Chapter 39
THIRTY-NINE
KAI
I just see flashes.
Gwenna kneeling. Yellow crosses. A pillar of white crumbling something. And Brothers everywhere. Robes and robes and robes.
No time to think, just fight. I streak behind Callahan. Leap up the steps three at a time and smash the guard of my weapon against the head of the nearest Brother I can reach. Fuck him. I don't care. I need to get to her.
Kingston darts ahead of me, dodging a swinging white arm. There's chaos, shouting, confusion, but he cuts through right to the Prior. Good. Fine. Touch for touch, I might be a better swordsman, but King can stay in control when I can't. And right now, I really can't.
The Brother I knocked stumbles into me, weapon barely raised, and I whale on him, slam down with my hand on his shoulder, and knock him sideways. Then cut across with my blade and stab. I cut through him, mow him down, and kick him as he falls to clear him out of the way.
I have to get to Gwenna. That's the goal. Everything else, animal, vegetable, or mineral, is just an obstacle I will blast to pieces.
Ahead in the center, Kingston's blade is a blur against the Prior's.
He's tired, fighting from a deficit, and the billowing haze of smoke from whatever's left of Camlann House isn't helping.
I cough as another Brother wings his blade at me, but I catch it, bind it easily, and shove it off, aiming another kick at wherever his balls are under that goddamn dress of his.
He's down. I head to my right as something slices through the smoke. Callahan. Three on one, but he's cutting them down easily. Berserker mode, whipping the blade back and forth and back and forth and catching each of them each time.
Pride and surprise flicker in me. Good for him.
But just as quickly, I snap my gaze around. Where is she? Where is she? What did those bastards do to her? Make her—
A blade whistles past my ear, too close.
I jump back, but barely. The haze is getting too thick, genuine smoke, black more than gray, hard to breathe, hard to see.
And I'm a good fighter, but I need my eyes to fight.
My one handicap, I guess. So I wend around a little, haphazard, cutting and slashing and trying to listen as much as I look for attacks, but it's hard.
It's really hard. This isn't lined up on a strip facing each other, no turning backs, timers going, safety equipment on.
This is a brawl. An all-sides assault, no rules, no halting, and no final score until someone hits the deck. And I can't fucking see.
I roar some kind of sound—frustration, rage, pent-up energy—and thrust at the nearest scrap of white I see—a head, a hood, who knows—but I miss.
Don't hit flesh or bone. Just catch the tip of my blade somewhere in the juncture between the hood and the mesh of the mask.
It drags me forward, and I rip it away, flicking the tip of the blade as I go, hoping I can cut the bastard across the face.
But he falls forward onto me, full body weight, two-hundred-some pounds of French swordfighting monk, and slams me to the flagstones.
The back of my skull cracks, and I wince, almost positive the skin is split and I'm bleeding, but I ignore it.
Push, kick, heave the man off of me, but he's heavy and it's hard and his cut mask is flapping around in the breeze and the smoke.
I glance up—could grab his throat if I can just see where his fucking face is—and horror chokes me.
I can't believe what I'm seeing.
The face behind the cut mask is almost ordinary. White skin, a little spotted with age, sagging.
And eyeless.
Where eyes should be in his skull are just puckered sockets of skin. Rippling with scar tissue, sunken and unseeing.
I yelp, surprised, then disgusted, then—
Shit. I have to blink, my own actual eyes watering against the thick fog of smoke burning into my membranes.
And then I realize. They're blind. They're all blind. They gouged their fucking eyes out or something. That's why they wear the masks, not to be anonymous, to be…
"If thine eye offend thee," the Brother intones in heavily accented English, "pluck it out."
He drives his blade through my left shoulder.
I scream, from the surprise as much as the pain, a streak of fire slicing through muscle that I tense to ignore.
I clutch at it, press down on the pulsing blood, and manage to get to my feet, even as the ground beneath me goes wet and slippery with my blood or his or both.
Awkward, bent over, I force myself to straighten, ignore the wound, and stand en garde.
But it's not a fair fight. I can't see, and neither can they. But they don't need to. They trained like this.
I whirl around, another throb of pain shooting from my shoulder as I try to get any sense of location.
King, Cal, Lanz, Gwenna—Where is Gwenna?
I think, the voice in my head feral. A breeze skirts at my back, pushing just enough through the smoke, and then I see her.
She made it to the side, to where the white heap of whatever it is stands, and she looks okay—God, thank God, she looks okay, but—
Crash. Someone barrels into me. Kingston, tripping, falling backwards as the Prior pushes his advantage.
"Fuck you!" I scream, and haul my arm forward, driving the blade to where I think the Prior must be. He parries it easily. Like flicking a fly. I cross-step in front of Kingston, trying to shield him as best I can, not sure if he's hurt or dead or…
"Kai, don't!" he yells.
All right, so not dead.
"They're blind!" I yell back. "They're fucking blind! Behind the masks, they—they have no eyes, King."
"Jesus Christ," I hear him mutter.
And then, barely two steps away, smoke swirls and a form drops to the flagstones, groaning. Lanz.
"Is he?" I don't get the words out because Callahan slashes whoever knocked Lanz down, bashing the side of his head, and the white-robed figure totters and then falls.
Kingston leaps from behind me, back on guard, taking the Prior's blade again, binding him. But I feel it. I sense it. An uncut terror that I know too well from practice bouts or a shitty tournament or just sparring in the salle. We're losing, I think. We're losing.
And no sooner does the thought flit through my mind than I'm knocked to the ground. A sweeping kick at my ankles. A blade at my throat.
"Yield!" someone barks, the voice from a face I can't see, the other end of the sword.
"No!" I scream, or try to. Because the smoke is too thick. I can't speak. I can't breathe. I can't see.
I can't find her.