Chapter Fifteen
“… suffice it to say that the End had revealed itself. There was nothing I could do but stand fast and face it.”
The Chronicles of Sean de Lara
They had not come to take him alive. Sean had already decided that the moment he realized that his fears had come to fruition; the king had sent his personal guard to assassinate de Lara and Sean knew, even as he saw the hordes of soldiers dropping down on him, that this was not meant as a threat or an abduction.
This was meant for death and he was prepared.
So Sean gave them death. He used his sword as both axe and spear, goring men, chopping them, trying to keep their weapons away from his body.
He was clad in full armor and well protected, but even armor had points of weakness.
There was no denying that he was vulnerable to a certain extent.
But he vowed to do all in his power to get away from them alive so that he could get back to his wife.
Above all else, he had to return to Sheridan and get her away from the Tower.
If they were after him, then soon they would be after her and he could not stand the thought. He had to protect her.
So he fought valiantly, trying to move away from the group even as they swarmed him.
Though the king’s guard was well trained, Sean knew their tactics and he knew each man individually.
He knew their strengths and weaknesses and tried to exploit them.
Two men fell, then four, then seven as he continued his battle.
But he could not kill all of them; even he knew that.
So he tried to move away from the flashing blades and back towards the Tower so he could make an attempt to flee.
He had to lose them somehow. But that was his last coherent thought before someone plunged a blade deep into his groin.
It was a bad wound; he knew that right away.
It cut into the tender portion of his upper leg, slicing through mail and linen.
Sean grunted with pain but did not falter; as he dispatched the man who had cut his groin, someone else managed to jam a blade into his right side.
When he brought his weapon around to address the assailant, someone else thrust a cold sword into the right side of his chest, just below the arm pit.
Sean stumbled back and went down on his knees.
But he was still fighting. Oddly enough, however, his attackers suddenly seemed to stop.
Bleeding heavily, Sean managed to get to his feet to prepare for another onslaught but none was forthcoming.
The men seemed to back off, standing around to watch him bleed to death.
At least that was what Sean thought until he saw the reason for their pause.
It was moving through the shadows like a dark specter; he could see a shaggy head making its way through the crowd.
Gerard’s face was suddenly illuminated by the ghostly moonlight, his black eyes full of death and fury.
Sean’s brow furrowed slightly, remembering the man he had gored and left to die on the floor of the king’s chamber.
But he had apparently not done a good enough job of it because Gerard was indeed walking.
He was listing heavily to one side and appeared ghostly pale, but he was moving nonetheless. And he was moving for Sean.
“I told you I would kill you,” Gerard rasped, his sword in his right hand although not yet raised. “You will die this night, de Lara, make no mistake. Your time is finished.”
Sean was shocked though he tried not to let it show.
He was having enough trouble dealing with excruciating pain and tremendous blood loss.
But he tried to stand straight to accept Gerard’s onslaught, wondering if he would be able to kill the man this time and make it back to Sheridan before he himself collapsed.
He could feel his strength draining away by the second.
If he was going to die, then he wanted it to be in her arms. He wanted her face to be the last thing he ever saw.
“It seems that both of our time is finished,” he replied to Gerard. “You may kill me, but I intend to take you with me.”
Gerard wasn’t as healthy as he wanted Sean to believe; the man had a horrendous wound to his gut that was taking its toll. It was a testament to his brute strength that he was still standing. But he tried to put up a good front and lifted his weapon.
“We shall see.”
The first blow was heavy but sloppy. Sean easily deflected it, but he was struggling with his breathing.
He suspected a lung had been punctured and it made it extremely difficult to move around.
He began unlatching his breastplate with his left hand, anything to help him breathe.
Gerard charged at him again but it was more like a stumbling fall; Sean pushed him aside and the man fell on his arse.
In the time it took Gerard to get to his feet, Sean had removed both his helm and his breastplate and cast them aside.
The crowd of the king’s soldiers stood silent as the battle of two mortally wounded men continued.
It was an odd assembly, like vultures waiting for the kill.
Sean and Gerard were without a doubt the two most feared men in England and to see the clash between them was truly something to behold. It was like watching demons in battle.
The fight continued on. Sean seemed to be defending himself rather than launching any offensives against Gerard; Gerard, however, was sloppy and exhausted, throwing himself at Sean only to be shoved to the ground.
This went on several times. Gerard finally bellowed at the king’s soldiers, ordering them away.
He didn’t want anyone to witness what might be his shame.
The men disbursed for the most part, though a few lingered out of range.
They were watching, waiting for the final blow.
Like the lure of blood lust, it was too good to pass up.
Their battle had also attracted the attention of the men on the parapets.
Now an audience was watching from above, having no idea why de Lara was battling d’Athée.
It was entrancing, harrowing. When they should have been watching the siege of London, the men guarding the Tower of London found themselves distracted by a life and death battle between two titans.
It was distraction enough so that William Marshall was able to move two siege engines within range and decimate the gate of the Bell Tower in two enormous blows.
The men guarding the Tower never saw it coming until it was too late.
Suddenly, the men on the wall were rushing to the west side of the Tower where two thousand men had now managed to sneak up on them.
The shouting, the cursing, was evident all over the compound.
Even the king’s guards fled when they realized the castle was compromised.
But Sean and Gerard stayed in battle mode, fighting each other to the death, oblivious to what was going on around them.
Sean had been ordered to sabotage the Tower’s defenses; he could not have done a better job if he had tried. The distraction of his battle with Gerard had proved sabotage enough.
But his strength, and Gerard’s strength, was fading quickly.
Although they were still tangling, it was punctuated by long periods where they did nothing more but stand and glare at each other.
Sean was leaving a bloody trail all over the ground as his groin wound poured blood down his leg.
Worse than that, his vision was beginning to darken and he suspected he did not have much time left to swoop in for the kill.
If he did not do it first, Gerard would.
As the gates at the Bell Tower burned brightly, Sean threw himself in Gerard’s direction, intending to give the death blow.
But he tripped in his weakness, falling to his knees as Gerard raised his sword in response.
When the bear of a man saw Sean on his knees, he knew it was time to strike the final blow.
Sean tried to roll out of the way but Gerard was nearly on top of him.
As Gerard brought his arm down to deliver the deadly impact, he suddenly jerked to a halt and listed heavily to one side.
The sword remained poised above Sean’s head as if frozen there.
As Sean watched in astonishment, Gerard fell to the ground and his sword clattered into the dirt.
Guy de Braose stood behind Gerard’s collapsed body, a broadsword in his hand dripping dark with blood.
The slender young lord with the dark eyes gazed steadily at Gerard on the ground before he, with a great amount of bitterness and an even larger amount of vengeance, rammed the blade once more into the man’s back; he couldn’t help himself.
He delivered the death blow and this time, Gerard stilled for good.
Guy held the left side of his torso, supporting his cracked ribs as he pulled the sword from Gerard’s body.
He stood there a moment, gazing down at the man who had beaten him so badly, feeling tremendous satisfaction in his death.
He considered it justice. But then he remembered that Sean was several feet away laying on the ground and, from what he had seen in the brief time he had witnessed the fight, he could tell that Sean was badly injured.
Guy made his way to Sean, going down on a knee beside the man. Their eyes met and a strange sense of unity filled the air. There was no longer a rivalry; for the moment, they were both on the same side.
“How badly are you hurt?” Guy asked.
“Badly enough,” Sean rasped. “Why in God’s name are you here?”
Guy was trying to assess Sean’s wounds. “The priest said you were in trouble,” he told him. “I came to help.”
Sean’s brow furrowed at the overload of information. “The priest? How did he know?”