Chapter Ten Fenlia
CHAPTER TEN
Fenlia
It all happens too fast. Later, Fen will chastise herself for how long it took her to realize the threat for what it was.
But she had been stunned to stillness when the charging Alelunen Reapers were stopped by Cat’s firm command, and when the soldiers charged as well she didn’t realize that Cat was not going to stop them too. Instead, Cat sags in his saddle.
Fen cannot see his face. Lio curses at her side, then barks an order. He gives his horse its head and spurs it forward, Marina chasing after him in a full charge. Whatever Cat did at the start will not be replicated a second time, and the army is coming.
The soldiers fly after their commander. Fen jerks her reins into position as Rodans shouts at her to wait.
He had, apparently, volunteered to serve as her guard when Lio had been looking for someone to fill the role.
He was the most accomplished cadet in the training corps, and with a relief force filled with the too old or the too young, he had told her he wanted this particular honour for himself.
She doubts he’ll think it much of an honour in the end.
For when she squeezes her thighs and leans into her horse to send it to a gallop, she does so knowing full well she is ignoring him completely.
Hitching herself up into a half-seat, Fen draws the sabre she has been practising with.
She has not practised with it long enough.
No one expects her to use it and use it well.
But until she can get out into the front lines and press her hands to each soldier who falls – the sword is one of the few things she can do to keep herself and the people around her safe.
Elician asked her to be here. He wants her at his side. She is going to make him proud.
Lio reaches the crush of soldiers first, swinging his own sabre down to hack at one soldier even as his horse tramples another.
Blood splashes high in the sky, but Fen can’t hear anything.
The sound of the battle, the shouts and yells and bodies being crushed under the weight of animals many times their size, are muted behind the harsh gasping of Fen’s lungs.
She knows there must be noise. Knows that even as she swings her sword down between Cat and a soldier trying to get close to her kings that there must be screaming at the very least. But all she hears is air as it whooshes past her when she yanks her gelding to a halt, the strangling hiss that gurgles up from her throat as she swivels this way and that.
It echoes like a choir of breaths, all exhaling in a round of accentuated pulses.
The battle of Altas is an orchestra of lungs breathing in and out as fast as they are able, bodies accompanying it with a percussion made of death and destruction.
Something strikes her horse. It rears up and she guides it back down.
She slashes her sword out again and again, stabbing and slicing as hands reach up.
Every soldier is just a suit of armour, a practice dummy set up in the training grounds or her favourite garden.
They are not people with lives or histories, until one strikes her hard enough on her thigh that she screams through the heavy breathing ricocheting in her ears.
Fen falls off her horse. Her leg is healed by the time she hits the ground, but there are hands everywhere that are reaching and grabbing at her.
Everyone is suddenly too close and too tight.
They are pressing in, and she is lost. She has no room to swing her sword.
All of Marina’s instructions, all of Rodans’ assistance, even Cat’s quiet lessons whenever they had time just to themselves, they flee – just as fast as she should have fled the moment she saw the army of Reapers surge forward.
She has no footwork, no form, no room. She chokes on ever-thickening air.
Her skin and mind tingle with conflicting sensations – Life and Death screeching back and forth, tearing apart the fabric of reality around her.
She does not want to die.
The crush is claustrophobic. The breaths that made up her orchestra now fly away in the very real sense that she cannot breathe.
Panic rises in her chest. Fen throws her hands out, bodily shoving someone from her even as she swivels her head this way and that.
Her gelding is running back to their encampment from the night before.
She falls again and someone screams her name.
A harsh hand pulls her back to her feet – Rodans.
He is there. He jerks her up and she scrambles for her sword even as she manages to get one hand to his bare arm to heal away blossoming bruises and pain.
This is her purpose. This is what she is meant to do.
She looks up. Lio is still astride his mount, keeping a firm barrier between the Alelunen soldiers and Elician.
But Elician isn’t moving. He is sitting on his horse, eyes blank and unfocused, his hand still outstretched towards the city as if whatever is happening there is more important than whatever is happening here.
Fen screams his name, but he does not react.
She runs to him instead, ducking and swooping and doing everything she can to not catch another blade against her ribs. Rodans follows behind.
A sword flashes through the air to her left; she barely blocks it in time, moving on instinct rather than any kind of talent.
Rodans kills the soldier himself. Something grabs her, yanking her back.
She ducks and turns, slashing her sabre with all the strength she possesses – and very nearly sinks it into the belly of her best friend.
Cat blocks the blow with barely a second to spare, almost losing his footing in the process.
‘Cat!’ she gasps as he tries to catch his balance. He isn’t looking at her.
‘Stop!’ Cat yells to an incoming soldier. He snatches at Fen’s arm and jerks her closer still, holding up one hand as if his voice and will alone would be enough to make the man do just that: stop.
He doesn’t. Rodans needs to intervene.
‘I thought you were going to use your powers on them too!’ Fen shouts. Maybe he can’t. Maybe it’s too much for him. Maybe there’s simply a limit to how many people he can affect at once.
Cat grimaces, stabbing the tip of his longsword into the earth to lean on it like a crutch. Blood leaks down from his eyes, his nostrils, his ears and lips. ‘Something is wrong,’ he says. ‘They’re not reacting to anything I do.’
‘What does that even mean?’
Another soldier gets close. Too close. Rodans doesn’t have the space to defend them.
Cat yanks his sword from the ground, off balance and too weak to parry.
He blocks the first strike and it only buys them time.
Fen charges in between the space that has been made.
Her sword stabs up through the Alelunen soldier’s throat.
Blood splatters over her as she pulls the blade free.
Vomit curdles in her stomach. She heaves, stumbling as the corpse falls to the ground.
It twitches, limbs thrashing as death struggles to take hold of its newest victim.
And then the tear in the Alelunen soldier’s throat heals itself.
That’s impossible. He is not one of the Reapers.
This is just a simple Alelunen soldier, and ‘They’re not dying!
‘ Fen shouts as he sits up once more, takes hold of his sword and starts his attack again.
Marina is there.
She removes the soldier’s head from his shoulders before Rodans can reclaim his space at Fen’s side. Fen scrambles out of the way. She lost track of Marina early on, but now the Reaper matriarch makes her presence clearly known.
For the first time in all the years Fen’s known her, Marina is not wearing gloves.
Her sleeves are pulled back. Her bare skin gleams like a tantalizing target that Marina uses as a weapon.
She grabs a man by his face, but he does not die.
Instead, he strikes and thrashes at her, ignorant of the laws of reality that would have seen him dead just from grazing his skin against hers.
Marina scowls and throws him back, stabbing him through the heart.
He hits the ground, but his body continues to twitch, flail, then starts to rise.
The eyes and mouth of the decapitated head at its side move this way and that.
Fen recoils, screams: ‘What is going on?
‘ as Marina yells back, ‘He’s not a Reaper or a Giver,’ over her shoulder.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Cat repeats, bracing himself. ‘They’re immune to Reapers.’
‘It’s not that,’ Marina replies. ‘They’re immune to Death.’
Elician is just behind him. Still astride his horse. Lio is blocking and defending him like a man possessed. Elician isn’t moving. He’s just sitting still, eyes vacant and lips parted. Fen screams his name. It’s him. It has to be him. He said he wouldn’t let anyone die and yet—
‘It’s not him,’ Cat says as she screams for her brother one more time.
He holds his hand out, straining in a way she has never seen him strain.
He is still using his powers, she realizes.
She squints through the melee. The Reapers haven’t joined the fight.
They are still on the ground. But they’ve been trying to get up.
They’re still trying. But he’s holding them in place.
All of them. And if he’s been trying to do that with the rest of the Alelunen army too…
‘I can’t…Something is wrong.‘ The effort is evident on his face. Blood streams faster from his eyes; he is using everything he can to try to command the Alelunen Reapers into stillness, and he is failing. If he lets them up in the middle of this chaos, they are all done for. ‘There’s something—’ He gasps, chokes, coughing up blood. ‘Something on them, can’t you feel it?’