45 Hugo #2
“They’re nocking another round!” Evangeline yelled, frantic.
“I love you. I’ve always loved you.” Hugo kissed her.
Eira grabbed his jacket, eyes welling with tears. “No,” she mouthed, lip trembling.
“I’ll love you when I’m dead and gone. Please, get away. For me. Live, for me,” Hugo said, kissing Eira again and throwing
her hood back over her head before kicking open the front door. He desperately hoped they would listen to him and get out.
“Gentlemen,” Hugo said, arms wide as he greeted the Iron Retinue soldiers, sword in his hand. “This doesn’t need to be a bloodbath.”
The two archers had arrows nocked and aimed in the direction of the tavern. They knew Evangeline and Eira were in there.
Use the diversion Eira, please.
He waited for them to speak and watched as the soldier in the center removed his helmet. Hugo’s heart fell into his stomach
as he recognized Lord General Kerrigan immediately, here in the flesh. If what he had been feeling before had felt like panic,
he’d been wrong. Hugo needed Eira to run, now more than ever. He had never expected the lord general to make an appearance;
he had no reason to be here . . . except for revenge against Hugo.
“Hugo,” Lord General Kerrigan said, stepping forward in the same plate armor he wore the night they took over Astrad together.
“You’ve become a real problem for me.”
Fear ripped through Hugo as he involuntarily took a step backward, flashes of all the times Lord General Kerrigan struck him
for not performing well enough tearing through his mind. No. The lord general was just a man. He didn’t have any sway over
Hugo anymore. He was just a man with too much power. Hugo would not be afraid of him for another moment of his life, however
short that may be.
“Lord General Kerrigan,” Hugo said, voice weaker than he wanted it to be. “I didn’t know that you were allowed to leave the
capital. Don’t you have a false war to start?”
“Hugo,” Kerrigan said, sounding disappointed. “I brought you into my empire and you threw my trust in you back in my face. You stole from me.”
“Your empire?” Hugo smirked. “I thought the Iron Empire was an empire of the people? Or was that just a convenient lie to have
us help you murder King Arthel?”
“You’re pointless to speak to, as always,” Kerrigan said, waving the sword in his hand in a sweep and taking another step
forward toward Hugo. In that same second, a conjured hand flew past the lord general and Hugo toward the other knights. Hugo
would recognize it anywhere; Eira’s conjured hand, Beatrice.
“Agreed,” Hugo snarled before diving past Lord General Kerrigan and throwing a dagger at one of the archers. They both loosed
arrows as the rest of the soldiers moved into action.
Hugo tried to turn back to Kerrigan, but the lord general had already stepped through the threshold and into the tavern where
Eira and Evangeline were. The monster couldn’t help himself but to go after a witch, and Hugo was too surrounded to stop him.
Glasses and mugs started flying out of the broken windows toward the soldiers, and Hugo watched as the conjured hand grabbed
the bow of one of the archers before throwing it into the open mining cavern. Beatrice, ethereal and made of the Flow itself,
moved quickly in the direction of the other archer.
He glanced through the door to see Eira hurling glasses from behind the bar toward the soldiers as Evangeline jumped through
the empty window frame. He realized that Eira didn’t even need to control Beatrice consciously; she was so powerful, it scared
him.
Lord General Kerrigan kept stalking toward Eira as she ducked behind the bar.
A greatsword swung past Hugo’s head as he barely dodged out of the way of a swing from one of the Soulless Knights. A well-aimed
glass hit the hand of the second archer as Hugo kicked one of the human soldiers who had started to swing at him, the soldier’s
knee buckling as he dropped to the snowy ground.
The Soulless Knight swung again, and Hugo could see a second weapon out of the corner of his eye. He couldn’t dodge both; one of them was going to hit him.
Hugo threw his sword up to block the greatsword in front of him and braced for the second to hit his side. He heard the clang
of metal on metal as Evangeline leaped in front of the second Soulless Knight and threw her sword up to block the death blow
at the last second.
“I told you both to run,” Hugo grunted.
“I don’t take orders from you,” she scoffed, gritting her teeth as the superhumanly strong knight bore down on her.
“You hate me. I wouldn’t have put it past you to take your chance to leave me behind,” Hugo said.
“You think I’d let you die after all of this? You have to earn the right to die heroically, especially for queen and country,” Evangeline said, pushing the sword off her and dodging out
of the way, pressing her back against Hugo’s so they could face the onslaught together.
They swung together, blocking the Soulless Knights and taking stabs at them as the other soldiers circled and tried to break
through to join in the attack.
Hugo saw the conjured hand flitting around doing what it could, pulling off pieces of armor and hitting the backs of knees
to knock people to the ground, but it wasn’t doing enough damage to be much more than an inconvenience.
Evangeline and Hugo swung and stabbed and swung and stabbed, sweating as they made little headway. Every time they knocked
a soldier down, another came forward.
“We can’t do this forever,” Evangeline called. “Agh!”
Hugo turned to see that a dagger had been stabbed into Evangeline’s thigh, and she was faltering. He quickly grabbed her waist
and barreled through the soldier that had just stabbed her, knocking him aside. The remaining knights followed after them
as he ran toward the tavern door.
Evangeline picked herself up, the dagger still lodged in her thigh.
“Hugo.” She panicked, looking at the tavern. “Why is he here? We have to get Eira, before—”
“I know, I know we can’t let him—” he panted, already winded from the fight. Hugo looked through the shattered tavern windows
and saw Lord General Kerrigan grab Eira’s cloak, her face still hooded and hidden in shadow. He found himself in motion before
he could even properly process what he was seeing, Evangeline in step with him, limping, as they ran toward Eira.