped. “Tactical regrouping!” Then she removed Cyrill’s shirt by force.
Balur pressed the wad of shirt to his streaming wound while Lette bound the second half of the shirt around his midriff.
“That’ll have to do,” she told him.
“Livers are good at growing back,” he told her with a shrug.
“Fuck, Balur.” Will saw there was genuine concern in Lette’s eyes.
“You are going soft,” Balur told her. “It is making me feel nauseous.”
“No,” she said. “That’s the toxins from your liver.”
Balur hesitated, then nodded. “That is being a fair point.”
Then another shout. The guards had found them.
“Move!” Will yelled, at the same moment Lette screamed the word, and then they were moving. Will led them down haphazard twists and turns, praying that neither Cyrill nor Balur collapsed.
Predictably, the old observer disappointed him first. He almost tripped over Cyrill. The man was on the floor letting out great rasping pants.
“Shh!” Will hissed at him. He looked around trying to get his bearings. He’d totally lost track of where they were. They were between two large tents. One resembled some of the barracks tents they had peered into, large, and long, and low. The other … The other was more like a circus big top. A massive dome of white fabric. And … did Will feel heat coming from the fabric?
Lette was trying to look at Balur’s wound, but he wasn’t paying attention.
“Eurk,” said Cyrill. He was holding his chest.
“This place is a gods-hexed maze.” Will looked left, looked right. He tried to formulate something resembling a plan. “I think we wait for everything to die down, then make a dash for it, half an hour before dawn. Hopefully they change the guard around then, and we can take advantage.”
Lette nodded. “That—”
She was interrupted by a sound like a landslide. Like rocks splitting, and earth subsiding. Like mountains pushing up through rock. She was interrupted by a voice.
“Are they dead?” it said.
It boomed out from confines of the massive tent. A voice as large as that fabric space.
On the floor, Cyrill let out a strangled “Hurk!” and struggled to sit up.
It was—could only be—the voice of Theerax.
Will was aware of a slight shaking in his hands. The edges of his vision seemed to grow hazy. A sense of unreality setting in.
Inside the tent, someone answered Theerax indistinctly.
Yellow light flared briefly. There was a wave of heat, and a very, very short scream.
The last time Will had been this close to a dragon, it had been chasing him across the plains of Kondorra. An army had been on the verge of turning on it.
Balur drew his two swords. His lips were peeling back in an uncontrollable grin.
Lette placed a hand on the lizard man’s arm. “Put those down, you mad bastard.”
And this was not the moment where a battle would be won. Not quite. But maybe it could be just as decisive. Maybe, just maybe Theerax would say the words that would turn the might of the Batarran military upon him.
“Does anyone else need to be reminded of the stakes?” Theerax roared, his voice like the crashing of a storm. Will could feel Theerax’s voice reverberating in his chest. Balur was growling, his deep baritone still a higher-pitched counterpoint to the dragon’s bass roar. But the lizard man was not putting his swords away.
“Diffinax already has Tamar in the palm of his hands,” bellowed Theerax, his derision like a punch to Will’s solar plexus. “Gorrax will ensure Salera falls within a week. Verra will be Jotharrax’s inside a month. And all you have to do is rip Batarra from the incompetent hands of the High Council. And now you fail to kill four idiotic intruders.”
For a moment Will thought his heart had stopped. He thought perhaps he would rip through the wall of the tent and go and embrace Theerax. “Finally,” he breathed. “Finally. You just went and said it.” He turned to Cyrill. “You cannot deny that that was completely incriminating.”
But Cyrill wasn’t listening to him. Cyrill wasn’t even listening to his great love, Theerax. Because Cyrill was on his back, clutching at his left shoulder and turning purple.
“No!” Will gasped. Because surely … surely …“Not now, you bastard!” he almost howled. “Don’t you dare die on me now!”
“And once we have Batarra,” boomed Theerax, “once this whole country is on its knees, bowing its head, and chanting our worship, we shall have all Avarra in our hands. And then we shall ascend to the heavens, and tear it from the gods. And we shall cast them down, and we shall rule utterly. This whole world will be ours. Every act shall be done according to our bidding. Every word uttered will be the words we wish to be uttered. Every piece of gold will be ours.”
“Holy shit!” Will threw up his hands. “You have to be hearing this! You have to be. You have to report this. This is everything!” He grabbed Cyrill and shook him by the shoulders. “Observe this, you fucker.”
Will was no medical expert, but he was pretty sure from the noises that Cyrill was making that the shaking wasn’t helping matters after all.
He looked around desperately. “Help me!” he begged Lette.
But Lette, like Cyrill before her, wasn’t paying attention to him. She was instead looking at Balur. Because Balur stood, almost quivering, his swords shaking in his hands, staring at the massive tent. The blood still flowing down his side shone in the torchlight.
“Balur,” Lette said quietly, but with unquestionable authority, “sit the fuck down.”
“No,” Balur growled.
And Will knew that something very bad was playing out right next to him. And yet, right there, in front of him …“He’s dead,” he said. And he knew he sounded outraged, and he knew that was a monstrous thing, and yet. “He’s actually bloody dead,” he said again. “I don’t believe it.”
And then from inside the tent came a human voice, quite close. It said, “Do you hear … voices?”
And Will looked up from the tragedy at his feet, and really took stock of the one playing out at his side.
Because then, with a howl, Balur slashed through the fabric of the great tent and, teeth bared, flung himself inside.
15
Run, Lettera, Run
“Oh, you stupid, silly bugger.” Lette made a grab for the back of Balur’s belt, and missed by a hair’s breadth. It was probably a good thing. She had about as much chance of stopping him as she would have stopping a landslide. And being literally dragged into a fight with a dragon was not high on her wish list for tonight.
There again, neither was Cyrill’s turning into a cold, limp corpsicle, but that hadn’t made much of a difference.
Not that she was completely convinced that his testimony would have been worth much. All over Avarra the dragons had stated that their mission was to s
teal the heavens from the gods, and the collective reaction had been an enthusiastic thumbs-up. Certainly, taking Batarra was perhaps a bit closer to home for some of the councilors, but if you believed the bit about the heavens, why was the bit about Batarra so hard for them to believe?
It was all idiocy. All of it. Theerax claiming he was going to make all of Avarra worship him as if that weren’t just evidence of ferocious dragon inbreeding. The High Council pushing the boundaries of corruption as if daring the populace to get involved in the popular-uprising business. Balur running into a tent full of dragon as if he weren’t bleeding heavily from his liver. All pure idiocy.
Balur was through the ragged hole in the side of the tent now, roaring madly, whirling his blades in complex arcs. In some ways it was nice to see him with the swords. He was an exquisite swordsman, though he didn’t usually show it, too happy to let his bulk do the work for him. A dull flicker of ill-placed pride briefly flared in her.
Then the world around Balur exploded into fire.
The lizard man threw himself sideways. Crates and tables piled near the side of the tent, detonated, became so much ash and waste. The tent caught fire. Lette saw Will hurling himself backward, raising an arm against the heat. Balur was on the ground, clothes smoldering.
“End them!” shrieked Theerax. The sound was so loud, Lette’s legs almost buckled. But she fought on, pushing toward Balur. She ducked through the flaming hole in the tent. Balur rolled onto his back, stared at her groggily.
Five men in black robes were approaching. And beyond them …
Gods she had forgotten how big dragons were. She had … gods …
Theerax was a cathedral of muscle, scale, and horn. He was an epic poem composed to Lawl’s foulest moods. He was a rocky crag of rage. Eyes of liquid fire glinted golden in a field of slate-gray scales. A ridge of wicked horns bisected his broad, snub face. He had a mouth that could swallow lives whole, two fangs the length of halberds protruding up from the lower jaw. He had his wings half-spread, great sweeps of midnight swallowing the world, coming to end everything.
For a moment, Lette blanched. And gods, for a while she had been excited by life back on the road. She had looked forward to days where adrenaline thrummed through her again. But she had forgotten about this. She had forgotten the terror dragons inspired. She had forgotten how small and helpless her fear made her, in a way she could hide but never deny. But now, staring Theerax in the face in the absurdly tight confines of this tent … gods, she was so close to death, she could feel Lawl’s fingers stroking her thigh.
Her hesitation was all that one of the approaching robed men needed to fling out an arm toward her. Magically summoned winds smashed into her like a fist, hurled her across dusty ground. She hit flaming tent fabric, collapsed.
Gods, she hated magic. And part of the terror evaporated in the heat of her fury.
Five of them, whispered a quiet voice in her head. Five of them that can move as fast as thought. But how fast can they think? With a tent on fire? With their dragon-god raging at them? There are a lot of things to pay attention to …
Battles were not just skill, and brawn, Lette knew. Fights were strategy. And strategy was just another word for trickery, for sleight of hand. And Lette had fast hands.
She flung three knives at once, a great wild, sweeping motion. The men saw them coming, managed to throw up their hands in time. The knives whipped away, battered by the magical winds.
But Lette was moving too, running low and hard. And she moved faster than the robed men. She jumped, grasped the hilt of one deflected knife as she spun through the air, grasped another. Two out of three was good enough. She started to descend, still spinning, whipping her legs out to increase her speed, to catch their eyes. Then her arms chased her body around, and the blades sang through the air once more.
Two of the fives mages screamed. Which was a shame, because if they were screaming, they were still alive, but it was the best that Lette could manage in a pinch.
She had landed next to Balur. She reached down to slap his face. “Get up, you—”
A blast of wind sent her spinning through the air. She fought for control, skidded to a landing, barely keeping her feet.
“Your mothers were whores,” she spat, as loudly as she could with wind and fire roaring around her, “and you were conceived by bastards who had to tie sticks to it to keep it up.”
Again, it was the best she could manage for now. And it at least captured their attention long enough for Will to sneak up and stab one of them.
Why the fuck he stabbed the mage in the leg, she had no idea. Surely even a farmer knew to stab someone in the head or chest? The principles of homicide and animal slaughter couldn’t be that different, surely?
Still it was another man down and screaming. And it had the other two turning to look at him so she could throw knives at them properly. They went down without screams, with the air whistling out of the new vents she had carved in their lungs.
She would have liked to have finished off the others properly but at that point she heard Theerax rumble, “If you want something done properly …”
And then there was a noise like billows the size of the world inflating. “Will!” she yelled. “Cover!”
Except the only cover she could see were several screaming men in robes.
Again, the best she could manage in a pinch. She dived into a roll as the world filled with fire.
It was brief, but long enough for the kicking and screaming man she was holding to become a flaky, brittle thing that crumbled beneath her scorched palms.
She flung the incinerated man’s flaming robe away and scrambled back to Balur, who was scorched but largely still whole.
“What?” he asked her confusedly.
“You’re a fucking idiot and we have to move.”
“So pretty much the same as usual?”
“Move!” she screamed. And she was not proud of it, but there was a dragon pacing toward her, and the ground was shaking, and gods she would not soil herself in front of these two. Would not. Would never. But gods, she wanted to just a little bit.
“Will?” Balur said, dragging himself to his feet far too slowly.
“Fuck!” Lette’s voice was definitely too shrill, and honestly, if she was actually good at this—the way she used to actually be good at it—she wouldn’t be giving a flying fuck about Will. She would be cutting her losses and running like … well, exactly like a dragon was on her heels in fact. But she stopped and she looked.
Where in the Hallows had farm boy got to now? And she was surprised at the hollowness she felt as she realized that one of the piles of charred flesh on the floor was probably him.
The ground shook under Theerax’s advancing footsteps.
“You,” he said, and Lette felt the full force of his attention upon her. “I know you.”
A blackened corpse flopped obscenely. Roasted flesh sloughed away from smoke-stained bones. Will emerged, staggering.
“You!” roared Theerax, and Lette heard him inhale.
And then she was running. Gods she was running. And if the gods had any love for her, or for what she was doing on their behalf they would speed her flight. Balur was loping beside her. And Will … gods she really did hope he was running too.
Despite herself, she looked back over her shoulder. Will was right there, legs pumping, arms pistoning. And behind him—
She dove to the ground, slid through slick mud, felt it spattering up over her.
Flame roared through the world. A shrieking stream of it. She rolled desperately. The heat was searing, unbearable. She was screaming.
Then someone was grabbing her arm, hauling her to her feet. Balur, looking dazed, side slick with blood still.
“That is being fucking toasty,” he said.
Her whole side felt raw. But she was moving still. Balur was moving still.
“Will?” she managed.
Balur grinned. “I knew you were caring.”
Lette didn’t have the time or the energy to punch him. There wasn’t time to do anything but move. She could hear Theerax howling, “Stop them!”
And then there was another voice, Will, half the hair on his head scorched short, screaming, “This way!” and beckoning down between two lines of tents.
Then life dissolved into blurs of motion, and battle madness. It collapsed into mud paths, and faceless junctions, and knives flung at guards. There were shouts, and roars, and the sounds of flame. And Lette kept her ears open, waiting, waiting, waiting for the sound of wings, of death mounting to the skies.
Is this why you went to the farm with Will? part of her asked. Because you never wanted to go through this again? Were you just running away?
And then another part of her asked, What in the Hallows? Is this really the time for self-reflection?
But she had not been afraid like this in a long time. Even back in Kondorra, with the dragons in the skies chasing after her, she had not truly felt this way. It had been in the weeks afterward. It had been lying in bed at night beside Will. That was when she had started to relive it all.
Maybe stopping was the mistake.
Shut up! Shut up and run!
She didn’t know. She couldn’t. All she knew was that she had wanted to be a better person, someone who wasn’t defined by killing anymore. And she had achieved that. She had been a farmer’s wife, then a dilettante, and now she was … a freedom fighter? A voice of reason? She wasn’t sure. But she was doing the right thing. Even now, scrabbling through the muck, desperate to get to her feet. Even punching a guard in the throat and plunging a knife between his ribs. She was doing the right thing.
Was fear the price of that?
Gods, if any of the divinities could get her brains to shut up, she might even start worshipping them while she was trying to save them.
There was a knot of soldiers by the gate. They knew what was about to happen. They had readied spears and halberds. Others had swords drawn.
Balur lowered one shoulder, let out a roar.
But then she was tearing past him, a knife in each hand. And they would not stop her, could not stop her. She would not be taken prisoner by them, by fear, by questions. She would defy it all. Fuck these people. Fuck this dragon. Fuck her fear.
