by Arthur Slade
Dark Wings
“We have to split up,” I shouted at Thord once we’d caught up.
He made a hand signal to show he’d heard me. Then he, Megan, and the two swans turned toward the north. We broke off westward.
I looked over my shoulder. There were three swans behind us. The other three were following Thord. His only hope would be that the Immortals were not as skilled as he was at riding a swan, even with the extra weight. And Megan’s swan should also act in their defence. Swans did that for people they’d bonded with, and Naga had bonded with Megan.
The leader of the three swans that followed us was Corwin. My dragon eye showed me the grimace of anger on his face.
Brax made an undignified grunt. His right wing, displayed in the wan moonlight, was leaking blood, and the hole Sargon had torn in it widened with each flapping motion.
“I am going slower by the second,” Brax said. “May I suggest we go toward the mountains.” His tone was almost polite. Maybe the more blood he lost, the more polite he became. “There are more air currents there that I hope will surprise inexperienced riders.”
“Yes, let’s go.”
He turned, winging his way in that direction, continuing to grunt with each motion.
“Why did you save me?” I asked. “You could have killed Corwin and our pact would be over.”
“I couldn’t find him,” he said, still sounding polite. “Plus, I wouldn’t abandon you.” And then he chuckled painfully. “I have plans for you. Corwin is only half the deal, and we were in live to fight another day territory.”
“It was a failure,” I said.
This got another weak chuckle. “We were attacking the emperor of half of Ellos. The odds were not on our side. That you got so close is amazing.”
Mountains rose before us and we had to climb higher, just brushing the top of one. I shivered as the air grew colder.
“I’ll let them get closer,” Brax said. “And hope they don’t have bows.”
At that same moment, a crossbow bolt hissed over my shoulder.
“Oh,” Brax said. “It will make surviving quite a bit tougher.”
Our pursuers were near enough for me to see that the Immortals were both flying with a bow in one hand and the reins in the other. At least that would make it harder for them to aim.
“Tell me when they’ve loaded again,” Brax said.
“Now,” I said. “Now!”
“Yes! Yes! I hear you.” He dived and two bolts hissed through the air over our heads.
He had tucked in his wings to increase our speed. “I am hoping my wings don’t rip off when we come out of this dive,” he grunted.
The others followed us, but one of the Immortals lost his grip on the reins and tumbled from the saddle. The man didn’t make a sound as he fell to the rocks below.
“I guess, at this height, they aren’t truly Immortal,” Brax said.
He opened his wings when we were near the ground; the wind roared through them and he uttered a gargling cry of pain. Blood from the tearing wound spattered me, but his wings held together, and we missed the ground by inches.
Then something burst below us and came rushing up. Was the ground cracking open?
No. Not the ground. We had passed into a field of geysers shooting water skyward at various times. The steam and boiling water would go as high as fifty to a hundred feet in the air, then fall back down in an icy mist. Brax swerved to avoid a direct blow from one of them.
Water turned to ice almost at once on my hair, my clothes, and my hands, making my grip unsteady. I even tried to use my broken arm, but that only shot pain through it.
Another geyser just missed us but caught one of our enemies. It drenched the swan in boiling water, and the bird went screaming down to the ground, screeching his pain. His rider tumbled along the rocks.
I so hoped it had been Corwin, but a moment later my brother came into view. He was avoiding the geysers and closing in. We cleared the geyser field but Brax’s wings barely worked properly now. He could no longer control our direction.
And Corwin was gone.
I looked left, right. “Where is he?” I shouted.
Brax climbed up, higher and higher, because a terraced cliff wall was stretching out before us. We had to clear it.
Then, just as we were nearing the top, Corwin plummeted into us, his swan crashing into my back and smacking Brax’s neck.
My grip had been broken. I was tossed through the air.
Chapter 29
Not Today
I landed on a cliffside, attempted to stop my rolling motion with my broken arm, cried out in pain, then slammed into rock. But I came up standing, with one dagger drawn and my feet set in a battle stance. Brax had vanished, perhaps crashed into the rocks below us.
Corwin had landed twenty feet away, looking like he hadn’t been damaged at all. Even his hair was straight. The glare in his eyes was one of absolute determination. He drew his sword.
“That was a daring raid,” he said. “Bravo, sister. But it was also embarrassing for me — I imagine taking your head back to the emperor will make up for my failure.”
“That won’t happen today, brother.” I tried to stand as tall and straight as I could, to pretend, without grimacing too badly, that my arm wasn’t broken. The wind caught my cloak, and I imagined with the snow and rocks behind me it was quite the pose.
At this, he grinned. “Your arm is broken,” he said. “You limp on your left, so you’ve damaged your leg, though you may not even notice it. And you’re holding a dagger, which means I have the longer reach. Advantage mine.”
Pain flared in my ankle. Was it just at his suggestion? No, when I shifted weight to that side my ankle nearly collapsed.
“You betrayed your fellow students,” I said. “You broke your blood oath.”
“Technically, I never made that oath since it was to come at the end of graduation. And why be stuck in the past, sister? I am the future. Your loyalty to a burned-out school stuffed with dead maestrus and students is the past.”
He strode ahead. His black armour caught the moonlight.
Brax, silent and sudden, raised his head over the cliff edge. He blasted Corwin with so much flame that it entirely enveloped him. He was dead. He had to be. It was an even bigger blast than the one that fried Banderius.
And I felt conflicted in my heart. Because he was my brother and I still cared for him, despite all the betrayals. What a fool I was.
Corwin stood in the flames. Why hadn’t he fallen? He wasn’t waving his arms or screaming or doing any of the things that one would expect a man surrounded by flames to do. He put up a hand that forced the fire to part. It continued to strike his armour, but he didn’t melt. He stepped toward Brax.
Brax looked shocked and kept spouting out his fiery breath, to the point that the heat was reaching me and melting the snow all around. But Corwin strode right up to him and swung his sword so that it struck Brax in the centre of his head. He crumpled from the blow and fell out of sight.
Corwin turned toward me and wiped a sheen of sweat from his forehead. “I planned for your dragon.” He gestured at his armour. “Dragon scales from baby dragons. The most expensive suit of armour in the Empire. Plus Sargon placed a ward around my face to protect against heat and flames.”
The blast hadn’t even affected his hair.
He now calmly walked toward me. I didn’t want to back up any further since I’d be trapped and have no room to move.
We crossed blades.
Chapter 30
So Very Sweet
On a good day, I could take him. But on this day, with a damaged ankle and a broken arm, it would be a slaughter. His armour was too strong for my blade.
He jabbed playfully at me. I parried and followed with a riposte that landed nowhere near him. He had already moved out of the way. Then he reached in and gave me a pinprick right on my shoulder. He could stand there and bat away my feeble blows.
“You won’t taste
victory today,” he said. The most aggravating thing was that his words weren’t even strained. “I will take your head, the dragon’s head, and the heads of your friends back to Sargon. And he will reward me.”
“Why?” I hissed. “Why do this?”
“Because it feels good. Because no one will leave me behind again, sister.” He darted into my circle of defence and I wasn’t fast enough to parry. His blade sliced my cheek.
It was a message. He could cut me at any time. He was the murderous cat and I was the mouse with one arm.
With each blow he laughed, enjoying the moment. “You will never know what it’s like,” he said, speaking easily as he smashed the flat of his blade against my broken arm. The pain nearly made me black out. “You wouldn’t even understand the feeling of power that came over me when I was standing on the top of the Red Assassin Fortress and sent the signal to the Immortals on their winged gliders. That sense of destiny. It was I who controlled them. Who controlled the lives of every assassin in that school.”
“You must be so proud of yourself.” I made a quick stab toward him, aiming for his hand, but he parried it and rewarded me with another cut on the cheek.
“Ah, that matches,” he said. “And I am proud. I just walked through the emperor’s great dining hall with representatives of all our enemies and all our allies, and every one of them cowered before me. They all know my name and they fear that one day I will crouch on their windowsill, blades in hand.”
“They will kill you.”
This got another tittering laugh from him. “They have no assassins,” he said. “That’s the beauty of it all. No assassins. All the powerful wizards are dead or have fled Ellos. Emperor Sargon, with my tactics and help, will conquer the Five Realms one by one. Every map will be redrawn; we’ll rewrite every history book and sing the praises of our great victory.”
“It will be a dead land.”
“No, sister. A perfect land. You don’t understand power. As long as there is a threat, that threat must be stamped out.” He performed a circular cut, which added momentum to his swing. I parried it, but my dagger was nearly knocked out of my hand. I knew he’d not let me stab his wrist again.
“You could have beat Scyllia,” he said. “And Gregum. You are that good. Not Corwin good, of course!”
“Gregum is dead,” I said, hoping this would shock him.
Corwin raised an eyebrow. “It’s not like you to lie.”
“We caught him over the water. He was flying to the east. We killed him.”
“Well, well.” His grin only broadened. “You are full of surprises. If only I’d mentored you properly. I shall miss dear Gregum. Not the smartest of friends, but efficient and loyal. And this gives me one more reason to kill you. Revenge, I am told, is so sweet.”
Then he began to press his attack. He was done talking.
He wanted the fight to be over.
Chapter 31
Pressing the Advantage
He rained down blow after blow, each knocking me further back. And it dawned on me that his talking hadn’t just been to air his views, but to distract and steer me to a place where there was only rock at my back and on either side. Even if I wanted to jump over the edge of the cliff to rob him of the fatal blow, I’d have to get past him. He kept pounding, staying just far enough back that neither dagger nor powders would reach him. I was barely deflecting the blows, sweating like mad now as it cooled on my forehead and ran into my eyes.
He saw that. Winked at me and sliced above my right eyebrow. Now blood was blinding me and I had to stagger further back, using my broken arm to wipe it away.
I reached in to my cloak, found a burning pepper powder and tossed it, filling the air between us. But he didn’t even blink, and I found it was my eyes that burned.
“I put that in my eyes every morning and night,” he said. “It helps me sleep.”
I blocked his next blow at the last moment. It had been aimed at my neck.
“The sand in the hourglass dwindles for you,” he said. “Sweet sister, enjoy these last few breaths.”
He might have added a few more taunts, but I was too busy dodging each blow. As I did so I listed my weapons. The poisons and dusts waited in each cloak pocket, but he was immune to anything I could toss at him.
I was not immune to his blade. This time he nicked my stomach and I screamed.
“Ah, that’s what we were looking for. A little reaction from my sister who always faces the world with such coolness. Not so cool now as your life dribbles away.”
My eyes continued to water, but the dragon eye stayed clear and focused. And through it I saw Corwin as a series of red lines moving toward me. Even the magic ward was visible. He was completely protected.
He hammered me with a downward blow that I had to block using both hands. The shock made the broken bones grate in my arm and I fell to my knees, but his blade was turned away.
It was also perhaps the last time I’d use that arm. It hung limp at my side.
“Impressive,” he said. “I thought that was your death blow. At least you are going out with a fight. There will be a chapter in my book about you. My sister was heroic, but she tragically chose the wrong side.”
“No. You— you chose the wrong side.” It wasn’t the snappiest reply, but I just had to keep him talking. “No one would read a book about you.”
“Oh, that hurts, sis,” he said.
What was my advantage? With a broken arm and now tired beyond endurance, I could think of nothing. I had two daggers, one arm, a cloak, and one good ankle.
And the answer came to me.
I shifted to one side and threw my dagger. He made a quick twisting motion, and the blade hissed past him.
“Oh, a desperate move, sis. Now you have only one weapon.”
I drew my second dagger.
The thing he didn’t know was that my blades would cut rock. My dagger had hit the wall to his left and stuck there. I made a feint to his right and he spun away from it, but that gave me room to jump and place a solid foot on the dagger protruding from the wall. I used that leverage, that extra height, to throw myself overtop of him.
A look of confusion and surprise crossed his face as I flipped, and when I was directly above him I cut the tie on my cloak.
It was weighted on the bottom. It fell over Corwin’s head, blinding him. I landed, grabbed the cloak, twisted so that it was wrapped tight around him, and threw him to the ground. I kicked his hand so that his sword went clattering along the rocks.
Then, as he struggled, I smashed him again and again with the hilt of my dagger.
He reached up, grabbed my broken arm and pulled, and the pain came close to knocking me out. But I kept hammering at him. In time he stopped moving.
I didn’t. I continued swinging. Just to be sure. I’m not certain when I stopped. I looked down to see that he was breathing but otherwise motionless. I had won.
But when I pulled away the cloak, he was staring at me.
Chapter 32
Turn Your Back
I drew back my arm to hit him again, then realized he had been knocked out. He’d trained his whole life to sleep with his eyes open. His eyes weren’t tracking movement. They stared straight into the stars.
I didn’t know why I hadn’t used the sharp end of my dagger. I guess I still had some hope for him.
Or a conscience.
I went to his swan, who hissed at me, but I met its eye in the way Maestru Arvid had taught me, showing it who was master. I retrieved a circle of rope from his saddlebag. It was a struggle to tie Corwin with one hand, but I made sure each knot was tight. I kept expecting him to awaken, but my blows had been hard.
Then I retrieved my dagger from the wall and stumbled over to the edge. Brax was on a line of rocks below me, not moving.
“Brax?” I said. “Brax?”
He didn’t reply. His wing looked like it was missing a chunk and perhaps broken in several places.
“Brax!”
&n
bsp; His good wing flapped raggedly and he turned his head. There was a gash in his skull. But he was alive!
“Do you have to be so loud?” His voice was a whisper.
“I’m so glad you can speak. Can you move?”
“I really hate your brother,” he said. And he moved his other wing. He struggled but was able to pull himself to all fours. “I assume he is dead now.”
I shook my head.
“You didn’t kill him?” Brax nearly spat these words out.
“No.”
“You are a mad child,” he said. “A soft, mad child.”
I shrugged. “It was my decision.” I saw that the cliff angled up. “You can climb up to where I am if you’re able.”
“I can see that. I’m not completely blind,” he said. “I just hope I don’t leave any pieces behind.” But he started dragging his damaged body up a series of slanted rocks.
A motion caught my eye. Three swans were moving through the distant sky, only visible because they blocked the stars. Three meant the Immortals had defeated Thord and Megan. I rushed to Corwin’s swan and took out the crossbow, struggling to load it with one hand, cranking back the string and setting a bolt in place. I wasn’t certain I could take on the remaining Immortals now. And Brax was not in the best of conditions either.
I raised the crossbow and aimed.
Thord was in my vision. With Megan riding the second swan. A swan with an empty saddle followed them.
I lowered the crossbow and waited.
By the time they landed, Brax had worked his way to me. I was surprised that Corwin’s swan hadn’t fled, but he must have imprinted it. It backed away from Brax.
Thord slid off and then turned to help Megan, who was clutching her side. She couldn’t hold herself up so she leaned on him. Her black clothing hid the severity of her wound.
They struggled over to where Corwin was lying and looked down.
“Why is he still alive?” Megan’s voice was raspy.
“Exactly what I asked her,” Brax said. “I don’t mean to be critical but you’re not a very good assassin, Carmen. You failed at your only job.”