Damsel Knight (36 page)

The body nearest her feet twitches.

Chapter 37

She runs down the darkened passageway, heart pounding, sword gripped tight in her hand.

Neven would be proud of her. She’d used her brain for once. Most of the dead hadn’t done anything more threatening than drool, but enough stumbled toward her to see that fighting would not be a good thing.

Julius is gone from where she left him, but the cloak is still there. She sprints past it, not stopping. The creatures following her are just as fast. These are no little boys. They’re something not human, or not human anymore.

The stench of rot seems to surround her. Bare feet slapping on stone sounds like they’re inches behind her.

Then she’s at the corridor outside the empty infirmary, and right in front of her is Mrs Moore.

The woman gasps seeing her, then grabs her arm and drags her away from the infirmary, down a narrow passageway toward a door. She pulls her though it, then slams it shut behind them, placing her back to the metal.

A stranger barges past Boone and helps her draw the bolt across.

“Barbarians?” Someone whispers from the room.

Boone turns. The room is long and thin - no, that’s not right. It looks long and thin, but all along the passageway are uneven stone openings into rooms on either side. A prison, bigger than the one she’d spent time in. The doors are no longer on the cells, and the stone is aged and worn, but it’s still a prison, just of a different kind.

Women and children poke their heads out of the cells. The woman who spoke is elderly and tall, her eyes peering at her curiously.

A thump hits the door, then another one. The door rattles, but the metal is thick. It holds.

“Worse.” Boone catches her breath, checking her sword. She can’t shelter here for long. The druid’s crystals are empty, but she still needs to get rid of the King’s crown. It’s the only way to end this battle.

As if reading her thoughts, a high pitched desperate sound echoes weakly outside. A horn. The signal for enemies attacking. The battle has begun.

Mrs Moore grabs her hard around her dead arm. “Neven. Have you seen him? He left with that dead boy Timon to get Alice and bring her down here. What’s happened? What are those things?”

Timon. But if he left with Timon, then… “When did he leave?”

“Minutes ago. Why? What’s going on?”

The stranger who had barred the door runs over to Mrs Moore and grabs the woman’s arm. Her hair, while not blond, is fair enough to have gathered her much scorn and envy in the circle. She keeps her dark eyes obediently fixed to the ground, or where the ground would be if her bulging pregnant belly wasn’t in the way. “I apologise for her sir. She’s just worried for her son. She means no harm.”

Several thumps come from the door. With each one the metal seems to bend inward. She hopes it’s only a trick of the mind. “Tell the others to gather anything that could be used as a weapon. Pots, pans, knitting needles, anything.”

The pregnant woman ducks her head and scurries off.

“Are you going to protect us?” The elderly woman asks. Her clothes are rich silks, her back straight, and hair a dark brown. The wife or mother of some rich businessman, probably long dead. Someone who could afford to hide her away if her stance was not deferent enough, or like now, if she asked too many questions.

“No.” Boone picks up a broom leaning against a wall, presses it into the woman’s hands. “You’re going to.”

The elderly woman gapes at her, then holds the broom handle tight.

Mrs Moore appears at her side, a small spade in a work worn hand. Her sun marked face is tight with determination, and barely concealed fear.

The thumping on the other side of the door slows to a soft scratching, then silence.

“If they leave, we might not need a confrontation.” Hope burns desperately inside her. Putting the women and children in danger isn’t something she wants to do, but she needs to get out there. “I go. You shut the door behind me, and be ready with the weapons, just in case.”

Then something happens that changes all those plans. Outside the metal door, a child starts to scream.

It’s a boy. Beyond that she can’t tell. All she knows is it’s too scared sounding to be one of those things. And if it’s not one of those things, then it’s in danger.

“The weapons. Quickly!” Mrs Moore shouts. “Arm every able woman. Send all the children to hide in the far cells. Now!”

What looks like hundreds of women burst out of hiding, running this way and that, some with children in their arms. Some gather near the door, holding makeshift weapons with an air of confusion. They’ve been passive sheep all their lives. The mere concept of themselves holding a weapon must seem so foreign.

Outside the child continues to scream.

“Come or stay,” Boone says. She wants them to know they have a choice this time. “Whichever you decide, don’t let them in.”

Most nod obediently, no real understanding entering their eyes. Those bolder look at each other in confusion.

Mrs Moore opens the door and rushes out, her spade held high. From the panic in her movements it’s clear the possibility of the screaming belonging to Neven has entered her mind. Boone follows close behind her.

The corridor is empty. The screaming turns into loud panicked shrieks, more akin to a dying animal than a human. It’s coming from the direction of the infirmary.

Mrs Moore breaks into a run, getting faster with each step until she’s sprinting ahead.

Boone struggles to keep up. By the time she reaches the infirmary doors the woman is already inside. A loud clang sounds, echoing around the room, and then another one.

She skids into the room. Makeshift beds are spread around the room, left in the haphazard way they were used. A few are piled on the far side of the large stone room, behind which a small child  is hiding. A glimpse of dark hair, and skin a little too brown to be called a tan. Too small to be Neven. Seven years old at the most.

One of the dead things runs toward her. It’s faster than she expects. She barely has time to lift her sword up before it reaches her, skewering itself on the dark metal. It doesn’t stop, struggling closer. It’s small. Not much bigger than the cowering child, but her feet skid backward on the stone floor as the sword catches on something inside him. It’s strong.

Blood spreads from the wound, pouring down its chest and to the floor. The red startles her. It looks so normal, so human. And it does look human in a way. Its clothes are rags, but it has skin, most of it scarred. Its face is non-descript. Two ears, an average nose, a small mouth scarred into a sneer. It looks like a portrait sketched from memory, smeared in the hurry to capture it all quickly. All except the eyes. They’re blue, but the shape looks an awful lot like Timon’s.

Its mouth opens and closes. It speaks the same two words over and over again. A mantra full of hate. “Filthy slavers. Filthy slavers. Filthy slavers.”

Whatever Mattis brought back, it’s not the child he wanted to. It’s something else warped by years of a vendetta. It reaches for her, its child fingers curved into claws. Its body drags further onto the sword.

Steel arms close around her chest from behind. They pin her arms to her side and squeeze. She gasps as the air is forced out of her lungs. Somehow despite the crushing pain in her good arm, she keeps hold of the sword.

From what feels like miles away, she hears a rasping child’s voice swear it’ll kill them if they raise a hand to it again. “Husband or not, I’m no one’s property.” Another speaks angrily in a foreign tongue she doesn’t understand. Another shouts that they can “burn me if you like. You can kill me, but you won’t stop me. Hate is too powerful a force to kill. Because of you I am nothing but hate, and I will see you die.”

Blood pounds through her head. She can’t breathe. Black spots dance over her vision. There’s movement all around her, harsh and violent. Someone screams.

The creature behind her squeezes, lifting her feet off the ground, while the creature in front drags itself hand over hand, further up her sword and toward her. Its bleeding hands reach, flailing before finally getting close enough to grab at her. Its small hand closes over her own.

A triumphant smile on its scarred mouth, it raises its other hand to deliver a punch. Judging by the strength of the tiny arms around her chest, she’d be lucky if broken bones were the only result of that first punch. Then it stops with a scared look on its face. It glances down at its chest.

At first, with her failing vision, Boone sees nothing different. Then the wound around the sword begins to smoke. Flames flicker into life, and reach outward. The hilt of the sword seems to grow warmer in her grip, and colder too. A vibrating mass of uncomfortable heat, and ice cold that burns. It’s all she can do to hold on.

The creature takes its hand from the hilt and bats at its chest. All at once the hot and cold dissipate, but the flames spread quickly, eating the creature from the inside out. It screams, as agonised as the lost ones reliving their deaths. It looks at her. A simple, pleading, human look. Then those flames reach its face.

It crumbles from around the sword, and falls bit by bit to the ground. A pile of smouldering ash.

Darkness clouds her vision. Her hand fiddles with the sword, trying to do something, but what little movement she manages causes the weapon to fall to the floor beside the blood and ash. Her legs kick, her arms struggle to move. Her lungs burn. The creature stays behind her, silent. The arms vice tight around her.    

Just as her head feels like it’s floating, and the darkness swamps her vision, her feet find the ground. The arms around her loosen, try to pull away.

They can’t.

Half stumbling on her feet, her vision clears enough to see her dead hand gripping the child’s arm tight. It’s strange to see her milk white skin against the boy’s healthy tones. Anyone looking would think her the monster, and the creature the victim.

The child creature beats at her hand frantically. It looks almost like your average child. A few spots of shiny scar tissue, an ugly band of scar tissue around his neck. Its features are plain, but it has a thick head of good dark hair. Its mouth gapes open and closed soundlessly, expression screwed up in terror.

She hesitates, then cursing herself for it, tries to pry her fingers loose with those of her good hand. The boy, seeing what’s she’s doing, joins in.

“Hold on,” Boone says, ignoring the fighting around her. Several women seem to have joined Mrs Moore. “You’re going to be fine. Just hold on.”

He’s not. She can see that. Already his efforts to remove her fingers are weaker. He falls to his knees, dragging her down with him. He’s younger than her, she thinks, but lanky and taller than her.

He looks at her with desolate dark eyes, then slumps his shoulders, giving up.

No. She shakes her head angrily, renewing her efforts to pry away her fingers. They may have been enemies not long ago, but there is a line she doesn’t want to cross. A line that spells the difference between a monster and a hero.

It doesn’t have anything to do with what gender, or race she is, what hair colour her ancestors decided was most beautiful, or what she believes. Those categories are not who she is. She is a mess of good and bad, constantly changing, and difficult to define. Who she is are the choices she’s made, and more importantly, the ones she’s making now.

She doesn’t want to make the wrong ones.

She pulls at the stiff white fingers until sweat beads on her forehead, and her nails slash little cuts in the cold skin. Then a hand places itself on hers, and pats consolingly.

Boone glances at the boy, and has to look away. There’s no hate in his expression. There should be. Part of her is killing him. She should be able to stop it. She should be able to-

Her fingers come away with a dry crack that tells her one of them is broken. It aches with a kind of deep throb that’s not quite pain. She doesn’t care. The boy is free.

He rubs his arm wonderingly, then launches himself at her. She tenses until his arms wrap around her much gentler than before. A creature born of hate, and the only thing it took for the hate to dissipate was a little kindness.

Then the boy is wrenched from her arms with a look of silent shock on his face. A thick sword severs his head from his shoulders in a single blow. Hot blood splatters her face, and the body slumps sideways.

Boone gapes. Feeling like ice cold water had just been splashed over her, she throws herself backwards, searching in the ash and blood for her sword. Closing her good hand around the hilt, she pushes herself to her feet, facing Angus.

“Why did you?” The words splutter out of her mouth. “How could you? He wasn’t a threat.”

“Looked like one to me.” He looks around the room with a frown on his face.

Women fighting monsters. Except not all are fighting, and not all look like monsters. A group of women is sitting on one, while the pregnant woman from before sings him a song. Mrs Moore has one backed into a wall, holding her spade, but she seems to be talking to it. Another is wrapped in a woman’s arms, and another few are unconscious. The others are fighting more traditionally, with the superior numbers of the women helping against the creature’s strength. The elderly woman seems particularly good at knocking them off their feet with that broom of hers, allowing the others to pin them down or otherwise subdue them.