49. The Gauntlet #2
Then Armand appeared, face streaked with soot and blood. “He’s right. Father would say the same thing. We go.”
Baldir looked at the Sword-Kin one more time. Danzing caught his eye and nodded once, sharp and final.
Go, boy. We’ve got this.
Baldir ran. Armand ran with him. I stayed to watch, because someone should witness what came next.
◇ ◆ ◇
The mercenaries kept coming.
They’d realized the gate was the chokepoint. Kill the Sword-Kin, take the gate, and none of us would escape. So they threw bodies at the problem with the desperate arithmetic of men who’d be executed if they failed.
Danzing killed the first wave almost single-handed. Doomfall rose and fell in strokes that split men from crown to groin, and for thirty seconds the gate approach became an abattoir. Limbs flew. Blood sprayed in arcs. The mercenaries fell back, regrouped, and came again.
The second wave brought crossbowmen.
Haim was the first to fall. Four bolts hit him in the same instant, chest and throat and eye and shoulder. His Brand flickered once, Justice trying to find a way to survive the unsurvivable. Then it went dark, and Haim crumpled, blade still in his hand.
Cain screamed his name. His copies multiplied, thirty, forty, fifty phantom killers flooding the mercenary line. For a moment it looked like he might drown them in sheer numbers.
Then a mercenary captain found the real Cain, the one that bled, and drove a blade through his ribs from behind.
The copies winked out. All of them, gone in an instant. Cain turned, killed the captain with his last breath, and fell beside Haim. The Brand of the Hanged Man guttered and died.
Tennyson saw them fall and the fire in his hands turned white. Pure white, hot enough to melt stone, hot enough to turn the air itself to burning vapor. He screamed and the gate approach became a furnace.
Mercenaries burned. Fifteen. Twenty. Twenty-five. The fire was so bright I had to shield my eyes with my forearm. When it faded, Tennyson was on his knees, his Brand flickering, his skin cracked and red from channeling more heat than his body could hold .
A crossbow bolt took him through the throat before he could rise. The Brand of the Sun went dark, and the fire died with it.
Tormund and Danzing stood alone.
The bronze warrior moved to cover Danzing’s flank, but I could see the cost now.
His skin had faded from mirror-bright to the dull brown of an old copper pot.
The gleam was gone from his arms entirely, and patches of ordinary flesh showed through at his joints and neck.
Each blow he took cost him more of the protection.
A mercenary drove a spear at his chest and the point skidded off, but it left a scratch where minutes ago it would have shattered.
Tormund grabbed the spearman and broke him anyway. Killed two more with his bare hands. But the invulnerability was bleeding away with every second.
A sword found the faded bronze at his forearm and bit through to muscle. Tormund grunted, the first sound of pain he’d made all night. He killed the swordsman, but another blade found his side where the protection had worn to nothing.
He went down swinging, surrounded by the bodies of men he’d broken. The Brand of Taurus flickered twice as he fell, trying to restore what it couldn’t, and then it faded. Tormund hit the cobblestones and didn’t rise.
Danzing stood alone in a circle of corpses.
The mercenaries hesitated. Even now, with his allies dead around him, Doomfall in his hands made them pause. The greatsword was red from tip to hilt, and the bodies piled at his feet were four deep in places.
“Come on then,” Danzing growled. Blood ran from cuts on his arms, his face, his chest. He’d taken a dozen wounds that would’ve killed ordinary men. His Brand kept him standing, kept Doomfall moving, kept the wheel of swords burning on his shoulder. “I’ve got enough left for all of you.”
They rushed him.
Doomfall carved through the first rank. Five men died in a single horizontal sweep, their bodies tumbling in pieces.
Danzing pivoted, brought the blade around, split another man from shoulder to hip.
A sword caught him across the back. He ignored it.
An axe bit into his thigh. He killed the axeman and kept fighting.
Six more. Seven. Eight.
A blade found his sword arm. Doomfall dipped, heavy, suddenly harder to lift. Danzing switched to a two-handed grip, slower now but still deadly.
Nine. Ten.
A spear punched through his side. He coughed blood, grabbed the shaft with his off hand, and used it as a pivot to bring Doomfall around in an arc that took four heads.
Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen.
He went to his knees. Still fighting. Doomfall rising and falling in strokes that had no right coming from a dying man. The Brand on his shoulder blazed brighter than ever, a wheel of swords spinning so fast it looked solid, pouring everything it had into keeping him moving.
A mercenary captain stepped up with an executioner’s axe. Danzing looked up at him, grinned through bloody teeth, and drove Doomfall through the man’s gut.
They fell together .
The wheel of swords flickered once. Twice. Then it went dark, and Danzing stopped moving, and the last of the Sword-Kin died on a pile of men he’d taken with him.
「The Knight demands blood.」
「Your blood or theirs. The blade doesn’t care.」
I pushed the Brand’s hunger down. The Sword-Kin had held long enough. The servants were clear. The soldiers were clear. Baldir and Armand were clear. Everyone who could be saved had been saved.
The mercenaries poured through the gate, but we had distance now, and the darkness, and the smoke.
Fifty-one. I’d counted the bodies around Danzing’s corpse. Fifty-one mercenaries dead, piled at his feet alone. The others had killed dozens more. Six Sword-Kin against an army, and the army had paid the butcher’s bill.
Make it mean something.
I ran.
“Danarre!” Maise’s voice, from somewhere ahead. “Move!”
I ran harder. Behind me, the mercenaries reorganized, but they were cautious now. They’d seen what six Branded warriors could do. They weren’t eager to find out what waited in the darkness beyond.
The Sword-Kin had bought us that caution with their lives.
It would have to be enough.
◇ ◆ ◇
「Hel’s Ledger」
Vessel: Danarre de Blaise | Year 828 | Age 13
House de Blaise | Status: Bastard (Unacknowledged)
Location: Road from Duke Hemmrich’s Estate
「Knight of Swords」 — Raging
「Emperor」 — Stirring
「Magician」 — Sleepin g
Active Charge: Find the Hierophant. End what was begun.
Six Brands went dark tonight. Six warriors who’d lived through a hundred battles chose to die holding a gate so two boys with the right blood could run.
The vessel counted the bodies. Fifty-one at Danzing’s feet alone.
That’s what Branded warriors cost when they stop holding back.
That’s what the vessel will cost someday, if he lives long enough to grow into it. She can wait.