Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) (20 page)

She knew the girls could hear the commotion and yelling
coming from downstairs now too, and they were old enough to
understand that she was their only hope. They seemed at most one
or two sojourns younger than she had been when she’d been
abandoned to the streets without her vision, and that gave her a
feeling of kinship with them.
Catelyn assessed her situation. She had accounted for the
possibility of carrying one person, the Dane, out and onto the
rooftops. Carrying two young girls, weighing roughly forty stone
each, was not going to be possible, so her rooftop escape plan was
now out. The only route left to her was going downstairs and out
the front door. Right through the bulk of Dane Callum’s private
cadre of thugs and guards, and straight towards the commotion.
Catelyn blasphemed the Divines under her breath.
She hadn’t planned this well at all.

Catelyn gathered the girls at the foot of the bed and knelt
before them, placing a hand on each of their shoulders, right then
noticing that, like the Dane, both of them were stark naked.

“Girls, do either of you have any clothing? Preferably
something dark?”
“No,” came the simple reply.
Of course not,
Catelyn fumed, her hatred for the Dane’s
running deeply through her.
“They brought us here from...somewhere else. We weren’t
allowed to have any clothes.”
Catelyn felt herself struggling with the urge she was having
to make an end of Dane Callum, to simply stand up and climb up
onto the bed to snap Callum’s neck, but she knew she couldn’t
afford the time or the complications that would bring into her life.
Not to mention her vow, which she was finding harder and harder
to honor. She breathed deeply instead.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” she told the girls again.
“But in order to do this, I’ll need you both to listen to every word I
say, and follow my directions, without question. Can you do that?”
She felt both girls nodding and they each said a hushed
“Yes, Catelyn”.
She leapt to her feet and crossed the room to the wedged
open door, with a girl clutching each hand. She had only been
listening to the commotion outside and downstairs with half her
attention before, and so she expanded her bubble to the hallway
and the floor below.
What she heard was complete and utter confusion. The
Dane’s men were running back and forth, some engaged in
combat, some simply smashing furniture or throwing themselves
against doors in an apparent attempt to get out. And then at the
distant edge of her senses, Catelyn’s worst fear was realized, as the
pungent stench of acrid burning wood and billowing smoke
reached her nose, ample evidence of exactly what she had come
here this night to try and prevent. And her heart sank with the
clear evidence that she had failed.
The Purge had begun.
The smells of burning she could detect were not yet close
to where she stood, indicating that the Imperials must still be
outside, probably barricading the doors of the surrounding
buildings from the outside and throwing combustible material
from one structure to the other.
Catelyn cursed the Emperor for living up to his well
renowned reputation for impatience and cruelty. Catelyn had
hoped that she would have had time to stop this from happening,
but she now knew that everything she had risked here tonight had
been in vain.
Though maybe
, she thought.
Maybe there is some
redemption to be had after all
.
She felt the small hands tighten in fear around her own,
and she knew that if it was the last thing she did in this life, she
would not let this night end in disaster for these two girls. They
would not go through another horrible day, if she had anything to
say about it.
But she needed to act quickly if she was going to save
them.
A singular voice in her head pleaded with her to leave
them behind, and to save herself, but she refused to heed that call.
Ironically, it was not the voice she had expected. That voice, the
one who questioned her faith in the Divines, and put
uncomfortable thoughts in her head, remained silent but she knew
that it would approve of the decision she was making right now.
She may have developed a thick skin and a more than
healthy dose of self preservation over the long and hard sojourns
of her life, but she could not and would not knowingly allow such
innocents to die. Especially not this way.
A stab of guilt penetrated her at that moment however, as
she considered all the innocents she had already allowed to die at
the hands of the Danes and their sadistic campaign as well as those
who were about to die in this Purge. She supposed that sometimes
upholding one’s ideals was more convenient at some times than
others.
But in this case, given the immediacy of the danger the
three of them were in, Catelyn simply refused to leave these two
girls to be devoured, whether by the conflagration of the Imperial
Purge or by the twisted sexual appetites of the Danes. Not tonight.
Not ever.
The realization that the Purge had begun made it clear
why the occupants of the estate had not rushed upstairs to help
their Dane. With the Empire on the doorstep, Purging anyone and
anything in their sight, the choice was clear: Flee and have a
chance to save themselves and their loved ones, or die for a man
they owed nothing to, and who had brought this down upon their
heads to begin with. It really must have been an easy choice for
most, and Catelyn could hear that indeed most of the commotion
was the sound of struggle as most of the Dane’s guards attempted
to flee, while a handful tried to stop them.
That meant that at least some of the Dane’s men would be
standing between her and escape, but far fewer than if there had
not been such confusion, and her chances of getting out with the
two girls were looking up. She just had to move fast, while the
Dane’s private guards were otherwise occupied and before the
Empire focused all their attention on this building. Catelyn knew
from her prior experience of a Purge, that they would first contain
the entire perimeter that was to be Purged, then they would send
in two squads of fifteen soldiers each. One would commence the
burning and blockading, while the other would kill any who tried
to escape, and these two teams would move from building to
building, house to house, systematically torching and killing. The
Empire had no care for who they killed or how many. A Purge was
deliberately designed to punish those within the perimeter, and
send a message to those outside of it, pure and simple. Obey.
Catelyn no longer worried about stealth or hiding her
identity in this situation, so she removed the kerchief from her
head and the cloth from around her face, letting it fall to her chest.
Upon revealing her shock of medium length red hair the girls, in
spite of their dire situation, gasped in surprise and delight. These
girls had likely never seen anyone with hair before.
Catelyn knew her appearance would be a shock for anyone
else as well, and hoped that perhaps it would even help buy her
some small measure of distraction. She squeezed the girl’s hands,
one in each of her own, and ran toward the stairs, vaulting down
them two at a time, her bubble focused on each step, and slowly
expanding it as she descended.
“Ma’am,” the girl, Elexia said as they reached the landing.
“Shush,” Catelyn hissed, more harshly than she had
intended. She tried to make her voice softer and warmer. “Stop
calling me ma’am, Elexia. I’m barely old enough to be your big
sister. Call me Catelyn or Cat.”
“OK. But Catelyn...”
Catelyn cut the girl off with a tug, as her bubble told her
that a guard was passing in the doorway just down the hall across
from them. The words were yanked from the girl’s mouth, and
Catelyn pressed them forward, smelling the inferno now strongly
as she reached the lower level. The Imperials would be at the
house shortly, if they weren’t already outside. It might already be
too late.
She heard the timbers of the building next door cracking
in the heat, and the roar of the flames, and the screams of trapped
innocents nearby. Catelyn’s pulse pounded in her ears, threatening
to drown out the sounds around her. She stifled the fear and the
shame she felt at having set off this chain of events, and padded
towards what she thought must be the exit to the street. As she
moved, her feet came into contact with a plush carpet, which was
soaked in something wet and sticky.
She moved her foot and sniffed the air, but whatever the
substance was, she’d never smelled anything like it before. It was
sharp, and burned her nose, and she could guess what it was. She
knew that the Empire threw in containers of kerosene and other
flammable liquids, and Catelyn gripped both girls’ hands tightly.
That was when she heard voices.
The words were muffled, coming from a room with two
walls and what was most likely a door between her and the
speakers, but as the fires began to rage, her bubble became harder
and harder to interpret through the smoke and flames. She moved
in the opposite direction, using her bubble to give her as much
information as it could, but with the raging fires outside and the
commotion all around, her mental map of the surroundings was
quickly becoming sketchy at best, and she knew that the longer she
stayed, the greater her risk.
She wished she had been able to do more scouting of this
building before hand, but her need had been great, and her time
short. She knew she was in a large room, with carpeted floors
throughout. From the feel of it under her toes, although it was
plush, the threads were worn and old, and would hold a flame
quite well. And it was coated in patches of the sticky substance.
She wished to get it off her skin.
She proceeded toward the wall away from the voices, then
felt her way along it until she reached the corner, then moved
along the perpendicular wall. Finally, as she had hoped, she found
a window. The girls must have wondered before, but now that they
knew she was blind, Catelyn expected them to question her and
perhaps even abandon her to take their chances on their own. To
their credit and to Catelyn’s surprise, rather than panic the girls
took turns trying to help Catelyn out.
“Catelyn this window doesn’t open,” said Sera.
“Damn. I guess it was too much to hope for.” Catelyn
sighed.
“There’s a door to the next room about two paces to the
left of the wall. It’s closed.”
Catelyn smiled and squeezed Sera’s small hand.
“How come you can’t see?” she asked. “And how come you
don’t bump into all the walls?”
Catelyn simply looked at her and smiled, and said “I’ll tell
you all about it after we get out of here. OK?”
“OK.”
Catelyn marveled at the simple, unassuming innocence of
childhood. Catelyn wondered how any parent could have sold their
child, could have willingly let the monsters of this world try to take
such a precious gift and corrupt it. Catelyn felt her heart hurt at
the very idea.
“Thank you,” she said instead, and together the three of
them moved toward the door. Catelyn’s senses warned her that
something was wrong.
“Wait,” she said as she reached out and felt the wood of
the door and the handle. Both were cool. She placed her hand on
the knob and turned, and as she did, everything went to the Void.
The first thing that went wrong was when she heard a door
open to her left and the voices she had heard through the walls
before rang out clear and strong. She shuffled the girls into the
room beyond the door she had just opened, without fully knowing
what lay behind. She couldn’t afford to do anything else, but it
wasn’t enough. The voices shouted in alarm and Catelyn slammed
the door shut behind her. She felt along the handle, but felt no
locking mechanism.
She burst out her bubble with everything she had, which
allowed her a momentary sense of her surroundings in fine detail,
then returned to the more abstract images she was used to. She
likened it to the way a flash of lightning would reveal the objects in
a darkened room, giving her an accurate picture of the room’s
layout and everything in it, but only briefly before returning to
darkness. She’d learned this trick by accident really, but it was
handy in a pinch, especially when under pressure like she was
now.
She had sensed a chair a pace away, and grabbing it, she
slammed it home under the handle, wedging the door shut. She
heard the heavy footfalls of two men as they stomped across the
room they had just left, and within a breath they were trying to
open the door and force their way inside. One of the men was
slamming his shoulder into it, but the chair held, for now.
She heard the other stomp away, presumably to find
another way around. She tightened her bubble to just the few
paces within the room and combining that with the information
she’d gleaned when she’d flashed her bubble before, she tried to
determine a way out of her situation.
She knew that she was in a small room, seemingly a place
for the servants to hang coats and for guests to remove one’s
muddy boots. There were two other chairs along one wall, and a
coat rack. Unfortunately for Catelyn, she also confirmed that there
was another door a few paces away. If he was even half aware, this
would certainly be where the other man would approach.
With the first door secured, she turned and listened at the
other. She didn’t want to wedge herself in on this side, or she
would be dead for sure, trapped and burned alive when the Purge
reached the Dane’s estate. Or the men would eventually break
their way inside, that threat becoming more imminent with every
breath. Her hearing told her the grim tale. The other man was
rounding a corner and would soon be right outside the door. It was
too late to try to run through. They were trapped.
“Girls, get behind me,” she commanded.
They did as she instructed, and Catelyn frantically tried to
sense something that she could use as a weapon. The coat rack was
tall, and too unwieldy to be effective in such a tight space. And
Catelyn had no training when it came to fighting. She’d never
needed to, although she wasn’t completely incapable of defending
herself. Still, this was likely a man with more training and more
strength than her, and she felt her stomach lurch at what was
happening, and what was about to happen.
Did everything end like this?