An arrow hit her leg.
Kirby cried out and reached for the protruding arrow, but stopped herself before pulling it out. She turned her attention to a crevice between two boulders, where an injured man had propped himself, readying his bow. Kirby fired at him. He ducked, but not before releasing another aimless arrow, which landed a few feet away. Anger stung her as she veered toward the gap next to the boulders, hoping to ferret him out. She charged up on the other side and found the man kneeling, reaching for his quiver and another arrow. He looked up, surprised, as Kirby shot him in the head.
Kirby looked around.
A patch of worn-down dirt on the other side of the boulders was empty, as was the long, moonlit road, and the woods behind it curving up into the mountains, the place from which Enoch and his men had attacked. She looked behind her. The battle was still going strong, but it had moved toward the middle of the bridge. No one was nearby.
Perhaps this was her chance to reload.
Chapter 77: Flora
Flora rode her horse as fighting men and women fell around her. At the sound of gunshots coming from the descending road, she’d veered in the other direction, having just enough time to catch a glimpse of a man coming up the road with a gun.
Deacon.
She couldn’t be certain it was he, but she had no time to analyze it further. The raging battle enveloped her. She’d lost track of Kirby.
Everywhere she looked, there was a vicious attack. The Halifax men fought the islanders, either slicing them open with swords or shooting them with their god weapons. Burning torches littered the ground. She couldn’t see much of anything through the constant commotion. The battle against Halifax—an idea sewn in the minds of the islanders as soon as they were old enough to understand words—was happening faster than she’d expected.
She gripped the sword that Enoch had given her as she rode through the battle, swinging at a few island soldiers that came in her direction, but the prospect of slaughtering her men stopped her. It had been easier to agree to the plan when she was in Halifax, bargaining for her life, but she couldn’t imagine cutting down people she might know. Neither could she slay the Halifax men, who had kept her alive, and with whom she had marched to kill Deacon.
She was a confusing piece in a bitter war.
Several times, men ran toward her, only to take the opposite direction. The islanders were looking for the marked men and women. The Halifax men were looking for the islanders. Some people might be looking for Kirby, but no one knew what to make of Flora.
She looked around her, catching sight of some men fighting near the edge of the bridge, screaming. That sight made her recall her father’s final moments, as he was hoisted over the edge and pitched to his death.
Deacon.
Renewed anger stirred Flora as she turned her horse, knocking aside an islander and heading back in the direction she thought she’d seen him. She passed clusters of men, deep in battle, striking each other with blades. Much of the gunfire had stopped. Halifax men slashed and screamed at the islanders in their language. The islanders defended themselves with slicing blades and foul words. Several men and women ran by her without stopping.
A group of Halifax men nearby jogged in the direction she was headed, toward Deacon. In the light of the moon and several burning torches, she recognized the man in the center. Enoch. She opened her mouth to call out to him, slowing her horse.
A hand grabbed at her boot.
Someone tried ripping her from the horse. Flora looked over to find one of the islanders, a man she thought was familiar.
“Get off the horse!” he shouted.
“No!” she yelled, kicking him away.
The horse whinnied nervously as it turned, and Flora raised her sword, threatening him.
“I need it! Get off and let me ride!” he argued.
Another man had joined him, aiming an arrow at her head. “Do it. Or we’ll shoot you!”
“I’m an islander, like you!” she said.
“I know who you are,” the second man said. “I saw you riding up to the bridge with the stranger. You have something to do with this.”
“That is not true.”
Anger raged inside Flora as she held her sword. She wanted to ride and swing at these men, but she’d more likely take an arrow than win. She looked around, as if someone might assist her, but everyone in the vicinity was battling. No one else came in her direction. Enoch was gone. Gunshots sounded toward the center of the bridge; loud cries filled the air.
“The horse will do us more good than you,” the first man said. “Get off, or Clark shoots.”
Anger filled her response as she said, “I will get down.”
She had just put her leg over the stirrup when the man with the bow cried out in pain. A sword appeared through the front of his stomach, and blood leaked down his shirt. The sword retracted. A Halifax man stood behind it. Another Halifax man slashed at the first islander, who had turned in time to get up his sword. The blades clashed.
Jumping back into the saddle, Flora rode toward the place where she’d last seen Enoch.
Chapter 78: Enoch
“That way!” one of Enoch’s soldiers cried to him in his language.
Enoch’s eyes blazed as he looked across the bridge, spotting the man who had spread too many lies, and caused the deaths of too many of his people. He strode across the bridge, making his way toward Deacon as the death cries of his men echoed around him, sounds he’d hear in his sleep.
Too many of his men had died over a land they should never have lost.
It was time he finished the battle started long ago.
Enoch clutched the sword in his hand, a weapon that had served him faithfully for most of his life, and felt almost as comfortable as his arm. He threw the lightning weapon over his shoulder. The gun had spit fire long enough to cause the deaths of many islanders, but he was out of the metal pieces they called bullets. No matter. He would do what he had to, in order to fell the man who stood in the way of the islands.
Reaching the intersection of the sloping road and the bridge, he saw Deacon rounding the corner and moving farther onto the bridge, aiming his loud lightning weapon, sending cracks of fire through the air. Enoch grimaced as several of his best men fell, dying bravely. No more. Four Halifax soldiers walked beside Enoch, following him as he went after Deacon. None faltered, or turned around.
“Deacon!” Enoch shouted, projecting his voice as he’d done on the Halifax platform.
The word was lost in the commotion.
A few of Deacon’s men, standing guard near him, spotted Enoch coming before he got close, shouting warnings to their leader. Deacon spun and aimed his lightning weapon. Enoch’s men, hoping to protect him, ran out in front.
“No!” Enoch shouted, as Deacon used his weapon, killing two of his men with loud cracks.
The other two men fell back next to Enoch as he approached Deacon, stopping within twenty yards.
“You are a coward!” Enoch shouted.
Deacon’s face was hard in the light of several fallen, burning torches as he turned his gun on Enoch, and his men moved in a position to defend him. Enoch clutched his sword. He wasn’t stupid enough to run to his death. But he wouldn’t give in to this man, lighting weapon or not.
“Coward!” Enoch yelled again. “We want what your people stole!”
Surprise crossed Deacon’s face as he heard Enoch speak his language.
“Have your people come for another mark of failure?” Deacon let one hand off his gun to point at his forehead, smiling. “I will make sure your women, your children wear the same mark. We will burn it into their skulls, as our people did in the beginning.”
“You will step over our bodies before that happens.”
Rage built in Enoch as he gripped his sword. Footsteps pounded the bridge behind him, and he spun to find a group of several more Halifax men breaking from other battles, ready to join him. More of his men warded off any who tried to get ne
ar the impending altercation. Deep in the distance, Enoch heard more of his men fighting the islanders down the sloping road.
They were brave.
Many years ago, his people had named him The Bravest One.
It was time to show the reason for that name again.
Enoch nodded at a group of five of his brothers, who had joined him, clutching their swords. He stared at the man with the lighting weapon. They were out of the metal pieces in the objects called bullets. But it was no matter. If they would fail, they would fail together.
Enoch screamed some words in their language. “For The Holy One!”
Deacon looked confused at the words he didn’t understand.
Enoch and his men charged.
The Halifax men ran alongside him, bellowing chants of war as more cracks from Deacon’s lightning weapon filled the air, felling some, but not all. Some of his men reached Deacon’s. They screamed and fought as they crashed into Deacon’s men, and Deacon. One of the Halifax men cried his death throes as Deacon shot him and broke free of the commotion. Enoch kept course for Deacon, raising his sword with a war cry he’d been saving most of his life.
Deacon raised the lightning weapon.
A crack split the air.
Pain sparked through Enoch’s eyes as metal from the lightning weapon struck him in the side, hard, but he kept running until he was on top of Deacon, knocking the weapon from his hands with a slash of his sword. Deacon fell back against the bridge wall. Enoch ignored the burning pain in his side as he elbowed Deacon in the face once, twice. Deacon grunted as blood sprayed the air, splashing Enoch.
He struck Deacon with the hilt of his sword.
And again.
Deacon kneed Enoch in the groin.
Losing his wind, Enoch doubled over, new pain hitting him as Deacon shoved him away, scrambling for his dropped gun. Before Enoch could get ahold of him, he retrieved it and raised it at Enoch’s face from just a few feet away.
Enoch cried out in anger as the pain from his wounded side caught up to him. He stared at Deacon with hatred, fighting for breath.
His last moments wouldn’t be spent doubled over, begging. He would fight. He raised his sword. Out of his peripheral vision, Enoch saw a few of his men running to his aid.
“Enoch!” they yelled.
But none of those mattered to this moment.
Deacon would use his lightning weapon.
Or Enoch would win.
A horse squealed.
Deacon looked away from Enoch, distracted by hooves clomping across the stone bridge. Fright crossed Deacon’s face as he moved away from Enoch, picking a new target. The lightning weapon cracked several times as a horse got close enough that Enoch could hear its frantic breath and its whinny. Enoch got out of the way just in time to turn his head and see a galloping steed, Flora in the saddle, raising her sword, come to help him.
Or perhaps come for revenge.
She cried out in anger as she rode straight for Deacon, prepared to slice, to kill.
She held her sword high in the air.
But the horse wasn’t faster than the lightning weapon. Deacon used the gun several more times, aiming for Flora, but hitting the beast instead. The beast swayed as pieces of metal tore into its neck, it lost its gallop, and stumbled. The momentum kept it coming.
The horse crashed into Deacon.
Deacon screamed.
Deacon fell backward, and the horse and Flora fell forward, over the edge of the bridge, in a tangled mass of screams and whinnies, toppling from sight.
Enoch’s men cried out in surprise.
Several crashes hit the water, hard.
And then they were gone.
Some of the commotion resumed.
Pain blazed behind Enoch’s eyes as he looked around, not believing what he’d seen, that Deacon was gone. And so was the girl he had trusted, Flora.
“Flora,” he whispered.
Enoch lowered his sword and clutched his side as men rushed to his aid, helping him stand amidst the crack of lightning weapons and the clang of swords all around them.
Chapter 79: Kirby
The cry of a horse and screams drew Kirby’s attention.
Slamming the magazine into her pistol, she spurred her steed, riding back around the boulders and reentering the bridge.
Some of the frenzy seemed to have died down as Kirby rode, passing mostly bodies, but a few small skirmishes that were still taking place as Halifax men took care of some of the remaining islanders. On the sloping road, visible off the bridge’s edge, she saw islanders and Halifax people dueling, mostly with swords, about halfway down. The war had moved. But what had that noise been? She looked in front of her.
No horse. No Flora.
Near the middle of the bridge, several Halifax men gathered. She rode toward them, ready to battle, if that was what was happening.
She galloped faster, weaving around the war’s casualties, able to ride unhindered without as many obstacles.
She reached the middle of the bridge.
A group of men gathered in a circle, mostly Halifax men. Pulling up alongside them, she recognized a few of the men as those with whom she’d marched. Enoch was in the center, bent over and bleeding.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
Enoch gasped for breath as one of the Halifax men held up a torch, revealing a hole in the side of his stomach, leaking blood.
“Deacon hit me with the lightning weapon,” he said.
“You need a healer,” Kirby said. “You’re shot.”
“I am not likely to get one,” Enoch said. “And besides, the war still rages, with Deacon dead.”
“Dead?” Kirby felt as if she had missed something. She looked around for Deacon, the horse she’d heard whining, and Flora.
“Dead,” Enoch repeated, raising a shaky arm to point off the edge of the bridge. “Flora charged him before he could kill me. She knocked him off the bridge with her horse. But she and the horse fell.”
“The horse…Flora…” Kirby repeated, as if she might make sense of it.
Her mouth opened and closed as she followed Enoch’s finger to the side of the bridge, seeing nothing but a wall and a few dead, scattered bodies. An emotion she couldn’t process hit her in the stomach as she rode to where he was pointing, looked over, and saw nothing but a steep drop and the dark river, cutting through the land.
“She’s gone,” Enoch called, “and so is the island leader. But our men still fight. If we don’t get to the road, they will die, and we will have come here for nothing.”
Kirby felt an irrepressible anger in her stomach. She wanted to shoot Deacon. She wanted to punish him for the loss of someone with whom she’d rode just moments before, another loss compounded in her memory for which she felt responsible. If she had stayed with Flora…
“You have been injured, too,” Enoch said, interrupting her thought, pointing at the piece of arrow still stuck in her leg, some of which she had broken off, but which she knew she would need to remove later, if she survived that long.
“You have come here for the boy, William,” Enoch said. “Let us fight our way to him.”
Kirby nodded, choking back an emotion she hadn’t expected to feel.
“Flora was true to her word,” Enoch said. “Our people will mourn her. Let us go, while we still have a fight left to finish.”
**
Kirby rode the horse next to Enoch and a group of fifty Halifax men as they turned down the sloping road to join the others. Most of the skirmishes on the bridge had ended. Dawn approached, casting a backlight over the long, descending road, and the swaths of people that fought at the bottom. The majority of Enoch’s Halifax men had left the bridge, battling a defensive line of soldiers, peasants, and some women. Most of the gunfire had ceased. Every now and again Kirby heard a crack, but for the most part, the battle was a struggle with swords. Kirby rode with her horse over several broken bows, along with some swords lying next to bodies that no longer ne
eded them. One of the Halifax men handed a blade to Kirby, who took it gratefully. Kirby was down to the last of her ammunition.
“Our men need our help,” Enoch proclaimed as he limped down the road, projecting bravery, even though he was clearly injured.
As it looked, the disproportionate number of islanders might end them all. Kirby stared past the colliding groups, hoping to see a sign of Bray and Samron, but still nothing. A building fear got worse—what if they had perished somewhere in the island’s middle? Reaching the fighting, she raised her gun and steeled herself for battle as Enoch and the Halifax men ran to join their brothers and sisters, swinging their swords with renewed vigor.
She couldn’t stop thinking of Flora.
Kirby rode into the fray, shooting the islanders and casting aside people with her horse, fighting through a tangled crowd that felt too thick to defeat.
Chapter 80: Bray
Having reloaded once, and spent the rest of his ammunition, Bray relied on his sword as they fended off the islanders running out at them from the woods. The street was a chaotic mess of bodies, swinging blades, grunts, and heaves. The Halifax men were tired. Their swords didn’t swing as fast, and their war cries had died, but they fought with a quiet vigor that impressed Bray as morning light crept over the fight.
The islanders the Halifax men battled now were clumsier, less used to fighting. They had been trained, but they weren’t used to warfare. The guns had given the Halifax men an advantage in the beginning—as shortly as it lasted, they had taken out most of the soldiers and patrols.
Bray figured the rest of the soldiers were at the bridge.
But there were still plenty of men left to fight.
Every so often, a Halifax man would break his silence with a dying scream, or some new group of islanders ran from the woods, brandishing crude weapons, yelling loudly enough to put a new surge of adrenaline into the fight. Bray could no longer tell how many people they’d lost, or how many people they’d killed.
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