by Barb Hendee
The Sea Lion was on fire.
Two bodies with torn throats lay between him and the burning tavern. In his present condition, he could not help Magiere fight, even if he could get to her. Staying on his feet was becoming more difficult with each passing moment.
Leesil looked frantically around, but saw no one he could call to assist with putting out the fire. Of the few people still standing, most were running or fighting for their lives. Should he try to organize some semblance of a retreat? If so, how?
From around the back of the tavern came Chap, lunging hard with legs bent as he used shoulders and haunches to struggle forward as quickly as he could. Cloth was clamped between his teeth as he dragged something across the ground away from the fire.
If Chap had come from the tavern, then Magiere was still inside. Why wasn’t the dog in there helping her?
“Chap,” Leesil called. “Here, boy.”
Leesil dropped the empty crossbow and leaned against the buildings as he struggled forward.
A building-and-a-half away from the tavern now, Chap spotted Leesil and stopped, letting go of his burden. The dog then ran back and forth and around whatever he’d been dragging, barking loudly and unwilling to leave it. When Leesil reached Chap’s side, he understood.
Rose’s half-conscious form lay on the ground. This was why Chap had left Magiere’s side.
“It’s all right,” he said.
Crouching down, he caught himself from falling with one hand on the ground. Rose lifted her head, face tear streaked.
“Leesil!” she cried, reaching out her hands.
That was good. If she could still talk and move, then whatever had happened, it had likely not caused her any lasting harm. He doubted he could get to Magiere, and the townsfolk were now beyond his help. But he could save Rose.
The dog whined and licked his face. Rose crawled to her feet and grabbed his neck, hanging on tightly. Her slight weight hurt his ribs and back.
“Can you walk?” he panted. “I can’t carry you.”
She seemed confused, then nodded in comprehension. “Yes, I can.”
“Take me to the stable, to the other children,” he said.
For one so young and frightened, she grasped his meaning quickly. Leading him by the hand, she hurried toward the stable, moving faster than he could and attempting to pull him along. Chap ranged alongside, ears pricked up at the sights and sounds of people fighting off wolves somewhere down the side streets. The night grew darker as they moved farther from the burning tavern. Leesil ignored everything but the need to keep moving. When they reached the stable door, he managed to jerk it open and then froze.
Two large wolves—one dusty black and the other gray—loped about inside, sniffing and pawing through the floor straw, searching for a way to get to what they smelled below. The children. Both of them lifted their heads and two sets of yellow eyes locked on the new arrivals.
The black wolf snarled, and Chap charged. Furred bodies collided.
“Rose, get up on the hay!” Leesil shouted, casting around for anything to use as a weapon. Every pitchfork and shovel had been cleaned out by the townsfolk earlier that day.
Rose scrambled as high as she could up the loose pile of hay strewn around two stacked bales. Chap and the black wolf rolled across the wooden floor like coiling snakes.
Leesil saw the gray wolf’s sharp fangs and tensing muscles as it lunged two steps toward him and attacked. Fear and instinct took over, driving his actions.
One arm shot up to guard his head and throat, as his other swung down hard to his side in a flicking motion. The strap that held his stiletto in place snapped free and the hilt dropped into his hand. The wolf’s teeth snapped closed around his raised arm.
When the animal’s forepaws hit his chest, he felt his broken ribs stab deeper into his body, stopping his breath. He let the wolf’s weight topple them both to the floor.
The impact sent another shock of pain through his body.
In the same fluid movement with which he’d once pinned Brenden to the tavern floor, he rolled with the wolf’s weight, pushing its jaws upward with his forearm to trap its head against the floor. With the last inertia of his roll, he rammed the stiletto down through the animal’s eye.
There was a crunch as the blade tip broke through bone and passed into the skull. The furred body spasmed once, then ceased moving. Leesil flopped over to the floor and tried to get air back into his lungs again.
Chap snapped and battered with his paws again and again at the other wolf, the two of them twisting and turning about each other. Leesil tried to move, to help, but nothing happened. His breath came in short sucking gasps that hurt so badly he wanted to stop breathing altogether.
There was no sound from the children below. Either blind fear or good sense had kept them from giving their position away.
Chap caught his opponent’s front leg and bit down. A loud snap and a yelp announced the end of the fight, and Leesil felt one small moment of pride. Stout Chap had been running down undeads. Dealing with a mere wolf was only a matter of moments.
The wounded animal stumbled out the stable doors on three legs, moving as fast as it was able. Chap let it go and reached Leesil about the same time that Rose climbed down from the hay.
“Get below,” Leesil whispered. “You have to hide with the others.”
Rose didn’t move. She wouldn’t leave him.
“Listen to me—” he hissed in anger, but he didn’t finish before darkness filled his head, and he dropped limp and unconscious.
When Magiere held Teesha’s head up, she expected to see rage and thirst for vengeance color Rashed’s face. With the growing flames between them, she anticipated the satisfaction of driving him to wild action.
At first, absolute incomprehension registered in his crystalline eyes—then horror—and finally something between fear and pain.
“Teesha?” he mouthed as a question, though Magiere could not hear his voice over the sound of the fire.
Magiere felt an unexpected and unwanted sensation of guilt, but swallowed it down.
“Here I am,” she called, determined to finish what he had started. “Why don’t you come take my head?”
He could not have heard her either, but at those words he cried out incoherently and came crashing through the window, the base of the wall below it giving way before his legs. Burning boards dropped around him, and he gripped his long sword as if it were the only thing that mattered.
Still Magiere felt nothing she expected. Sorrow danced around the edge of his cry, not rage.
“Coward!” he managed to yell before swinging so hard that Magiere dropped Teesha’s head and jumped back instead of blocking. His attack now stirred the power and anger she longed for.
With Teesha, she had controlled that rage and how it affected her actions, and she believed she could have done so even now. But she didn’t want to, and she let it take her, rushing through her body. The sharpness inside of her mouth was welcome, no longer unsettling. To destroy him, she would become him—one of his kind.
The common room had always felt large and open before, but standing inside the growing fire and forced to back away from Rashed, Magiere suddenly felt trapped in too small a space. His physical presence felt too close, too immediate.
Rashed positioned himself between her and the open wall, standing his ground, waiting. She hated him for the murdering monster that he was, but admired his strategy in the midst of all this madness. He wasn’t going to let her out. Whether he killed her with a sword or forced her to burn in the fire didn’t matter. Before long, the second floor would cave in.
If that was his plan, then let him try. This time, she charged.
Steel clanked on steel, and Magiere forgot Rashed’s grief at seeing Teesha’s severed head.
Every move he made was familiar, as if she could feel his intent before the action. They each swung and blocked and swung again. Somewhere in the back of her thoughts a voice whispered that if t
hey didn’t run from the tavern soon, they would both burn to death. Did that matter? It didn’t seem to matter to him. No, and nothing mattered to her but cleaving Rashed’s head from his body.
Heat from the inferno around them caused her to choke, and the flames grew hotter and higher. His blade nearly caught her shoulder as she gulped in scorching air. He jerked his sword up and left himself wide open while attempting to cleave her skull. Instead of opting for a sane, defensive move, she thrust upward, aiming for his stomach.
“You fools!” someone shrieked.
The unexpected cry startled both of them and each missed their blow. Even through the smoke and fire, Magiere clearly saw a horrible visage that disrupted her bloodlust.
Floating over Teesha’s head was the ghost of a nearly beheaded man, his long yellow hair hanging from his tilted head. Magiere had thought nothing could shock her anymore, but even in her rage the bright hues of his open throat pulled her attention, flames flickering through his transparent body.
“You fools!” he repeated. His face exuded all the rage and venom she’d expected in Rashed’s.
“Get away, Edwan,” Rashed shouted over the fire. “Vengeance is beyond you.”
“Vengeance?” the ghost answered in disbelief. “You murdered her. You and your pride. Can’t either of you see what’s happening? Did either of you want this?” He drifted down to kneel near Teesha’s severed head, his face weeping, but without tears. “You slew my Teesha.”
Magiere stumbled once. Nothing made sense. No action seemed correct. The heat inside her began to fade and, instead, she felt the bright flames around searing her flesh. Her leather armor smoldered in several places.
When she looked back to Rashed, she saw the tavern stairs behind him and realized they had maneuvered completely around each other. Her back was now to the opening in the front wall where he’d crashed through moments earlier.
Magiere backed up hesitantly.
“No!” Rashed shouted, flames reflecting off his hard crystal eyes.
An ear-splitting crack sounded overhead. Magiere’s gaze turned up briefly. The upper floor began to give way. The desire to survive won out.
She turned and dove through the jagged opening in the wall, shielding her face with one arm. Fresh air from the open street flooded inside her as she rolled once across the ground and came up to look back into the flames.
A heavy beam wider than his chest pinned Rashed to the floor, and he lay completely engulfed in flames, fighting to get up. His thrashing limbs were like waving branches of fire. Over the blaze’s roar, she couldn’t hear anything, and wondered if he was screaming.
The beheaded figure flitted about the room, in and out of the flames devouring Rashed. The ghost appeared to be laughing.
Magiere staggered back a few paces more and sank to the ground. She watched Rashed’s writhing, burning form until he stopped moving. Then the entire upstairs floor caved in. Sparks flew like a thousand fireflies into the night air.
Aside from all the methods she had learned from villagers’ folklore and legends, she thought burning an undead’s body completely to ash was as good as any other way to destroy it.
Where was her earthen jar to trap his spirit now? Where were the peasants to sigh in relief? How brave, how very brave she was to have leaped away and watched her enemy become trapped under a flaming crossbeam. The topaz amulet around her neck glowed steadily.
A light brighter than the flames flashed beside her and the horrible visage of the beheaded man appeared close to her face. She cried out and fell backward.
“Over, over, over,” the thing sang while floating in the air above her, its severed head close enough for her to see every minute detail. “Over, over, over, over . . .”
The light of him began to dim, and he faded until only the night and the flames of the tavern remained. Magiere half lay on the ground, numb inside as she watched the burning building for any sign of Rashed.
There was nothing but fire and smoke in the dark.
Chapter Twenty-one
The first return of emotion fluttered inside Magiere when she saw Leesil open his eyes. He lay on the ground beside her, out in the street. There were fresh teeth marks on his left arm below the ones she’d given him two nights before. His face was pale, but he was breathing without too much discomfort that she could see. He blinked twice from the light of a torch stuck in the ground nearby.
“Is it morning?” he rasped.
“Almost,” she answered. “Soon.”
Leesil scowled, and that brought Magiere more comfort. Irritation and a foul mood meant he would probably be all right.
“Are we alive?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Good . . . nobody should feel this bad if they’re dead.”
Magiere sighed, releasing all the anxiety and tension she’d not even been aware was locked inside her. She sat gazing at what had been The Sea Lion. Separated as it was from the buildings nearby, the fire had not spread beyond the tavern.
As Leesil gained some awareness, he lifted his head enough to see the smoldering remains of their home, groaned, and then raised his hands slightly in resignation. When his hands flopped back down, his face winced from pain, and then he tried cradling his injured arm.
“Don’t move,” she said. “I got you out of the stable, but after that, I thought it best to keep you still.”
He half rocked on his back and tried to pull off the wool cloak she’d covered him with, but he only managed to rumple it to one side. She pulled the cloak back up into place again.
Streaks of light now stretched out over the trees to the east, gilding a few white clouds high in the sky. Around them, people still tended the injured or helped them off the streets. Karlin’s voice rose occasionally above the general noise as he suggested how to best treat an injury or who might need to be carried. Some members of their little army who hadn’t been seriously injured conversed in low voices and patted each other on the shoulder.
Magiere had her own injured to care for, but there wasn’t much she could offer Leesil, besides time and rest. Once she’d gotten him out of the stable, she laid him flat and kept him warm. Karlin had told her they were setting up the bakery as a hospice. Although, like Caleb, he didn’t think much of Miiska’s current healers, he had several people trying to locate one.
“Where’d you find me?” Leesil asked. “The last thing I remember is killing a wolf.”
“Apparently, the children dragged you down into their hiding place. Chap was still sitting on the trapdoor, keeping guard when I arrived.” She paused. “They’re good children. Resourceful. These people are worth trying to save.”
“Where’s Chap now?”
“Geoffry took Rose to the bakery. I sent Chap with them.”
“Is Rashed—”
“Gone.” Her tone became flat and empty. “I watched him burn.”
She couldn’t muster any joy, but Leesil didn’t seem to notice. Just when she thought he’d be able to rest and heal, something new managed to beat him down yet again. But not anymore.
That thought brought some comfort again. At least this spiral of success and failure was truly over.
“Nothing happened like I thought it would,” she said.
Leesil was about to answer when Karlin walked over to check on him. Though dirty and exhausted, the baker appeared unhurt. “Ah, you’re awake. I’m so glad. We’ll get you somewhere more comfortable as soon as possible.”
“What about the rest?” Leesil asked with effort.
“Only five deaths,” Karlin replied. Despite the phrase, his tone held enough sorrow for ten times as many. “I’m already trying to arrange visitation ceremonies before burial . . . when people are ready to face it.”
“Brenden’s body burned with the tavern,” Leesil realized. Then he seemed unable to continue with the thought. “I never planned on fighting wolves.”
“No one did. It’s not your fault.” Karlin’s brows knitted. “The moment the tav
ern collapsed, they all fled back into the forest, as if Rashed lost his hold on them.”
“He did,” Magiere confirmed quietly.
Leesil lay back and stared up at the sky. “Well, we’re homeless . . . again. All that fighting, and we lost the main thing we’d been fighting for.”
“Did we?” Magiere asked.
Again, Karlin frowned, his round cheeks wrinkling slightly. “Heal up and rebuild.”
“What?” Magiere stared at him incredulously. “How, and with what? We don’t even have a place to live in the meantime.”
Karlin knelt and pointed at the smoldering tavern.
“The land plot is still yours. And the payment the shopkeepers tried to give you is still sitting in my kitchen. Those coins will buy supplies to get started. We’ll work in the evenings and at week’s end. Some of the stonework in the kitchen, and fireplace, might not even need to be replaced. It may take a moon or two, but I think enough folks will be willing to help.”
Magiere couldn’t respond. Karlin did not seem to see himself as unselfish or astounding. The whole resolution seemed so simple, so clear to him.
“Brenden’s home is empty now,” he chatted on. “It may seem a bit odd at first, but he’d want you there until we’ve got The Sea Lion rebuilt. There’s grain and firewood already stored at the place, and the rest can be dealt with along the way.”
He talked as if Magiere and Leesil’s current situation were commonplace, and a bit of planning and polish would fix everything. Magiere wasn’t nearly so certain.
She looked down at her partner, whose amber eyes were still fixed on the sky. His hands trembled slightly. She carefully touched him on the shoulder to return his attention.
“What do you think?” she asked.
He nodded once without speaking.
“Done then,” Karlin said, and he stood up. “Ah, here come Caleb and Darien with a door.”
