by Bobby Adair
As she passed, a contagious cheer rose on voices that spread down the line.
Buoyed by the ovation, Fitz understood immediately that her value to the army was not in killing demons with her sword, but in bolstering the fragile spirit of her people, giving them a reason, helping them find the strength to fight on.
She wanted to ride past the main gate and beyond, but she had to turn. She had to go back to where the lines had broken.
Leading the horses in a wide U-turn, Fitz saw the swath of broken demons marking the trail her small formation had taken through the throng, and that boosted her confidence more.
She kicked her horse and yelled, swinging her heavy sword.
Demons fell.
Blood splattered.
Her arm burned, and her hand felt numb wrapped around the hilt of the blade.
Where the line had disintegrated, far out in the field, a new line was forming, jagged, gapped, and messy, but taking shape.
There was hope.
Fitz led her horses along a path in front of where the clumps of women were gathering their courage and turning. “Fight!” she yelled. “Fight!”
Ahead, she saw a row of women, a hundred strong, straight, formed up as they’d been trained, shoulder-to-shoulder, strength coalesced from fear, spears pointing forward, efficiently killing the demons coming at them. And in the center of the line, taller than most of the women around him, Fitz saw Adam-John, spear raised, yelling orders and encouragement to the women and boys around him.
In the distance, galloping like a savior from out of the city streets, Fitz saw Ginger’s flaming red hair flowing in the wind, with two hundred riders behind, swords raised, coming to kill.
They’re here!
In front of the coming horses, Fitz saw her disintegrating army come to a stop, learning bravery from the coming riders. No, they’re not just riders, Fitz thought.
They’re a cavalry.
Tears of joy flowed down Fitz’s face as she led her small formation in another turn, riding along the wall and back toward the main gate, to the center of the battle.
Chapter 97: Oliver
“Did we win?” asked Oliver, giddy for having lived when he thought for certain he was going to die.
Jingo put a foot on the log and looked across the field. Countless demons lay in the grass, most dead, many dying. A smattering of twisted men walked among them, wounded and dazed, or just confused. Jingo pointed in the direction of the main gate. “The battle is inside the wall now. We’ve done our part out here.”
“What do we do now?” asked Beck.
“We go in,” said Ivory, jumping to his feet and tucking magazines into his belt.
Nodding, Jingo said, “He’s right.”
Oliver stood up, stiff from tension, sore in his shoulder from where the rifle had pounded him with every shot. “I’m ready.”
Jingo gave everyone a quick look. “Make sure all of your magazines are full. Check your hand grenades. Make sure you have enough.”
Oliver already knew his magazines were full, but he checked anyway. As the battle had wound down and there were fewer and fewer targets coming, Jingo and Beck caught up on keeping the magazines topped off. Still, Oliver checked the one in his gun and each of the six Kirby had given him.
“Tuck them into your belt, like I did,” Ivory told him, walking over. “They won’t do you any good in your backpack. You won’t be able to get them out fast enough.”
“What about the wagon?” Beck asked, pointing at the last few cases of bullets and hand grenades still on the aluminum cart.
“We’ll come back for it,” Jingo told him. “It’ll do us no good to bring it along.”
“It’ll slow us down,” Ivory added.
“Between us, with our magazines full, we’ve got over a thousand rounds of ammunition, plus what we carry for the pistols,” said Jingo. “And we’ve got the hand grenades. I don’t know how many demons await us inside, but we’ll be able to kill a lot before we need to come back here to reload.”
“Let’s go, then,” said Beck, “While there’s still a Brighton left to fight for.”
Rifle in hand, Jingo stepped over the downed tree, the rampart that they’d defended all through the battle. “Spread out,” he told the others. “Walk in line, side by side, but about ten paces apart. Shoot anything that can still walk. Ivory, you take one end, Melora you take the other. You two are the best shots. Oliver, you’re in the middle.”
Oliver had killed his share of demons. He didn’t need to be protected. “Why do—”
“As a favor to me,” said Jingo. “Let’s not take an unnecessary risk.”
The group lined up and spread out, Oliver in the middle, Jingo to his left and Beck to his right, Melora on one end, and Ivory on the other. They walked at a brisk pace across the field in the direction of the main gate, shooting any demons still on their feet as they went.
Chapter 98: Fitz
Panting, after what seemed like hours atop the horse, slaughtering demons with the aid of her cavalry, Fitz and her beast stood still behind the battle line where the people of Brighton, still fought side by side.
They weren’t really fighting anymore.
Her fighters were advancing toward the wall, walking over the bodies of thousands and thousands of dead demons, exterminating those who were trapped between them and the wall who they now outnumbered.
Some demons were climbing the wall, trying to get back outside. More were running through the narrow gap in the open gate.
“We did it,” said Ginger, from her horse beside Fitz’s. “We won.”
Fitz felt the battle in every joint and every muscle of her body. Her horse stomped and snorted. It was ready for more. “It’s not over yet.”
Ginger pointed at the line of women, advancing on the remnants of the horde. “They’ll finish the brutes.”
Fitz nodded at the gates, “We need to take the cavalry through the gate and kill all that we can outside the wall before they escape into the forest.”
“But we’ve won,” Ginger told her. “We don’t need to risk ourselves.”
“We do,” Fitz insisted. “There may still be men out there, fighting for their lives.”
“Winthrop’s army?” Ginger spat. “They were coming here to tear down our walls and kill us all.”
“Husbands, brothers, and sons,” Fitz told her, not rising to the argument. “We need to save as many as we can.”
Ginger nodded, respect written on her face. “Yes, General.”
Fitz laughed. “I’m no general.”
“Yes, my Queen?” Ginger smiled widely to let Fitz know the title was a bit of a joke.
“I don’t know if I need a title.” Fitz raised her sword. “You are the general of our cavalry, Ginger. Why don’t you lead us out?”
“No,” Ginger answered. “Lady Fitz, you saved us today. You lead us out.”
Fitz stood in her stirrups and waved her blade in the air. “Don’t clean your swords yet, ladies. We have more killing to do.” Fitz pointed toward the gates. “Follow me.”
She trotted her horse with Ginger behind and the cavalry lining up single-file to go back out through the gate for the second time that day.
Chapter 99: Fitz
Fitz spurred her horse to a full gallop as she rode through the partially open gates.
Behind her, nearly two hundred women on horseback followed. A dozen demons loitered in the funnel created by the partially open doors, and Fitz killed one of them as she pushed through into the open. The cavalry behind her would take care of the rest.
Knowing she couldn’t slow, Fitz galloped into the corpse-strewn pasture in front of the gates, looking quickly from right to left to gauge the situation. She needed to turn in the correct direction so she could lead
her cavalry at what she expected would be hundreds—and hoped wouldn’t be thousands—of demons.
What she saw surprised her.
Halfway to the forest, several hundred soldiers stood in no kind of order, with sagging shoulders and weapons hanging from their hands. Hours of face-to-face fighting had splattered them with so much gore that they looked human only in silhouette.
No live demon was close to them.
None of the army was fighting anymore.
They were the paltry remains of a military force nineteen thousand strong, the proudest ever assembled in the three hundred year history of Brighton.
The vicious horde she’d expected to find outside the wall was nothing but a few hundred upright demons scattered across a carpet of bodies, demons, men, and women. Most dead, many wailing as their lives seeped out through their open wounds.
The cracking thunder that Fitz had been hearing all day was more pronounced outside the wall, and she heard it again, popping in rapid bangs. Looking to her left, she saw many of the demons in that direction making their way over the corpses toward a line of five people in the distance.
They were the source of the abrupt thunder.
In front of those five people, the disoriented demons fell.
Fitz didn’t understand what she was seeing. It didn’t make sense that the demons would fall over and die just by going in their direction.
Fitz veered her horse toward the strange people.
The horses that had already made it through the gate rode behind her, and in moments, her cavalry was riding abreast, charging at the rear of the demons that were moving toward the noisy five people.
The hooves of the horses created a thunder so loud they drowned out all other sound.
The demons in front of Fitz’s cavalry turned to see what was coming. Some stopped, some fought, and others stumbled. More sprinted away trying to save themselves.
None of those choices helped them.
All fell under the hooves and swords of her cavalry.
Seemingly as soon as it began, it was over. All the demons were on the ground behind her horses, dying or dead, and Fitz was slowing her horse as she rode toward the line of five strangers.
One lowered his odd, noisy weapon, and pulled a hood up over his head as the horses drew close.
Fitz rode straight for the shortest of them, the one in the center, the one she assumed was the leader.
The short one stepped forward as Fitz brought her horse to a stop. Fitz didn’t believe what her eyes were telling her.
It couldn’t be.
“Oliver?”
Oliver lowered the dull metal weapon he was holding as he walked forward, looking at her. “Fitz?”
Fitz wiped a bloody sleeve across suddenly damp eyes. “Yes, Oliver. It’s me.”
Confusion overrode Fitz’s other emotions. She couldn’t find any words.
“I—” Oliver didn’t know what to say as his voice cracked and tears betrayed him. He ran to Fitz’s horse, looking up at her the whole way. “Are you okay?”
Fitz almost laughed. She shook her head and said, “I’m fine, Oliver. None of this is my blood.”
“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
“I thought the same.”
Fitz looked from Oliver to the strange device in his hands, the one she’d seen doing impossible things, just moments earlier. “Who are these people you are with? And what is that thing you are holding?”
“It’s a gun,” said a man, coming up behind Oliver. “A rifle. Tech Magic. Just like the myths.”
Fitz looked at the thin, haggard man, and recognition triggered. “Minister Beck?”
“The same.” Beck nodded, as he looked her up and down. “I have to admit, I’m surprised to see you on that horse.”
Fitz tensed as the joy of her reunion faded. She lifted her sword, prepared to fight again. “You were expecting Tenbrook?” Fitz drilled Beck with a hard stare, a stare that said she didn’t care about the weapon in his hand. She’d die for Brighton, if she had to. “Tenbrook’s dead. And no one like him is coming back.”
“Fitz is our leader,” Ginger added. “You aren’t anything anymore, Beck, except maybe a criminal.” Ginger raised her sword, too.
“Beck’s okay,” Oliver said, stepping up and putting a hand on Fitz’s leg. “He’s—” Oliver glanced back and forth at the line of woman on horseback around Fitz. In a low voice, he said, “Before we left, I was working with Beck to overthrow Tenbrook. Beck’s a good guy.”
Fitz sat up straight in her saddle and looked down at Oliver. “Stay near me, Oliver. You and I will talk later.” Looking down on Beck, she said, “Brighton has changed in your absence. There is no Tenbrook. No cavalry, except what you see here. No blue shirts, and no Council of elders. There is a New Council that governs Brighton.”
Beck held a look on his face that said he wasn’t sure how to react.
“What Beck means to say,” said a strange man next to Beck, stepping forward and throwing back his hood. “Is that we want change, too.”
Women on horses gasped.
Fitz tensed.
Ginger raised her sword.
“Wait!” Oliver yelled. “Stop!”
“Do I surprise you?” asked the hoodless, wart-covered man, looking only at Fitz, “A demon, a monster, who speaks?” He let his weapon hang on its strap and raised his hands. “I mean you no harm.” He looked over at Beck. “Obviously, Brighton has changed for the better during Beck’s absence.”
“It has,” Ginger spat. “What do you want?”
“Listen to him,” Oliver pleaded with Fitz. “He’s three hundred years old. He knows everything. His name is Jingo.”
Fitz shook her head, ready to brush off Oliver’s fantasy beliefs, but the confident look on Oliver’s face convinced her to listen.
“I am three hundred years old,” Jingo confirmed. “I am what you would call an Ancient. I lived in the time before the spore. I grew up in the magical times of your legends.”
Shaking her head, disbelief clear on her face, Fitz asked, “Why are you here?”
“I am here to guide Brighton out of brutality and ignorance, if that’s what you want,” announced Jingo. “I’m here to help you. All of you.”
“Please listen to him,” Oliver pleaded. “He’s my friend.”
Fitz looked down at Oliver, inclined to accept his recommendation, even though the women around her looked on with equal measures of awe and hate. While riding up to the five, they’d all seen what the five’s guns could do, killing demons at a distance with the noise of thunder.
But they’d been fighting through the whole of the day with demons that looked just like Jingo. It didn’t make sense.
“You’ve seen what we can do working together,” Jingo said, pointing all around them at the demons they’d slayed. “That is what we hoped for. We came here to help, as I said.”
“How can we be sure of that?” Ginger asked.
“Perhaps you don’t understand the power of the weapons we hold,” Jingo said. “If you’ll allow me, I’ll demonstrate.”
Ginger raised her sword at Jingo. “You don’t want to do that.”
“It’s okay!” Oliver said, holding up his hands to calm everyone. “Let him show you.”
Jingo pulled a strange, round metal device from his pants, pulled off a piece, and hurled it in the opposite direction. An ear-splitting crack echoed across the field as the device suddenly came apart, spraying dirt, pieces of dead demons, and fire in all directions.
“Melora, Ivory, show them what our guns can do,” Jingo said.
The young man and woman next to Jingo turned around and pointed their strange weapons at five demons that were loitering out by the tree line, deciding wheth
er to run or attack again. Ivory and Melora fired their guns across the distance. The demons all fell to the ground with blood spewing from wounds.
Fitz and her women stared at the aftermath in awe, looking between Jingo, his group, and the destruction.
“If we wanted to come into Brighton by force, we could,” Jingo said. “That’s why you must believe me when I say that was never our intention. We don’t mean anyone harm. We’re here to help you with your change, in whichever way you need us.”
Jingo looked over at Beck. Feeling the weight of Jingo’s glance, Beck agreed. “It’s true.”
“See, I told you,” Oliver said, next to Fitz. “We’re on the same side.”
Before Fitz could consider a response, a woman on horseback came galloping up, stealing everyone’s attention with her urgency. She glanced quickly between the strange group of people, Fitz, and the debris from Jingo’s strange weapon. Then she said, “We’ve found Father Winthrop, Lady Fitz.”
“Dead?” Fitz asked, though she had no expectation to the contrary.
“No,” the woman answered. “He’s terribly wounded.”
Fitz nodded. “Bind his hands and feet and take him inside.” Fitz turned to Ginger. “Tell Winthrop’s soldiers they are welcome to enter Brighton if they give up their weapons and accept the authority of the New Council. Tyranny no longer rules. We do. They must respect that and they must treat women as equals, or they’ll be exiled.” She made sure to look at Beck as she spoke.
“What of these people?” Ginger asked, cocking her head at Jingo, Beck, and the young man and woman, apparently named Ivory and Melora.
“I’ll deal with them,” Fitz answered.
Chapter 100: William
William ran until the screams in the distance were quieter and the thunder of the battlefield sounded like it was tapering off. He wondered if Winthrop’s gods had finally gone quiet, mourning the loss of one of their brothers. Or maybe his arrogance had irked them and earned their enmity.