by Morgan Rice
Sartes watched the wagons strike home, and suddenly, it was Felldust’s warriors who were running, fleeing back down the slope toward their lines. It should have seemed like a blessing, but instead, Sartes could only see the danger it represented; the chances of them returning in force.
“Are you all right?” he asked Leyana.
“I’m fine,” she assured him with a smile. “We should keep moving, shouldn’t we?”
They had to, but Sartes couldn’t help staring after the crowd of people fleeing the city.
“They wouldn’t help,” he said. “We’ve done so much to help them, and they wouldn’t help.”
“They’re just afraid,” Leyana said.
It didn’t seem to be enough of an answer to Sartes, but they kept going down toward the city anyway. There was a spot there that the rebellion had used as a smuggler’s way through the walls. It was open now, and Sartes could see soldiers beyond it, fighting one another in a skirmish that rang with the sounds of steel and pain. When Sartes looked through the gap to see who was fighting, he hurried forward.
“Quick,” he called. “We need to help them. My father’s there!”
His father was swinging his smith’s hammer with the strength of a much younger man while around him, rebels tried to push the warriors of Felldust back. His father had other smiths with him there, their hammers rising and falling as rhythmically as they might have when forging steel. They’d obviously been out working on the walls when the fight had come.
Sartes saw one fall to a thick bodied knife, cut down while trying to hold the invaders back. He plunged into the small battle, throwing himself at a warrior from behind and feeling his blade sink home. Another ran at him and Sartes barely ducked out of the way in time.
The others were there then, pouring in with him to attack the forces trying to get into the city from behind. At the same time, his father gave a shout, urging his men forward in a fresh attack.
There seemed to be blades everywhere in the next few seconds. Sartes ducked under the sweep of a sword, trying to stab back as it came at him and not knowing if he connected. He dodged past an attacker to make it to another who was grappling with Leyana. He pulled the man from her, tripping him, and the rest of the battle flowed over him.
It wasn’t as brief as the fight to save the refugees had been. There, they’d had the crushing power of the runaway wagons. Now, it was down to violence and speed, but they still had the advantage of surprise. The invaders were expecting to be the ones descending with death and chaos. They didn’t expect to be the ones being attacked.
Sartes saw his father sweep a man from his feet with his hammer, saw a pair of rebels diving on one of their opponents together, saw one of Lord West’s men thrust right through an attacker.
Just as quickly as it had begun, it was done, and they stood panting as the adrenaline left them. Sartes looked around, and relief flooded him as he saw that Leyana was all right, and so was his father.
He rushed forward to draw his father into a hug. “I’m so glad you’re safe,” he said. “I got your message.”
“Things are bad,” his father said. “I’m trying to patch the holes in the walls, but they keep punching new ones, or finding them.”
Sartes took Leyana’s hand. “Father, this is Leyana. We met outside the city, and she’s been traveling with us.”
He wanted to say the rest of it: that he loved her. From his father’s expression, though, it seemed that he didn’t need to say it.
“I wish I could tell you to both run now and be happy,” his father said. “But… we need all the help we can get to fight this invasion and free your sister.”
Sartes nodded. He understood that, and the truth was that there was no way he would have agreed to go when Ceres was in danger. It seemed that not everyone felt that way though, because he saw a couple of Lord West’s former men stand and head toward the hole in the wall.
“Where are you going?” Sartes demanded.
“Back to the North Coast. There’s no winning this.”
Anger flared in him. “You’re going to desert? After you swore an oath to Ceres?”
One of the warriors climbed through the gap. The other shook his head ruefully.
“Ceres is gone,” he said. “You think Stephania will keep her alive? Ceres is gone. The castle is gone. The city will follow soon. It’s not as though most of the people here are standing up to fight.”
“They’re cowards like you,” Sartes said. He felt his father’s hand fall on his shoulder in a silent warning.
“I’m no coward,” the warrior said. “I’ll stand and fight, but I’ll do it on the North Coast. I’ll do it to protect my land and my people. This city is lost.”
He ducked through the hole too, and Sartes wanted to rush forward to drag him back, but his father’s hand prevented it.
“Let them go,” he said. “We can’t force people to fight, but we have to, and there isn’t much time.”
That part, at least, Sartes could understand. His sister was in the castle somewhere, in spite of what the men had said.
“We need to get into the castle if we’re going to rescue Ceres,” Leyana said.
Sartes saw his father smile.
“It seems you’ve found yourself a girl as brave as you are,” he said. “Yes. Use the tunnels. I don’t know if anyone will have closed them, but trying to find a way in through them is our only real chance. The walls are too strong to just scale. At least without Ceres and the combatlords.”
He didn’t sound that hopeful, but Sartes knew they had to try. The castle had always been secure, but the tunnels under the city ran almost everywhere. There had to be a way in, didn’t there?
“If it’s possible, I’ll do it,” Sartes promised.
“We’ll do it,” Leyana corrected him.
“And in the meantime, I’ll hold onto the city,” his father said. “I’ll keep patching the walls, and we’ll keep fighting the ones who do get in.”
They’d decided then. The only difficulty now was doing it.
***
Sartes crept through the near dark of the tunnels beneath the city, holding up a smuggler’s lamp to light the way while the others followed him. He kept the shutters on it low, illuminating only a short stretch of the path ahead. The others followed behind, forced to go single file because of the narrowness of the tunnels around them.
“Is this the right way?” Leyana asked, from close behind him.
“I don’t know,” Sartes admitted. “We used to think that there weren’t any ways straight into the castle, or we’d have attacked it that way. Now… I know there were secret passages in the castle. I’m just hoping they connect, I guess.”
Leyana reached out to squeeze his hand. “It’s important to have hope.”
The hardest part was that it was difficult to keep track of the direction they were moving in. Sartes was doing his best to map the turns and openings as they made their way along, but it was difficult to be certain. They could be heading in the wrong direction entirely, even though he’d spent plenty of time in the rebellion’s sections of the old tunnels.
The one they were walking down started to open out, and Sartes saw the stonework around them change slightly, to more regular stone, dressed and decorated in a way that seemed familiar.
“I think this might be it,” he said, although he kept his voice down so it wouldn’t carry too far. “This way.”
He led the way as the tunnel became a corridor, which gave way to dead, empty rooms that had obviously belonged to far older structures. There was even furniture in some of them, so old and rotted that when Sartes touched an ancient-looking chair, it collapsed.
The next room was circular, with sunlight visible far above. Fragments of mirrors set along the walls reflected that light, suggesting that it had once been some kind of well of light. For a moment, Sartes found himself dazzled just looking at it…
…and that was when the soldiers came.
They r
ushed from openings in the walls in a mass that caught their line of former conscripts unprepared. Sartes saw one slash his blade across the throat of a boy before he could even start to clear his weapon.
Sartes barely managed to bring his own to bear in time. He parried a stroke that would otherwise have gone straight through his heart, jumping back with no chance to counterattack. He parried again, swinging back blindly.
He knew he wasn’t a great fighter. Not the way Ceres was, or Akila, or Thanos. When he’d succeeded before, it was always because he’d found ways to outthink his opponents, to surprise them or strike at them in unexpected ways.
Here, though, there was no room for movement, no time for planning. Sartes saw the Empire’s men slam into the conscripts, and although they fought back, the slaughter in those first few seconds was horrible to watch. He saw swords sliding into flesh and out again, blood covering them. He saw conscripts struggling desperately, trying to overcome the surprise and fight back.
Sartes tried to fight. He thrust at one man, feeling his blade strike home, then barely managed to step back as a return thrust came at him. In an enclosed space like this, there was barely any room to dodge. Around him, he saw the former conscripts fighting bravely, their blades flashing in the light as they struggled with their attackers.
Sartes should have known. He should have guessed that Stephania would have the tunnels watched, and that the watchers would see them coming. He should have been more careful. He should have—
“Sartes!”
He spun at the sound of Leyana’s voice. She was pressed up against a wall, a soldier holding her pinioned wrists with one hand while his other struggled with a length of rope. As if she were nothing more than another slave to be taken.
Fury flashed through Sartes then, and he ran at the other man. In the press of the violence, though, there was no room to do it. He found a soldier barging into him from one side. He pushed past and tripped as a leg hooked his ankle.
He briefly saw the world stretched out above him, with the figures of those fighting a little above, then the mirrored walls of the light well, then the open sky beyond. Sartes struggled to stand—and then something struck him on the side of the head.
He slipped into blackness, and even the sounds of battle faded to nothingness.
CHAPTER TWELVE
By the time Delos came into view, Felene felt as though she might keel over at any moment. Her back burned in a way that it shouldn’t have, a long way from the dull ache that denoted healing.
“You should have stayed with the healers in Felldust,” she told herself, but she didn’t believe it. She had a task, and she was going to do it, whatever it took.
The small convoy she was traveling with was no help. Their captain had been serious about Felene only eating her own supplies, and even if there had been invitations to join the others on the deck of the adjoining ships, Felene wouldn’t have trusted them. At the very least, she needed to maintain the illusion that she was one of them, and her Felldust accent wasn’t good enough for a long conversation.
Seeing the battle that raged ahead, Felene found herself grateful that she did fit in. Felldust’s fleet was like a stain on the water, held back only by the shore defenses and the harbor chains. Felene could see ships flying the colors of the rebellion trying to harry the edges of the fleet, fighting bravely, but she could see that their numbers were far too few to ever hold.
Then she caught sight of more.
There were half a dozen ships of varying sizes, including one great galley that looked far too much as though it had been stolen from the Empire. They descended on the convoy she was a part of the way raiders on land might have harassed an army’s supply lines. It was a good tactic. If the fleet turned to help those joining it, then it would be distracted from its work while the attackers melted away. If it didn’t, then it lost potential allies and supplies.
Which would be fine if Felene weren’t on one of the ships they were targeting.
She broke away from the others while the squadron of ships bore down on them. She didn’t try to break away completely though. The bigger ships of the rebellion had more sails and full banks of oars. All Felene had was a wound that continued to pain her and a need to get into the city.
She heard the moment when the great galley slammed into one of the ships she’d been tracking. It sounded like a tree falling as the ram on the prow tore through the side of the vessel. The rowers put it into reverse, while at the same time warriors near the front fought against those who tried to save themselves by jumping aboard the attacking ship.
There were battles going on all around Felene as the other ships closed and boarded the rest of the fleet. Battles on land were bad enough that Felene always tried to avoid them. Battles on the water were always more brutal, because there was no place to keep prisoners, and the monsters of the deep water were always circling, waiting for those who hit the water. Felene heard one man screaming as the sharks took him, then realized that she should be worrying about herself, because the great galley was turning in her direction.
Quickly, Felene started to unwind the mask that hid her face. Not that it would help. It wasn’t as though anyone but Thanos knew who she was. That was her only hope. She pointed her small boat at the huge ship as if she might ram it, hoping that they wouldn’t just pick her off with arrows.
“Thanos!” she yelled above the noise of the battle. “Thanos sent me!”
She kept yelling as she got closer, pulling just to the side of the galley where the oars rose to let her get close. Archers appeared at the side then. Felene didn’t try to kill these; she just kept yelling.
“Prince Thanos sent me!”
Someone must have said something up on deck, because the arrows lowered and a boarding net dropped down the side of the galley. Felene understood what they wanted, but she wasn’t going to let them dictate things so easily, so she took a grappling hook and lobbed it up there, ignoring the pain of the movement. She fixed it to her small boat so it wouldn’t float away, then started to climb.
She soon wished she hadn’t. Right then, every movement was agony. Halfway up, it felt as though she might collapse back into the water with the sharks. By the top, it was all she could do to pull herself over the railings and fall to her front on the deck. She looked up to see a wiry, tough-looking man watching her, recognized Akila, and forced herself at least to one knee.
“Consider yourself boarded,” she managed between panting breaths. “I’d demand that you all surrender at once, but you might have to give me a minute.”
That got a tight smile from the man there.
“I remember you,” Akila said. “You’re the one who brought Thanos to Haylon.”
“And you’re the one who said you weren’t getting involved,” Felene said. “I guess things change.”
Akila looked at her for a long moment. “Do you need help? We have healers aboard.”
He gestured, and a woman ran forward, examining Felene’s back while they kept talking. Felene hissed in pain every time the woman touched her.
“Have you joined Felldust’s army then?” Akila asked. “Should I be throwing you back over the side?”
“You might as well not bother, with the look of this wound,” the healer said, prodding at the hole in Felene’s back. It was all Felene could do to keep from spinning around and knocking her down.
“Please don’t do that,” Felene said. “It’s bad enough I’ve been coughing blood half the way from Felldust, without you doing that.”
“So you did come from Felldust?” Akila asked her.
They’d met before, but Felene had found that didn’t always stop people from trying to kill you. Particularly if they thought you’d picked the wrong side. She decided it was probably a good moment for an explanation.
“Stephania fooled me,” she said. “Thanos told me that he was going to try to save her, and when she came to my boat for an escape from Delos, I bought her lie that he was gone. I took her
to Felldust, and she stabbed me in the back. Now I hear that she’s returned to Delos.”
“She has the castle,” Akila said. “I’ve had messenger birds, but I can spare no men.”
“Good thing I’m not one of your men, then,” Felene pointed out. She forced herself to her feet in spite of the pain. “I’m going to find her, and I’m going to end this.”
She didn’t have to force that determination into her voice. It was there at the heart of her like the hard keel of a ship, holding it true and balanced. She was going to find Stephania. She was going to stop her, whatever it took.
“An admirable ambition,” Akila said. “What makes you think you can do it?”
Felene gave him a hard look. “I’m not asking your permission.”
She forced herself to stand straight then. She drew a blade, letting it shine in the sun.
“I’ve been across continents. I’ve stolen hearts and jewels and treasures you couldn’t begin to imagine. I’ve fought my way past creatures and men. You really think one castle wall is going to stop me when I want revenge?”
She saw Akila smile at that.
“Probably not. Tell me, are you starting to wish that you’d never met Thanos?”
“Are you?” Felene countered.
She saw him shrug then.
“Sometimes, when we lose my men in one of the attacks. I’m throwing myself at their fleet, and I might as well be a blood-fly scraping at a horse’s hide. I bite, and the tail swishes, and I have to fly again in case I’m squashed.”
Felene understood that feeling. She was throwing herself at a castle singlehanded, after all.
“There are places I’ve seen where men run from the insect swarms,” Felene pointed out. “Where they drain horses dry, or they die diseased afterwards.”