by Morgan Rice
As they charged, the Lord’s Men prepared another round of arrows and fired once again—and soon a wall of arrows came at them.
But then, to Kyra’s surprise, her father’s men raised their large shields, creating a wall as they all squatted down together, perfectly disciplined. She squatted behind one of them, and heard the thwack as deadly arrows were stopped.
They all jumped to their feet and charged again, and she realized her father’s strategy—to get close enough to the Lord’s Men to render their arrows useless. They soon reached the wall of soldiers and there came a great clang of metal as men clashed in battle, swords meeting swords, halberds meeting shields, spears meeting armor. It was terrifying and exhilarating at the same moment.
Squeezed into the bridge with nowhere to go, the men fought hand-to-hand, groaning, slashing and blocking, the clang of metal deafening. Leo lunged forward and sunk his teeth into a man’s foot, while one of her father’s men cried out beside her and she looked over to see him stabbed by a sword, blood dripping from his mouth.
Kyra watched Anvin head-butt a man, then plunge a sword into his gut. She watched her father use his shield as a weapon, smashing two men so hard he knocked them over the bridge and into the moat. She’d never before seen her father in action, and he was a fierce thing to watch. Even more impressive was how his men formed around him, and it was clear they had fought by each other’s sides for years. They had a camaraderie she envied.
Her father’s men fought so well, they caught the Lord’s Men off guard, who clearly had not expected an organized resistance. The Lord’s Men fought for their Governor, who had already left them—while her father’s men fought for their home, their families and their very lives, all right here. Their passion, their stakes, gave them momentum.
In close quarters with little room to maneuver, Kyra saw a soldier come at her, sword raised high, and she immediately grabbed her staff with both hands, turned it sideways and raised it overhead as a shield. The man came at her with a long sword, and she prayed Brot’s Alkan steel would hold.
The sword clanged off the staff as it would against a shield, and to her relief, the staff did not break.
Kyra spun the staff around and smashed the soldier in the side of the head. He stumbled back, and she then kicked him, sending him tumbling backwards, shrieking, into the moat.
Another soldier charged her from the side, swinging a flail, and she realized she wouldn’t be able to react in time. But Leo rushed forward and pounced on his chest, pinning him down on all fours.
Another soldier came at her with an ax, swinging sideways at her; she barely had time to react, as she spun and used her staff to block it. She held her staff vertically, barely able to keep back the soldier’s strength, as the ax came closer to her. She gained a valuable lesson, realizing she should not try to meet these men head on. She could not overpower them; she had to fight to her strength, not to theirs.
Losing strength as the ax blade came closer, Kyra remembered Brot’s contraption. She twisted the staff, it split into two pieces, and she stepped back as the ax came whizzing past, missing her. The soldier was stunned, clearly not expecting this, and in the same motion, Kyra raised the two halves of the staff and plunged the blades into the soldier’s chest, killing him.
There came a shout, a rallying cry from behind her—and Kyra turned to see a mob of village folk—farmers, masons, blacksmiths, armorers, butchers—all wielding weapons—sickles, hatchets, anything and everything—racing for the bridge. Within moments they joined her father’s men, all of them ready to take a stand.
Kyra watched as Thomak the butcher used a cleaver to sever a man’s arm, while Brine the mason smashed a soldier in the chest with a hammer, felling him. The village folk brought a fresh burst of energy to the battle, and as clumsy as they were, they caught the Lord’s Men off guard. They fought with passion, releasing years of pent-up anger at their servitude. Now, finally, they had a chance to stand up for themselves—a chance for vengeance.
They pushed back the Lord’s Men as they hacked their way through with brute force, felling men—and their horses—left and right. But after a few minutes of intense fighting these amateur warriors began to fall, the air filled with their cries as the better armed and better trained soldiers cut them down. The Lord’s Men pushed back, and the momentum swung back the other way.
The bridge became more crowded as more of the Lord’s Men reinforcements charged onto it. Her father’s men, slipping in the snow, were tiring, more than one crying out and falling, killed by the Lord’s Men. The tide of battle was turning against them, and Kyra knew she had to do something quickly.
Kyra eyed her surroundings and had an idea: she jumped up on the stone rail at the edge of the bridge, gaining the vantage point she needed, several feet above the others, exposing herself but no longer caring. She was the only one of them nimble enough to leap all the way up here, and she drew her bow, took aim, and fired.
With her superior angle, Kyra was able to take out one soldier after the next. She took aim at one of the Lord’s Men, bringing a hatchet down for her unsuspecting father’s back, and hit him in the neck, felling him right before he put a blade in her father’s back. She then fired at a soldier swinging a flail, hitting him in the ribs right before he could impact Anvin’s head.
Firing arrow after arrow, Kyra felled a dozen men—until she was finally spotted. She felt an arrowed whizz by her face, and she looked out to see archers firing back at her. Before she could react, she gasped in horrific pain as an arrow grazed her arm, drawing blood.
Kyra jumped down from the rail and back into the fray. She rolled to her hands and knees, and she knelt there, breathing hard, her arm killing her, and looked up and saw more reinforcements arriving onto the bridge. She watched her people get driven back, and watched as one of them, right beside her, a man she had known and loved, was stabbed in the gut and tumbled over the railing, into the moat, dead.
As she knelt there, a fierce soldier raised his ax high overhead and brought it down for her. She knew she could not react it in time and she braced herself—when suddenly Leo lunged forward and sunk his fangs into the man’s stomach.
Kyra sensed motion out of the corner of her eye and she turned to see another soldier raise his halberd and bring it down for the back of her neck. Unable to react in time, she braced herself for the blow, expecting to die.
There came a clang, and she looked up to see the blade hovering right before her head—stopped by a sword. Her father stood over her, wielding the sword, saving her from the deadly blow. He spun his sword around, twisting the halberd out of the way, then stabbed the soldier in the heart.
The move, though, left her father defenseless, and Kyra watched, horrified, as another soldier stepped forward and stabbed her father in the arm; he cried out and went stumbling back as the soldier bore down on him.
As Kyra knelt there, an unfamiliar feeling began to overcome her; it was a warmth, beginning in her solar plexus and radiating from there. It was a foreign sensation, yet one she embraced immediately as she felt it giving her infinite strength, spreading through her body, one limb at a time, coursing through her veins. More than strength, it gave her focus; as she looked around, it was as if time slowed. In a single glance, she took in all the enemy soldiers, saw all their vulnerabilities, saw how to kill each and every one.
Kyra did not understand what was happening to her—and she did not care. She embraced the new power that took over her and allowed herself to succumb to its sweet rage and do with her as it would.
Kyra stood, feeling invincible, feeling as if everyone else moved in slow motion around her. She raised her staff and pounced into the crowd.
What happened next was a flash, a blinding blur that she could barely process and barely remember. She felt the power overtake her arms, felt it instruct her who to strike, where to move, and she found herself attacking enemy soldiers in a blur as she cut through the crowd. She smashed one soldier in the side of the he
ad, then reached back and jabbed one in the throat; then leapt high and with two hands brought her staff straight down on two soldiers’ heads. She twisted and spun her staff end over end as she cut through the mob like a whirlwind, felling soldiers left and right, leaving a trail in her wake. No one could catch her—and no one could stop her.
The clang of her metal staff hitting armor echoed in the air, all happening impossibly fast. For the first time in her life, she felt at one with the universe; she felt as if she were no longer trying to control—but allowing herself to be controlled. She felt as if she were outside of herself. She did not understand this new power, and it terrified and exhilarated her at the same time.
Within moments she had cleared all the Lord’s Men off the bridge. She found herself standing on the far side and jabbing one last soldier between the eyes.
Kyra stood there, breathing hard, and suddenly time became fast again. She looked around and saw the damage she had done, and she was more shocked than anyone else.
The dozen or so soldiers who remained of the Lord’s Men, on the far side of the bridge, looked back at her, panic in their eyes, and turned and ran, slipping in the snow.
There came a shout, and Kyra’s father led the charge as his men pursued them. They hacked them down, left and right, until there were no survivors left.
A horn sounded. The battle was over.
All her father’s men, all the villagers, stood there, stunned, realizing they had achieved the impossible. Yet, oddly, there wasn’t the jubilant outcry that normally would follow such a victory; there came no cheering and embracing of men, no shouts of joy. Instead, the air was strangely silent, the mood somber; they had lost many good brothers on this day, their bodies scattered before them, and perhaps that caused the men to pause.
But it was more than that, Kyra knew. That wasn’t what caused the silence. What caused it, she knew, was her.
Every eye on the battlefield turned and looked at her. Even Leo looked up at her, fear in his eyes, as if he no longer knew her.
Kyra stood there, still breathing hard, her cheeks still flush, and felt them all staring. They looked at her with awe—but also with suspicion. They looked at her as if she were a stranger in their midst. All of them, she knew, were asking themselves the same question. It was a question which she herself wanted answered, and one that terrified her more than anything:
Who was she?
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Alec drifted in and out of sleep as he stood in the cart, sandwiched between the mass of boys, dreaming fast, troubled dreams. He saw himself being squeezed to death in a coffin filled with boys, the lid being slammed on him.
He woke with a start, breathing hard, realizing he was standing in the cart. More stops had been made and more boys were crammed in as the cart jolted along its way, all day long for a second day, up and down hills, weaving in and out of the wood. Alec had been on his feet ever since the confrontation, feeling safer to stand, and his back was killing him. But he longer cared. He found it easier to doze off while standing, especially with Marco beside him. The boys who had attacked him had retreated to the far side of the carriage, but at this point, he did not trust anybody.
The jolting of the cart had sunk into Alec’s consciousness, and he forgot what it was like to stand on steady ground. He thought of Ashton and took solace in the fact that at least his brother wasn’t standing here right now. It gave him a sense of purpose, and gave him the courage to go on.
As the shadows grew longer, no end in sight to their journey, Alec began to lose hope, to feel as if they would never reach The Flames.
More time passed, and after he dozed off several times, he felt a nudge in his ribs. He opened his eyes to see it was Marco, gesturing with his head.
Alec felt a wave of excitement rippling through the crowd of boys, and this time he sensed something was different. All the boys perked up as they began to turn and look through the iron bars. Alec turned and tried to look out, disoriented, but he could not see through the thick crowd of bodies.
“You’ve got to see this,” Marco said, looking out.
Marco shifted out of the way so Alec could peek through. As he did, Alec saw a sight which he would never forget:
The Flames.
Alec had heard about The Flames his entire life, but he had never imagined they could exist. It was one of those things so hard to imagine that, try as he did, he just could not picture how it could be possible. How could flames really reach the sky? How could they burn forever?
But now, as he laid eyes upon them for the first time, he realized it was all true. It took his breath away. There, on the horizon, sat The Flames, rising, as legend had it, to the clouds, so thick he could not see where they ended. He could hear the crackling of it, feel the heat of it, even from here. It was awe-inspiring and terrifying at once.
Up and down The Flames, Alec saw stationed hundreds of soldiers, boys and men, standing guard, spread out every hundred feet or so. On the horizon, at the end of the road, he saw a black, stone tower, around which sat several outbuildings. It was a hub of activity.
“Looks like our new home,” Marco observed.
Alec saw the rows of squalid barracks, packed with boys covered in soot. He felt a pit in his stomach, realizing this was a sorry glimpse of his future, of the hell his life would become.
*
Alec braced himself as he was yanked off the cart by Pandesian handlers and went tumbling down, with a mass of boys, into the hard ground below. Boys landed on top of him, and as he struggled to breathe, it shocked him how hard the ground was—and that it was covered in snow. He wasn’t used to this northeastern weather, and he realized immediately that his Midland clothes, too thin, would be useless here. Back in Soli, though it was but a few days’ ride south, the ground was soft, covered in green moss, lush; it never snowed there and the air smelled of flowers. Here it was cold and hard, lifeless—and the air smelled only of fire.
As Alec disentangled himself from the mass of bodies, he had barely gained his feet when he was shoved in the back. He stumbled forward and turned to see a handler behind him, herding all the boys like cattle toward the barracks.
Behind him Alec watched as several dozen boys emerged from his cart; more than one, he was surprised to see, fell out limply, dead. He marveled that he’d survived the journey, crammed in as he’d been. He ached in every bone in his body, his joints stiff, and as he marched, he had never felt more weary. He felt as though he hadn’t slept in months, and as he felt as if he’d arrived at the end of the world.
Crackling filled the air and Alec looked up and saw, perhaps a hundred yards away, The Flames. They walked toward them, and they loomed larger and larger. They were awe-inspiring in person, up close, and he appreciated their heat, growing warmer with each step he took. He feared, though, how hot it would become when he got up close, as the others on patrol who stood hardly twenty yards away. He noticed they wore unusual protective armor. Even so, some lay there, limp, having clearly collapsed.
“See those flames, boy?” came a sinister voice.
Alec turned to see the boy he’d confronted in the carriage coming up beside him, his friend beside him, sneering.
“When I take your face to them no one’s gonna recognize you—not even your mama. I’ll burn your hands off until they’re nothing but stumps. Appreciate what you got before you lose it.”
He laughed, a dark, mean noise, sounding like a cough.
Alec stared back with defiance, Marco now beside him.
“You couldn’t beat me in the carriage,” Alec replied, “and you won’t beat me now.”
The boy snickered.
“This ain’t no carriage, boy,” he said. “You’ll be sleeping with me tonight. Those barracks are all of ours. One night, one roof. It’s you and me. And I’ve got all the time in the world. It might be tonight or it might be tomorrow—but one of these nights, when you least expect it, you’ll be sleeping and we’ll get you. You’ll wake up to find
your face in those flames. Sleep tight,” he concluded with a laugh.
“If you’re so tough,” Marco said, beside him, “what are you waiting for? Here we are. Try it.”
Alec saw the boy hesitate as he glanced back at the Pandesian handlers.
“When the time is right,” he replied.
With that, they slinked away into the crowd.
“Don’t worry,” Marco said. “You’ll sleep when I wake, and I’ll do the same for you. If that scum come near us, they’ll wish they hadn’t.”
Alec nodded in agreement, grateful, as he looked out at the barracks and wondered. A few feet from the packed entrance, Alec could already smell the body odor emanating from the building. He recoiled as he was shoved inside.
Alec tried to adjust to the dark barracks, lit only by the weak light coming through a few windows, high up. He looked down at the dirt floor and realized immediately that the carriage, as bad as it was, was better than this. He saw rows of suspicious, hostile faces, only the whites of their eyes visible, judging him up. They started to hoot and holler, clearly trying to intimidate them, the newbies, and to stake out their territory, and the barracks became filled with loud voices.
“Fresh meat!” called one.
“Fodder for The Flames!” cried another.
Alec felt a deepening sense of apprehension as they were all shoved deeper and deeper into the one big room. He finally stopped, Marco beside him, before an open patch of straw on the ground—only to be immediately shoved from behind.
“That’s my spot, boy.”
Alec turned to see an older recruit glaring at him, holding a dagger.
“Unless you want me to cut your throat,” he warned.
Marco stepped forward.
“Keep your hay,” he said. “It stinks anyway.”
The two of them turned and continued deeper into the barracks, until, in a far corner, Alec found a small patch of hay deep in the shadows. He saw no one nearby, and he and Marco sat, a few feet away from each other, their backs against the wall.
