Empire of Ashes

Chapter LXXXVIII - Runaway

[Warning: This is the second part of a double update, and if you haven't read 'Sword Song' you should run back there right now. You have been warned].

Now, I could have left it there and made you wait, couldn't I? I could have. You can just remember that while you're sharpening your knives and forming your lynch mob. This chapter is meant to buy me a few minutes to run away and start my new life in a cave underground where you guys can't find me ;)

***

The king was twitching behind us. He was still alive, somehow, and that realisation snapped something inside me. I reached sideways, closed my palm around the hilt of Tem's sword, prying it from his stiff fingers ... and I brought the blade down on the king's neck with all my desperate, manic strength.

In the crowd above, a woman screamed. There was a horrible pause, and then she screamed again, and she kept screaming, and I knew it was the queen.

The screams seemed to wake the onlookers from their trances. The guards were moving at long last. They closed in with their spears and swords — a deadly circle of iron. But they were not the only ones who were moving. On the northern balcony, I could hear panicked shouting and the sounds of knuckles hitting flesh.

I stood up just as the northerners jumped down from the walkway. Anlai lunged for the king's discarded sword, and he managed to lift it a heartbeat before one of the guards swung at his neck. There was a horrible grating noise as the two blades clashed. The next thing I knew, the guard was lying onto the ground, choking on his own blood, and Anlai's back was pressed against mine.

"Kill them," someone shouted. "Protect the king."

It was too late for that. Herox was lying belly up, his grey eyes staring accusingly at me. Tem had gutted him, and I had opened his throat.

The soldiers closed in. I caught a fleeting glimpse of Fendur and Melia through the press of bodies, and then they vanished again. In the far corner of the lawn, the king's bastard was lying on the ground, and it looked like he had fallen from the walkway above. He was trying and failing to rise, because one of his legs was shattered, the bone peeking through the skin.

A dozen Anglians had come down from the walkway. There were enough of them to surround us properly, and they didn't hesitate to do it. A heartbeat before the circle closed, Fendur ducked beneath a sword swing and crashed into us. I turned a blow which would have taken his head from his shoulders.

If the Anglians took another few steps, we would be overwhelmed. For the moment, they were cautious of Anlai, who had cut down four of their number like stalks of wheat, but even that wouldn't last long. We were three against twenty, and we were going to die.

We needed help. I could see Melia now — she had found herself a sword, and she was using it to hack an Anglian soldier into little pieces. I could not, however, see Fendur anymore, and that worried me, so I risked a glance over my shoulder. The Iyrak was kneeling beside Tem's body.

"You're alright, Tem," Fendur breathed. "You're... You're alright."

Another shouted command, and the soldiers took another step forwards. The closest were within reach now, so Anlai and I were forced to fend off a forest of blades. These men were not green peasants in second-hand uniforms. They were the best of the best, and I was struggling. A giant of a man stabbed at my throat, and I could feel my muscles tearing with the sheer force it took to turn the blow. I managed to slice his shin open, more luck than skill, and he toppled like a felled tree.

"Well?" Anlai demanded. "Is he—?"

"He's dead," Fendur said, and he was so shell-shocked that the words came out perfectly calm. Matter-of-fact, even.