Murmurs ran through the crowd. Jubal Bruk stood before Aeros Raijael and his five mounted companions. The baron looked small out there alone. From where he was, Nail couldn’t hear anything that was said, but there was a brief discussion, and then the White Prince and his five guards whirled their mounts and galloped back to their forces.
“Prepare yourselves!” the baron hollered when he rejoined the Gallows Haven army. He drew his sword and raised it above his head. “Form a shield wall, boys!”
“Sweet bloody papa.” Zane Neville’s mouth was agape, eyes wide. “Bend me over and bugger me senseless. As Laijon is my witness, we’re liable to get our heads caved in by these rascally bastards. We’d be absolutely barking mad to try and fight them.” Zane tossed down his helm and shield, gaze racing up and down the ragtag line of Gallows Haven men. “I’m going to find my family, find Beer Mug. Flee into the hills. I’m done with this madness.” With that, he turned and ran.
“You all swore an oath!” the baron roared, spittle flecking his beard, eyes following Zane. “I will not suffer cowards! You all swore a covenant with church and king to defend your homeland! We’ll fight like warriors and carve them up good and proper and send them back to Sør Sevier on the dung-ships they sailed in on!”
Baron Bruk’s roaming gaze touched Shawcroft’s and locked there a moment. “We all fight! The next who leaves I will chase down and kill myself!”
The back of Nail’s hand now stung with a white-hot pain. He looked down at the almost forgotten, but still red and blistered, crosslike burn on his hand—the burn caused by his gauntlet when the lightning had struck Dokie. But my gauntlets are probably with some old farmer now! So ill-prepared! Nail now knew he would die here today.
Baron Bruk raised his sword and yelled, “By the word of Laijon, I command you to all form a shield wall—”
There was a hollow, metallic thunk! A thick crossbow bolt bounced off the back of the baron’s helm and fell to the ground. He dropped unceremoniously to his knees, stunned, helm knocked askew.
Nail’s eyes flew to the ranks of the Sør Sevier army. The red-haired woman stood about ten paces in front of the rest of the Sør Sevier army, nocking another quarrel to her crossbow. She looked so regal and skilled and deadly that what little regard the Gallows Haven men had previously had for fighting was rapidly wilting.
Shawcroft’s eyes were racked with emotion. “We must go. Now. Much rides upon your surviva—”
Nail heard the snap of the red-haired warrior woman’s crossbow and the wind of the quarrel’s passage and the whhppt of cleaved air.
Shawcroft’s knees buckled like broken saplings.
Nail’s master crumpled to the ground and rolled onto his side. Blood welled from around the thick shaft sunk deep in his back, bubbled through his fingers as he reached to pull the quarrel free. Nail’s breath clamped tight in his chest.
The sight of Shawcroft stuck with a crossbow bolt, wheezing for breath, broke the nerve of some men nearby. They began fleeing one at a time, then in small groups.
Nail felt nothing. He reached down and pulled Shawcroft’s longsword from its sheath. He hefted the weapon, testing its weight in his hand. Heavy. The black opal on the pommel exactly like that on Baron Bruk’s sword. A Dayknight sword?
Silence had fallen across the field. The terror in the village ranks was palpable. Nail could feel it welling up within him, too. Sweat trickled down the sides of his face. When the soaring wail of the Sør Sevier bagpipes sounded over the landscape, Nail had to swallow his own fear and impulse to flee.
A bloody hand reached up and tried to take the sword from him. Nail moved back from his master and the hand fell away. “Help me up,” Shawcroft said. Nail took his master’s hand the second time it was offered and, with all he could muster, pulled the man to his feet.
The enemy knights began clanging swords upon shields. It was a fearsome sound and the very ground appeared to shudder. As one, the Sør Sevier archers nocked their arrows and took aim.
“Just run.” Shawcroft was now trying to stand on his own, pleading, pushing Nail away. Blood was soaking his clothes fast. “Run. Now. Leave me.”
The rising music stopped.
Silence.
And instantly the scene was chaos.
Nearly every Gallows Haven fighter turned and fled. Stefan Wayland with his new Silver Guard bow ran. Dokie Liddle ran. Everyone was running toward town.
But Nail stood rooted in fear. He saw two others nearby: Brutus Grove from the baron’s grayken-hunting skiff, and Jenko Bruk, both trying to help the baron stand.
The Sør Sevier archers lowered their bows and stepped aside and the vast army behind them set heels to flanks and charged. As the Sør Sevier army thundered toward him, Nail couldn’t believe what was happening. So quickly this horror had come to them. One day they were celebrating at the Mourning Moon Feast, and the next day the armies of Sør Sevier were here to kill them all. He pulled at Shawcroft’s arm, tried to get the man to flee with him. But Shawcroft shoved him away roughly. “Go, Nail. Now.”
And at the sight of fifteen hundred knights bearing down upon him, something snapped inside of Nail. An instant of self-preservation, a primal instinct, kicked in. He did as Shawcroft bade him do. He ran.
After about thirty frantic paces, he turned and looked back. Watched in terror as the charging cavalry trampled Shawcroft over.
Nail fled toward the keep. It was a frantic sprint. And in only a few short steps, his lungs began to burn. They heaved against his chest armor.
He looked back in fear, watched as a frothing war charger bore down on Brutus Grove and Jenko Bruk. The large bullnecked Sør Sevier man with the red beard and blue tattoos struck first. The fellow’s mane of wild red hair flamed and flew in the sunlight as his massive ball mace met armor and bone and Brutus Grove exploded upward in a spray of blood—the heavy mace arcing high, slinging trails of red into the air. Jenko Bruk dodged the flashing blue longsword of the White Prince but was quickly trampled under the stark white charger of the red-haired warrior woman with the crossbow. Jenko tumbled under the churning hooves, his sword, shield, and helm scattering. Baron Bruk was trampled underneath too. And the enemy cavalry stormed on toward Nail.
He found himself in a whirl of pounding hooves, eyes scarcely registering the turmoil around him except in glimpses: the blur of Sør Sevier armor, the flashing of blades, the prickle of spearheads, the scattering of buffet tables and decorations, remnants of last night’s feast. The only solid thing he could focus on was the wide slab of the keep’s crumbling wall and the slope of its debris. With his master’s heavy sword still in hand, he swung out madly at a passing rider, striking nothing, still running. There was a clamor and roiling around him, a cacophony of sound, and something smashed into his side. He was forced stumbling to the right. A charger crashed into him, knocking him over, Shawcroft’s sword spinning from his hand, lost in the confusion.
Nail scrambled to his feet just in time to see another white warhorse bearing down, its corded muscles under spiked armor heaving and strained. The charger’s stern-faced rider was completely bald and focused. The man swung low at Nail with a fearsome-looking longsword. Nail dropped to the ground again, dirt kicked up into his eyes as the blade whistled overhead. The bald rider moved on, swinging again, decapitating an old farmer who held up a rake in defense.
Nail lurched to his feet and headed for the keep, shouts of death and destruction all around. Sør Sevier knights swarmed the keep’s entrance. Nail veered to the left, spying a wide crack in the building’s crumbling wall. There was a dark opening there, just big enough for a man. Another entrance. And no Sør Sevier fighters.
He sprinted for the wall and dove into the crumbled access, only to slam into a frenzied-eyed fisherman who was attempting to duck into the same opening. The collision sent both sprawling. Nail regained his bearings and hurtled through the craggy slit first. The fisherman followed but ended up lodged between the jagged mortars. Red bubbled from his
mouth as he was speared in the back by a menacing-looking Sør Sevier knight. Nail fled from the man’s bloodcurdling screams, eyes trying to adjust to the darkness. He stumbled over a crate and fell headlong into a moldy stack of cloth. Frantic, he regained his feet, continuing onward toward a dim light at the end of a narrow passageway. He busted through a rickety wooden door and into a large roofless room, squinting against the glare of light pouring in from above. Beams and rafters had caved in ages ago and littered the floor in jagged, twisted piles. He instantly knew he was in the keep’s long-unused dining hall. There were women and girls huddled in the room. They screeched in horror as flame-lit arrows began to rain over the walls. In one teeming mass they ran for an open tunnel along the far wall. A flaming arrow struck one girl, who fell screaming into a pile of wooden rafters on the floor. Instantly smoke and heat billowed.
Nail lurched after the remaining women, joining them in their dash down the dark opening and farther into the abandoned keep. The tunnel was already filled with smoke and flame. Some women dropped to the ground, crying, their companions dragging them from the spreading fires. Nail helped a village girl pull an old woman over a crumbled cobblestone barrier. Then he noticed the woman he helped was dead, an arrow shaft sprouting from her chest. He let her go and ran.
Dark smoke roiled around him. He saw the fleshy bare legs of another woman in a threadbare skirt race by. He followed her. Orange light flared up and waves of heat bore down. Then the woman in front of him suddenly disappeared. He tumbled down a flight of stone stairs, landing atop her with a thud. As he untangled himself from the woman, he heard horrific pain-filled screams coming from the stairs above.
Then a soft breath of fresh air grazed his face. In the opposite direction of the stairs was a narrow tunnel, a brilliant blue glow at its far end. Nail urged the woman to run toward the light with a swift push. She ran, clogging the passageway before him with a limping, lumbering gait. Her silhouette was dark against the stark blue of the tunnel’s exit, her hair bouncing and shimmering in crazy patterns in the light. When she broke free from the tunnel, sunlight engulfed her.
Nail stumbled out of the keep behind her, eyes adjusting to the light, the lady running free along the beach in front of him, her skirt awhirl as her bare feet churned up the sand. She was met by a charging Sør Sevier horseman, who cut her in half with a huge flashing blade. The top of her body, arms flailing, was sent spinning into the surf, a string of guts trailing. Her legs folded and slid in the sand.
Like swarming ants, Sør Sevier fighters were everywhere at once.
Nail stopped. He gazed upon a beach littered with bodies. Villagers were everywhere: farmers, sailors, women, and conscripts still in their armor, they were all of them running and screaming whilst Sør Sevier blades appeared to leap and slash at them from every direction. An older woman fell next to him, silent, her tattered skirt torn, belly ripped open, her slashed and bruise-colored entrails steaming in the sand.
Gulping in the squalid air, Nail tottered forward and dropped to his knees in the sand near a portion of the crumbled keep. He could hear the swish of the receding tide in between the screams of the dying. With scarcely any strength in his legs, he tried standing again. Every muscle in his body twitched in protest.
He knelt there, head down, sifting his fingers through the sand, knowing that his life would soon be over. He found himself cowering, hugging the broken stones of the keep, willing himself to disappear beneath them.
As the chaos swirled around him, he looked toward the sea, its white rolling breakers in the distance, the unfurled sails of the huge warships floating beyond.
It seemed a lifetime ago that he had been sitting on this very beach under the stars with Ava Shay.
A villager in boiled leather armor and a rusted iron helm stumbled toward him, blood vomiting from his mouth, a bloody spear point jutting through his chest. The rest of the spear’s haft protruded from the fellow’s back. One of the rowers on Jubal Bruk’s hunting skiff. Nail could not recall his name. The man dropped his sword and fell forward into the sand in front of Nail, his helmet bouncing from his head, blood pumping from his open, gasping mouth. The sand of the beach greedily absorbed the spilled blood.
Nail knew the sight of the sailor dying would be the last thing he would ever see, that and the Sør Sevier knight walking casually toward him.
What set this knight apart from the hacking and slashing and swirling tumult of the beachhead slaughter was the knight’s calmness—and his youth. He wore no helm, yet his silver armor and white surcoat were bloodstained red and he bore a sword nearly as long as his body. Nail took in every detail of the athletic-looking young man. A fellow not much older than me, a young man who has probably already witnessed a hundred battles and a thousand bloody deaths. A true warrior indeed. There was a feral, animal-like bearing about this young Sør Sevier knight that transfixed Nail. Perhaps it lay in his squinting eyes—eyes that were dark and fierce and bore what appeared to be thick smears of blue war paint under each. Or perhaps it was the young man’s carefully pressed russet braids, which draped down his back like long cornrows of snakes—braids that were now flying out behind him as he picked up speed, for this young knight had noticed Nail kneeling there and had begun to run in loping strides toward him, longsword upraised in both hands.
As death closed in, Nail sat there unmoving. Weariness had drained him.
Onward the young Sør Sevier knight ran, evil grin bearing down, sword poised above like an ax in an axman’s hands, preparing to split Nail’s head like a melon.
Death comes to claim me.
Nail thought of his twin sister, his only family, a girl he would never now find, a girl he would never now get to know. Was she out there somewhere in the Five Isles, as lost and alone as he? Did she know that he even existed? There were too many questions that would forever go unanswered.
But Nail did not want to die just yet.
He scrambled for the dead sailor’s rusted iron helmet and sword. Picking up both, he slammed the helmet over his head and rose to meet his foe.
But the Sør Sevier youth was already upon him, longsword swinging in a great huge arc downward.
Only halfway to his feet, Nail’s head exploded in a shower of stars and all things instantly went black.
* * *
And the shamans and stone carvers did prophesy, “There are gods many and lords many, but soon there will be but one lord greater than the rest. A savior. An ensign unto all kingdoms. A great hero born by the sea. One powerful enough to slay the winged demons and their evil lords. One whose feet shall be washed by queens and kings.”
—THE WAY AND TRUTH OF LAIJON
* * *
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
AVA SHAY
3RD DAY OF THE MOURNING MOON, 999TH YEAR OF LAIJON
GALLOWS HAVEN, GUL KANA
Crabs scuttled among the heap of dead bodies as seagulls cried above, their shadows weaving over the rippled, bloodstained sand and waves rolling ashore. White fins of sharks, slithering up from the depths, were coming closer to land. They could taste death in the water. Baron Bruk’s cauldrons had been overturned by Sør Sevier warriors to empty them of grayken oil, then, for some reason unkown to Ava or any of the other captives, refilled with boiling tar, the black bubbling broth sending up fumes that scarcely masked the stench of the bloated corpses. North of Gallows Keep rose up another pile of the dead, all afire, burned by the Sør Sevier knights, never to be given religious rites or proper burial.
Ava Shay could feel the flies lighting on her skin now, scurrying, little feet dancing madly across her face. With hands bound behind her back with rope, she could not swat them away. Trying to ignore the tickling of the bugs, she took note of her fellow survivors. There were only a paltry thirty souls left of the five hundred or so who had once populated Gallows Haven. Smoke and grit coated their faces.
The Grayken Spear Inn had been reduced to cinders. When the inn had been set afire, only Ava, along with four other
serving girls, Tylda Egbert, Gisela Barnwell, Polly Mott, and Liz Hen Neville, managed to escape. The memory of the Grayken Spear’s fiery destruction tumbled mercilessly through her head. She could not dispel the image of her younger brothers and sisters burning as Ol’ Man Leddingham tried to save them. Her whole family was now gone. Ol’ Man Leddingham, too. She could still hear their inhuman screams, still smell the air bitter with the reek of their charred flesh. Smoke billowed from the keep and chapel too. It appeared everything had been ravaged and burned.
Tears welled in her eyes. This did not feel like a dream. Yet it didn’t seem quite real, either. She tried to regain some sense of sanity. Her gaze traveled to Baron Bruk’s grayken-hunting ship, cast adrift in the bay. Swirling fire leaped to the sky from its flaming skeleton, and black smoke billowed heavenward.
It would have been better to have just died. The others beside her in line looked as destitute as she felt, their faces shocked with pain, their eyes barren. Ava noticed Stefan Wayland and Dokie Liddle near the end of the line. Stefan wore his armor, though it was dirt-crusted and dented. Dokie was wearing naught but a shirt, torn leather tunic, rough-spun woolen leggings, and a few scraps of dented plate strapped to his chest. Next to them were Gisela and Polly; like Ava, they wore simple woolen shifts tied at the waist. She recalled the joy on Gisela’s face last night as she’d danced with Stefan. But it now seemed all such innocent joys had been forever wiped from the world.
Jenko Bruk stood to the right of Tylda, head hung low, hair covering his bruised face, armor battered. His mere presence was a small but blessed comfort.
The bulk of the Sør Sevier army was setting up camp on the grassy field just north of the keep. She could hear the rattle and clanking of the wagons they had scavenged from the town. A group of knights milled about the beach directly in front of the prisoners. Their fearsome warhorses were painted in the colors of Sør Sevier, blue circles and spirals around their eyes, ears dyed white and rimmed in blue.
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