Chapter 43
The rest of the travel party wouldn’t be gone much longer, but Vera buzzed with adrenaline. She felt … different. There was dread about her decision’s gravity, but there was elation, too.
“Do we have time to run?” she asked as she paced the room.
Lancelot had been nearly as eager for it as her, though he insisted that Vera wear her armor and sword. “We should have been doing this more. It’s good training.”
Vera groaned. She’d only run with her armor and the sword Randall made her once before. It was cumbersome how the sword, strapped to her back, clanged about and threatened to trip her every step when she didn’t actively think about its presence.
“All the more reason to do it now and get used to it,” Lancelot said. “Sort of the whole point of training, Guinna.”
She argued for no helmets or leg guards, just a chainmail shirt over her running clothes with her sword and shield strapped on her back. Lancelot, presumably softened from his close brush with losing her, rolled his eyes and relented.
Vera took the back stairs down past the kitchen, where she nearly ran head-on into a tank of a man hefting giant sacks of grain from the back of a cart into the inn’s kitchen.
“Morning!” she squeaked as she darted past him.
His eyes landed on her, and they didn’t leave.
She thought he might have recognized her, but then his expression went vacant and unreadable.
It unnerved Vera, but she quickly forgot about it when she rounded the corner and found Lancelot waiting for her in his chainmail shirt with his much heavier sword strapped in a sheath on his back.
Lancelot reached into his pocket and pulled out what, at first glance, she thought was a rodent.
She jumped back from the fuzzy grey ball dancing in his palm.
But it wasn’t fur. Vera stepped closer. The baseball-sized lump was made of swirling grey smoke that whirled contentedly in his hand.
It had no face nor any kind of features, yet somehow, it felt happy.
“I wanted you to know about this in case I bump my head on a branch and get knocked out or otherwise incapacitated. It’s another Gawain invention,” he said, his mouth lifting in a crooked smile.
“He has one, and I have one. If shit goes sideways for them, his will come flying and find us—and then it can lead us back to his location. Likewise, if one of us gives this a good chuck, it’ll find Gawain. ”
Vera poked the wisp and had the distinct sense that it giggled, though she heard no sound. “How is it … cute?”
Lancelot laughed. “I don’t know. Gawain is the most extraordinary weirdo,” he said fondly.
It only took ten minutes of running for days of mounting stress to feel lighter. Vera and Lancelot slid back into their usual banter. She teased him about how many times he’d told her to “shut up” earlier before they moved on to gossiping about whether Randall and Matilda had taken up together.
It was never to be more than a few miles out into the woods next to town before they turned around.
They’d looped around a tree to head back and had run past a burly man with an axe just off the lane.
After a few minutes, Lancelot went quiet.
He only responded to Vera with one or two-word responses.
Then his smile dropped, and his features went taut.
Vera’s skin prickled as she said, “What’s going—”
“Keep running.” Lancelot dove his hand into his pocket without breaking his stride and pulled out the friendly wisp, giving it a toss. It darted away from them through the trees at an impossible speed.
“We need to get out of the woods,” he whispered.
Vera matched his faster gait. They didn’t have far to go until they cleared the trees into the expansive open field.
She sighed and slowed when the morning sun hit her full-on in the face, but her sense of safety was short-lived. Lancelot grabbed her arm.
“Keep going.”
They were at least twenty minutes out from the inn or any building, for that matter. The road stretched before them, and when Vera followed it with her gaze, she saw it. Three figures—coming toward them.
“Shit,” Lancelot hissed. He glanced over his shoulder.
Vera chanced a look, too. There were yet two more men behind them, slower under the bulk of sheer body size, but they were running.
The shorter made up for his height in width—and the Viking axe in his hand.
It was the man Vera had seen in the woods.
Assuming he was a woodcutter, she hadn’t thought anything of him, but that was a battle axe.
She didn’t know where the man at his side came from.
He was taller, with an impressive beard and wild hair, and he ran with an unsheathed sword.
The blade was so large Vera would have hardly been able to swing it once.
He wielded it as easily as a plastic toy.
The other figures, the ones approaching from town, were much closer now.
Three men, and not young either: two looked like grizzled farmers in their simple dirt-worn clothing, armed with swords and daggers.
She nearly stumbled when she recognized the third as none other than the giant of a man she’d seen behind the inn.
Vera and Lancelot could have outrun the two behind them, but with three in front of them? They were trapped.
“They can’t be coming for us,” Vera said, a desperate plea. She knew the answer.
“I’ve fucked up.” Lancelot slowed to a stop.
She followed his lead, stopping next to him as her eyes darted from one armed group to the other, far too close now.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he drew his sword.
“We’re going to pull off the road here, and if they follow, you’re going to have to fight, Guinna.
Stay close. Keep your focus. I’ll get you through this.
” He took her elbow and led Vera off the road so no one was behind them.
All five men approached, making a beeline for them.
“Sword drawn, shield up,” Lancelot said hurriedly. “Now Guinna. Get your sword. Stay behind me.”
It was all he had time to say as the first two, the ones who’d followed them in the woods, reached them.
The one with the enormous longsword came first. He fought with it in two hands.
Lancelot held his sword one-handed, his shield in the other, giving him more reach but less power.
It was all deliberate. He drew the man out, feigning vulnerability and enticing the attacker into swinging his sword with all his might.
Lancelot raised his shield just in time to take a blow that was so powerful Vera was convinced it would crack the shield in two.
She cried out on the impact, but Lancelot held strong and seized on the man’s vulnerable stance to slice deep into his belly and rip the blade free, entrails and blood following in its wake.
One down.
Vera pulled her gaping jaw shut and forced herself to breathe deeply. This was no time to panic. No time to process the horror she’d seen at her friend’s hands.
The wide man with the battle axe was already on Lancelot, and the other three were close behind.
Lancelot was a great warrior, but four men were too many to fight on his own.
Vera inched closer. She didn’t want to make it worse with her ineptitude, but she didn’t want to leave him stranded.
Lancelot fought the man with the axe and the first farmer to join the fray from the other group, too.
He was locked in with both when the giant from the inn lumbered in with a blow aimed at Lancelot’s vulnerable side.
Vera lurched forward with her shield out and blocked him.
The force of it sent her tumbling backward, feet over her head.
“Up, Guinna!” Lancelot shouted without breaking from his fight.
It was the first thing she’d learned in their training: to stay on her feet at all costs. She scrambled up, nearly slicing her leg with her own blade, and stumbled backward.
The giant fixed on her with ravenous eyes, his black pupils so large they filled his whole iris.
“Guard up!” Lancelot cried over his shoulder.
She raised her shield, having not even realized she’d lowered it.
The giant man skirted around Lancelot and the other two (soon to be three as the final farmer joined the fray).
Lancelot tried to maneuver to stop him, but there was nothing for it. Vera had to fight.
When she used her shield to deflect his sword’s first swing, it rattled her, reverberating from the spot on her forearm behind the shield all the way to her teeth, clenched together in effort.
Vera blocked blow after blow. The man was relentless—and gaining speed as he attacked.
She knew she should counter-strike when he came off balance but was terrified to chance it.
She channeled all her focus into one task: trying not to die.
Lancelot fought his three back enough to steal a second and rush to help Vera. With his sword, he stopped a swift swing aimed at Vera’s collarbone and yelled to her, “Run!”
She needed no more telling.
Sweat drenched her skin as she sprinted further into the field, Lancelot on her heels.
This was different from distance running, though.
It was a mad sprint following exhausting sword fighting.
They couldn’t sustain it and used it only to gain better footing before their assailants caught up, and the fight resumed.
Vera couldn’t imagine holding off three attackers the way Lancelot did. Her arms drooped from trying to keep them up to block the nonstop attacks, and her breath came in rattling gasps. She wasn’t going to be able to carry on much longer.