The three marines jumped to their feet. Leo pushed past the man brusquely in his haste. They hadn’t been in the inn for five minutes, but he could already tell the sounds of battle were closer. The shouts were more distinct, and he could hear the steady footfall of approaching horses.
A knight on horseback burst into the village. His identity obscured by his helm, Leo hoped that his allegiance could be guaranteed, as he was in Kaslea colors. If they had been on Earth, he wouldn’t have trusted it. He’d used the tactic of dressing as the enemy to escape detection far too often not to expect that same tactic to be employed to fool him. The knight dismounted and clicked up his visor—it was Mathis.
“Mathis,” Leo shouted. “What’s the situation?”
“Staff Sergeant Frasier and comrades. I wasn’t expecting to see you here, but your presence is most welcome. The battling forces of Sintiya and Gatlan draw closer; they will be upon us any minute. I must get these people to safety,” Mathis declared.
“We’ll help,” Leo offered. “But we won’t fight. We’re not picking any sides here.”
“I understand.” Mathis bowed his head. “You are men of honor.” He moved over to the well, the center of the village, and started to address the villagers who were appearing from everywhere, emptying out from their homes as they heard the commotion.
“Non-lethal force only,” Leo ordered, before giving a wry smile. “After all, we don’t want to run out of bullets.”
“Copy that,” Don acknowledged.
“Yeah, let’s get these people out of here before the battle arrives,” Nick agreed, thinking of that mother and child he had seen when they had arrived. A battle was no place for them.
“Too late,” Leo groaned.
He could just see the outskirts of the village; several knights on horseback were riding up at full gallop. He wasn’t sure what side they were on, but that didn’t matter. What did matter was what was coming from the left. He could see another group of knights on horseback, wearing different colors. Red-and-gold versus purple-and-silver. The village was directly in the middle, that was where they would clash.
“Alright, people, let’s move,” Don yelled. “Run, that way.” He pointed to the other end of the village, the same side they had arrived from. “Go, go, move it.”
“Let’s make sure these buildings are clear. You know how civilians hide,” Leo suggested.
Leo sprinted over to the nearest hut and kicked the door in. He strode in and looked around, making sure to swiftly duck and check under the table. The place was empty; that was good. He moved on to the next. On the other side of the street, Nick was doing the same. Don was still yelling at everyone in the street to move, and a few of them were frozen in terror. Don grabbed them and pulled them forward, pushing their shoulders until they started to run on their own.
Nick kicked in another door. The last two huts had been empty, and at first glance this one appeared the same. He then heard a frightened whimper. He ducked down. Two children with tear-streaked faces and wide eyes were hiding under the table.
“Hey, it’s alright, it’s okay,” Nick said quickly. “I’m here to help you, but you can’t stay here. You need to run, okay? So take my hand and we’ll get out of here.”
It was a little boy and girl, likely brother and sister. The girl was possibly eight, the boy a couple of years younger. He clung to his older sister and sniffed, his lower lip trembling in terror. The little girl swallowed hard, and for a long, painful moment, Nick thought that they would stay there, and he couldn’t imagine that him bodily pulling them out would help matters. However, she had likely been told many times she was responsible for her brother—he could almost see the determination in her jaw. She took Nick’s outstretched hand and crept out from under the table. Her brother followed her, and then they were both standing in front of him.
“Alright, let’s go,” Nick told them.
He stepped around them and went first to make sure the coast was clear. The last place he wanted them to run out into was the middle of a battle. However, these were wooden huts, and wood burned. It would be far more frightening, and far more deadly, to let them hide, and then they’d be faced with burning to death, choking on smoke and dying of suffocation or running out into the battle that would be going full measure by then. No, the time to flee was now. It was the safest thing.
Outside, he crouched down so that he was on their level and pointed into the distance. There was a stream of other villagers running; they couldn’t miss where to go.
“Follow everyone else, go on and run. They’ll take care of you,” Nick promised. That was a universal constant—children were protected. He couldn’t believe otherwise.
Nick watched them go for a long moment, one he could ill afford, but he needed to make sure that they would make it. He heard hooves falling behind him; he turned and then yelped, quickly jumping to the side to avoid a collision with the knight on the horse. The promised battle had finally arrived.
It was madness. Just the rampaging horses in the confined space was bad enough. The knights were slashing at one another, the horses whinnying in terror as the steel missed and slashed their flanks, sending blood spraying around the market. Nick stepped back, pressing himself against a wooden hut until he saw where best to run to. He had crossed a knight by accident before; he had no intention of making the same mistake.
On the other side of the square, Leo’s actions mirrored Nick’s. He really didn’t want to be in the middle of this. Then he spotted a screaming woman, doubled over in fear, dashing in between the wooden huts, trying to run, trying to get out of the village but penned in by the erratic movement of the horses.
Leo saw Don. He too had spotted the woman, and he sprinted over to her, weaving in between the horses. Leo winced as he ducked under a sword strike that would have decapitated him if he’d been a second slower. A knight approached, sword outstretched; it was raised to hit the woman. Don tackled her to the ground and the knight kept on riding. Leo shook his head. Why had the knight done that? What did he possibly gain from hacking an innocent young woman to death?
Bloodlust. He was here to kill, and kill they would. One knight fell off his horse; another knight dismounted, and then they were dueling. One horse galloped off through the village, riderless, its eyes wide; it might well run till its heart exploded. Another horse reared up again, and again, trapped in the center.
Leo took a chance and ran over. He put his boot in the stirrup and heaved himself up. He settled on the horse’s back. It reared up again, but he gripped the reins tightly and directed it over to where Don was shielding the woman with his own body.
“Here,” Leo yelled.
He reached a hand down. Don saw what he was planning and all but threw the woman onto the back of the horse. She grabbed Leo’s hand on instinct and settled behind him. The horse hadn’t even come to a complete stop. Leo spurred it on, eager to get the woman and the panicked horse out of the middle of the battle. They reached the outskirts of the village and Leo paused the horse. He slipped to the ground.
“Circle round, meet up with the others,” Leo ordered, sprinting back in the direction of the fighting.
Back in the battle, Nick had yet to move. It was almost surreal. Knights in armor having a swordfight…it was something to be watched on television; it wasn’t real life. He was watching the swinging swords and he couldn’t see how there was to be a victor. Even when the knight was successful, and landed a hit on his opponent, it hit the metal of the armor and did no damage.
Then one of the battling knights slipped; he landed hard in the mud of the village courtyard. Whether injured or just exhausted, he lay there unmoving, no longer fighting. He could have just been looking for a weakness to exploit; no downed opponent could be trusted to remain that way.
Nick watched, certain the opposing knight was going to raise the sword, plunge the tip down, pierce the chestplate, and skewer his opponent in the chest. He didn’t. The sword would never have penetrated t
he armor. A lance might have with the thrust of a galloping horse behind it, but not a sword.
Instead, the knight knelt in the mud, holding his sword at a strange angle. Nick realized a second too late what the knight was going to do. He plunged the sword in under the armpit, using it like a dagger through the flexible part that the armor didn’t cover.
The knight’s hands then went to his fallen opponent’s helmet. He removed it and raised the sword again. Bile filled Nick’s throat. A huge artery ran through the armpit, and the fallen knight would bleed out in minutes—he was effectively already dead. They were trained to take people out, but they didn’t finish off wounded men, and they didn’t mutilate corpses. More than one soldier had been brought up on charges for that.
No, he couldn’t permit this. Automatically, his hands raised his assault rifle. Nick fired a short burst into the air and everyone stopped.
Battlefields were noisy places, a constant bombardment on the senses. A silent battlefield was much worse; it was eerie and unnatural. Leo came sprinting up, the only movement in the tableau in front of Nick. Leo skidded to a stop in front of Nick, sliding a little on the churned-up mud, which had once been a nice village green.
Leo’s eyes skittered over the stock-still collection of fighters. He had been going to try and pacify them, to talk them down. Nick had gotten their attention, and that attention was likely to be violent. However, the silence stretched on; they just stared as if they were waiting for something, a sign for what they should do next.
He decided to give them the indicator they were looking for. Leo raised his rifle and fired a short burst into the air, just as Nick had done.
“Go on, then, get out of here!” Leo yelled.
That did the trick. All the knights—brave men, soldiers of the realm—scattered in fear. They mounted horses and galloped away, or sprinted as fast as their armor allowed. Within minutes, the village was empty, the enemy forces disappearing fast into the distance. Gatlan’s forces ran west, Sintiya’s more to the north; they were split presumably heading back to their respective base camps.
This battle, at least, was over.
Chapter Sixteen
“Okay, that was weird,” Don said as he came forward, away from the hut he had been sheltering against. His expression mirrored that of his two colleagues: complete befuddlement. “Who knew they would be scared by a bit of gunfire. Next time, we should lead with that.”
“Next time, it won’t be new,” Leo cautioned. “They’ll have had time to think it over, realize that they weren’t hurt. I doubt that the same trick will work twice. Not on the same forces, anyway, though we could probably buy ourselves another round if we actually hit somebody.”
“But we don’t want to do that,” Nick murmured.
He couldn’t quite believe that it had worked. He had intended to scare the knight, to make him think twice about his actions. Nick wasn’t been sure whether the knight had been planning on stabbing the fallen knight in the throat or attempting to sever his head. Either option was unconscionable, given the other knight was already dead or dying. However, Nick hadn’t expected for one second it would stop the battle, or lead to everyone running away. He wished he had tried it the first time, as it might have saved him from that sword nearly running him in two.
Now that the sorcerer’s magic paste had fixed it, though, he wasn’t as bitter about the experience as he had been. It was a hell of a story, but it hadn’t been a fun one to think about telling, when he’d thought he might die here of the infection he had felt set in.
“No, don’t want to annoy any future potential allies,” Leo confirmed.
“So what now?” Don asked awkwardly, looking around the empty village.
There were signs it had been abandoned quickly. A couple of baskets lay broken, trampled into the mud in the melee, their contents spread over the area. Fruit, linen, straw, all ruined. But at least their owners had run in time; they had made it to safety.
There were a couple of bodies lying on the ground. The knight Nick had seen stabbed, who was likely dead. Another knight whose armor was dented in several places; it appeared he had been trampled by a horse. He wasn’t moving, but it was possible he was still alive.
Then there were two young boys in leather who hadn’t been so lucky. Infantry, by the look of them. They’d somehow gotten caught in the melee, their pikes laying by their sides. Their eyes were open and unmoving, great red gashes marring their skin, a pool of blood sinking into the mud around them, almost invisible in the dirt. They didn’t have the protection of armor, and they had paid the price.
Leo felt sick as he looked at their faces. They were teenagers, far too young to be conscripted into any decent army. He had fought kids like that, young boys conscripted into local militia, brainwashed and sent out to die. He had killed kids like that. He’d had no choice, but it never sat right. Children were supposed to be protected. He tried to remember this was a different world, a different culture, and that he shouldn’t judge. However, looking at a dead kid on the ground, it was very difficult not to cast judgment.
“Looks like the locals saw what happened,” Nick said.
He pointed into the distance to where there was a stream of people heading for the village this time, not away from it. Mathis was at the front, two young children mounted on his horse. He held the reins tightly, guiding the animal, leading everyone home.
In a matter of minutes, the village was bustling with life again. The mood was far more buoyant than subdued, but then Leo realized that they had expected things to be much worse. There was a small amount of damage to the wooden buildings, mostly from missed sword strikes, and there were some frightened horses, but nothing had been destroyed beyond repair. These people had run with nothing but the clothes on their back. They had saved their lives, but they had expected that they would lose everything else.
The four dead on the ground should have had a sobering effect, but a few of the men picked them up and carried them inside a building, away from the sensitive eyes of women and children. Once that was done, the last restraint was lifted and the cheers started.
“You saved our village,” declared the same better-dressed villager who had directed them to the inn less than an hour earlier. Leo realized he was probably the mayor, or what passed for leadership in this place.
“We were just trying to help,” Leo told him, brushing off the thanks.
It was the job. It was what he’d signed up to the marines for: to run towards trouble and not away from it. They could no more have turned their backs on this village than they could have turned their backs on Earth’s alien invasion. It didn’t matter that this hadn’t been their fight, just as it didn’t matter that they had been off-duty at the time. It really wasn’t anything special.
“You did more than that, stranger. You are our saviors. We owe you a great debt.” The mayor bowed his head seriously.
“Friend.” Mathis placed a gauntlet on the mayor’s shoulder. “The battlefront is not far from here, and it draws ever closer. The forces of Gatlan and Sintiya have clashed here once; they will do so again. Your people now have time to gather their belongings. You can bring with you whatever you can carry when you head for safety.”
The mayor stepped back. Mathis’s hand fell loosely to his side. Leo watched warily as the mayor’s jaw set, stubbornness creeping over his expression.
“No, that is no longer necessary,” the mayor said, shaking his head. He tipped his head in the direction of the three marines. “We have been saved. These strangers are our saviors. Their magic has frightened the enemy away.”
“Oh no,” Leo objected.
“That’s not what happened,” Nick argued quickly.
“We don’t have magic,” Don said hastily.
The mayor looked puzzled. “Your magic saved our village. You have great power; you are our saviors, and we owe you a great debt.” He bowed deeply, and all around him the rest of the village followed. A few even dropped to one knee as if
pledging fealty.
Leo felt deeply uncomfortable and completely out of his depth. He had guessed some time ago that the locals had no idea that the rifles and sidearms they carried were weapons, that the lack of recognition was why no one had seen them as a threat. However, he had never considered that they would believe that a gun was a magical artifact.
Although, he supposed that from their perspective, it was so far outside their comprehension it would appear magical. It was like how they could have viewed the transport platform. Leo steadfastly believed it wasn’t magic, just technology they didn’t understand, but that Arthur C. Clarke quote applied yet again. Advanced technology and magic were indistinguishable, and by any normal measure the villagers were more primitive than people were on Earth. An automatic weapon would certainly be very advanced for them.
“Yes, Staff Sergeant Frasier and his comrades saved your village today, but they have tasks of their own to complete. They will be leaving the village today; they will not be here tomorrow,” Mathis explained patiently, his concern clear.
“The forces of Gatlan and Sintiya will surely not return, not now they have seen what magic protects us.” A sly grin spread across the mayor’s face. “They do not know that our magical saviors will have moved on. Fear will make them take their fight elsewhere.”
“Perhaps,” Mathis agreed begrudgingly. “But I would not bet the lives of your village on it.”
Nick caught sight of the mother and baby he had seen earlier. He grabbed Leo’s arm desperately. “They aren’t seriously considering staying?”
“We can’t make them leave,” Leo replied with a shrug.
The flush of success had faded all too quickly, and now he just felt uneasy. In truth, he felt responsible. These people could die based on a false belief, and there was nothing he could do. He’d accepted long ago that they couldn’t save everyone, but that didn’t mean he liked it or that it didn’t bother him.
“How’s our resident magic skeptic taking being thought of as a ‘magical savior’?” Don teased, but his heart wasn’t really in it.
Divided (#1 Divided Destiny) Page 16
