Chapter 6 #4
I hissed. “Shit. The beasts are coming. We can’t—”
The thud of a Koa Esher jumping out through the already broken window we’d passed on our way in was disproportionate to his size.
He was the big celadon we’d met before. Thanks to the knowing, I could tell he was in charge, held the position of the head of the inner guard.
I didn’t need magic to know he was mean. That showed on his face.
The celadon moved with the elegance of my guys, but none of my guys nor any protector I’d seen had that kind of sneer, that way of pulling his lips to show his teeth that made me cringe.
There were whimpers from the survivors. The celadon had a broad and lightly curved sword, and said something I didn’t understand.
His tone was enough to make my skin crawl.
Two more Koa Esher jumped out of the window behind him, at least one of them a mage, going by his messed-up horns and spotty face.
He quickly pulled a jar with something living inside from a pouch.
“Down!” Vergis.
I froze. Inkiri slapped his hand down on my stomach, almost like a Heimlich maneuver. It got me to bend over, and from there, he got me closer to the ground, using his body as a shield.
Stones flew through the air—no, shingles.
The Koa Esher was doing that. The land sensed it, and so did I. I saw the muzzle of Vergis’s gun from the corner of my eye, and there was a bright flash and a deafening bang. I covered my ears with my hands. One shot, then Vergis cursed, bringing an arm up. The shingles.
A noise, different from the numbingly loud gunshot, pulled me out of my freeze state: Inkiri was clicking at me, and I just… He was protecting me and making me feel safe. He was putting himself in danger for me. I had to do something.
Moors, I told the land. Turn the ground under their feet into the moors of Esaka, the ones that devour bagua.
Well, okay, I was thinking in drama terms, but the land got it. Nothing so strange that I can do here, but I can do this. Move away now. Stones are powerful, but water and earth are more powerful still.
I gasped. “Run!”
The celadon cursed, pulling one leg up out of the softening ground, but the very earth beneath him was changing.
Vergis growled. “Fuck, Princess, warn us next time!”
There were more shouts from the other side of the building, and our group was changing direction now, moving away from the castle instead of running along it.
Inkiri pulled me by the wrist. I kept my eyes on the ground, on the Koa Esher. The celadon and his two goons were stomping after us, keeping up as best they could as the solid ground turned into mud wherever they placed their feet.
Then there came a bloodcurdling scream, and the three yellow beasts rounded the wall. The fastest made a quick stop. Was it the same one that had stopped for the weasel? By how it tore into the Koa Esher mage’s hip, it looked a lot like it.
The celadon saw. He brought his sword around, cut into his mage’s neck—then used the dead mage to pull himself up and out of the sinking ground, swiping his blade at the yellow beast the moment he got his feet on the dead Koa Esher’s back.
His remaining buddy screamed, but the celadon didn’t pay him any mind. He leaped from the corpse as if it were a springboard.
Vergis made a surprised noise. “Fuck. At least that explains why that one was death marked. Thought I needed to shoot him.”
Faster. Change the ground faster. “Faster! Run faster!”
The celadon swiped at one of the two yellow beasts who were still after me. The land obeyed and turned solid ground into moor. A part of the castle collapsed, the part right where that broken window had been.
Inkiri pushed for speed, but not like I had expected. He scooped me up out of my run and carried me under his arm like a football.
I told you I can give you speed, but this works as well, the stupidly humorous land said.
“Take cover behind that wall!” Vergis screamed.
I couldn’t see, but I heard the beast and everyone around me, so I drifted and nudged the land to show me what was going on.
Next thing I knew, I wished I hadn’t. The moor wasn’t fast enough. Celadon dude and the one yellow beast he hadn’t wounded were faster.
“Lissir!” Inkiri shouted, and then tossed me. Also like a football. If I hadn’t been working with the land, I’d have hurled all over them.
Lissir caught me and went right to slinging me over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
Inkiri stopped, turned, and with the twist of his body, he pulled two of his three swords from their sheaths and leaped toward the celadon.
Their blades clashed once, but then my mate sidestepped, and with his other blade, he cut into the yellow beast, splitting its head horizontally from ear to ear before whirling around and parrying the celadon’s attack.
“No! Ink!”
I heard my desperate scream with the detachment the magic brought me.
Inkiri and the celadon’s blades clashed again and again, the rapid clanging like a butcher sharpening his tools.
It made my blood run cold. The celadon lifted his arm, and the beast he had wounded, slower but still in pursuit, eyed that blade.
With my magical vision, I was probably the only one who saw those beastly orange eyes and the quick sneer that went over the yellow monster’s face before it chose vengeance instead of going after me. It leaped and closed its jaws around the celadon’s sword arm.
The celadon screeched in pain, his eyes going wide. Inkiri didn’t miss a beat. He cut, left sword coming down, cutting away half the yellow beast’s head—and a good chunk of the celadon’s arm with it.
Lissir leaped the wall and pulled me off his shoulder to stand me up on shaky legs.
“I’ll do it,” Kinnek said. “You two guard our retreat.” Vergis and Charles took up their places, peeking over the wall and aiming their guns that way. Their shots rang like the lightning I’d failed to call down to earth.
Vergis hit the third Koa Esher, the one who had been following the celadon but had slowed when he’d watched the celadon use the other guy as a bagu springboard.
Charles didn’t take his eyes off the carnage. “Bag! Left side!”
Kinnek made for the duffel, pulled it open, and got a canister of spray paint out.
He popped the lid and shook, then went about marking out a ko circle—fast but clean, focused, stripped to the barest minimum needed for this—around us, and I had a quarter of a second to admire Charles’s preparedness.
When Kinnek was done, he dropped the can in the circle and took my face in both his hands, but I was only half there, dizzy, worried.
Kinnek looked younger, although his face was so haunted. “Focus, Rory.” Something was missing from his face, I realized, something that had weighed it down before, and I’d never noticed that weight until it was no longer there. He took a deep breath. “Sweet pea, are you with me?”
Inkiri leaped the wall and rolled, and I realized my eyes had been closed. I’d watched everything through my magical senses.
“Sadir, I’m here! Take us away, now.”
That was my mate, and he was safe. The screams from beyond that wall weren’t him, but the other one, the celadon who was bleeding heavily into the newly formed moor.
Bloodletting after all.
I opened my eyes and placed my hands over Kinnek’s.
“Dispense.”
He worked his magic. Simple, solid, strong magic. We left the howling beasts and the sinking castle behind us, and I was not a brave person or a fighter, but the next time I saw an effing Koa Esher, I would release that lightning the land had promised me on them.