Chapter 15 #3
She kicked at his face and head, but he only hissed and captured her other foot, determined to use her as a distraction.
Her sweaty hand clipped onto the bronzed bow of the statue and, with a forceful tug, broke it loose from the marbled fingers.
She swung the bow down with both hands, sending it colliding into the top of her captor’s head with a sickening crunch as it caved his skull inward.
His grip on her slackened as blood bubbled from his mouth, his eyes twitching off-kilter.
A flash of silver arced overhead.
She screamed as she brought the metal bow up to block Bohdan’s longsword from taking off her head, its crystalline chime meeting with a jarring clang against the weathered bronze.
Sparks sprang from their contact into his face, momentarily blinding him, and she used the opportunity to pull herself to standing. She grinned and sprinted the last pace, vaulting over the low stone wall and landing on her side.
Her breath was shallow and clipped as she rolled on her back. Her shoulder and ankle seized with a sharp, shooting pain, but she had made it.
A familiar pair of feet ran toward her and she was pulled into a sitting position. Varka enveloped her in a hug too fierce for their arrangement of champion and sponsor.
“Well done, Senka.” She hauled Ksenia up to her feet, and the visual before her almost made her sit back again. She caught a glimpse of Bohdan, still hovering at the statuary edge, his longsword gleaming black with blood as he studied her.
She staggered backward, gaining her balance once more, and returned his glare.
She wasn’t going to let him best her.
Varka led her across the grounds and back toward the marble gazebo, her footsteps growing stiffer as they approached the dais where a crowd of sponsors and survivors stood. But one figure stood out amongst the rest.
An overwhelming sense of dread set into her bones as Radegast’s resonance announced the king’s presence. The sound filled her mind, pressing against her skull with a full-bodied chord, twisted and layered.
Ksenia could scarcely draw breath as she laid her eyes upon the king. The last time she had seen his washed-out eyes, he’d been hovering over her, burying Radegast’s blade in her chest.
Now those same disinterested blue eyes swept over her.
Ksenia’s vision blurred at the edges and her pulse roared in her ears, drowning out the crowd’s murmurs, the distant sounds of fighting and dying, and her own ragged breathing.
His hands were crossed behind his back and he gave a little slouch as if he were watching a game of chess.
He didn’t recognize her, of course. But a part of her wished he would so that her death meant something, and she wasn’t just a weapon that Vornaya had reassembled.
The throbbing pain in her shoulder helped—grounded her, kept her from doing something as catastrophically stupid as retrieving Caromir from the table, lunging forward, and driving it into his gullet.
Patience. Vornaya was testing her.
Ksenia was far from ready. She had witnessed Karsan’s speed and strength firsthand and had paid the ultimate price.
Now, she had to play the game carefully to free Danika and her soul.
King Saranov released her from his gaze to look out with a contented sigh over the field of bloodshed before him. She counted more than a dozen bodies littered around the sprawling statue garden, one draped over the stone wall, his hand outstretched in freedom with a hatchet buried in his back.
Ksenia’s palms dripped with sweat as she focused.
There was a dart of movement within the field still; a few of the men hadn’t escaped yet, each clutching a weapon for defense.
A longsword, a crossbow, and a polearm. Survivors and their sponsors watched with rapt intent.
The scene had become sport for them once they had escaped safely.
“Release the ravens,” Karsan said, his voice soft.
An attendant nodded, signaling a guard on a high turret wall.
A few ravens swooped down from behind them, their glossy black wings a flash as they flew through the gazebo, forcing several people to duck and yelp. Only Karsan stayed frontward facing, his beady eyes alight with glee.
The birds circled overhead before spotting the remaining champions, then settled to perch on the statues nearest to each.
The weapons that were scattered to level the playing field were of little help to the three that remained.
Ksenia could not look away as she watched Bohdan and his retinue tear through them with brutal efficiency. Every move calculated, energy expenditure minimized, one step ahead of their opponent.
A heavily muscled champion flourished his polearm, circling Bohdan. The polearm fighter was deliberate, his footsteps crushing the grass beneath him. He thrust the weapon forward with brutish force, piercing the air where Bohdan had just slipped from.
Bohdan’s skills were a work of art: never a wasted step as he closed the distance on the brutish man, driving his sword between the man’s arm and torso, rendering the limb useless.
The man screamed as crimson blossomed through his leather jerkin, the polearm clattering to the floor. Another swift thrust sent the man to his knees as Bohdan’s sword exited his torso, spilling his entrails onto the grass.
The ravens finished alerting the Envorsen to the locations of the final competitors and flew back. One landed directly on Karsan’s shoulder, whom he stroked tenderly.