“Beata, please, she’s going to kill me. Please don’t let her through.”
“Riders coming,” Estelle called out.
Fitch nearly jumped out of his skin. Beata looked up at Estelle, but saw she was pointing to the rear, not out to the wilds. Beata relaxed a bit.
“Who are they?” she called up at Estelle.
“Can’t tell, yet, Sergeant.”
“Fitch, you got to give that thing back. When this woman comes, you have to—”
“Rider coming, Sergeant,” Emmeline called, pointing out to the wilds.
“What’s she look like?” Fitch called up, frantic as a cat with its tail afire.
Emmeline looked out to the plains for a minute. “I don’t know. She’s too far away.”
“Red.” Fitch called. “Does it look like she’s in red?”
Emmeline peered off another minute. “Blond hair, wearing red.”
“Let her pass!” Beata ordered.
“Yes, Sergeant.”
Fitch threw up his arms, looking suddenly terrified. “Beata, what are you doing? You want to get me killed? She’s crazy! The woman is a monster, she’s—”
“We’ll have a talk with her. Don’t worry, we’ll not let the little boy get hurt. We’ll find out what she wants and take care of it.”
Fitch looked hurt. That did not displease Beata, not after all the trouble he was causing, after he stole something as valuable as the Sword of Truth. A valuable thing of magic. Now the fool boy had gone and got his friend Morley involved in thieving and got him killed for it.
And to think, she once thought she could fall in love with Fitch.
He hung his head. “Beata, I’m sorry. I just wanted to make you proud—”
“Thieving is not something to be proud of, Fitch.”
“You just don’t understand,” he muttered, on the verge of tears. “You just don’t understand.”
Beata heard an odd ruckus from the next Dominie Dirtch. Shouts and such, but no alarm. As she turned to look, she saw the three special Anderith guards trotting in on their horses, the ones Estelle had spotted. She wondered what they would want.
She turned to the sound of the galloping horse coming in. Beata jabbed a finger against Fitch’s chest.
“Now, you just keep quiet and let me do the talking.”
Rather than answer, he stared at the ground. Beata turned and saw the horse race past the stone base. The woman was indeed wearing red. Beata had never seen anything like it, a red leather outfit from head to toe. Her long blond braid was flying out behind.
Beata’s guard went up. She had never seen a look of determination such as was on this woman’s face.
She didn’t even bother to halt her horse. She simply dove off it at Fitch. Beata shoved Fitch out of the way. The woman rolled twice and came up on her feet.
“Hold on!” Beata cried. “I told him we’d settle this with you, and he’d give you back what’s yours!”
Beata was baffled to see that the woman held a black bottle by its neck. To dive off a horse with a bottle… maybe Fitch was right; maybe she was crazy.
She didn’t look crazy. But she did look resolved to carry this matter into the next world if she had to.
The woman, her sky-blue eyes fixed on Fitch, ignored Beata. “Give it over now, and I’ll not kill you. I’ll only make you regret being born.”
Fitch, instead of giving up, drew the sword.
It made a ring of steel such as Beata, used to the sound of blades, had never heard.
Fitch got a strange look on his face. His eyes were going wide, like he might faint, or something. His eyes had a decidedly strange look in them, a shimmering light that gave Beata gooseflesh. It was a look of some kind of awesome inner vision.
The woman held the bottle out in one hand, like it was a weapon. With her other hand, she waggled her fingers, taunting Fitch to come closer, to attack her.
Beata stepped in to restrain the woman until they could talk it over.
Beata next realized she was sitting on the ground. Her face stung something fierce.
“Stay out of it,” the woman said in a voice like ice. “There is no need for you to be hurt. Do yourself a favor and stay down.”
Her blue eyes turned to Fitch. “Come on, boy. Either give it up, or do something about it.”
Fitch did something about it. He swung the sword. Beata could hear the tip whistle going through the air.
The woman danced back a step and at the same time thrust with the black bottle. The sword shattered it into a thousand pieces that filled the air like a storm cloud.
“HA!” the woman cried in triumph.
She grinned wickedly.
“Now I’ll take the sword.”
She flicked her wrist. When she did, a red leather rod hanging on a gold chain at her wrist spun up into her hand. At first she looked expectantly overjoyed, but the look turned to confusion, and then to bafflement as she stared at the thing in her hand.
“It should work,” she mumbled to herself. “It should work.”
When she looked up she saw something that brought her back to her senses. Beata glanced over, but didn’t see anything odd.
The woman seized Beata’s outfit at the shoulder and hauled her to her feet. “Get your people out of here. Get them out now!”
“What? Fitch is right. You are—”
She thrust her arm out, pointing. “Look, you fool!”
The special Anderith guards were coming toward them, chatting among themselves. “Those are our men. They’re nothing to worry—”
“Get your people out of here right now, or you will all die.”
Beata huffed at being ordered about by some crazy woman treating her like a child. She called over to Corporal Marie Fauvel, not twenty feet away as she was walking out to see what the commotion was all about.
“Corporal Fauvel,” Beata called out.
“Yes, Sergeant?” the Ander woman asked.
“Have those men wait there until we get this settled.” Beata put her fists on her hips as she turned to the woman in red.
“Satisfied?”
The woman ground her teeth and grabbed Beata’s shoulder again. “You little fool! Get you and your other children moving right now or you will all die!”
Beata was getting angry. “I’m an officer in the Anderith army, and those men…” Beata turned to point.
Marie Fauvel stepped in front of the men, held up a hand, and told them they would have to wait.
One of the three unceremoniously drew his sword and swung it with casual, but frightening, power. Accompanied by the sickening thwack of blade hitting bone, it cut Marie clean in half.
Beata stood stupefied, not really believing what she was seeing.
Working for a butcher, she’d seen so much slaughtering it hardly ever warranted a second look. She’d cleaned the guts from so many different animals that seeing guts seemed to her just a natural thing. Guts didn’t appall Beata in the least.
Seeing Marie there on the ground, with her guts spilling out of her top half, in one way seemed only a curiosity, a human animal’s guts so similar to other animals’, but human.
Marie Fauvel, separated from her hips and legs, gasped, clutching at the grass, her eyes wide as her brain tried to comprehend the shock of what had just happened to her body.
It was so dauntingly horrifying Beata couldn’t move.
Marie pulled at the grass, trying to drag herself away from the men, toward Beata. Her lips moved, but no words came out, just low, hoarse grunts. Her fingers lost their power. She slumped, twitching like a freshly butchered sheep.
Up on the Dominie Dirtch, both Estelle and Emmeline screamed.
Beata pulled free her sword, holding it aloft for all to see. “Soldiers! Attack!”
Beata checked the men. They were still coming.
They were grinning.
And then the world turned truly mad.
64
Norris rushed forward, like they’d
been trained, going for the legs of one man. The man kicked Norris in the face. Norris fell back, holding his face, blood running out through his fingers. The man picked up Norris’s fallen sword and plunged it through his gut, pinning Norris to the ground, leaving him to squirm in screaming agony, to shred his fingers on the sharp blade.
Karl and Bryce were rushing in with weapons drawn. Carine charged out of the barracks with a spear. Annette was right behind her with another.
Beata felt a surge of conviction. The men were going to be surrounded. Her soldiers were trained for combat. They could handle three men.
“Sergeant!” the woman in red called. “Get back!”
Beata was terrified, but she still felt annoyed by the woman, who obviously didn’t know the first thing about soldiering. Beata was also ashamed for the woman’s cowardice. Beata and her soldiers would stand and fight—they would protect the worthless woman in red, who feared to stand up to a mere three of the enemy.
Fitch, too, Beata was proud to note, rushed forward with his prize sword, ready to fight.
As they all rushed in, only the man who had cut down Marie even had his sword out. The other two still had their weapons sheathed. She was furious that they would take Beata’s squad so lightly.
Beata, better accustomed to stabbing meat with a blade than were the rest of her squad, confidently went for a man. She didn’t see how, but he effortlessly dodged her.
Startled, she realized that this was not at all like stabbing straw men, or carcasses hanging from a hook.
As Beata’s blade caught only air, Annette rushed up to stab him in the leg from behind. He sidestepped Annette, too, but caught her by her red hair. He pulled a knife and in an easy, slow manner, as he smiled wickedly into Beata’s eyes, slit Annette’s throat as if he were butchering a hog.
Another man caught Carine’s spear, snapped it in half with one hand, and rammed the barbed point in her gut.
Karl swung his sword low at the man Beata missed, trying to hamstring him, and got his face kicked, instead. The man swung his sword down at Karl. Beata sprang forward and blocked his strike.
The power of the ringing blow of steel against steel hammered her weapon from her hand. Her hands stung so much she couldn’t flex her unfeeling fingers. She realized she was on her knees.
The man swung down on Karl. Karl held his hands up protectively before his face. The sword severed his hands at midpalm before it split his face to his chin.
The man turn back to Beata. His blood-slicked sword was coming for her face, next. Seeing it coming, Beata could do nothing but scream.
A hand snatched her hair and violently yanked her back. The sword tip whistled right past her face, hitting the ground between her legs. It was the woman in red who had just saved Beata’s life.
The man’s attention was caught by something else. He turned to look. Beata looked, too, and saw riders coming. Maybe as many as a hundred. More special Anderith guards, just like these three.
The woman in red pulled Bryce back just before he was killed. As soon as she turned to something else, he rushed back at the enemy despite her orders to stay back. Beata saw a sword, the blade red, erupt from the middle of Bryce’s back, lifting him from his feet.
The big man who had hacked Karl now turned his attention back to Beata. She tried to scurry back, but his long stride was faster. In her panic, she couldn’t get her feet. Beata knew she was going to die.
As the sword swung down on her, she couldn’t think what to do. She began a prayer she knew she wouldn’t get a chance to finish.
Fitch leaped in front of her, his sword blocking the killing blow. The enemy’s blade shattered on Fitch’s weapon. Beata blinked in surprise. She was still alive.
Fitch took a fierce swing at the man. He sidestepped, Fitch’s blade just missing his middle as he arched his back.
With icy efficiency as the blade was going by him, the man casually unhooked a spiked mace from a hanger on his weapons belt. As Fitch was still whipping around with the momentum, the man took a swift, powerful, backhanded swing.
The blow tore off the top of Fitch’s skull. Pink chunks of his brains splattered up Beata’s tunic. Fitch crumbled to the ground.
Beata sat frozen in shock. She could hear her own cries, like a panicked child. She couldn’t make herself stop. It was like she was watching someone else.
Instead of killing her, the man turned his consideration to Fitch, or rather, Fitch’s sword. He pulled the gleaming weapon from Fitch’s limp hand, and then yanked the baldric and scabbard free of the dead weight of the body.
More mounted men were just arriving as the man slid the Sword of Truth back into the scabbard.
He smiled and winked at Beata. “I think Commander Stein would like to have this. What do you think?”
Beata sat stunned, Fitch’s body right in front of her, his brains all over her, his blood emptying out on the ground.
“Why?” was all Beata could say.
The man was still grinning. “Now that you all had your chance to vote, Emperor Jagang is casting the deciding ballot.”
“What you got, here?” another man called as he dismounted.
“Some decent-looking girls.”
“Well, don’t kill ‘em all,” the man complained good-naturedly. “I like mine warm and still moving.”
The men all laughed. Beata whimpered as she pushed with her heels, scooting away from the men.
“This sword is something I’ve heard of. I’m taking it to Commander Stein. He’ll be pleased no end to be able to present it to the emperor.”
Over her shoulder, she saw another man up on the Dominie Dirtch casually disarm Estelle and Emmeline as they tried to defend their post. Emmeline leaped from the Dominie Dirtch to escape. The fall broke her leg. A man on the ground grabbed her red hair in his fist and started dragging her toward the barracks as if he had caught a chicken.
Estelle was getting kissed by the man up on the Dominie Dirtch as she beat her fists against him. The men thought her battling comical. Men in dark leather plates and belts and straps covered with spikes and chain mail and fur, and with massive swords, flails, and axes, were dismounting everywhere. Others, still on their horses, were racing around and around the Dominie Dirtch, cheering.
When the men all turned to Emmeline’s renewed screams of pain and terror, and to her captor’s laughing, a hand snatched Beata’s collar and dragged her back on her bottom.
The woman in red leather behind her growled under her breath, “Move! While you still can!”
Beata, powered by panic, scrambled up and ran with the woman while the men weren’t looking. The two of them dove into a dip in the ground hidden by the tall grass.
“Stop that crying!” the woman ordered. “Stop it or you’ll get us caught.”
Beata forced herself to stop making noise, but she couldn’t stop the tears. Her whole squad had just been killed, except Estelle and Emmeline, and they were captured.
Fitch, that fool Fitch, had just gotten himself killed saving her life.
“If you don’t hush, I’ll slit your throat myself.”
Beata bit her lip. She had always been able to keep herself from crying. It had never been this hard.
“I’m sorry,” Beata whispered in a whine.
“I just saved your fat from the fire. In return you can at least not get us caught.”
The woman watched as the man with the Sword of Truth galloped away, back toward Fairfield. She cursed under her breath.
“Why’d you just drag me away?” Beata asked in bitter anger. “Why didn’t you at least try to get some of them?”
The woman flicked out a hand. “Who do you think did that? Who do you think was protecting your back? One of your children soldiers?”
Beata looked then and saw what she hadn’t seen before. Dead enemy soldiers sprawled here and there. She looked back to the woman’s blue eyes.
“Idiot,” the woman muttered.
“You act like this is my fault,
like you hate me.”
“Because you are a fool.” She pointed angrily out at the carnage. “Three men just wiped out your post and they aren’t even breathing hard.”
“But—they surprised us.”
“You think this some game? You’re not even smart enough to realize you’re nothing more than a dupe. Those in charge puffed you up with false courage and sent you out to fail. It’s plain as day and you can’t even see it. A hundred of you girls and boys couldn’t knock down one of those men. Those are Imperial Order troops.”
“But if they just—”
“You think the enemy is going to play by your rules? Real life just got those other young people killed, and the dead girls are going to be better off than the ones still alive, I can promise you that.”
Beata was so horrified she couldn’t speak. The woman’s heated voice softened a little.
“Well, it’s not all your fault. I guess you aren’t old enough to know better, to know some of life’s realities. You can’t be expected to see what’s true and not. You only think you can.”
“Why do you want that sword so bad?”
“Because it belongs to Lord Rahl. He sent me to get it.”
“Why’d you save me?”
The woman stared back at her. Behind those cold, calculating blue eyes, there didn’t seem to be any fear.
“I guess because I, too, was once a foolish young girl captured by bad men.”
“What did they do to you?”
The woman smiled a grim smile. “They made me into what I am: Mord-Sith. You wouldn’t be that lucky; these men aren’t anywhere near as good at what they do.”
Beata had never heard of a Mord-Sith before. Their attention was drawn to Estelle’s cries from up on the Dominie Dirtch.
“I need to go after the sword. I suggest you run.”
“Take me with you.”
“No. You cannot be of any use and will only hold me back.”
Beata knew the awful truth of that. “What am I to do?”
“You get your behind out of here before those men get ahold of it or you’ll be very much more than sorry.”
“Please,” Beata said, tears welling up again, “help me save Estelle and Emmeline?”
Soul of the Fire Page 72
