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 onewould 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.
