Chapter 40 #2
‘Get out of here!’ Llewyn snapped, pushing Harwick towards the window.
His gaze danced, moving between the three templars.
He was fast enough, he thought, to keep them occupied for a few moments.
The room was small, and crowded with three beds along the walls.
Not much room to manoeuvre, but enough, so long as he kept himself between his attackers and the window.
With luck, he might buy time for Fola and Colm to arrive—assuming they yet lived and the battle had not cut them off from this side of the keep.
Harwick’s presence, and death, would buy little more.
Harwick shook his head, gripped his hatchet with both hands, and planted himself in front of the window. ‘They’re my family, too, Llewyn,’ he snarled. Blood dribbled down his chin. He spat out a tooth.
The swordswoman denied Llewyn the chance to argue.
She gripped her massive sword high on the handle, one hand wrapped around the base of the blade.
She lunged and thrust. Llewyn dodged towards the window.
The tip of her sword caught the mattress on the left-hand wall, sending up a shower of fabric and straw.
Llewyn lashed out as she shifted her balance for another attack.
He felt his ghostwood bite into flesh. She grunted, then laughed as blood poured from her thigh to spatter the floorboards.
‘A good start, tree-devil,’ she snarled. The flames around her head flared. A shudder worked through her, a tension like a coiled spring. ‘Now, faster.’
The younger knight moved behind her, closing on Harwick, but Llewyn had no attention to spare.
It took everything just to keep the swordswoman at bay.
Her blade cut flashing arcs through the air as she surged forward.
Llewyn dodged as often as he could and deflected when he could not, but there were too many blows, falling too quickly, too powerfully.
He kept her between him and the doorway, denying the robed templar a chance to join the fray, but every backward step cost him the space he would need to dodge the next blow.
Breath came slow and shallow as exhaustion took hold.
He slipped past a downward slash. Instead, it hewed a leg from one of the beds.
She threw her shoulder into him. He stumbled, and she whipped her blade up from a low guard.
The tip caught his ribs as he tried to dodge away.
Pain flared across his chest. The sharp heat of the cut, then the slow, smouldering burn left by raw iron.
The swordswoman paused to study him. ‘Is that all? No spells? No glamours to trick my eye? I might have found a better challenge on the battlefield.’
The enrobed templar snapped an order.
With a sneer, the swordswoman attacked again. Three blows hammered at Llewyn. He caught the first. The second batted his blade aside. The third carved through his shoulder. He screamed and lurched backwards, his blood seeping, his flesh blistering.
Have I bought enough time? Moments grew slippery in a fight—stretching and compressing. Siwan could have made the wall by now. Maybe even the treeline.
He hoped so. There could be no knowing.
Run, girl. His thoughts reached for her, as once they had reached for the Grey Lady. Keep running. Find a place where Parwys isn’t even on the bloody maps.
He shook himself. Brought up his blade. Willed it to become broader, more flexible.
Better able to absorb the swordswoman’s blows.
His chest burned. His right arm had gone numb, save the searing pain in his shoulder.
It still moved when he willed it, albeit sluggishly.
Strength drained from him with every pulse.
No matter. A few minutes more, and Siwan would be free of these people.
Free to find her peace. To live the life she wanted.
Freed of the fiend, with Fola’s help. If the sorceress survived.
For that, he could give up his own freedom in these last moments of life.
He stepped back, moving towards the window, sweeping his blade with one hand to menace the swordswoman and the enrobed priest in turn, who was moving past her, his blazing hand outstretched.
Llewyn reached for his pocket.
The ring slipped on as easily as breathing. As though his thumb had longed for it all these years. A hateful thought. Not one to linger on.
She was there at once, her mind settling onto his like a sheen of oil on a pool of water.
the Grey Lady said.
‘I need strength,’ Llewyn snarled.
The swordswoman cocked her head. ‘You what?’
‘These people are your enemies as much as they are mine.’
A shout—Harwick fell, blood spurting from his side. The young templar’s sword flashed red.
Though it had been years, Llewyn knew the Grey Lady’s mind. Knew her fears—the deep paranoia that filled her, root and branch. She sent her gwyddien out into the world to prune her rivals because, for all her age, for all she projected knowledge and strength, she was always and ever afraid.
‘When they are done, they will hunt you next.’
The thought was sharp with anger—and with fear.
Despite her words, her thoughts flowed through his, a barrage of image and sensation.
She had sent her Huntress. One of her eldest, most potent gwyddien.
These three mortals had overcome her, buried her in their dungeon, cut the ring from her finger.
‘Enough of this,’ the priest said.
‘Give me strength,’ Llewyn begged. ‘I will make them bleed.’
No matter that his reasons and hers diverged. They had a hatred in common. Water and soil for violence and tragedy.
The priest opened his hand while the swordswoman and the young templar slowly converged, blades ready.
the Grey Lady said.
A true warning, he knew. There was no glamour in the words.
He saw Siwan on the altar. Heard her broken voice: ‘Papa … Please …’
At Nyth Fran, he had given up everything he knew to save her. But that had been a reflex. An outflow of his own anger, his own old hurts. This was different. He knew her, now. Had watched her become, transforming from a frightened, orphaned child into the bright, talented young woman she was.
The priest closed his hand. Cold flames burned in the air between them, reaching for Llewyn. Coalescing.
Llewyn thought of Siwan on the stage, as alive as anyone had ever been. Gittern in hand, her voice clear and beautiful as summer birdsong.
He would risk anything. Pay any cost. Make any sacrifice so that she might walk a stage again.
‘Give me strength,’ he screamed. ‘Now!’
His next breath carried a rush like he had never known, even in Nyth Fran, at the peak of his service.
No mere glamour, this. No simple power to draw spirits from stone.
Every fibre of his being vibrated and pulsed with life.
Exhaustion boiled away like steam—though the burning of raw iron in his wounds redoubled and spread like molten stone.
Llewyn lunged through the cold flames. They closed around him. The air felt thick. Weight like chains settled on his limbs, but he surged through.
His blade hummed as it whipped towards the priest’s neck.
The swordswoman’s fist caught him in the stomach.
She grunted, the floorboards groaning beneath her with the impact.
The wind left Llewyn—and was replaced by his next pulse, even as he struck the windowsill.
His body was carried not by breath, now, but by rage.
His own, and the Grey Lady’s. One of his ribs was cracked.
Blood seeped from his cheek and gums. His teeth felt loose.
He spat blood, rolled to the side and sprang to his feet as the swordswoman’s blade smashed through the wall, shattering the window.
He risked a glance towards the battlement. Siwan lingered there, silhouetted against the forest canopy that stretched towards the distant purple mountains beyond, just visible as shades on the horizon. Damon pulled at her arm, trying to drag her to the ladder of vines behind her.
‘Go!’ he roared, his lungs aching, his chest and shoulder burning. Not only from his injuries—the Grey Lady’s power seared his veins like poison even as it strengthened him. There was no knowing how long before the cost of it began to outweigh the power it lent.
The swordswoman wrenched her weapon from the ruined wall. Llewyn gave her no time to attack. Ghostwood met raw iron again and again as he hammered her back, one eye on the robed priest. The priest’s hand flexed, blazing with magical fire, as he struggled to track the pace of their contest.
A wild grin split the swordswoman’s face as she backpedalled towards the door, her iron blade a blur.
Llewyn slipped past it twice, thrice, leaving thin weeping cuts through her armour.
It would have been over already had he been able to focus entirely on the attack.
Instead, his attention was divided as he manoeuvred to keep ahead of the flames that burned from the priest’s grasping hand.
Even still, he could feel the tide turning, the pace of her defences slowing.
Hope flowered anew. Bright. Terrible. Full of promise and the risk of that promise breaking.
A few moments more and it would be over. The Grey Lady’s power might consume him, but Siwan would escape. He would spend himself to save her. She would live and grow and be happy, as he had never been.
But there were three of them in that room, and he was alone.
He felt it first as heat. A white coal buried in the small of his back, driving through and out from his belly. The point of a shortsword protruded there. Raw iron, smoking where it burned his flesh and blood.
His legs buckled as he made one more step, one final attempt to strike.
Limp-wristed. All his strength and might had bled away.
He collapsed. Heard, distantly, over the roaring in his ears and the din of battle, a voice screaming his name.
And wondered—for a few slowing heartbeats—what had become of the mother who had given him away.