Chapter 26 #2
One by one, bodies separated from trees and boulders—to the right, the left, behind us. Their faces were smeared with mud, bodies garbed in tattered, earth-colored rags. I caught sight of a cracked sword, a thick branch, a rusted ax. Weapons as makeshift as their clothes.
They stared at us, eerily silent.
“Horrads?” I whispered in a quivering voice. I counted fifteen, maybe twenty.
“No,” Harthon replied. His sword jutted past my thigh. “Looters.”
One of them raised their hand, and the group began closing in. They approached quietly, like they, too, were afraid of making noise and calling attention here.
They weren’t the only predators in these woods.
Harthon hit the ground and ushered me down. “Take a moment to watch and decide if you take the offensive. If you get into trouble, call out. Doesn’t matter if I have five of them on me.”
I nodded, shaking out my arms. As if that tiny warmup is going to magically improve your skills. Stefano and Joris flanked me.
Aric tossed his sword in his palm and nodded to the left side of the incoming circle. “Let’s not wait for all of them to get within hugging distance, hmm?”
In a burst of speed that took even me by surprise, he, Conrad, and Harthon charged.
It was like cutting through butter. Within seconds, four of the looters were dead. The rest of them broke their circular formation and jolted into action, rushing us.
Stefano and Joris edged in front of me, gifting me three precious breaths before someone made it far enough to engage me. The man’s rotten teeth gnashed as he swung his club. I jerked to the side, then stepped in on his downswing and jammed the blade beneath his ribs.
He stumbled in shock, the club limp at his side. Blood sprayed as I pulled the dagger free and sent it into his neck. He dropped, lifeless.
I didn’t get to appreciate how easy that was because the next person replaced him, wielding a sword carved from bark. A woman, I realized, before spinning away to dodge the sharp wood.
Evade, then rush.
My arm extended at the end of my rotation, and the dagger struck her shoulder. Her lips parted on a silent gasp before she swung high. I ducked and swept back in, shoving up beneath her ribs.
Confidence tempered adrenaline as she fell and I searched for another opponent.
But there wasn’t one. I spun to see Stefano easily finishing the last man, while bodies surrounded Harthon, Conrad, and Aric. Blood speckled their clothing, but none of them appeared injured.
Harthon made quick work of the space between us, cataloguing my body for injuries as he approached. The worst he found was a blood splatter across my arm from the first man. From beginning to end, the fight had lasted less than a minute. The entire thing had been remarkably underwhelming.
“You’ve improved.” He said it objectively, like a commander might evaluate a trainee, but I caught approval in the curve of his lips.
He was right. I had gotten better.
I opened my mouth to reply when a spine-chilling scream rent the temporary peace in two.
I jumped, and Harthon yanked me behind him. Dread slithered into my stomach as the primal noise echoed through the quiet landscape.
We knew that sound.
It was the same one we’d heard earlier in the day—the sound of a brutal, horrific death.
But this one was no distant cry. It was around us, above us, in the very air we breathed.
They appeared then, much like a swarm of flies drawn to the smell of a mortally wounded animal.
One or two at first, sporadic enough to make the animal think it might have a chance to escape, and find a place to heal without being infected with flystrike.
But then those flies would multiply, bursting into a throng of wings and single-minded intent, and no matter how fast the animal ran, no matter what ditch it cowered in or how fiercely it swiped its claws, those flies would swallow it in a cloud, feast on its flesh, and lay their eggs.
Except here, they weren’t small insects, but people. At least forty of them. And they were everywhere, appearing from every direction I spun to in panic.
The source of that terrible scream appeared—a looter with their stomach spilled open. The bloody hands holding him threw him carelessly to the ground.
“Meet the Horrads,” Aric breathed.
Like the looters, the Horrads were armed with makeshift weapons and covered in shapeless, earth-toned rags.
But unlike the looters, their heads were covered with what looked like burlap sacks, and the skin of their hands was hidden by gloves.
There were no holes cut for their eyes or mouths, but they moved deftly, easily, suggesting the fabric was woven loosely enough for them to see and breathe.
And unlike the looters, there was no chance we could successfully fight our way out of them. Our level of skill or ferocity didn’t matter. We were simply outnumbered.
“We have two options,” Aric rushed out, his voice tight and gritty. “Fight now and die now, hopefully quickly. Or we don’t fight back, we’re taken captive, and we die slow, painful deaths. The latter gives us a chance to escape, but the likelihood of suffering is much higher.”
I wondered if they could hear us as they closed in, but the burlap sacks allowed no insights, no sense of whether their faces salivated as they tasted our fear. Promises of death would be better than the blank visages bearing down on us.
Fear was a wild thing, sprouting into every limb, screaming at me to run. But there was nowhere to go.
Harthon turned to me. “I will get you out of this. I promise you,” he vowed, the words so sure and determined, they had to be true. But his expression was tight with what looked suspiciously like fear, and that might have been the scariest thing of all.
“Domus help us all,” Aric muttered, dropping his sword. “Swallow your pride and don’t struggle.”
Harthon dropped his weapon, then Joris and Stefano. The leather grip of my dagger slipped through my fingers.
Conrad was the only one who didn’t. Sneering in determination, he cocked his arm back to throw a dagger.
“Brother, don’t,” Aric hissed.
Conrad hesitated, reconsidering his choice.
What he decided, we’d never know, because all at once, five blades impaled his stomach and legs. His face slackened in shock, and he collapsed.
There was no time to process his death.
The stench of rot and sweat came with their bodies. They reached Harthon first, and I stood, frozen in horror, as a Horrad swung the butt of their wooden sword and cracked him in the skull.
He dropped before I could try to catch him.
His body crumpled on the ground, blood blooming from a wound at his temple, was the last thing I saw before something rammed into my own head.
* * *
Time washed away in a blur of tangled branches and shapeless hues of brown. Pain beat across my skull every time consciousness surfaced, only to disappear when one of those burlap bags loomed over my face and sent a wash of bitter-tasting syrup into a mouth I never remembered opening.
I didn’t want to open it for them.
I didn’t want to be here at all.
No, that wasn’t right, because the kernel of heat in my chest was humming. Content.
The path. Yes, the path. I’m going to bring Harthon there—
Harthon.
My eyes fluttered open before I could remember not to. The faceless figure above me tilted their head down. Blank fabric met my blurred vision. A weak moan vibrated against my ears.
Then glass was shoved between my lips again, and that horrible syrup drained down my throat, and I was sucked under.