Chapter 19 #2
I was just fast enough. My fingers had barely curled into algiz when the arrow slammed into the spell, fracturing against the wall of protective magic.
Then two others were already flying, and I had to stagger two steps back to avoid them; one landed uselessly in the marshes, the other met with Durlain’s whip of fire.
Someone shouted Again!, followed by the unmistakable hiss of arrows drawn from their quivers.
Balls.
Time to start thinking.
Standing here like a hunted deer would kill me.
Durlain’s shield of fire was keeping him alive and well behind me, but my runes didn’t reach as far as his flames.
If my attackers stayed where they were, hidden within the mist, I would be dodging arrows until one of them inevitably hit. So I just needed them closer. I just …
An arrow whizzed past, half a foot from my face, and I was moving.
Three sequences of gebo, then algiz – adding protection, signed at my tunic, my hair, the scarf covering half of my face. Then a rapid spell at the simmering pool before me, raido, laguz, ing, followed by gebo and uruz – no, gebo, fehu, uruz …
Change, water, earth.
Adding, abundance, strength.
Muddy water turned into watery mud, then solidified slightly. Best I was going to get. No sense in wavering either, because the spell wouldn’t hold for more than a minute or two … so I sucked in a sulphur-tinged breath, wrapped my hand around Uruz’s hilt, and made the leap.
For a single, heart-stopping moment, there was nothing around me but thick white fumes and the spongy, brand new earth beneath my feet.
Then silhouettes loomed up before me, and all hell broke loose.
I managed to sign eihwaz at the first two men I encountered.
They went down, but not without some last cries of alarm; someone else hollered a warning close by, and at once figures were emerging from the mist on all sides, outlines hazy and distorted.
I ducked just in time to dodge the swing of a club.
By the time I’d stabbed Uruz straight through the club-wielder’s chainmail, three others were creeping up on me.
I gave up on clever thoughts.
Sometimes, inelegant bloodshed was the only answer.
Flashes of Durlain’s fire flared through the fog as I drew Eihwaz with my left hand, slashing wildly at the nearest attacker.
The blade drew a scratch across his upper arm, and he stumbled, then collapsed into the copper-stained mud without so much as a grunt.
A vicious weight hit me between the shoulder blades in the same moment, the sensation of a sword slamming into algiz’s layer of protection; I spun, deflected the next blow with Uruz, then stabbed Eihwaz into my attacker’s thigh in that moment of distraction.
Four down.
The soil beneath me was turning watery again.
Leaping back to dryer ground landed me in the arms of an iron-fisted guard, who delivered a nasty blow to my kidney before I could return the favour by slashing Eihwaz across his wrist. The world had reduced itself to flying limbs and weapons.
A sword ricocheted from Uruz’s rune-enforced steel; a vulnerable glimmer of skin fell prey to Eihwaz’s edge.
Durlain’s fire flickered gold and dazzling bronze on the edge of my sight.
The bubbling water was turning crimson around me.
I drove Uruz into the chest of another club-wielding guard, and the marshes went eerily quiet as he crumpled.
They were all dead. It took me a moment to realise it, looking around frantically for the next assailant to emerge – that there was no one left.
Just the dozen limp bodies scattered across the wetlands.
Just Durlain, a single blood- and algae-stained pool away from me – curls ruffled, eye wild, right hand sparkling slightly with the heat of his fire.
Around him, the bodies were blackened and blistered rather than bleeding out.
Neither of us moved as we stood and stared at each other for two endless heartbeats, the ghastly, bubbling silence growing larger and larger between us.
There was something strangely intimate about it, killing together.
A vulnerability in allowing another living creature to see that darkest, vilest side of you, and for one moment it didn’t matter that Durlain Averre was a liar and a poisoner and a power-hungry swine – because he looked at me and saw me, bloodied knives in my hands and corpses at my feet, and he did not flinch.
He did not scowl.
He did not open his mouth and say—
Pretty grisly, isn’t it, witchling?
I gulped in a breath to defend myself, just as Durlain averted his face and said, ‘Well done.’
It wasn’t the condescending praise of a teacher complimenting a promising pupil. Rather, it was the gruff acknowledgement of an equal, and something in my throat went tight.
‘Would still have been nice to have a little more warning.’ My voice was choked through his scarf. ‘Can we get out of here now, or—’
Something lit up in the mist behind him.
It was little more than a faint glow, muted and distorted by the fumes … but a glow it was, and in a place like this, there would be no lanterns, no windows, no festive bonfires. For it to have ignited so suddenly …
This was the sort of fire to have sprung from a mage’s palm.
A second flame flared, to my right this time.
‘Fuck,’ I breathed.
Durlain looked profoundly unsurprised.
Twelve dead guards around us, burned and bleeding … Of course that wasn’t the full force a city like Brainne would send after a witch wanted by King Aranc himself. And while we’d been busy fighting off this smaller division—
Another flame blinked into existence to my left.
They’d surrounded us.
We were standing in the middle of hungry, unknown marshland, cornered by at least three fireborn mages and hell knew how many human warriors, and we had nowhere left to flee.
Even Uruz felt suddenly light and feeble in my hand.
‘I suspect your birds are with them,’ Durlain said, voice low as he stepped around a charred corpse and towards me.
The fire was playing around the fingers of his right hand again.
Slow, patient twirls, turning the scars on his knuckles into frozen gold.
‘Is there anything I need to know about any of them?’
‘Jay’s knives are a nightmare,’ I whispered.
Who knew how many hostile ears were listening in that foul, impenetrable fog?
‘Rook could break your neck with two fingers and a thumb, but he’s mostly very, very good at knowing things he shouldn’t know – so if he gets close to you, whatever you do, don’t look like Dur— like yourself. Aranc will hear.’
Were those splashing footsteps behind me?
Durlain didn’t seem to care as he raised his hand, sparks dancing beneath his pale skin, flames flickering eagerly at his fingertips. ‘And Kestrel?’
The urge to look over my shoulder became almost unbearable.
‘Kestrel doesn’t usually do big battles,’ I said hoarsely, hating the quiver in my voice. ‘Just the hunting. What Aranc calls the interesting work.’
‘So he won’t be here to fight us?’
‘No.’ I swallowed the taste of bile. ‘Very unlikely. But—’
‘—he might follow us later. Yes.’ He turned his head a fraction – just enough for his good eye to glimpse the fire burning to his left. Was it my imagination, or was it moving closer? ‘Problem for later, then. Could you buy me some time so I can kill these fellows?’
I blinked.
It took a moment to accept I’d heard those words – level, impassive words – correctly.
‘What do you mean, so you can—’ My voice shot up; I had to bite my tongue hard and viciously to bring it back down. ‘How were you planning to kill all of them when we had enough trouble staving off a dozen—’
‘Surprises only work once.’ He took a single measured step backwards, the fire solidifying to a seething ball of heat in his palm. ‘Don’t come too close to me.’
And as if that was anything like an actual answer – as if we’d discussed all I needed to know and set out even the most minimal excuse for a strategy – he swivelled around and flung that handful of fire at the shining beacon creeping closer to our right.
There was a raw, guttural shriek.
Then the whole world erupted in shouts.
I just had time to renew the protection spells on my clothing before the first attackers came leaping out of the fog, faces covered, swords drawn.
Some well-aimed thorn signs knocked the legs from under the first three of them and sent them tumbling into the scalding water.
A fourth dove at me with a mighty swing of his battleaxe, only to be cut off by a brutal lash of Durlain’s flames.
I signed eihwaz at the two men who tried to sneak up on me from behind, and they went down so fast another guard tripped over them.
Behind the veil of the mist, the writhing line of bodies only grew denser.
I ought to stay near Durlain. There were too many of them; back-to-back, at least we wouldn’t be stabbed between the shoulders so easily. But—
Buy me time, he’d said. Don’t come too close.
And worst of all—
Trust me.
I wished I didn’t.
I wished I could tell myself it was pure calculation to follow his instructions, the intellectual, rational awareness that he needed me alive as much as I needed him.
But the rational part of me should have known that the bastard would just as happily sacrifice me once the tables turned.
Should have wondered whether he’d finally decided I was more burden than asset and started acting to get himself out of here alive.
The rational part of me should have kept herself safe.
Instead …
Instead, I gritted my teeth, swore I’d haunt the bastard for the rest of his life if I died in this hellhole, and launched myself into the fray.