Order of the Fire Box Set

by P. E. Padilla

  Kate turned in time to see the man with the sledgehammer swinging it as a weapon at her. She parried the blow with her shield, deflecting it harmlessly past her as she went after the other men, who were scrambling to their feet. The hammer-wielder dropped the tool and drew his sword.

  Something swiped the air next to Kate’s face, tugging on a lock of her hair. She drew her head back and allowed her body to follow, rolling backward and onto her feet.

  They had a demon with them. The invisible kind.

  Kate circled and put her back to the firestone, fairly certain the demon wouldn’t want to try to flank her by getting closer to the talisman.

  With surprise, Kate recognized one of the guards. It was the Red who attacked Wilfred that time, when the Blue had stuck up for the Black. The same one who had given her that smirk a few weeks back.

  “Taunts aren’t enough for you, traitor?” Kate said, twisting her wrist to parry a sword slash from one of the other Reds and then punching him in the face with the pommel of her hilt.

  The Red scowled, but didn’t say anything. The way he moved, though, didn’t seem right.

  Kate’s instincts took over, and she threw her shield up and thrust her sword just underneath it. Something clanged off the surface. More importantly, her blade met resistance. It had punctured something.

  It was as she had thought. The man had been shoved aside by the demon.

  A few drops of green splashed to the ground. Kate smiled.

  The three remaining men attacked as one. Kate appreciated their close formation because it allowed her to see another motion that could only have been caused by the demon jostling one of the attackers. She moved the shield to block two of the Reds’ blades and let another scratch across her breastplate so she could position herself correctly.

  Acting like she was swinging at the attacker on her right, she purposely missed him. As the blade went through empty air beside him, it almost stopped at the resistance it met, but she powered it through, then pivoted to her right to dodge a blow she couldn’t see but knew was coming.

  Again, the breeze of a powerful strike zipped past her head. She flipped her wrist, circling the blade around and, adding to its trajectory with her arm, shoulder, and rotating hips, slashed powerfully diagonally downward, hoping she had judged the distance correctly.

  Kate arced her shield around to slash at one of the three men and backed up a step to gain distance. A scaled arm and claw appeared in the air, having been shorn from the body, and right after, an ugly demon head materialized and followed it to the stone. With a final thump, the rest of the demon’s body became visible. Good, they could be seen once they were dead.

  The men’s eyes grew wide, and they stared at the monstrosity besides them and then at Kate. She assumed they weren’t surprised it was a demon, just that Kate had killed it. She extended the same courtesy to them, hacking through them as if they were made of paper. Within seconds, she was cleaning her blade on the tunic of the man who had instigated the attack on Wilfred not that long ago.

  As Kate inspected the demon’s body, the sound of stomping feet sounded from another street. She stood, hoisting her shield and raising her sword.

  “Kate!” It was Angus Lloyd, a Black she had sparred with occasionally and saw from time to time in conjunction with Infirium activities. He was breathing hard, as if he had been sprinting. “I heard the swords clash and thought maybe one of us was being attacked again. I was coming back from eating and…what the Hell is that?”

  “It’s one of the invisible assassin demons. Angus, you have to go tell the others. Hopefully someone is already in the library. They’re trying to destroy the stones. They’re not going to use them against us, they’re going to make sure our protection is limited. Go! Tell them to protect the stones.”

  He nodded and took off running toward the library. Kate went the other way, heading toward the large firestone on the west side of Parade Square. Someone would have to hold them off until the others gathered.

  She ran, performing an internal review of her body to see if she felt like she had been injured. Luckily, she didn’t think she had. As she went, she glanced to her right, toward the east. Yes, the sky was definitely lightening. Would it make a difference? She didn’t know, but if she could keep the guards from destroying the firestones until there were more people about, she just might be able to save them from being smashed.

  Kate was headed for the firestone to the west of Parade Square but veered off toward the one on the other side of the square when that strange tugging sensation came over her again. She raced toward the pull while still scanning her surroundings so she didn’t run into a trap.

  She got to the other firestone, this one in the northwest area of the city, just in time to see the guards being attacked. Actually, as she got closer, she saw that it wasn’t all the guards being attacked. Three of them were in a pitched battle with the other two and what looked like half a dozen other men dressed in dark clothes.

  This time, Kate did yell a battle cry so that the attackers would turn their attention from the innocent guards to her. Four of the eight assailants pivoted toward her and ran to meet her charge.

  She clashed with the two closest to her, knocking one off his feet with the force of the collision. The other tried to get his sword up in time. There wasn’t enough room for Kate to swing her blade, either, so she brought her hand in close and threw her elbow into the man’s face.

  He wasn’t wearing a helmet, and the mail covering her arm struck him hard. His nose split and blood spattered all over his face, but Kate was already past him, swinging her sword at the next two. She threw herself to her knees, sliding along the stone platform on her poleyns, and sliced with her sword on one side and her shield on the other, cutting into both men’s legs. They were not wearing armor, no doubt planning on an easy time of disposing of the non-traitorous guards, so both received cuts so deep, Kate knew they would be dead soon enough from blood loss.

  Kate levered herself up from the slide and spun to face the two she had injured first. The one with the broken nose was spitting out blood and wiping it from his eyes while the other man got to his feet and tried to find his weapon. She kept an eye on the three guards battling the four remaining traitors to make sure no one came at her from behind, and then she went to take care of the two in front of her.

  She charged in as if her very life meant taking them out quickly. Perhaps it did. She wound up and swung her sword in a downward stroke that took the weaponless man’s arm off at the elbow just as he was reaching for his sword. She spun as she passed and tore his throat out with the razor-sharp teeth on her shield.

  As the attacker with the broken nose tried to clear his vision, Kate swung at him. Knowing he would block the strike, she set the man up by slowly bringing her shield around as if to slash at him. Then, spinning again, she reversed her grip on the sword in mid-rotation and struck downward, past his guard and across his chest. One more full turn and she used her momentum to cut half his skull off with the sharpened edge of her shield.

  Before he had even fallen, Kate leaped toward the remaining attackers.

  Only three were left, the other one having been dispatched by the three real guards. The innocent guards were in sorry shape, though, with several locations on each of them bleeding. From what she could see, the three remaining traitors were better with their swords.

  But they weren’t better than her.

  The six men were so embroiled in their own battle, they hadn’t seen Kate finish hers. More importantly, they hadn’t seen her coming toward them, except one of the real guards. His eyes widened when he saw her, but then a look of determination came over his face and he gripped his sword more tightly.

  Kate didn’t bother with ramming the men this time. She punched her sword through the lower back of one, cutting his spine and causing him to drop like a sack of rocks. Before the other two could respond, she ripped her sword out of the first man and slashed downward, cutting through one
traitor guard’s armor and tearing a deep gash in his back. He screamed and lurched forward. Right into the waiting sword of the guard that had seen her.

  She left the remaining man—one of the original guards judging by what he was wearing—to the other three and scanned the area surrounding the firestone. Luckily, there didn’t seem to be one of the invisible demons here, though she did see a pile of axes and a sledgehammer, confirming this group was planning to destroy the stone.

  Sure that there were no hidden enemies around, she turned to face the three remaining guards. Two of them were hunched, one with his hands on his knees and breathing hard and the other holding a cloth to a shallow cut in his thigh. The other stood straight, sword at the ready.

  “Are you three all right?” she asked.

  “A bit torn up, but we’ll live. Thanks to you. You’re…that Black, aren’t you? The hero of the Battle of the Breach.”

  “For what it’s worth, yes. Did these ambush you?” she kicked at one of the traitor guards.

  “They did. We don’t know why, though.”

  “There’s your answer,” Kate said, pointing toward the axes and hammer. “They were going to destroy the firestone. They’re trying to get all of them. At the one near the library, all five guards were traitors.”

  “But why?” the man with the leg wound asked. “What good would it do?”

  “You know the answer to that,” she said. “The first group also had a demon with them. An invisible demon. At least, it was invisible until I killed it.”

  “The other firestones!” the first guard said. “We have to protect them.”

  Kate studied the man. He looked familiar, but she wasn’t sure if she had ever met him before. “I called for help. It should be here soon. Until then, one of you go and report what happened. Get reinforcements. Protect these stones at all costs.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, snapping to attention and saluting.

  Kate didn’t have time to tell him not to salute. “Oh, and soldier,” she said, “things are going to get very violent in a few hours. Be prepared.”

  As she ran off toward the next stone, she heard him say to one of the other guards, “And this wasn’t violent?”

  Kate couldn’t be sure where she was needed. There was no tugging, no special sense at all, as if whatever she had felt earlier had disappeared completely. She headed for the closest firestone, the one on the other side of Parade Square—the one she had originally been heading for—hoping it had not already been destroyed.

  As she got close to the stone, shadows moved all around her. She brought her shield up and gripped her sword more tightly, but one of them resolved itself into Rory McCarthy. He was wearing his blacks. He nodded to her as he slipped on his death mask and joined the other men, all clad in their black uniforms with their own death masks on. They were heading for the firestone.

  She thanked Rory silently as she heard the clash of swords.

  Kate stopped to take a few deep breaths. It seemed that she had been running all night, though it couldn’t have been more than an hour since she had woken. She trusted that the others would have sent someone to each of the other three firestones, so she was sure they had things well in hand. They would get there before her.

  She considered going to help protect the stones, and she also considered going to the library to help rally the Infirium. Both would be a waste of her talents, though. No, she needed to do something else. Something that no one else would—or could—do.

  She took off again, this time toward the Command Center.

  33

  Kate had almost reached the massive building housing the top tier of the command structure for the Order when she said aloud, “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “You know.” Koren’s voice came from the shadows off to her right. “What are you doing?”

  “You know,” she said, a small smile tugging at her mouth.

  “I do. Leave it to you to go haring off to try to take out the entire command structure without telling anyone.”

  “You are just as aware as I am that there’s no time, Koren. The others are busy fighting to protect the stones, and I finally figured out that the only way to get to the supreme commander is to charge in. With all the other confusion, I might just make it.”

  “Yes. That’s why I didn’t try to stop you. But you could use another sword at your side, I think.”

  Koren had been walking toward her as he spoke. He was dressed in his blacks, and his remade death mask hung from a clip at his belt.

  “I’d appreciate it, though it may be a suicide mission.”

  “My favorite kind,” he said as he slipped on the mask. “You know, you’re not really dressed for this party.” He gestured to the shredded red tunic over her black armor and the tattered red cloak hanging at her back.

  Kate looked down and realized that some of those swords and claws had gotten closer to her than she had thought.

  She took the cloak off and tore the tunic from around her armor. “It’ll have to do. I’ll make myself pretty for them later, maybe. For now, all they need to look at is my sword and shield. I’ll let those do the talking.”

  “Fair enough.”

  They ran through the double doors in the front of the building. Very few people were up and about at this hour, so they didn’t see anyone until they reached the second floor, where a pair of guards were standing to either side of the staircase.

  “What do you think you’re—” one of them said before Kate punched him full-force in the jaw, knocking him out cold.

  The other guard went to draw his sword, but Koren kicked the man between the legs and then hit him with an uppercut Kate thought might have broken his jaw. Both guards lay sprawled on the floor. They wouldn’t bother anyone for a while.

  The stairs to the upper level were half a floor away, but they didn’t run into any other guards until they topped the stairs to the third floor. This location had four guards, and more would be scattered around the floor, probably including dedicated guards at the supreme commander’s rooms.

  She and Koren incapacitated the four guards as they had the other two, without doing them serious damage. They wore leather caps, so when she and Koren struck two of them on the head with the pommels of their swords, they were fairly certain they didn’t cause the men permanent damage. As for the other two, they would have sore jaws when they finally woke. It was the best the two Blacks could do. They didn’t have time to be gentle.

  Kate led Koren to the supreme commander’s rooms. As expected, two more guards were waiting. The long hallway gave them adequate time to see the two intruders and draw their swords.

  “Try not to kill them,” she told Koren. “I’m not sure if they’re traitors or not, but I’d rather assume they’re not and find out later.”

  The masked warrior nodded and took a position near her.

  “You can’t be up here,” one of the guards said. “Leave or we’ll be forced to kill you.”

  “Move aside,” Koren told them. “There is no reason for you to die. We are here to see the supreme commander.”

  “To kill him?” the other guard asked.

  “No, you moron, to talk to him.”

  “No time,” Kate said. “We’ll have to do it the hard way before anyone else comes.”

  She and Koren rushed the guards. The men were skilled, but Kate and her Black brother merely defended until they held a position they liked. Then, almost at the same time, both of them sprang forward as they parried the guards’ slashes. Koren flipped his sword and struck one of the guards in the temple with his pommel, and Kate knocked the other man’s sword from his grasp, slipped behind him, and applied a chokehold. She silently thanked Jurdan for showing her that move one day when they were chatting so many months ago. She held onto the man until he went limp, then lowered him to the floor.

  The two burst into the supreme commander’s room, weapons at the ready. When nothing attacked them, Kate stepped over to one of the lamp
s hanging on the wall and turned the wick up, flooding the room in flickering light.

  Berart de Maligny, Supreme Commander of the Order of the Fire, lay in his bed in a puddle of blood. The steady drip-drip-drip of the red fluid was the only sound Kate could hear.

  His throat had been cut.

  “This happened recently. Maybe just a few minutes ago,” Koren said. He jerked his head out toward where the guards lay. “I wish one of these was awake so we could ask them who was in here.”

  “I think we have an idea,” Kate told him. “Let’s go. I’ll hazard a guess where to find them.”

  They took off running again, not meeting any other guards along the way. Kate thought that was unusual, but on this night—or morning, she could see light coming in from some of the windows—it didn’t seem too strange at all.

  They surged through the doors to the council chambers and slid to a halt on the wooden floor. The entire council was there, seated around their meeting table. All except the supreme commander, of course.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Antoni Sena asked. He was as Kate remembered him, his beard mostly white with little of the brown of his youth. His grey-blue eyes flashed with anger. “This is a closed session of the Guiding Council. Leave at once.”

  “I think not,” Kate said. “We just found the supreme commander in his chambers with this throat cut. He has been murdered.”

  “What are you saying?” Pello Sirakov said. The fortress commander was an average sized man with a bushy moustache a few shades lighter than his dark brown hair and peppered with white. It made him look like a walrus. “Antoni was just telling us that Berart succumbed to his illness and has passed. We are preparing to handle his absence.”

  “Quiet, you fool,” Sena said. “These don’t deserve any information. They’re not allowed in here. Guards, remove them.”