Count On Me

by Abigail Graham

  “Conrad,” Saska says, appearing by my side. “Father. Listen to me.”

  “No,” he says.

  “You have no choice. Take up the sword and use it. With its full power you could cut down these attackers as a sickle cuts grain. No foe on Earth can stand against that power. No one has to die tonight.”

  “No,” Conrad says fiercely. “Enough killing. I’ll never turn that awful thing on another living man again.”

  I watch them, thinking.

  “Is it so wrong?” she says. “If you win, you’ll kill scores of them anyway, but scores of us will die. Maybe even your own son. Is it such a terrible thing to save lives, even if you have to do violence?”

  He looks at her then at me.

  “She’s not wrong,” he says.

  “Yes, she is,” I say. “She’s completely wrong. Saska, help me convince him to leave. We can find our way out—”

  Conrad gives me a sharp look.

  Saska shakes her head.

  “Even if there were some escape, we’d never make it. He’ll hunt us down. He’s mad. Do it, Conrad. You could end this now.”

  “At what cost?”

  Saska frowns.

  “Don’t listen to her,” I protest. “Let’s just go.”

  “You can’t let him have it. You know the power it offers. Imagine if he had that. If it let him leave with it. I’ve seen the outside world, you know that. They wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  I cut in before he can answer her.

  “Put it back where it came from,” I plead, grabbing his arm. “Let’s figure out how to put it back behind the doors. There must be some way to seal them. It’s evil, Conrad. Remember what you told me.”

  He looks at me in confused horror.

  “Look!” Saska cries, almost too loudly.

  I look back out. Manfred’s men are setting up the big…thing. It’s a long arm with a big pouch at one end, almost like a slingshot, and at the other, short end, a big box they’re filling with rocks and dirt.

  Conrad turns back and jerks, horrified.

  “Guards, to the wall!” he shouts, “Open fire!”

  His men lean out with their rifles and the terrible cracking sound of gunfire starts. I throw my hands to my ears. Puffs of dirt and splintered wood erupt on and around the machine, while a couple of the workers drop. Manfred screams at them and they double their pace.

  It’s assembled. They crank the longer end of the arm down, against the counterweight, and load something in the leather sack. It looks like a big ball of twigs, but it’s clearly heavy, taking four men to lift. It bends the wooden arm a bit once they settle it in place.

  They light it on fire. Manfred waves a sword, and they release the tension. The big box of rocks comes swinging down through the body of the machine. The long arm whips up, releasing a ball of fire at the top of the arc.

  It sales overhead and smashes into one of the inner towers, bursting apart in a shower of flaming pitch.

  “Keep shooting!” Conrad bellows.

  They crank it down again, adjusting. Manfred yells the orders himself, but I can’t hear him.

  The next shot lands squarely in the middle of the courtyard. Conrad grabs a rifle from one of his men and shoulders it himself, trembling.

  He fires one shot, so loud it snaps in my ears, leaving a ringing behind. The ground puffs near Manfred, and Conrad shoots again.

  The third shot from the big flinging machine sails overhead, trailing smoke and flame, and Conrad throws down his weapon, grabs me bodily from my feet, and takes the stairs two at a time until we’re off the wall.

  The projectile bursts against the top of the wall, showering the men manning it in flames. In a mad panic, the survivors flee to the yard below. A man, on fire, tumbles into the dry moat. Another leaps off the wall and shatters both legs on landing in the yard.

  “They’re going to use the trebuchet to keep us off the wall while they move up the catapults and a battering ram,” Conrad says. “We’re not going to hold the walls or the gatehouse. We don’t have enough men,” he looks around, “or the discipline.”

  Oh. It’s a trebuchet. You learn something new every day.

  “You know what you have to do,” Saska says.

  “Yes,” Conrad says, his voice a lament. He turns to me. “Roxanne, take everyone into the keep. Saska, you as well.”

  Adrian rushes outside, pale and sweaty, his shirt open to the waist. He breathes hard and leans on Saska’s arm.

  “I can fight,” he protests.

  “Not this battle,” Conrad says. “All of you go. Now, damn it. That’s an order.”

  “Conrad,” I plead. “Don’t do this.”

  Another fireball hits the inner gate, the wash of flames raining down into the yard missing us by mere feet. Conrad gives me a push into his son and daughter.

  “Go.”

  I grab them and run inside, but linger at the gate.

  The sun is setting. Fire washes again down the walls, burning, sticky slime running down the stones. The next impact isn’t a ball of burning pitch; it’s a heavy stone. It cracks right through the top of the wall, and the inner gatehouse groans. More of them start landing, smaller ones, and now and then a big one, hammering the walls.

  Conrad disappears into the inner courtyard.

  A moment later he emerges, stripped to the waist, the red sword in his fist, blade blazing. He looks back at me.

  “Don’t watch,” I hear him say, his voice small against the first crash of the ram against the gates.

  So he tells me, but I can’t take my eyes away. Adrian, pale as a sheet, stands next to me. I take his hand, look at him, and memories flood into my mind.

  I blink a few times.

  I remember him as a little boy, pulling on my skirts. I remember the look on his face as he clutches my hand, no more than six…no, he was seven…his little fingers tightening as he feels mine let go. As I die, clutching my newborn to my chest.

  My head swims and I lean against the wall, one hand resting there.

  A sudden agony thrusts into my chest. He looks at me and he sees a stranger. A kind stranger, maybe, a stranger his father has feelings for, but he doesn’t know me. He doesn’t remember who I am.

  I look at Saska, trying to capture that sensation, reaching into my mind, pulling, but there’s nothing. A void. She looks away from me, her expression neutral.

  “We shouldn’t watch this,” I say.

  Adrian is unmoved.

  I pull his arm.

  “Where’s your sister?”

  “I’ll see to her,” Saska says.

  She slips away, away from me, scurrying almost.

  There’s something wrong.

  I try to remember and I reach back. I start to remember things before I was born. It’s all a jumble. I can’t search through it. It just comes back when it comes back. There’s nothing of her, though. Isn’t she my firstborn? The old me, the me I was, she gave birth to Saska first, right? That’s what Conrad says; she was our daughter out of wedlock and…

  There’s something wrong.

  Conrad stands in the yard, facing the gate. It’s on fire, the flames licking up into the sky, curling on themselves, smoke and fire in an endless dance, embers swirling around like motes in a sunbeam. They’ve breached the inner gatehouse. They must have brought something to cross the gap.

  Conrad waits, still. As the gates begin to buckle inward, the posts snapping under the force of the ramming impacts against the gate, he takes the sword in both hands.

  It shimmers in the dusk, alive with light, like ripples across a pool. Something flows down from the base of the blade, some smoke or vapor, thick and black, but instead of falling it coils around his arms, slips up and covers his chest, down his legs, and over his head.

  A shape emerges from shadow and mist, antlers springing from a high, heavy helm, a dark cloak flowing down his back. The blade blazes now, a second sunrise.

  The gates hammer in and Manfred’s men run fo
rward. They charge into the yard in a mad rush, shooting and swinging weapons of all descriptions. I can see it in their eyes, some madness gripping them. They don’t look fully human.

  I tell myself it’s a mercy.

  A shock ripples through my body. My eyes open…and open. I am surrounded by thick, rancid cobwebs, translucent and yellow with rot and foulness. They teem in the air, threaded between every tower and wall, every rock and stone. They wrap Manfred’s men in foul cocoons, streaming from them like rotting bandages from a mummy, gushing from their howling mouths.

  The world around me grows thin, like paper. I feel as if I am cupped in the maw of some great creature pretending to be a castle, and it’s starting to lose its patience with us.

  Then it’s gone in a blink.

  Conrad storms forward, footsteps shaking the earth under my feet. He’s bigger than he was, a giant, and with one swing he cleaves two men in two, cuts through their weapons and bodies both, and they fall, bloodless, to the dirt.

  Adrian steps back and chokes on vomit, forcing it down before he lets go on the floor.

  Conrad roars in a voice that’s his and not his at once. His animal snarl begins as Manfred’s name and melts into a hideous, gurgling fury.

  He’s still only one man, and they just run around him. They try.

  Conrad throws his hand back almost casually and the armored glove encasing it erupts into a swirl of smoke. Heavy chains burst out of it, tipped with wicked hooks. They sink into the men running past him and drag them back.

  I can’t watch this.

  I turn away, pulling Adrian with me, gathering his head to my chest like a mother whether he remembers me or not. He doesn’t look.

  I do. As much as I hate it, I watch. I swear the armor swirls and I catch glimpses of Conrad inside the antlered giant stalking the yard, his face a strained rictus of agony, torn into a creaking, silent scream.

  He’s fighting it, forcing it under his control.

  The tide has turned. He’s grown so large now that he shoulders into the ruins of the gatehouse and shoves it all out of the way with a huge grunt. The stone cracks and creaks and tumbles loose into the ravine while Conrad’s earthshaking steps threaten to break the makeshift bridge as he crosses it.

  Manfred’s men break. They run, and a chill goes down my spine.

  Stop, oh God, stop this.

  He doesn’t. He falls on them as they flee, swinging a sword as long as four men are tall. It’s like Saska said. He threshes them like grain. They run.

  Not fast enough.

  The ones who don’t die by the sword lose their footing and go tumbling down the slopes and die screaming. Conrad towers so tall he takes the trebuchet by its swing-arm, lifts it, and throws it. It sails in a high arc, mostly coming apart in the air, only to crash to pieces completely as it lands. He raises one giant foot and stomps a catapult to kindling, and kicks the other one down the slope.

  He’s halfway down the serpentine road, following Manfred’s men with gigantic strides, when the first axe crashes through a door behind me.

  “What the hell?” I shout, turning.

  I push Adrian behind me, but it’s too late. They’re coming from inside the keep.

  The secret fucking passages.

  “Run!” I shout, but it’s too late.

  They come out of three doors at once, flooding the hall, shooting the armed villagers who don’t throw down their weapons. Before I realize it there’s a gun in my face, and behind it, Manfred, Conrad’s brother, staring me down.

  “Well,” he says, “there you are.”

  “Leave her alone,” Adrian shouts, pulling me away.

  No, don’t. Don’t.

  Manfred aims at him and I leap in the way, pulling Adrian to me, turning to take the shot in my back.

  “She’s more useful alive. They both are,” Saska says, smiling.

  She holds Nina at her waist, a knife pressed to the girl’s shoulder, ready to leap up and slash her throat.

  Manfred grabs my arm. Two of his men pull Adrian away from me. I scream as they drive heavy fists into his stomach, one after another, until he doubles over in agony, limp. They drag him back while Manfred spins me around and presses the cold hard barrel of a gun to my jaw.

  Conrad steps over the ravine in one stride. We all look up at him. He grows smaller as he walks, until he crosses the yard a mere eight feet tall, not counting the antlers, the sword blazing in his hand like a furnace fire.

  “Release her.” His voice comes out distorted, like it’s echoing through a tomb.

  Manfred digs the gun barrel into my chin and thumbs back the hammer with a deafening click.

  “I’d be careful, brother. I might take a liberal interpretation to your orders.”

  “Let her go or you die.”

  “Let her go and I will die,” he counters.

  “Conrad, don’t listen to him,” I shout. “He’ll kill me anyway. Stop him.”

  Manfred laughs.

  “Look at you!” he bellows, grinning. “For all your strength.”

  Conrad takes a step forward and Manfred’s finger tenses on the trigger.

  “I have nothing to lose,” he says. “You do. Put down the sword. Now.”

  “Release her and it is yours.”

  “I let go of her and I’m a dead man, Conrad. I hold her life in my hands, and yours.”

  No, don’t, don’t do it, don’t do this—

  “Let him shoot me,” I scream. “I’ll just come back. Don’t let him hurt the children!”

  Manfred looks at me.

  “Are you mad?” he says. “What lunacy are you talking about?”

  “Listen,” I shout. “This all just keeps happening over and over. You can’t win, Manfred.”

  “What are you saying?” he says. The pressure against my jaw wavers. “What do you mean it keeps happening? Answer me.”

  Saska releases Nina, steps in, and grabs my hair. She presses the knife to my throat.

  “Shut up,” she hisses. “Conrad, do as your brother says or I swear I will open her throat. You have until the count of three. One. Two.”

  Conrad hammers the point of the sword into the earth and steps back.

  It doesn’t want to let go of him. There’s a ripping sound as it pulls away from his skin. He seizes his wrist and yanks it away. The armor falls from his body in a rain of ash, and he collapses to the ground.

  Oh God. No.

  I sag, a sob tearing from my throat.

  “Take him!” Manfred screams, his voice high and reedy.

  Saska steps away from me, a satisfied cat smirk on her lips. Manfred’s men surge out into the yard, take Conrad by the arms, and pummel him. Fists hammer his face, his jaw, his ribs. One of them kicks him hard in the stomach with a booted foot, driving up so forcefully that when they let him go he curls on the ground.

  The sword stands there, quivering.

  My palms itch. I feel a strange urge to reach for it, like someone is picking up my wrists and moving them against my will.

  Saska slips up and puts the knife to my throat again, as Manfred releases me. I eye her over my shoulder.

  If I could just—

  “Do it,” she whispers in my ear. “I can just kill you now. But the little girl will die first. You’ll watch.”

  I go still.

  Manfred strides across the yard, casting his weapon aside. He turns his hand, taking a proper grip on the hilt of the sword.

  He grimaces in pain.

  “Don’t fight me,” he says to the air. “Don’t. He put you down. He gave you up. He’s weak. I will use your power as it was meant to be used. I will set you free.”

  His face relaxes, slackens, goes from agony to joy. A single tug and the blade comes loose. He lifts it up, marveling at it, staring into his own reflected glee.

  As Manfred raises the sword high, his men let out a ragged cheer. He approaches the great hall, the flat of the blade resting across his shoulder. It thrums with energy, light skimmin
g and swirling across its surface.

  His voice is high and clear as a battered Conrad is dragged in behind him.

  “I offer you this condition. The traitor Conrad von Grauberg has been defeated and deposed. I am your lord now, and he will face my judgment. So, now, must all of you. Thus: I offer you pardon. All you need do is kneel before me, swear that I am your new lord and master, and you may live. Refuse and, well…”

  He shrugs.

  All around me, people begin to kneel. Conrad looks at them, broken, his eyes downcast.

  “Manfred,” he rasps. “Let them go. Take me. I surrendered like I promised. Let my children go.”

  “Do it,” I say. “Keep me, too, just let Adrian take Nina and walk away.”

  Saska’s voice is silky in my ear.

  “They’re a threat. Your hold on this place will never be secure. Adrian will raise an army and set himself on the throne.”

  “I won’t,” Adrian coughs. “If you want this awful place, keep it.”

  “He’s lying,” Saska says, her voice like honey.

  She rips the pistol from my belt and undoes it, the sword falling to my feet. Throwing me into the grip of two of Manfred’s men, she steps forward, slowly looping her arms around his neck.

  Then she kisses him.

  “Oh my God, that is gross,” I blurt out.

  She glances at me, and one of Manfred’s thugs drives his fist into my stomach, and the wind out of my lungs.

  Conrad is on his feet, surging toward me. Manfred stops him.

  With the sword.

  My heart leaps to my chest. He only hit him with the flat, across the chest, but it burned him. It left a burn mark across Conrad’s chest.

  Manfred swings it around and puts the tip so close to my chest it’s almost touching.

  “It eats the souls of its victims,” he says lovingly. “I wonder what that feels like.”

  “You already know,” I say. “Think.”

  He looks at me strangely.

  “She’s mad,” Saska says. “A witch! A witch who beguiled your count. You saw the monster he became, all of you! You saw what he is, and now this evil is in your new lord’s hands, ready to serve you! To bend to your will!”

  What is this? This is insane. They’re listening to her.

  “Yes,” Manfred says.

  He sweeps the blade away from me, and I breathe out in relief.