43. Night of Knives #2
My spear found his throat before any sound could escape. The blunted tip smashed through his windpipe, crushing cartilage, ripping flesh outward with a ragged wet wound. He clawed at the shaft, choking on his own blood, but I was already wrenching the spear sideways.
Arteries tore. A hot jet splattered across my face as his knees folded. I let him drop.
No hesitation. No remorse. Just the clean math of a job done right.
「The Knight feeds.」
The Brand burned between my shoulder blades, and for once the heat felt like approval .
The second pair had split off toward the armory. Their footsteps crunched somewhere beyond the barracks, measured and unhurried. They didn’t know they were being hunted yet.
Good.
I moved after them, bare feet silent against the packed earth. The blood cooling on my chest and face should have bothered me, but the Red Gale had worn worse. Had waded through worse. Had killed men while standing knee-deep in the dead.
This was almost clean by comparison.
The armory door hung slightly ajar, lamplight flickering from within. Shadows shifted against the walls. Two figures moving between weapon racks. Voices murmured, confident in their privacy.
“Four vials per door. Lock them first, then light the bottles. No survivors.”
“Burning’s cleaner. Nobody asks questions about training accidents.”
“Orders are orders. The employers want it done quietly.”
I burst through the door.
The closest man turned, mouth open, his arms full of glass flasks that would have burned a hundred people alive. I drove my spear straight through his eye socket before his hands could do anything useful.
The wet crunch of bone gave way. The shaft sank deep until it scraped the back of his skull. His body spasmed, fingers loosening around the vials he’d been carrying.
They shattered at our feet, the liquid foaming across the stone floor, stinking of chemicals and slow death. No flame, no spark. Just fumes and broken glass. The oil pooled harmlessly in the gaps between flagstones.
The second man lunged for his sword. Faster than I’d expected, training overriding shock. I twisted my grip on the embedded spear, used the dead man’s weight as a fulcrum to kick high and hard. My boot caught the second man in the jaw with enough force to snap his head back.
Before he could recover, I ripped the spear free and stabbed downward. The blunted point punched through the bridge of his nose with enough force to pin his skull to the floorboards.
Gurgling. Twitching. Then nothing.
Four down.
I crouched among the bodies, listening. Outside, the distant murmur of the estate carried on unchanged. No alarms. No shouts. Nobody had noticed yet.
Then movement behind me.
I ducked on instinct, and a dagger flashed through the space where my neck had been a heartbeat earlier.
A fifth man. Hidden in the armory shadows, waiting for exactly this moment.
He swore and lunged again. Professional grip, professional footwork. Not a hired thug. An actual killer who knew his business.
I rolled sideways, snatched a fallen flask from the floor and flung it at his face in one motion. He flinched.
One second. All I needed.
My hand found a dagger on one of the dead men’s belts, steel sliding free with the only sound that mattered. I came up inside his guard, too close for his blade to find me, and drove the knife upward under his ribs.
The narrow blade slid between bones, piercing lung, heart, whatever soft meat blocked its path. He gasped, eyes bulging, hands grabbing at my shoulders. I twisted the blade. Then twisted it again.
“Should have stayed home,” I said quietly.
He tried to respond. Only blood came out. I yanked the dagger free and let him drown beside his friends.
Five dead.
Blood pooled between flagstones, spreading in patterns that reflected the lamplight. The alchemist’s fire soaked into the gaps, still volatile if anyone brought open flame too close, but inert for now.
I exhaled and let my pulse settle.
The Knight Brand burned with satisfaction between my shoulder blades, a warmth that felt almost like praise. It had wanted this. Had hungered for it since the moment I’d been reborn.
And I’d given it exactly what it wanted.
「The Knight drinks deep. Five offered. Five taken.」
I cleaned the dagger on one of the dead men’s cloaks, then tucked it into my belt. The practice spear was too damaged for further use, bent from the force of kills it was never designed to make. But the armory was full of better options.
I moved past the bodies to the locked weapon cages where the real steel was kept. Tournament blades, maintained for competition but sharp enough to kill. The lock was a simple pin mechanism, the kind Perrin had shown me how to defeat months ago with nothing but a knife tip and patience .
The cage door swung open. I selected a war spear with a leaf-shaped blade balanced on a shaft of hardened ash. Strapped a longsword to my hip and tucked a second dagger into my boot.
Then I turned back to the bodies one more time.
One of the dead men had a waterskin on his belt.
I took a long swallow, then poured the rest over my face and chest, washing away the worst of the gore.
The water ran red between my fingers, but I’d look less like a walking massacre when I reached the barracks. Marginally.
◇ ◆ ◇
The barracks door creaked as I pushed it open. Inside, cots shifted as sleeping fighters stirred at the sound.
“Don’t move.”
Grit’s voice, from beside the door. A knife glinted near my throat, held by a hand that had been waiting for exactly this kind of intrusion.
“It’s me,” I said.
The knife didn’t move.
“Danarre?” Maise’s voice, from deeper in the room. “What the hell are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in the keep with your brothers.”
“Change of plans.” I stepped into the room, letting them see me in the faint moonlight filtering through the windows. “We have a problem.”
Maise was on her feet before I finished speaking, sword in hand, her eyes taking in the blood on my skin and the weapons I was carrying. Perrin rolled from his cot with two knives already gripped, his usual jokes nowhere to be found.
Grit lowered his blade, but his eyes stayed sharp .
“What kind of problem?” he asked.
“The kind that’s wearing plain cloaks and carrying alchemist’s fire.” I moved to the window, checking the courtyard for movement. “They were going to burn this building with all of you inside.”
“Were?” Maise asked.
“Five of them. They’re not going to burn anything now.”
She looked at me for a long moment. At the blood drying in patterns across my chest. At the calm in my eyes that had no business belonging to a boy of thirteen.
“You killed five men,” she said, making it a statement.
“They were going to kill all of you.” I adjusted the spear across my shoulder. “Seemed like a fair trade.”
Perrin made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a choke. “Holy gods. Rulfen always said there was wrong with you.”
“Rulfen’s right about most things.” I turned back to face them. “But right now, we need to move. This was just the first wave. There are more coming, and Baldir and Armand are walking into worse.”
“Where are they?”
I moved toward the door, keeping my voice low enough that only the closest beds could hear.
“Heading for Danzing and the Sword-Kin in the east wing. They don’t know the south barracks were the first target.
” I caught Maise’s eye. “They’re going to get there and find everything quiet, and they’re going to think we were wrong about the attack.
And then whoever’s running this is going to hit them while their guard is down. ”
“What do you need from us?”
“Get everyone in this building armed and ready. Then follow me to the east wing.” I pushed toward the door. “We’re going to save my brothers, and then we’re going to figure out exactly who thought they could burn House de Blaise in their beds.”
Grit was already pulling on his armor.
Maise sheathed her sword and grabbed a shield from the rack near her cot. Behind her, the other fighters were rolling out of their beds, the practiced silence of soldiers who’d learned to arm themselves without being told twice.
Perrin was checking his knives, counting edges and grips with the focused attention of someone who expected to use them all before dawn.
“Five men,” Maise said quietly as she fell into step beside me. “And you did it alone.”
“I didn’t have a choice.” I pushed open the door, scanning the courtyard for threats. “They were going to kill my people.”
“Your people,” she repeated. The edge in her voice had softened into a tone I’d never heard from her before.
“Mine.” I looked back at her. “Problem with that?”
For the first time since I’d known her, Maise smiled at me. Not the sharp grin she wore before a fight, or the sarcastic twist that meant she was about to gut someone’s argument. This was the expression of a soldier who’d finally decided who she’d follow into the dark.
“No problem at all, Captain.”
The word sat heavy in my chest. I wasn’t a captain. I was a bastard, a child, a placeholder in the family hierarchy that everyone expected to stay in his lane. But the Red Gale had been all of those things once, too, before the Wolves learned to trust the man instead of the rank .
I didn’t correct her. Just pushed through the door and led them into the dark, the Knight Brand burning steady between my shoulder blades, and sixteen armed fighters falling into formation behind me without being asked.
Leadership wasn’t a title. It was what you proved when the knives came out.
◇ ◆ ◇
「Hel’s Ledger」
Vessel: Danarre de Blaise | Year 828 | Age 13
House de Blaise | Status: Bastard (Unacknowledged)
Location: Duke Hemmrich’s Estate, South Barracks
「Knight of Swords」 — Raging
「Emperor」 — Sleeping
「Magician」 — Sleeping
Active Charge: Find the Hierophant. End what was begun.
Five men bled out on cold stone and the vessel didn’t flinch. Didn’t hesitate. Didn’t waste a breath on guilt when there were still people worth killing for. The Knight gorged itself tonight and howled for more. Good. Tonight, the blade remembered what it was for.