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Ah, shit. Fooled no one.
Motion from the stairs revealed both Rathadas and Billat charging forward, their swords drawn.
The monk reached her first. She had raised her sword, thrusting its point towards the man, waiting for his heavy knife to move as he sought to sweep aside her blade – but he would miss, as she disengaged his attempted beat. Or so it should have been.
Instead, the monk threw the knife underhand with barely three paces between them.
Another heavy blow punched under her right arm, and she saw her sword leap from her grip, clattering against the wall before falling to the floor. The thrown knife had slipped between ribs, the massive, crooked blade sliding into her right lung. Sagging, slumping down the wall, Esk gagged as her mouth filled with blood.
Bodyguards. Of course they’re good. It started out too easily, down at the gatehouse.
As the monk swept past her to engage with Rathadas and Billat, he ran the thin blade of a parrying knife across her throat.
A sting, sudden warmth, and then nothing.
Seeing the monk casually slice open the lieutenant’s throat, Rathadas cursed and charged to close with the bastard.
His sword had the advantage of reach, as the monk facing him was readying a short-handled, single-bladed axe in his right hand, and a thin parrying knife in his left. His expression, as he watched Rathadas approach, was calm.
‘She came to parley!’ Billat shouted from behind Rathadas.
‘She came to die,’ the monk replied.
Rathadas bellowed as he attacked, slashing crossways to either cut or force away the monk’s two out-thrust hands. Instead, he cut through nothing but air. Recovering, he brought the blade back up, point angled to take the monk from low should the man seek to close – but something obstructed it, swept it out to the side. The parrying knife tapped his temple, making a sound like a nail driven through the side of a clay pot.
As the sound echoed, Rathadas stepped back, shaking his head. He was having trouble seeing. He then realized that he did not know where he was, or what the strange man now stepping past him had done to him. He stood, uncomprehending, as a second stranger reached him. Frowning, Rathadas watched the man swing a heavy knife casually towards him. Vaguely alarmed, he tried raising an arm to block the knife – which looked sharp and might hurt him – but his arm would not answer, or perhaps it was simply too slow. The knife edge sawed through his neck, cutting muscle, gristle and bone.
The world tilted crazily as Rathadas watched the floor rising to meet him.
Billat screamed when he saw Rathadas’s head roll forward, toppling from the man’s still upright body. A moment later, the lead monk reached the soldier. Cursing that they’d not been permitted to carry their shields, Billat backed away, his sword thrust out, its point dancing to keep his distance from the advancing monk. A shield would have made all the difference. He’d not have needed to worry about that second weapon, and behind a shield he could have charged the man, blocking the axe even if it was thrown at him, and then his sword would have done its work quickly.
He nodded to himself, only then realizing that he was sitting down, almost opposite the staircase. Sweat stung his eyes, making it difficult to understand what his hands were doing, there in his lap, repeatedly moving in a way something like shovelling, as they sought to push his intestines back into his body. It wasn’t working.
A shield. And a sword. Things would have turned out differently if he’d had those. He wouldn’t be sitting here on the floor.
Blinking back on a world that now stung, he saw his hands give up, and the guts roll out. He recalled trying to dig a latrine once, in sandy clay, and how the side walls kept caving in, until that damned pit was fifteen fucking paces across, and his comrades – all laughing – had had to throw him a rope so he could climb up the sloping sides. They’d known about the sand, of course. It was a rite of passage, being made into a fool, but how it had burned, how it had stung.
Humiliation. What a last thing to remember.
* * *
The heat from the fire engulfing the barracks forced Sergeant Telra and her soldiers back towards the entrance to the main building, where she decided they would await the reappearance of the lieutenant, once the ugly work inside was done with.
The shrieks from inside the barracks were gone now. No one had made it outside, meaning that she and her comrades had yet to bless their swords this night. Often, war forgot about being all about fighting, and instead became a sordid exercise in destruction, in flames and burned bodies stepped over, as if the aftermath had a way of creeping unseen over the present. In some ways, of course, that was a relief, but one could be left with the sense of having missed out on everything.
The heat and the flames, the billowing black smoke rising only to tumble over beneath the ceiling of white clouds, all reminded her of the last time she’d set fire to a building. That one had been an estate, empty but for a horrid old woman. Something of a debacle, to be honest. She’d exceeded her orders. Well, truth was, she’d been drunk.
Motion from the gatehouse drew her attention and she turned to see the first of Bahann’s advance squads arriving. Lieutenant Uskan was in the lead, sword in one hand and shield drawn round and set. Telra bit back a sneer. The man’s excessive caution hinted at cowardice, as far as she was concerned. Stepping forward, she said, ‘Sir. Lieutenant Esk is still in the main building. We got the company unawares – not a single man made it out of the barracks.’
‘How long?’ he demanded.
She frowned at his flushed face beneath the helm’s rim. ‘Sir?’
‘How long has she been in there, sergeant?’
‘Well, now that you mention it, some time’s passed.’
‘Stay here,’ he ordered, gesturing his squads to follow him. He brushed past Telra and entered the main building, his soldiers trooping after him.
