Chapter 17
Bastion sat up like a cadaver risen from the dead.
Ulla.
He staggered to his feet with a groan.
His head pounded, and he didn’t know if it was the blood in his ears or the sea that he heard. Fragmented images flashed in his mind: a fall of satin, flesh yielding to claws, a well of stairs. He clutched his chest, expecting to find it torn open.
Instead, his fingers caught on chainmail, cold but whole.
The ache intensified, as if his heart were an anchor moored somewhere behind him. He took a deep breath and willed it to come back, desperate to stow it safely within his ribcage, but it staunchly refused.
Laughter made him freeze, the sound altogether wrong in the night. He reached for his sword and drew it slowly. Ignoring the tautness beneath his sternum, Bastion stalked towards the voices, his grip cold and stiff.
In a pool of hazy lamplight, two men looted an unconscious guard. One pressed a ball of wax into the guard’s nose.
“Think he’ll suffocate?” the pirate grinned.
“Would ye’ stop fooling! The others will be here anytime!” the second groused. He lifted a gold pendant from his chest. “Or should I tell Buck ye don’t want yer share of plunder?”
Bastion roared. The pirates startled as he charged in and cut down one before he could rise.
The wax bounced from his hand as Bastion’s blade opened him up.
Blood spilled across the battlements. The second staggered back, his eyes like full moons.
Bastion stepped over the fallen crewmate and backhanded him.
The pirate spun around and caught the battlements, babbling nonsensically as he scrambled to get away.
Bastion seized him by the neck and twisted him around.
They grappled, each struggling to get the upper hand in the dark.
Bastion tried to snatch the pendant from his neck with one hand while the pirate shoved him away.
He kicked at Bastion, succeeding in only pushing off his thighs and arching over the wall.
Just when Bastion was about to drop his sword and throw him on the ground, the man toppled over backwards.
His scream vanished amid the roaring waves.
Bastion growled a curse and slammed the flat of his fist against the stone. Furious, he searched the first man, but found nothing.
As he stood and looked out over Moonwatch, the ache in his chest spread.
Ulla, he thought again. I have to find Ulla.
He set off south, keeping low as he crept around fallen bodies.
Just as he stepped into the stairwell beneath the southern watchtower, the sound of scrambling along the wall made him freeze.
A dark shape swung a leg over the battlements.
Two more rose from the shadows and clapped arms with the newcomer.
Bastion retreated into the darkness, watching while they laughed and gloated.
More followed from the outer wall. Bastion forced his breathing to steady, counting the men.
Beside him, a crumpled guard groaned. Bastion’s eyes flashed back to the team of intruders.
They were dead silent, predatory attention trained on the guard. With an alarming amount of stealth, they moved closer. Around him, other guards began to stir, but not fast enough. They would be slaughtered before they knew what was happening. Bastion readied himself.
The moment he saw starlight reflected in steel, he acted.
He burst out of the doorway, leapt over the groggy guards, and thrust his sword into the first pirate with a snarl. The man died with a strangled gurgle. Bastion used the surprise to slash at the next pirate and throw him down into the courtyard.
“MOONWATCH IS UNDER ATTACK!” he yelled over his shoulder.
The pirates screamed a battle cry. Bastion leveraged himself against the curtain wall.
He kicked and elbowed, and more pirates flew into the darkness.
In the chaos, one got inside his guard and pinned his sword arm to the stone.
Bastion punched him in the nose and switched his blade to his left hand.
“THE PIRATES ARE INSIDE!” he shouted.
Metal rang out in the night as guards joined the fight.
It echoed in his ears so loudly that it wasn’t until a wave of guards surged past him that he fell back and heard the alarm bell overhead.
The sounds of battle descended. Weapons clashed, and cries of pain filled the night. Even the sea felt silent.
Across the courtyard, the vivid orange of fire blazed to light. It danced wildly, too much for just a few torches.
“Nesrin,” Bastion whispered. A fragmented memory slammed inside his skull like a bell clapper.
Capture Lady Nesrin. She’ll be our bargaining chip.
Then another.
Bring her back alive.
His throat closed up. Ulla.
Buck wanted both of them.
Bastion hesitated. His heart demanded that he find Ulla, but she was barricaded in the Great Hall. Safe.
Across the yard, the gatehouse lurched and clanked. Calls for help and the clash of weapons erupted from the windlass over the portcullis. Bastion thumped his fist against his leg with a growl, the decision all but made for him. If the gate was opened, no one would be safe.
“Destroy their ladders! Hold the chokepoints!” he bellowed.
He ran for the stairs, a few guards still sprawled in his path. In the stairwell, he brandished his blade and leapt down the stairs. Blood pounded in his ears as his chest heaved. Hard breath clouded the winter air before him.
At the bottom, he tore across the courtyard. As he passed the portcullis, he cried, “Defend the gatehouse!”
Some of the guards still lay prone, their fellows trying to rouse them. The upright ones tightened their grip on their spears and shouted a confirmation. Bastion bounded up the stairs of the eastern wall and drew his long knife.
Pirates met him before he reached the top, silhouetted by growing flames.
He blocked their strikes in quick succession, deflecting blades so his knife hand could snake into any opening.
He fought his way up to the parapet walk, stabbing and slashing at exposed chests and limbs.
In the firelight, his sword gleamed carmine.
“Nesrin!” He kicked a man in the chest and spun to meet another who thought to sneak up on him. “Nesrin!”
Bastion drove his knife into the side of the man’s head with a sickening crunch. He switched sword hands again, parrying a fresh opponent as he wrenched his long knife free. An elbow to the face, and the man went flying.
“Bastion!”
He turned. Nesrin took down men with the force of a battering ram. She wielded a great-sword as if it were a shaft of wheat, her movements fluid, more meditation than massacre.
There were only a few men between them. Bastion charged and heaved the nearest over his shoulder, tossing him into the courtyard below. Another jumped back to avoid the reach of Nesrin’s blade and ran right into his sword.
The momentum of her swing came around with enough force to cut off the pirate’s head. The body crumpled in a fountain of blood.
Bastion stepped over it and clapped her forearm.
“Buck,” Bastion breathed. “He’s coming for you and Ulla.”
Nesrin’s eyes hardened. Then she seized him by the collar and pulled him behind her. She raised her great-sword, and an enemy’s blade crashed against it. With a snarl, she pushed her assailant away, then spun and swung. He split open, and blood sprayed across Bastion.
“Why does he want us?” Nesrin asked. She wiped her hand over her eyes, smearing scarlet across her mahogany skin as guards surged past them.
“Does it matter?”
Another wave of men came for them. Nesrin let her guards take down most of the pirates fighting towards her. The point of her sword rested on the ground behind her, leaving her front exposed. A grim smile curved her lips as one brawler broke through.
As he came into reach, she screamed and swung the great sword in an arc over her head. The blade cut through his shoulder and settled in his ribcage.
Bastion rushed in while she worked her weapon free. He pinned a sword against the crenels with his own, slashing at the nearest throat with his long knife. One man jumped back, jostling his fellow, who tumbled into empty space.
“Ulla!” Nesrin cried.
Bastion cast an alarmed look over his shoulder, the ache in his chest as taut as a bow string.
Ulla cut her way through the fray. A feral expression curled her lips back from gleaming fangs.
A pirate came for her, and she lurched backwards, parrying his sword with a frying pan, every hit reverberating like a gong.
Then, she clipped his jaw and, in a blink, opened his jugular with her bone knife.
She spun and knelt, sinking the blade into his inner thigh.
As the man fell, another hit her wrist with the flat of his blade. She dropped the frying pan. Hissing, Ulla seized him by the throat. A scream ripped from the pirate as her claws dug in. He arched backwards before collapsing at her feet.
“ULLA!” Bastion cried.
She turned, as if she’d heard him, and their eyes met. The noise of battle dampened, and relief softened her expression. Bastion’s heart skipped a beat. He was a fool for not understanding sooner.
Then, a blade sprouted from her side, just below her ribs. Bastion went cold, and his stomach hit the ground like an egg.
“NO!” he howled.
Ulla staggered sideways, revealing a gleeful pirate as she grasped the crenelations.
Swift and vicious, Bastion cut down every man in his path, leaving a trail of bodies behind him. He slammed heads into the curtain wall and gutted those too stupid or slow to move.
Ulla’s attacker watched in horror, primal fear freezing him in place. The point of Bastion’s blade sank into his belly before the man could even blink. Bastion kept eye contact as he reached for the man’s shoulder and thrust. Surprise painted his face, and blood dribbled from his mouth.
Bastion withdrew his sword and threw it down. He turned and collapsed beside Ulla, where she slumped against the wall, her face ashen. Blood bloomed beneath the hand she held to her side, and rivulets of crimson ran down her legs below cut-away skirts.
“Why didn’t you stay in the dining hall?” Bastion breathed.
Guards clattered past him as he tried to lift her hand. She convulsed, a terrible sound erupting from her throat. It struck his heart like lightning to a dry tree.
“Minato,” Bastion gasped. He leaned back and yelled, “I need Minato!”
He tried to rise, ready to eviscerate every person between him and the only other healer in Moonwatch. Ulla grabbed his wrist, stopping him, and he could feel the strength in her hand draining away like the blood now pooling beneath her.
Bastion leaned forwards, cradling her face in his palm. Her eyes were becoming unfocused. Her fist dropped onto her chest, and she moved it in a circle, so, so slowly.
“No, no, no!” Bastion cried. “Not now! Not like this!”
“Bastion.” It was Nesrin, as if from a long way off. “We have to move her before the fire reaches us.”
Hands pulled at him. He slapped them away. “Where is Minato!?”
Ulla gave him a sad smile, and then her hand slid away from her side.
“NO!” Bastion covered the wound with his palm. “Ulla, it’s only the beginning! We’ve only just found each other!”
He couldn’t fail. Not this time.
Bastion pressed his palm more firmly against her side and slid his other arm behind her back, pulling her closer. He’d overcome too many obstacles, been blind and stupid from the start. Fear of judgment had kept him at arm’s length when Ulla had already proven she understood what no one else did.
He pressed his face into her hair, pouring every ounce of his being into willing the blood beneath his hand to stop flowing. A cool, tingling sensation sparked across his palm.
“Don’t go,” he whispered.
A blood-slicked hand covered his, claws pricking his knuckles. Bastion jerked back. Ulla looked at him, awe brightening her eyes. He glanced at his palm. Blue light flickered beneath it.
His heart ricocheted against his ribs, and a new fear stung him from head to toe. Ulla mouthed one word.
Yvri.