Sword Sisters (21 page)

“You can run away,” little Horva said.

“No. Not this time.” I put my hand on the door then turned back to the family. “Please remember I said this: I’m very, very sorry for what I’ve done to your village and your daughter. I hope Amelia is safe. I hope I survive the next few minutes to try and help her. But whatever happens, I want you to know I am sorry.”

Sela hugged me the way I’d seen her hug Amelia. I was speechless, and the wrenching in my chest grew harder and tighter.

Then someone knocked on the door.

It wasn’t the kind of pounding I expected but a soft knock, the kind you make to alert someone so you won’t startle them. Then the door opened, and Heod entered. He closed the door behind him. He didn’t look scared or worried. He actually seemed rather pleased.

“Aella,” he began.

“Heod, please—” Sela started to say.

“No,” I said. “This is my place. Heod, I understand why everyone is angry, but please hear me. I won’t go down without a fight. I can’t; it’s not in my nature. So while you may kill me eventually, a lot of your friends will die tonight.”

He tried again. “Aella—”

“I don’t want to kill anyone, Heod!” I almost shouted.

“Come outside,” he said, and reached for my arm. He didn’t sound angry at all.

I let him pull me toward the door and out in front of the crowd. They indeed had torches and weapons, most of them tools, some of them old, rusted heirlooms. I couldn’t quite make out their faces, but they fell silent when I appeared.

Then Sixle stepped forward. I knew I was toasted bread. I assumed my favorite battle-ready stance and mentally prepared myself for the worst fight of my life.
Don’t kill, only incapacitate
, I reminded myself. I took a short breath.

He said, “We are with you, Reaper.”

I blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“We are prepared to battle Lurida Lumo. We no longer wish to fall under his sway. He has taken too many of us for too long.”

It took me a moment to absorb this. “Are you serious?”

“We are. You may think us simple and backward, and perhaps that is true. It has certainly been true in the past. But when you denied Lurida Lumo his sacrifice and none of the terrible punishments foretold in the prophecies appeared, we realized the truth. Whatever he is, he is no god, and we have failed our own children for generations.”

Yazel stepped forward. Her distant demeanor from earlier was gone, and she almost cackled with glee. “Once I got that idiot Litwin to shut up, the rest of them saw reason. If I’d known it was going to be so easy, I’d have done it years ago.”

“Now,” Sixle concluded, “it is time for vengeance.”

At this word, the crowd cheered and shook their weapons and torches.

I wondered what wizard had cursed me to move into this strange new world where everything was suddenly backward. “Ah…that’s great.”

More cheering. It sounded both wonderful and strange to my ears. A girl could learn to like that.

“You lead us,” one of the boys from earlier said. “We’ll follow you into hell.” People cheered at that too.

I’d been to hell or at least a place close enough and certainly filled with Demons. “No, wait, that’s not…I appreciate the offer, really. A war against a god is no place for humans. But I do need a sword. And a shield if anyone has one.”

“You can’t go alone,” Sixle said. There were murmurs of agreement around him. What wonderful, fragile, foolish creatures.

“It’s got nothing to do with your courage,” I said. “It’s about training. And skill. This is what I was born to do. It’s second nature as I’m afraid you witnessed earlier today. I’m very sorry I hurt your son.” I lowered my head, but not my eyes.

“He has needed an experience like that for some time. It was…harsher than I might’ve wished, but nonetheless, he invited it by his conduct. He will be fine and hopefully a better man someday.”

I was speechless for a moment. In none of my experiences with humans had I witnessed anything like this. My ribs felt tighter than usual. That fluttering must be fear. But of what?

Then, a little girl came forward, bearing a sword longer than she was tall. She handed it to me with reverence. “My daddy said grandpa once killed a bear with this,” she said seriously. “It’s very strong.” She brushed her long hair out of her eyes and curtseyed. No one had ever curtseyed for me before.

I took it from her and marveled at the weight of it. How had this little girl carried this sword by herself? I was in awe of her. It was strong, all right. It was a Reaper sword, tarnished with age but still as solid as the day it was forged. No doubt grandpa had scavenged it from a battlefield. And who knows? He might also have used it to kill a bear because it would definitely have done the job.

I looked down into her adoring face. What did she see when she looked at me? It was certainly different from what Adonis, Eldrid, and all the other Reapers saw. I wished I could see through her eyes just for a moment.

“What is your name, young squire?”

She blushed. “Felicia.”

“This,” I said with a smile, “is the best sword I’ve ever held. Thank you, Felicia.”

She smiled, revealing two missing teeth, then scampered off.

A young boy, one of those who’d watched the fight with Gaither, awkwardly carried a shield. He knelt and offered it to me, the way I might approach Adonis in a public ceremony. I took it and said, “Thank you.” It was a standard human infantry shield, solid and graceless, but certainly capable of blocking clawing hands and spider fangs, which was all I needed it to do.

“I’ll find Amelia if at all possible,” I said, trying not to imagine her bones among the others on the cavern floor. “And this time, I will kill Lurida Lumo or lose my own life trying.”

“Reapers can’t die, can they?” a boy asked.

“We can,” I said with a smile, “but it’s a lot harder than you’d imagine.”

Then I turned and marched off into the night toward the cave of Lurida Lumo.

I took the pilgrim trail because I saw no reason to waste energy cutting through the forest again. As I passed each of the pillars, I tapped it with my sword. It was a combination of a gesture for good luck, and to announce to Lurida Lumo’s fellow gods that retribution was coming. Sure, retribution was a petite, red-haired girl with borrowed weapons, but they underestimated it at their own peril.

As I neared the cave, the blue glow again greeted me. I approached cautiously and wondered if the giant spiders emerged after dark to hunt. If they did, I didn’t see them or sense them.

What I did see, though, were unmistakable footprints in the dust just outside the entrance. They were small, feminine feet in slippers, and they headed into the cave. So Amelia had come here and had gone into the cave. And if that spider had still lurked in the overhead passage, then my rescue mission may have already failed before it got properly started. I really did make a terrible Red Reaper.

I saw other prints, larger and from boots. A man, probably Damato, had gone into the cave as well. Whoever it was, his scent was obscured by the wind.

Well, there was nothing to gain by waiting. I tucked the shield against my chest, kept the sword ahead of me, and descended into the passage.

The big spider was gone from its earlier perch, but fresh webbing covered the walls and floor as if it and its brethren had recently crawled past. Had they joined in to wrap Amelia and Damato then dragged their immobilized forms into the cavern where their venom could make them easier to digest? I saw no evidence of the kind of fight I was sure Damato would make. I almost smiled when I thought of Damato in action. I’ll bet he moves like a cat. I also saw no sign of the sword I’d lost here earlier. I hoped Damato had picked it up.

Should I call out for them? If they had escaped the spiders and were hiding, it might give them away. Or it might draw the spiders to me although I couldn’t believe they hadn’t already sensed me. No, there was nothing to do but keep plugging forward. Patience was not a natural Reaper virtue but one we train in heavily.

I reached the end of the tunnel, where it opened into the cavern. Immediately, I saw that Lurida Lumo was not on his throne and didn’t seem to be anywhere around. Where was he? Did he have a bathroom nearby, where he sat and read some scroll? Or a nice little chamber with soft cushions and tea? Or worse, was there a Mrs. Lurida Lumo somewhere, and the two of them…oh, yuck. I couldn’t imagine his weird, slimy form doing anything, really. It seemed like it would take all his concentration to keep from oozing to the floor.

It was impossible to walk without crunching on bones. I glanced down and spotted the impossibly small skull of what must have once been a little girl. I gritted my teeth against the associations that jumped to mind. I saw her with Felicia’s face, playing in the village, picking flowers, spinning proudly in the beautiful new dress she’d probably worn just to come here and be spider food. How could any parents do that? And of course, that led me back to thoughts of my mother, which just made me angrier. This had to be stopped.

“Damato?” I said. It wasn’t a yell, but it was no whisper either. “Amelia?”

Something moved above me.

A human-sized cocoon hung from the center of the ceiling. It writhed as whatever was inside tried to emerge. I gasped. I’d assumed the giant spiders were their final form, but what if they weren’t? What if they turned into something even worse, maybe something with wings?

“Oh, shit,” I whispered to myself and backed away. I wasn’t going to run, but I didn’t want to be directly beneath whatever came out either.

Then I caught faint, muffled cries of feminine outrage. It wasn’t a cocoon, it was the spider’s latest meal, wrapped up and put aside for later just as I should’ve realized. As if to confirm that, three of the huge spiders moved slowly across the ceiling toward it.

Then I recognized the voice. It was Amelia. I couldn’t help but smile. Anyone else, probably including me, would be screaming their heads off. But Amelia was trying to escape, not wasting energy on panic. The spiders hung back, apparently waiting for their dinner to calm the hell down.

I saw no way to get her free. I certainly couldn’t climb up there, and I had no projectile weapons. “Amelia!” I called. “It’s Aella!”

“Get me the hell down from here!” she yelled, her voice distant behind the wrappings that, thankfully, didn’t seem to be airtight.

“Working on it,” I said, and looked around. Bones, loose rock, and dissipated webbing were all that was at hand. None of them seemed like they’d help. “Where’s Damato?”

“Damato? I haven’t seen him. This web stuff really smells bad, Aella. I’d really like to get out of here!”

“Me, too,” I said and tried to think of something, anything, that might let me reach her.

Then I had more immediate problems. One by one, the three spiders dropped from the ceiling and landed before me. I backed up to the wall so they couldn’t surround me and prayed to the goddess Mantisia that there were no more of them hidden anywhere. They crouched there, immobile, eyes staring. Their palpable threat caused predictable responses in me.

As my Reaper blood rose, I grew increasingly calm. “Fellas,” I said with my battle smile, “let’s be clear on our roles in this little performance. You’re the bugs. And me? I’m the flyswatter.”

I put one boot against the rock wall and used it to launch myself at them.

I didn’t go into full Reaper mode this time. I didn’t need to. I knew they were killable, and I understood how to approach them. There were two crucial tactics: avoid the fangs, and dodge the webbing.

I drove one back with the shield as it jumped at me and severed the head and front two legs of the next as it tried the same. The third scuttled low, so I put one foot on his head and drove the sword deep into its abdomen. It scurried back, casting plumes of webbing randomly into the air as it fell onto its back in its death throes.

That left one. “Just you and me now, Legs.”

And then two more joined him from the shadows.

“Really?” I said to the universe at large. “You really felt this was necessary?” As always, I got no reply.

Two of them jumped at once, and I ducked beneath the shield. They collided above me. One knocked the other aside and landed on top of me. The fangs clanged against the metal as they tried to penetrate it. I stood, using my leverage to toss it aside, and hacked two legs off the other one. The one I tossed scrambled back to its feet, but before it could move, I stabbed it with a thrust right between the fangs. That proved an error because its spasm of agony yanked the sword from my hand.

The remaining one had stayed back while the other two attacked and saw its chance. It was also the biggest, and I admit, I got a serious shiver as it scuttled toward me, raising its first pair of legs to tower over me.

But I met the charge head-on with the shield, pushing its fanged face back with all my considerable strength. I grabbed the nearest bone of any size, some unfortunate girl’s femur, and drove it under the edge of the shield, up into the spider’s dripping mouth. It recoiled, and I ran to wrench my sword from the twitching form of my prior opponent. A shower of venom squirted straight up, barely missing Amelia, and came straight back down onto the still-writhing spider. It screamed as its own venom burned through its eyes.