The face behind the cut mask is almost ordinary. White skin, a little spotted with age, sagging.
Andeyeless.
Where eyes should be in his skull are just puckered sockets of skin. Rippling with scar tissue, sunken and unseeing.
I yelp, surprised, then disgusted, then?—
Shit. I have to blink, my own actual eyes watering against the thick fog of smoke burning into my membranes.
And then I realize. They're blind. They're all blind. They gouged their fucking eyes out or something. That's why they wear the masks, not to be anonymous, to be…
"If thine eye offend thee," the Brother intones in heavily accented English, "pluck it out."
He drives his blade through my left shoulder. I scream, from the surprise as much as the pain, a streak of fire slicing through muscle that I tense to ignore. I clutch at it, press down on the pulsing blood, and manage to get to my feet, even as the ground beneath me goes wet and slippery with my blood or his or both. Awkward, bent over, I force myself to straighten, ignore the wound, and stand en garde.
But it's not a fair fight. I can't see, and neither can they. But they don't need to. They trained like this.
I whirl around, another throb of pain shooting from my shoulder as I try to get any sense of location. King, Cal, Lanz,Gwenna—Where is Gwenna?I think, the voice in my head feral. A breeze skirts at my back, pushing just enough through the smoke, and then I see her. She made it to the side, to where the white heap of whatever it is stands, and she looks okay—God, thankGod, she looks okay, but?—
Crash. Someone barrels into me. Kingston, tripping, falling backwards as the Prior pushes his advantage.
"Fuck you!" I scream, and haul my arm forward, driving the blade to where I think the Prior must be. He parries it easily. Like flicking a fly. I cross-step in front of Kingston, trying to shield him as best I can, not sure if he's hurt or dead or…
"Kai, don't!" he yells.
All right, so not dead.
"They're blind!" I yell back. "They're fucking blind! Behind the masks, they—they have no eyes, King."
"Jesus Christ," I hear him mutter.
And then, barely two steps away, smoke swirls and a form drops to the flagstones, groaning. Lanz.
"Is he?" I don't get the words out because Callahan slashes whoever knocked Lanz down, bashing the side of his head, and the white-robed figure totters and then falls.
Kingston leaps from behind me, back on guard, taking the Prior's blade again, binding him. But I feel it. I sense it. An uncut terror that I know too well from practice bouts or a shitty tournament or just sparring in the salle. We're losing, I think. We're losing.
And no sooner does the thought flit through my mind than I'm knocked to the ground. A sweeping kick at my ankles. A blade at my throat.
"Yield!" someone barks, the voice from a face I can't see, the other end of the sword.
"No!" I scream, or try to. Because the smoke is too thick. I can't speak. I can't breathe. I can't see.
I can't find her.
FORTY
GWENNA
Icrawl.Awkward, messy, impulsive, unsure where I'm going. Just trying to find Morgan. Trying to get under the smoke and away. Because they dropped me, took up their swords, and now—clang—right above me, a blade catching blade. I look up at…Lanz, I think,Lanz, furiously beating back two of them, crack against crack of steel on steel, so near and loud and painful it hurts.
"Go!” he yells.
I don't wait. I scramble. My palms raw on the stone, my knees aching, trying to see, trying to find Morgan, trying to?—
A scream. My heart stops. I look back, I can't help it, and watch as one of the Brothers stabs—who is it? Kai? My heart squeezes—right in the shoulder.
No. I have to go. As soon as I get away, they'll follow, they'll stop fighting, they'll run with me, we'll?—
