by Bobby Adair
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 at 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 whether 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 han
ds 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.
He didn't care. All he cared about was that he was alone.
The demons were no longer running with him. Their shrieks had long faded as they raced back toward the field, probably heading for whatever scraps were left behind.
William slowed as he reached a patch of forest with tall, wide trees, and a fallen oak, lying sideways. The ground was mostly open and covered with half-frozen moss. He found a narrow section of the fallen tree that was the right height to sit on. William's lungs heaved from the exertion of running, and his heart thumped rapidly in his chest. He needed to catch his wind.
He bent down, cleaning some of the remaining blood from his hands on some leaves, which were stuck to the ground from the cold. He looked around the quiet forest, then up at the clear sky visible through the tops of the trees. It was almost peaceful enough to make him forget the horrors he'd witnessed on the battlefield.
Something crashed through the forest from the direction in which he'd been running.
William looked around, wondering if his demons had disobeyed his commands. He searched for some sign of them, ready to tell them to go on their way again.
More crashes.
Voices?
He raised his knife.
Flashes of clothing through the trees told him he'd stayed too long. William got up from the log, watching as several blood-printed men ran into the open, catching sight of him before he could duck out of sight.
"It's the demon boy!" a man exclaimed, surprise lighting his face as he stepped into the open. He was clutching his ear, blood dripping through his fingers as he nursed a battle wound.
"I saw him in the field!" said another man with shaggy hair. "He killed Winthrop! He was helping the demons!"
"He killed our god!"
Fear turned to anger as the men shouted to some others behind them and a dozen others emerged, most covered in blood, theirs and their enemies'. One man was doubled over with bite marks on his stomach, coughing. But most were able-bodied and angry enough to kill William.
"You did this!" said the first man, with the ear wound. "You brought the demons to us. You killed our god!"
"Murderer!"
"God-killer!"
Hearing the shouts of others, several more men charged through the forest, catching sight of what was happening, their fear changing to anger as they found a focus for their retribution.
William backed up and raised his knife.
But the tree was behind him. He couldn't jump over it and run without turning his back, and if he did, he'd most likely be stabbed.
Twenty men surrounded him, swords drawn, murder on their faces. The demons were gone. William's twisted men were back on the field, fighting alongside their brothers.
William was alone.
Chapter 101: Bray
Bray and Kirby mounted their horses and headed in the direction in which they'd last seen William going, listening to the distant shrieks of battle. They rode between trees and over beds of frozen moss and curled brown weeds, well outside the trail they'd been riding, into the thick overgrowth. Bray's arm still blazed with pain, but the strip of fabric Kirby had used to tie it off seemed to have stopped the bleeding. Bray kept his sword in his good hand and used his left to hold the reins, cussing under his breath from the pain of his injury as he guided his beast and the other horses. He watched for demons or danger.
"Are you sure we're going the right way?" Kirby asked.
Bray didn't need to ask her to know the double meaning behind that statement. "I know where I saw him," he said. "I have a good sense of direction, regardless of what you might think."
For one of the first times since he'd met her, Kirby resisted commenting.
They rode by bodies of dead demons, men, and women who had gotten far enough away from the battlefield to die in the woods. Bray found himself checking the ground as well as the forest between the trees, thinking he'd find a small body lying among the foliage. William might've survived the battle outside of the Brighton walls, but Bray didn't know how long his luck would hold.
He thought back to when he'd seen William running into the battlefield. Was that the last glimpse he'd have?
They'd been traveling for what felt like too long when screams and loud voices echoed through the trees.
Unlike the cries of battle, these were close.
Listening intently, Bray could almost pick out a voice that might be William.
"Up ahead! I hear something!" Bray said, charging through the underbrush and leading Kirby and the horses faster. Kirby didn't argue. She kept her gun out, clutching her horse's reins as she followed.
The cries got more insistent, frantic, as Bray and Kirby closed the gap. They saw glimpses of men through the trees, hollering and wielding their swords. Bray kept going, ignoring the pain in his arm and the sting of chafed skin from being dragged by the horse, recognizing the high-pitched voice he heard screaming in the distance. It was the same one who had screamed at him when he'd killed Ella.
William.
"Leave me alone! Get the hell away from me!" William yelled.
Bray wouldn't let William down again.
He charged through the trees, holding his sword ready as he entered an arena of blood-soaked, mostly shirtless men who had backed William up against a fallen tree. William's face was plastered with blood. One of the men held a knife that might've been William's, taunting him. Another cocked back a bloody fist, making it obvious he'd already hit William once.
Bray didn't hesitate. He slashed at the nearest man, cutting the back of his neck before he could utter a warning. Then he swung his sword again, knocking another man to the ground. The others had already turned to find Bray and Kirby coming through the trees.
"Get out of here!" Bray yelled at William. "Kirby, I've got them!"
Bray heard the crack of gunfire behind him, but he didn't stop charging at the men, slashing and fighting at one man who tried to swing at him. He knocked the man back with a slice to the chest, then cut another man's arm, knocking the sword from his hands. Anywhere he saw flesh, he struck. Having seen William bloodied, his seething rage was a force he couldn't quell. For too many days, Bray had watched William from a distance, kidnapped by these men, forced into who knew what kind of perversions.
William had always been just out of reach, too far from help, or surrounded by demons.
Bray had been powerless to do anything.
No more.
Bray directed his horse into the middle of the thickest cluster of men, knocking one aside and trampling others. He heard the screams of the men as his horse reared up and hooves met faces. He kept swinging at anything he could see, keeping a tight hold on the saddle so he wouldn't fall. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw William darting to the other side of the fallen tree and taking cover.
An enraged, bloodied man ran at Bray, but his head exploded before Bray could reach him. Bray didn't stop, even as he heard Kirby's ancient gun firing behind him. He charged at the men.
A group of four men coordinated an attack at Bray, running at the horse's flank. He slashed the air and cut them back, knocking a sword from one man's hand, cutting another's hand clean off. The wounded man cried out a
nd stared at the bloody, dripping stump as Bray fought another. Numbers didn't mean anything to him anymore. He'd make good on his promise to Ella and William.
Soon, he was past the men and turning around for another charge, his breath heaving, his sword dripping blood. On the ground behind him were the bodies of over a dozen men. He watched as Kirby fired on several more wounded who were getting up, knocking them back to the ground for good. And then Kirby was grabbing for something in her pants pocket, lowering the gun.
What was she doing?
Four men remained. Their eyes darted from Bray to Kirby as they determined a next move. They were angry. Whether it was misdirected anger at losing to the demons, or the adrenaline of battle, they weren't giving up.
Bray figured out what they were going to do before they did it. One ran for Kirby, while the other three ran toward the tree and for William.
"Cowards!" Bray roared as he drove his horse after them.
Kirby screamed, "Get William!"
Bray rode at the men, swinging at the closest and knocking him down, then goring the second in the back. The man fell with a muted cry as the horse stomped over him. The last man was already over the log and heading for William, who had managed to get to the other side of it. Bray steered his horse in their direction, intent on leaping over the downed tree and striking him down, before he realized that the trampling, war-driven horse might not stop for William. At the last moment, Bray pulled up his reins and leapt from the saddle, hitting the ground with a thud. The landing shook his shoulder, but he kept going.
William was scrambling from the man's eager grasp, barely avoiding capture as the man leapt for what he thought might give him a chance at life. William's face was a bloodied mask of fear.
With a feral cry, Bray dove at the man, catching hold of the bottom of his pants and tackling him to the ground. The man fell with a thud, his wind burst from his body, and his sword flew from his grasp. William scurried just out of reach and to a safe distance in the trees. Bray clawed the man's back as he scooted up from the man's legs to his waist, pinning him to the hard ground. The man tried to turn his head as if to utter a plea, but Bray was beyond talk. He raised his sword with his good arm and sliced the back of the man's neck.