The Price of Valor

by Django Wexler

  As if this had been the starting gun, the other two Penitent Damned came forward, one on each side of their giant colleague. Joanna stepped forward to meet the old man, jabbing at his face with a quick punch, but the Penitent was deceptively fast. He let the blow whistle past his head and brought his fingers up and around Joanna’s arm, curved nails slipping through flesh as easily as if it were cream. The big woman opened her mouth in a soundless scream as the old man ducked closer for a killing blow, then danced back hurriedly as Barley slid between them, knife slashing at his head.

  The giant tore off a piece of the table to use as a club and swung it at Bobby, who ducked the blow and grabbed for the huge man’s arm. This time, though, the Penitent seemed determined not to be drawn into a clinch. He gave ground, swinging again, and when Bobby tried to step around the club landed a backhand to the ribs that connected with a crunch of breaking bone. Bobby staggered backward, but didn’t fall, and the giant came at her. Andy, who’d retrieved one of the dropped muskets, drove it into the Penitent Damned’s side as he went past, but he ignored the wound as though it were a flea bite.

  Sothe met the third Penitent Damned head-on, a blade in each hand to match his. The two of them seemed to erupt into a flurry of steel, nearly too fast for the eye to follow. But that wasn’t quite right, Winter thought. Sothe was fast, faster than Winter would have believed possible, until she seemed to have four arms and four blades instead of two. But the young man was always a half step ahead of her, twisting so that every strike missed him by fractions of an inch, his own blows intercepting Sothe’s and leaving long draw-cuts on the meat of her arms. He ducked under an overhand slash and brought his blade up into a gutting move that Sothe avoided only by a frantic parry and step backward.

  Winter, sword out, stepped up beside the woman in black, and they exchanged the briefest of glances. That was enough—Winter went right, and Sothe went left. While Winter couldn’t match Sothe’s speed, the greater reach of her weapon gave her an advantage, and her empty hand could be just as dangerous. This Penitent Damned had barely escaped Infernivore before, in Desland, and he was not eager to repeat the experience. He went on the defensive, even with his uncanny agility, ducking and dodging and only occasionally finding space for his own blades to lick out. But however they tried to press their advantage, he remained out of reach. Small cuts blossomed on Winter’s sword arm and a slash across Sothe’s shoulder dripped blood, while their opponent remained unscathed.

  Bobby, still looking woozy, stepped away from the heavy blows of her opponent, giving ground. Her foot came down on the outflung hand of one of the dead Patriots, and she stumbled forward, as though throwing herself into the Penitent’s embrace. He swung a roundhouse at her head, which she avoided by dropping to her knees. The Penitent Damned raised his fists, then roared as Andy darted forward again, sinking her bayonet into the small of his back. He grabbed the weapon from her in one hand, snapped it in half between his fingers, and hurled it aside, then turned his attention back to Bobby.

  Bobby, making use of that moment of distraction, had grabbed the giant’s ankle. Her hands barely closed around it, but she squeezed hard, with all the supernatural power of Feor’s magic in her grip. Something broke with a snap, and the giant wobbled. He brought his great fist down between Bobby’s shoulder blades with another bone-breaking sound, but Bobby hung on grimly, grinding broken chunks of his ankle between her fingers.

  Barley, though skilled with her knives, was no Sothe. Her furious assault had driven the Penitent Damned back, but the old man had more agility than he’d let on. He blocked a cut aimed at his head and let his nails trace paths along her forearm, scoring bloody trails through her skin. Barley screamed, dropping one of her knives, and the Penitent closed his hand around her wrist and swung her into the wall, her head cracking hard enough to leave a dent in the plaster. He raised his fingers to her face, then spun, warned by some movement in the air behind him.

  Joanna was back on her feet, one arm sheathed in red, breathing heavily. The old priest feinted at her wounded side, other hand ready to slash when she dodged, but the big woman simply bulled through the attack. His nails cut deep into her slide, slicing through skin and muscle and grating against bone, but she kept coming, swinging a balled fist hard into his face. Blood sprayed from his nose as it broke, and he staggered back in time to get a roundhouse punch to the side of the head that sent him sprawling to the floor on top of one of the Patriot corpses.

  Winter’s opponent, backward against the wall, spun away from Sothe and left himself open to her sword. She lunged, almost instinctively, and realized too late that the move was a feint. He was already sliding away, and her saber slid through the wallpaper and the plaster underneath to strike a wooden beam and stick hard. One of his knives was already coming up toward her wrist, and only by hurriedly releasing her sword did she manage to avoid losing a hand. She backed up, pawing for another weapon, as Sothe stepped in front of her.

  A change had come over the black-clad assassin. Her fighting, which earlier had approached ragged desperation, had regained the icy calm with which she’d dispatched the Patriot Guard. Her moves were careful and precise, none of them close to striking home, but keeping the Penitent on the defensive and backing away. As the pair of them passed her, Winter was astonished to see the Sothe had her eyes closed, hands moving as if by pure instinct in the complex dance of blades.

  The Penitent took one more step back, setting himself up for an attack, and his foot came down on the barrel of a fallen musket. Sothe’s eyes snapped open, and she bulled forward, accepting a long cut across her back to drive both her knives toward the young man’s face. He stepped backward, and the musket shifted underneath him—not much, but enough to put him off-balance, and he stumbled backward into Winter, who wrapped her arms around his midsection.

  Not getting away this time. She held him tight, as though in an embrace, and slipped Infernivore’s leash. The demon surged out of her and into the Penitent, furious with frustrated appetite. There was a moment of conflict as the two creatures warred, but only a moment. Then Infernivore was rushing back into her, fattened by its kill. Winter felt the young man sag against her. His face was a mask of blood, streams of it running from his eyes like tears. When she let him go, he fell limply to the floor.

  That left the giant. He’d pried Bobby’s hands free of his ankle, and one of her arms dangled obscenely, bent backward at the elbow. He raised her into the air, gripping her by the shoulders, and though she landed blows from her good arm with all her supernatural strength behind it, his grip didn’t falter. Winter thought for a moment that Bobby would be torn in half, like a sheet of paper, and she didn’t think even Feor’s naath would let her recover from that—

  Then the giant dropped her, spinning as best he could with one leg crippled. The brown satchel Andy had been carrying hung from his back, pinned there by a saber that Andy had driven into his flesh for half its length. The young ranker was backing away, a pistol already in her hand, as the giant spun in place, trying to reach the weapon that impaled him.

  “Everybody down!” Andy screamed.

  Bobby, one arm dangling, threw herself away from the giant. Winter and Sothe dove for the floor, and Joanna covered Barely with her body. Andy fired, and Winter heard the ting of metal on metal as the ball struck the sack she’d attached to the huge priest. Then there was a thump, a sound so loud it reverberated in her breastbone and behind her eyes, and a wash of heat that frizzled her eyebrows.

  Slowly, Winter unfolded herself and looked around. The giant was still standing, but his right arm and shoulder were simply gone, and ribs emerged from the bloody, smoking mass of his flesh like dead plants from winter soil. His black face mask had been shredded, as had the skin underneath, and both hung from his skull in torn rags.

  And yet he wouldn’t die. Couldn’t die, maybe. As Winter watched, he turned, torn muscles moving visibly in one leg where they’d been l
aid bare. One of his eyes was gone, the socket leaking vile, gory fluid, but the other stared down at her with a bright, mad glare. His remaining hand scrabbled weakly on the floor for something he could swing.

  Winter’s ears were still ringing, and the world tilted wildly around her, but she stepped forward and put her hand against the giant’s chest. She felt the demon inside her surge at the proximity to one of its fellows, felt its boundless hunger, and she willed it down through her arm and into the Penitent Damned. One more time. The two demons met, and tangled about each other, but again the contest was a brief one. Infernivore, the demon that consumed its own kind, spread through the other demon like a drop of blood spreading into clear water, rapidly converting the other’s substance into more of itself. When there was nothing left of the giant’s demon, Infernivore surged back through the huge man’s body and into Winter’s hand, diving once more into the darkest recesses of her soul. The huge priest blinked once, and then his eye rolled back into his head and his massive form sprawled in the wreckage of the table and lay still.

  What followed was not silence, since the firefight at the other end of the hall continued, but it was relative stillness. Winter’s ears still rang with the force of the blast, and tiny nicks and scrapes she hadn’t been aware of were starting to make themselves known all over her body. Andy raised her head from where she’d crouched against the wall, and Bobby, her broken arm already working again, pressed herself up from the scorched floor. Joanna had been closest to the blast, and the back of her uniform was torn and bleeding from shrapnel, but she managed to get shakily to her feet.

  “Everyone . . .” Winter paused. “Okay” seemed like a stretch, considering. “Still alive?”

  Joanna pointed urgently to Barley, who was still lying against the wall. Winter hurried over, then noticed the old man, lying nearby where Joanna had laid him out, was still breathing.

  “Bobby!” Winter pointed. “Skewer him if he moves.”

  Bobby nodded, retrieving a musket and leveling it at the Penitent. While Winter knelt beside Barley, Andy went to Joanna, whose arm was still dripping a steady patter of crimson onto the floor.

  “I’ll get this door open,” Sothe said, bending to examine the lock.

  Blood trickled from a cut on Barley’s scalp, and Winter probed it delicately with her fingers. The wound was gory, but not deep, and the skull beneath seemed intact.

  “I think she’ll be okay,” she said to Joanna as Andy bound up the big woman’s wounded arm. “Nothing broken. We’ll get her to the cutters once we get out of here—”

  “Colonel!” The scream came from the hallway. “Colonel, they’re coming!”

  “Balls of the fucking Beast,” Winter swore, turning back to the doorway. One of the rankers, Vicky, had her hands beneath Sergeant Maura’s armpits, dragging her toward the doorway and leaving a darker stain on the red carpet in her wake. A blue-uniformed body lay motionless amid a cloud of powder smoke at the top of the stairs, and the clatter of booted feet mixed with victorious shouts as the Patriot Guards ascended.

  “Joanna, watch the old man!” Winter said. “Bobby, Andy, load these muskets!” She grabbed one of the dead Patriots’ weapons herself, pulled a handful of cartridges from the corpse’s belt pouch, and tore one open with her teeth. It had been a long time since Winter had gone through the manual of arms, but her muscles remembered the movements—powder in the lock, close it up, the rest down the barrel, spit the ball after it, ram the whole mess home with the rod. Raise the weapon to your shoulder—

  A dozen Patriots had made it to the top of the stairs, and from the sound of it more were coming. Winter leveled the weapon and fired, and a man in the middle of the group went down. The rest dove for cover, stopping behind the banister or throwing themselves flat. One fired, and Winter heard the ball go wide. The rest, it seemed, hadn’t reloaded before their triumphant charge, and struggled awkwardly with their too-long weapons.

  Andy fired as well, raising splinters from the banister. Winter turned to Bobby and held out a hand, and the girl passed a loaded weapon.

  “Get some of those chairs,” Winter said. “We have to barricade the doors.”

  Bobby nodded and ran to the back of the room. Winter aimed and fired at one man who’d gotten up, missing but sending him diving back to the floor. Before the rest recovered their courage, she ran to the front of the foyer and closed the double doors just after Vicky dragged Maura across the threshold. By themselves, the doors didn’t offer much of a barrier, splintered with holes as they were, but Bobby arrived soon after carrying a heavy leather armchair. Andy dragged another one into place, and they went back for more. Vicky manhandled the wounded sergeant out of the way.

  “Winter!” Sothe said from where she was standing by the unconscious Penitent Damned. “I need to get Raesinia out.”

  And then what? Both stairways were on the other side of the now-barricaded door. The window, maybe? They were on the sixth floor, but it wasn’t far to the neighboring building. We might be able to jump for it . . .

  “Go!” Winter said. “Joanna, can you keep a sword to this bastard’s throat?”

  Joanna nodded, a vicious grin on her face. She patted Barley and drew her blade, shifting it awkwardly to her unwounded arm. Sothe bent back to the padlock as Andy and Bobby piled another pair of armchairs against the door.

  “You,” Winter heard Andy remark to Bobby as they went back for the last two, “are a lot tougher than you look.”

  “Got it,” Sothe said. The door swung open.

  Winter had only seen the Queen of Vordan on state occasions, in formal mourning dress. She hadn’t really expected to find her imprisoned in a voluminous gown, but she certainly hadn’t pictured this: a short, slight young woman, in boyish trousers, bare-shouldered, with a bedsheet tied around her torso. Sothe dropped to one knee, head down.

  “Hi,” Raesinia said. “What kept you?”

  “We ran into some . . . difficulties.” Sothe kept her head down. “I’m sorry. I should never have—”

  “Done what I told you to do?” Raesinia said, grinning.

  “Yes.” Sothe looked up, and Winter wasn’t sure what was more shocking, the tears gleaming in her eyes or the smile on her face. “I should never, ever have done that.”

  Raesinia extended a hand to her servant and pulled her up, then wrapped her arms around her. When they finally stepped apart, she seemed to notice the carnage in the room beyond for the first time.

  “Oh,” she said. “I heard the fighting, but I didn’t realize . . .” She took a deep breath and looked at Winter. “You’re in command?”

  Winter wasn’t sure if she was supposed to salute or not. She settled on a bow. “Yes, Your Majesty. Colonel Winter Ihernglass.”

  Once before, outside the Vendre, she’d felt Infernivore stir in Raesinia’s presence. Glutted with two meals, it nonetheless shifted uneasily now. Winter wondered if there was a limit to its hunger, and resolved not to touch the queen if she could possibly help it. She thought she could restrain the demon, but no sense taking chances.

  “Are your people all right?” Raesinia looked over the scattered, dismembered corpses, showing none of the squeamishness Winter might have expected from the gently born. “It looks like a bomb went off in here.”

  “That’s more or less what happened. We lost one on the stairway, and—” Winter looked at Vicky, who was standing beside the slumped sergeant. The ranker shook her head, tears cutting through the powder-grime that coated her face. “Two. Everyone else should live, if we can get out of here.”

  Raesinia was silent for a moment, her jaw set, then let out a breath. “Any plans for that?”

  * * *

  RAESINIA

  Two more, dead for my sake. More sacrifices for a life that isn’t even real. Raesinia fought down her feelings and kept her face impassive.

  Winter looked uncomfortable. “
Not . . . yet. There’s about twenty Patriots on the other side of that door.”

  They were already shoving at it, though the heavy armchairs shifted only slightly. Raesinia could hear fists pounding on the wood and raised voices from the other side.

  “What about Maurisk?” Raesinia said. “Have you found him?”

  Winter shook her head. Sothe quickly opened both doors on the side of the room where Raesinia’s cell had been, revealing quarters for another servant and a water closet, both empty. The open door the Penitent Damned had come in by led to a dining room, and a quick glance proved this also to be unoccupied. That leaves one.

  Sothe put her hand on the latch, but Raesinia waved her aside.

  “Your Majesty—” Sothe began.

  “We both know that if he’s sitting in there with a pistol, it’s better if I open the door,” Raesinia said. “Stay back a bit, just in case.”

  She thumbed the latch and pushed the door open. Inside was an office, richly furnished in gleaming hardwood and gilt, bookshelves lined with matched sets of leather-bound volumes. Directly in front of the door, a prim-looking young man stood with a small sword in hand, waiting in a painfully erect stance right out of a fencing salon. Behind a vast desk, slumped over in his chair, sat the President of the Directory, a nearly empty wine bottle dangling from one hand.

  “Who is it, Kellerman?” Maurisk said without raising his head.

  “It’s . . .” The young man blinked, and the tip of his sword quivered. “It’s, um, the queen. I think.”

  “Ah. You may as well stand down, then.”

  “Sir,” Kellerman said, looking over Raesinia’s head. “They’ve slaughtered the guards—”

  “Stand down,” Maurisk said, a hint of steel entering his tone. He raised the bottle to his lips and tipped it back, then let it fall on the carpet with a thump. “Your Majesty. I hadn’t expected to see you like this.”

  “Whereas I must admit I was hoping for something of the sort,” Raesinia said. She stepped forward as Kellerman lowered his sword and moved out of the way. Maurisk’s bleary eyes focused on her. “I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint Dr. Sarton.”