Chapter 61
Sixty-One
Gawain looked down at the arrow protruding from his stomach. It had sliced through his back and was tenting his chain mail. He placed his hand around the spike with detached confusion.
Then he saw Galehaut’s horrified stance. And mine. He knew it was Galehaut I’d saved. And he knew that this was how it ended.
I charged at Claudas. Somehow my sword was gone, and I swung my fists in a ragged haze, connecting with jaw and cheek, cracking a rib.
Yet Claudas was bigger than me, and despite his age he still possessed surprising strength.
He fought back, grabbing me by the arms, forcing me towards the grated window.
He crashed on top of me, right at the window’s ledge, a few steps up from the floor.
The collision had knocked open the grate and my head dangled out, my body splayed and flailing against the stairs.
The wound in my stomach had sapped me of my energy, and Claudas managed to shove me farther out the window, until my shoulders were leaning over the ledge.
I kicked and thrashed, trying to fend him off, but I was losing my will.
Gawain was dying and Galehaut could barely stand.
This man who had killed my parents would also kill me.
As my head extended out the window, I let the cold wash over me, blinked into the flurry of snow. Below me, the fatal drop to the beach. I felt Bagotta’s hand on my shoulder, urging me back in.
There will be moments when you are near death. Sometimes all it takes is one last push. Even if you die, you’ll know, in your final gasps, that you gave everything.
With a desperate undulation, I lifted my knees, planting my feet against Claudas’s thighs. He was hovering over me now, and with my last wisps of strength, I thrust him backward, over my head, towards the empty space of the sky.
As Claudas went flying out the window, his hand gripped my hauberk. It was just enough to pull me off the window ledge. Falling as Galehaut once had.
I was momentarily weightless, then my boot caught the grate. As I dangled out the window by my leg, the blood rushing to my head, Claudas smashed into the beach below.
Galehaut reached the window just in time to see my boot lose its grip.