Warmoon [ONC 2020]•[Shortlisted]•[Honorable Mention List, Stunning Worlds]

16. Fire

"Aim small," Rhoa whispered. Then she squeezed the trigger. A split-second later Old Marjan went flying backwards, a heavy crossbow bolt skewering his left arm and dragging him with it, pinning him to the trunk of the pine tree the villagers had felled.

It didn't slow them down. They kept coming, carrying the log on their shoulders, Old Marjan stumbling right along with them. 

When they first started up the road with the tree, she had shouted at them, warning them. They hadn't heeded anything. Then she wounded several of them, taking out knees and arms and shoulders, and still they kept marching, legs lifting in tandem like some sort of freakish centipede. They shouldn't have been able to move, but they were nearly to the ravine.

"What are you?" Rhoa growled, lowering the crossbow. She had picked off six of the villagers as they brought their pine trunk up the road, but they didn't show any signs of stopping. Now they were preparing to cantilever the thing, pinned Marjan and all, over the dry moat so the rest could reach the wall of the fortress.

Meanwhile, none of the villagers were in the kill square yet, and young Faltes Gaffig and Welson Urchland were down there, holed up behind a spur of rocks, waiting for her to show her face so they could pick her off with their hunting bows.

She needed to get higher. Grabbing a second crossbow, she took the narrow steps up to the roof of the gatehouse at a run, then scuttled forward to one of the merlons between the archer's crenels. Breathing hard, she pressed her back up against sun-warmed stone and began drawing the crossbow string back. She dropped a bolt into the slot, brought the crossbow to her shoulder, then whipped around to stand in the gap of the crenel, focusing the crossbow sights on that spur of rock.

Faltes was the better marksman, so he was first. Rhoa tried not to sob when the bolt plowed him down. She doubted Faltes was in that twisted body, anymore. If he was, he was trying to kill her and everyone else in the fortress. She hauled the other crossbow to her shoulder and switched targets. Alerted to her new position, Welson was drawing his bow, taking aim on her when she fired. A split-second later he flew backward, landing in a crumpled heap several yards from the rocks. He didn't move again, a bolt sticking out of his chest.

Rhoa snatched up both crossbows and ran back down the stairs and out onto the gateway rampart, scooping up the last two quivers of bolts on her way through the gatehouse.

She stopped, slung one of the quivers to the ground, put her back to a merlon, and began rearming the crossbows. 

Her hands paused on the windlass.

The Vanguard had braced the stable doors shut with the poles from the hitching posts and a bench from the lean-to, and was walking backwards away from it. He came to a halt in the middle of the bailey, raised his arms slightly, his fingers drawing invisible symbols in the air. Then he bowed his head and turned his hands palm down. For a moment, nothing happened. Then something stirred the layer of salt dust and straw on the cobblestones at the farthest edges of the courtyard. Whatever it was, it began moving toward him as if he were pulling it in, trickling at first, then becoming a gathering rush, eddying and swirling at his feet, growing stronger, bigger, till it coiled in a faint, glowing sphere around him. 

It was the hum, that ripple of power running through the ground. He was drawing on it, channeling it into himself. 

Rhoa drew in a sharp breath as brilliant scarlet flames suddenly erupted from his hands, racing along the coppery tattoos on his forearms.

None of the stories she had ever heard about the forbidden Vanguard magic had done it justice. It wasn't just a myth they spread to make themselves seem dangerous, it was real, and she was watching it happen right in front of her.