92. Now Flash
NOW: FLASH
His call of agony was drowned out by the shouts of the others.
When the priest released me to fall to his knees and claw at his head, I staggered back and had the foresight to hold my hand away from my body.
I was grateful my longer sleeves, as always in colder weather, were rolled halfway up my forearms as Magda had always worn hers.
Bertram had shrugged off his shock and pelted towards me, sword out. “Keep her away from the river!” he commanded, advancing on me.
I was still trying to breathe again after having been nearly strangled to death, but I maintained my footing, backing away closer to the door.
And though my neck was throbbing with pain, though there was an ache in my lungs, I grated out a laugh and said, “Why? Because the secret about the fate called Fear’s poisonous spit is not the only secret about it?
There is more than the quenching of the thirst of the people above us?
There is more than fueling Perpatane with some abstruse force? ”
The young lord and I faced each other.
Over Bertram’s shoulder, I could see the rest of them.
Gerard had shoved Ilsit to the floor and then rushed to the kneeling priest’s side, as had one of the guards, leaving only one man to duel with Evangeline.
Reed took both of his swords, made an X of them, and blocked a blow from Torm, forcing the older man to stumble backwards. Then Reed pushed, and the lord fell.
I still spoke to Bertram. I was unsure of what our next move was, but I knew there was a way through, knew that victory was no longer an improbable thing.
“Figured it out, didn’t I? The river, the founts, the little channel that runs along the floor above? The way all of them flow around the skull? They can all catch fire.”
“Shut your whore mouth,” Bertram said, sword extended, edging closer but wary of my right hand held out in front of me. “It’s time your blood finally ran. Long have I watched you defy the natural order of things. Your whole life you’ve been this way. This is a good day for a witch to die.”
“Or a lord,” said Reed, stepping up behind Bertram and skewering him in his back with a brutal thrust of the short swords until they pierced through the man’s stomach, causing Bertram’s mouth to hang open and his sword to fall.
Reed lifted a leg, his knee hitting Bertram’s lower back, and he yanked his blades viciously out of the dying man’s torso. Briefly, Bertram’s body swayed as if it was miming standing, and then it collapsed.
“No!” Torm screamed and ran for his son.
Looking almost bored, Reed stepped aside, as if out of courtesy allowing the lord of Sheridan to reach his heir just as Bertram breathed in a death rattle so loud, I swore I could hear the last expanse of his broken lungs.
While Torm fell to the floor next to his son, Reed beckoned me to step around and away from them to join him.
Father Starling was being helped to his feet. Gerard and the guard had beaten out the flames on his face, but his cheek and ear were pink, dripping, and raw.
Still along the teeth of the tongue river, Evangeline fenced with the second guard, but now he was outnumbered, because as unskilled as she may have been, Ilsit was at his back thrusting her knife out every time he tried to elude Evangeline. The two women and the lip of the river caged him in.
Ilsit had turned her head briefly, laughing in shock at my burning hand before her approving eyes looked away again, back to the man she and Evangeline fought. And so she was distracted when Gerard abandoned Starling and charged at her, a foul word on his lips.
Reed and I both began to follow him, but the guard who had gone to help Starling bounded up and swung out a sword at Reed, who again made an X of his twin blades.
I still picked my way across the chamber after Gerard, ignoring Reed’s shout at me, calling out my friend’s name.
Ilsit turned her head to see her former husband headed for her, and she looked stricken. The guard she had been fighting quickly swung at Evangeline, forcing her to parry his blow. And while Evangeline straightened from that defense, he turned and slashed out at Ilsit, slicing her forearm open.
She doubled over in pain.
Gerard reached her, sheathing his sword and grasping at the front of her clothes.
He lifted her up, shaking her, screaming curses.
Her blood dripped onto the white stone floor, eerily glistening from the light of the cresset torches, only one of which was still held.
The other two were rolling on the floor, casting hellish shadows on the inside of the fate’s skull.
The guard who had slashed at Ilsit whirled to meet Evangeline’s next blow from behind, but he was too slow.
The lady warrior’s blade pierced through his neck, above the gray-and-red leather breastplate of his rank.
He tripped backwards, his weapon making a clattering when it fell.
Clutching at his neck, he tipped over into the tongue river.
His body’s entrance into the spittle was less of a splash and more of a slap, like feed being slopped into a trough.
“Put her down,” I said to Gerard as Evangeline and I advanced on him, her from the side and me from behind. He and Ilsit were far too close to the river.
“Keep her away from the river!” Starling was baying.
Behind me, Reed was fighting against both the guard that had been aiding Starling and now also an incensed, devastated Torm. I was aware of Starling’s livid approach in our direction, but I only saw Ilsit, limp and in pain, in Gerard’s grip. I had never seen her so weakened.
Then Gerard hauled her up slightly higher and dropped her into the river.
Evangeline ran for him and slashed at him, flaying open the sleeve of his uniform and the flesh beneath it.
I knelt along the bank and reached down to Ilsit with my left hand. She was gasping and floundering, trying to swim with a wounded arm.
“I need both your hands,” she cried, reaching and clasping desperately for me with slick, slimy palms, sliding back in when I could not lift her out.
“I can’t,” I wailed. “I can’t put my right hand in the river!”
Ilsit looked confounded and frightened.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the body of the dead guard sinking beneath the surface, face down, the ooze of blood from his neck lazy and slow, not mixing quickly with the spit.
I looked up to see Evangeline drive Gerard back and then, when he was slightly off balance from defending himself, she kicked at him, causing him to fall.
She ran for the lip of the river, knelt down next to me and, her sword set aside, reached for Ilsit.
Her strong body an anchor, she reeled Ilsit out.
I felt so useless, only able to offer my left hand on Ilsit’s soaked dress as the three of us struggled to stand.
Gerard had rallied and made for Evangeline again.
“Cut them down! Each one,” ordered Starling, drawing closer, looking monstrous with his disfigurement.
And because the lady warrior was paying attention only to the scared, wounded woman in her arms, because she had yet to fully let go of Ilsit, her reach for her own blade was too late.
The captain’s sword slid into her back with ease, and he pulled it out of her with a triumphant yank.
Evangeline wavered and then fell to her knees.
I crouched next to her, her name on my lips.
I heard Reed call out her name in anguish.
“You bastard!” Ilsit seethed and bent to take up Evangeline’s sword with her good arm. Not used to its heft, she was clumsy with it, floundering towards Gerard who leered at her.
“Come, wife,” he invited. “Let’s end this.”
I did not want to abandon Evangeline, who was looking as if to ask me what was happening, her hands trembling over her heart. But Ilsit was defenseless against Gerard. I straightened and turned towards them. “I’ll burn you alive if you so much as touch her, Gerard.”
“I’ll cut that hand off before you can,” he replied, brandishing his sword.
“I’m coming, Robbie!” Reed’s words echoed from where he still battled with Torm and the other guard.
“Captain,” came the hiss of Starling’s voice behind Gerard. “Get the witch away from the tongue of soundness. She can no longer be saved by its cleansing her. She has chosen to use her spell craft against it.”
“Oh fuck off,” I exploded. “I know what I can do to it. And I can’t wait to watch it all burn.”
“Captain!”
“I heard you,” Gerard yelled at the priest, his eyes still on Ilsit.
“Young man, come and get the witch,” Starling ordered.
The guard who had been fighting Reed left Torm to answer to the priest, racing to his side. “Yes, Father?”
Starling bristled, his hand extended towards me. “Get her away from the tongue. Do you hear me, son?”
Ilsit was cradling her wounded arm to her body, her other arm trembling from the weight of Evangeline’s sword. She stepped back along the length of the river, nearing where Evangeline had slumped forward to her hands and knees.
“I can’t really breathe,” I heard the lady warrior say, her tone conversational and confused. “Why can’t I breathe?”
I too was edging back away from the guard coming for me, trying to place myself in front of Evangeline. He had a determined look in his eyes as he listened to Starling’s renewed tirade about my evil.
Nearby, Ilsit and Gerard shouted at each other.
Reed and Torm were in close combat, the lord’s broadsword against Reed’s two short swords.
And then, in an irritated fashion, Reed slid the hilt of the sword in his right hand into his left, holding both swords in the same hand.
He reared his right fist back to slam into Torm’s jaw.
Then—the lord finally showing his age and dropping his weapon, winded by the punch—Reed returned the short sword to his right hand and made for us.
With speed, he reached the guard that came for me and skewered the man in the gut with one of his blades.
Starling screamed for Gerard again.
Gerard lifted his sword and brought the hilt down on Ilsit’s head.
She ducked before it hit her as heavily as he had intended, but it still caused her to fall. She crumpled and crawled to Evangeline’s side.
Gerard turned and met Reed, who had already begun to charge for him.
The two began to duel. They were evenly matched—of equal size, both trained soldiers, tall men who were leaner than they were broad but moved with speed because of their lack of heft.
Both of them were coated in a sheen of sweat, and it was hard to tell who would be the victor as they exchanged equally powerful strikes.
Torm had righted himself and drew near the priest.
Free of the guard who had been sent to kill me, I faced the two men.
“Roberta,” Torm grated out. “Do not do this. Put your hand out. Surrender yourself to the river. It is what your mother would have wanted.”
“It is too late,” Starling sang out. “She has chosen her gods and their magic. She has chosen to be condemned to the demon realm.”
“My mother,” I spat out, “was a decent woman confused by her church. She wanted me to live, Torm. Remember? She would not let me burn.”
“I spared you then,” answered the lord. “I cannot do that this day.”
“A mistake made due to desire,” pronounced Starling, his sneer twice as ugly with the ruined flesh on one side, his lips a grisly slit of blood and charred skin.
Gerard cried out, sustaining a blow on his arm from Reed. Reed had caught him in the same place Evangeline had, deepening the wound.
Torm turned from Starling, ignoring the priest’s protest, perhaps in a soldier’s response sensing a fellow man-in-arms needing support, forgetting the most dangerous person in the chamber was me.
Starling lunged for me, catching me by surprise.
He grabbed my right forearm, dragging me close to him.
“Do you remember when I held you like this before?” he asked.
“We were standing in the wagon. We were about to watch the hag burn. And I told you—What did I tell you? Oh, yes. I said I would make your death the cause of my life.”
I struggled, frustrated by the man, older than me but still able to overpower me. Like it had on the day he referenced, my right arm felt torn from my shoulder. My left hand slapped at him, futile and desperate.
Above us, my right hand blazed.
Yet again, we were face-to-face.
“What are you going to do?” I challenged.
“Torm!” the priest called, eyes still locked on to mine. “Torm, get over here and beat out this demon fire. Or sever her hand from her arm.”
I screamed.
The lord, having fought Reed while Gerard got his bearings, left the fight as the captain had, though wounded, rallied himself to continue. Torm neared us and then took up my left forearm, yanking me so that I was between both men.
I flailed, but I was caught.
“Kneel, witch,” Starling crowed.
Torm swept his leg out behind me and forced me to my knees. The old lord was panting. “Father, perhaps you should be the one to stamp it out. You have borne for so long all of her abominations.”
Distantly, I heard Reed’s voice. “Hold on, Robbie!”
The lord brought his knee between my shoulders and forced me prostrate to the floor. Then he squatted to straddle my back, replacing Starling’s hold on my right forearm, and pinned me entirely.
My face was turned to one side, icy bone up against my cheek. I saw Starling’s boots circle me and step close, knew his heel would come down on my burning hand, which was stretched out along the floor now.
But as he did, I turned my hand on its side so that his foot slammed into the floor. My fingers reached out and cupped his ankle, squeezing, my forefinger gliding as high up his calf as I could manage.
Furious, he kicked my hand and then stomped down again, this time catching me fully on the fingers. Over and over he did this while I screamed. With each crush of his boot, my hand’s flame began to wane.