Jabone's Sword (31 page)

Then they came tumbling out of the woods and out of the trees and running towards them looking like ants when you kick their nest over. Jestia yelled out, "Move fire."

The roaring fire flew over his head and exploded just in the tree line where the Amalites had been hiding. It made an impressive display, sending about a dozen Amalites running around in flames and caught the woods on fire.

The Amalites in front of them seemed to pause to think about it. Some ran off in terror and then the rest after a brief pause started pouring out of the burning woods.

Jabone threw down the bow and pulled his sword. At his side Kasiria had changed and she held a spear hoping to use their tiny shield wall to its best advantage. "I love you," he said, and she didn't have to ask why he was saying it now. She knew they all knew they probably weren't going to live to see another day.

"I love you, too," she said and then drove her spear into the face of an Amalite.

* * *

Jestia couldn't see Ufalla. Tarius, who had been fighting spear, had lost his shield man, thrown the spear down and pulled his sword. He was to her left hacking and slashing everything she wasn't. This was closer to what she'd been trained for—no plants or trees in her way—just targets to hit. Where was Ufalla? She could fight or she could cast but she was sure she couldn't do both at once.

Then she saw Ufalla. Ufalla screamed and then she dove over their own shieldwall on the Amalites who scattered under the weight of her rage. Then they all ran at her again.
The huge idiot!
Could humans have Katabull rage? Ufalla was going to get herself killed and there was no way she and Tarius could get over there to help her, and then she thought as hard as she could while she was fighting off hundreds of screaming Amalites,
Come to me.

Ufalla was lifted into the air and sailed backwards 'til she landed beside Jestia, where she gave Jestia a look of utter relief closely followed by a scowl before she just started fighting again. "You can thank me later," Jestia said.

"I couldn't find you," Ufalla said as an explanation for her actions.

"Honey, if I had been out there nothing you could have done would have saved me."

"Why don't you cast get us the hell out of here?" Tarius said.

She wished she could. Jestia was pretty sure all she'd done was postpone the inevitable.

* * *

Eric and Thomas and two others were still on their feet fighting beside he and Kasiria, but Jabone couldn't even see anyone else. Then one of the men fell, and it was just the five of them. For every one they killed three more seemed to appear from thin air

"Jabone, look out!" It was Tarius's voice and he looked up in time to see the arrow heading not for him but Kasiria. He reached out without thinking to grab it by the shaft, but it went right through his fingers and into Kasiria's side. Her sword fell and she looked at him with an air of disbelief as she changed form and crumpled to the ground.

"No!" Jabone forgot about the battle. He dropped his sword, dropped to his knees beside Kasiria and took her in his arms wondering why he wasn't dead already.

"Brother we need you!" Ufalla yelled at him, but he had no idea where she was.

"Wall of bats!" Jestia screamed.

"Again!" Tarius exclaimed.

"I am running out of spells," Jestia said. The wall of bats confused them enough that they were able to make it over to the others.

"Jabone," Kasiria choked out, "you have to fight."

He shook his head.
"You must," she said, and then her eyes closed. Filled with the Katabull rage he rose, grabbed his sword, and with his shoulder against Tarius's he started to slay the Amalites two and three at a time.

* * *

Ufalla had gone over the shieldwall because she couldn't find Jestia and she was either going to find Jestia and save her or she was going to kill as many of them as she could before she went to join Jestia, so she knew why Jabone had just laid over Kasiria. But his few moments of grief had cost them dearly. Eric and some man whose name she didn't remember and the four of them were the only ones left alive now. She was, in fact, forced to stand on Thomas's body as she fought.

Her parents' enemies were alive and well and living in the Jethrikian-held territories of the Amalite. In that moment her arms and legs were burning and she felt like she had just given all she had to give. If there was anything keeping her going besides trying to keep herself and her loved ones alive it was the fact that she didn't want to let her parents down. If someone didn't get back alive they might never find these bastards and they needed to pay for all they had done. Tarius the Black was right; you couldn't allow these things to thrive.

But it was looking more and more like none of them were going to make it out of there alive. There were too few of them too many of their enemy.

"Invisible shield!" Jestia cast in front of them and Ufalla was just glad to have a moment to breathe and get better footing. She looked at Jestia.

"Jestia do some spell go over them, disappear and get away. Something," Ufalla said.

"No, I won't go without you," Jestia said, shaking her head. "If you die I die, so you'd better not die. It won't hold long," she said of the shield.

And it didn't. Soon they were fighting for their lives again. Ufalla took a blow that rocked her head without breaking her helm, but her strength was waning and she was about to just give up when she heard horses coming in fast.

"Thank the gods!" Jestia said behind her and she knew it wasn't just in her head.

* * *

When Jena saw them a million nightmares came back made worse by the fact that her son—if he was still alive—was in that mess. Before she really had time to think about it, Tarius had called a charge. They rode in hard and her heart started to beat again when she saw their son still alive.

"Tarius!" she called out because even though she rode beside her she couldn't have heard her unless she was yelling. "Jabone!" She pointed with her sword and Tarius took off for him like one possessed with Harris following right behind her. Jena knew she couldn't keep up so she stayed with the remainder of the Marching Night, staying in formation even as Arvon commanded them to.

With the single-minded precision she was known for, Tarius hacked her way right through the Amalites, Harris taking up her slack 'til she was beside their son. Then Jena couldn't watch any longer because the Amalites had turned on them and they were fully engaged.

* * *

Tarius let out a war cry and then she landed beside her son, sending her horse away. Harris did the same and stood at her left as her son was on her right. This wasn't Tarius the Warlord, this was Tarius the mother and they had threatened her only cub. They would all pay. She killed 'til there was no one there left to kill and then she hollered in rage and ran off to where the battle had gone and killed some more.

* * *

Harris stayed behind to guard the children because at his age and with his club foot he simply couldn't keep up with Tarius any more, not on foot anyway. He turned saw his tattered, bloody children and started to cry. They both ran and embraced him. He watched as Jabone threw his sword down and went to kneel beside a dead Jethrikian girl.

For reasons he could only guess at, Jestia ran over and hugged him, too, and he gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

* * *

The battle was now where Tarius took it because the Amalites were trying to retreat and she wasn't about to let them do that. So Jena rode quickly up to her son. She dismounted and ran to his side, knelt beside him and put her arms around him. "Son."

"Mother," Jabone croked out, and then he threw his arms around her and just cried. She didn't have to ask why when she saw his madre's cuff on the girl's wrist. She looked down at the shattered girl. She had been very pretty. Then she saw the slightest movement on the right side of the girl's chest.

"She's still alive." She pushed her son gently away. "Ufalla, come help me. Tarius, go get Jason."

Jabone dried his tears. "Mother she is the Katabull," he said, knowing that Jena had called for a human medic.

"Yri then!" Tarius yelled back and continued to run across the battlefield, weaving in and out of corpses.

Ufalla unhanded her father and dropped down on the other side of the girl to check out the wound even as Jestia went to check on the wounds of a Jethrikian boy whose leg was bleeding badly and who had a nasty sword cut across his left shoulder. No one else was alive that Jena could see.

Ufalla looked around the shaft of the arrow and made a face. She pointed and Jena saw the bubbles and knew what it meant one of the girl's lungs had been hit and was leaking. Worse yet, the girl was Katabull and the arrow shaft was wood. It wasn't good and Jena found herself wishing she hadn't realized the girl was still alive because she probably wouldn't be for very long.

"We need to get the arrow out," Jabone said. Ufalla, knowing she couldn't push it through where it was started to pull it out and Jena grabbed her hand.

"No. The Amalites wrap their arrows so that the heads will come out in the body if you pull on them. Wait for Yri."

"Kasiria can you hear me?" Jabone begged. "Kasiria I'm so sorry."

The girl made a gurgling sound but that was it.

Yri ran over then with his bag. He looked at the wound and then he looked at Jena. She knew what he was thinking even though he didn't speak a word because she had just seen too many bad wounds on the battle field.

"Try, Yri," she begged.

He nodded, skillfully twisted the arrow a bit and then slowly pulled on it 'til it was out of the girl's body cavity. The whole time the girl had made gurgling noises and Jena took that as a good sign because if she was still feeling anything she was still alive. Yri threw the arrow down then took a tool from his bag that looked like a small set of tongs. He poked around in the arrow hole with his finger then drew out his finger out, put in the tongs, and extracted a link of the girl's chain mail, then another and then another, and then a piece of her gambeson. When he was done he poured a bottle of what she knew was water from the springs of Montero into the wound which bubbled and spewed as it cleaned the poison from the wound and the wound stopped bleeding. Together they pulled the girl from her chain mail and her gambeson and shirt. Yri didn't stitch the wound, just took some powder and sprinkled it over it then dressed it. Then he grabbed his bag and stood up. Jena stood with him, took his arm and pulled him away from the group. Before she could ask him what the girl's chances were Jabone was there and demanding to know.

"How is she?"

Yri was silent looking at Jena. Jabone knew he would say nothing without her permission so he appealed to her. "Mother I need to know. You'd want to know if it was Madra."

Jena looked at the medic and nodded.

"Her wound is grave, my prince. She lost a lot of blood. A pierced lung it's beyond my expertise. Add to that she's pierced with wood and one of us. She's barely alive. If we could put her in the spring of Montero today, maybe. But we are a two day ride if we ride hard to the coast, and then three days on the sea. The ride alone will most likely finish her off, I am sorry."

"Don't you have some powders that would help maybe 'til we can get her to Montero?" Jabone asked.
"The only thing I have is for pain, Jabone, and she's not in any pain as long as she's unconscious. The powders alone might kill her at this point."

Jabone turned to look at Jestia who was crying on Ufalla's shoulder and couldn't hold his eye.

"Do you have a potion, a spell, something?" Jabone asked, crying again.

Tarius the Black ran over to them then bloody and triumphant. "Killed to the last man. The troop is just gathering up the weapons and armor now."

Jena scowled at her.

"What?" she asked. For answer Jena nodded her head in the direction of their son who was crying. "My son what is wrong?" She walked over and took him in her arms. He cried something incoherent against her neck. Surprisingly she seemed to understand him and started to cry with him, patting him on the back so hard his teeth rattled.

Then Jabone pushed suddenly away from her. He spun quickly to look at Jestia who still wouldn't look at him. "You, you do have a spell. You told me you had a healer's spell."

Jestia cringed as if she'd been waiting for him to say this.

"I also told you no witch dare cast it," she said, separating herself from Ufalla.

"Unless the circumstances are desperate. She's dying, Jestia. You don't get much more desperate than that!"

"The spell is dangerous, Jabone," Jestia said, wiping her cheeks with her hands and coating them with yet more blood and dirt.

"Again I say, she is dying. Don't just stand there if there is anything you can do that might save her, Jestia. She would do it for you, you know she would." Jabone was still crying and it was obvious that the girl wanted to help him so there had to be some reason for her reluctance.

"What are the dangers of the spell girl?" Tarius demanded.

"Well first off I've never cast it before and gods alone know what will happen if I miss-cast it," Jestia said. "The spell is called healing sleep, and even if you cast it right the person can wake up from it a blithering idiot or might just never wake up at all. In which case you can either watch them slowly waste away or kindly kill them. That's the spell you're asking me to cast, Jabone. Are any of those things what you want for Kasiria?"

There was something the girl wasn't saying, but Jena never got to ask her what it might be because then Tarius demanded, "Cast the spell, Jestia."

She looked at Jena as if asking her council and explained, "It's her only chance for life, and if anything goes wrong I will kill the girl myself."

Jena nodded her agreement.

"Do it," Tarius ordered.

Jestia walked over to the girl, held her hands over her and said the words "Healing sleep" so low they could hardly hear her. Then they could see the white light of the power radiating from Jestia to envelope the girl. When the light ceased Jestia collapsed and Ufalla who seemed to have appeared from nowhere caught her. Gathering Jestia in her arms, Ufalla turned to give them all the most magnificent go to hell look then carried Jestia in the direction of the medic's wagon.