by CM Raymond
Parker squeezed her hand as they stumbled together down the rocky path. “Why do you assume that there is a limit to your magic?”
Hannah shrugged. “Dunno. I guess everything has limits.”
“I doubt we’ll ever find yours,” he responded, his eyes locked on the water that stretched out toward the horizon.
With no response, she kept her eyes on the lapping waves. Spending all of her life in Arcadia, and most of it within the Boulevard, her world was pretty small. But knowing how much distance they had travelled, and how much more they had to go, Hannah couldn’t help but marvel at just how big their world was.
She and Parker wove their way through the reveling crowd. The Baseeki were ecstatic: feasting, drinking, dancing together under the moon. She stopped and watched Karl, stripped to the waist and circling a large Baseeki warrior while a crowd cheered on.
“What do you think?” Parker asked her. “That Baseeki is probably twice his size.”
Hannah smiled. “I didn’t bet against you when you fought a man twice your size in the Pit. And I sure as hell wouldn’t bet against Karl.”
They moved on, finally finding their crew. They sat on seats carved out of logs surrounding a fire, feet away from the ocean. Aysa and Dardanus were a part of the circle.
“Where have you two been?” Laurel asked as they let go of each other’s hands and joined their friends.
“Just resting… I mean, well, I was resting, and so was Parker.” Hannah felt herself blush, and she hoped the moonlight wouldn’t betray her.
“So, that’s what you call it?” Laurel cooed.
They all laughed and let Parker and Hannah settle into the remaining seats. A small fire burned in the middle as the party raged around them. Ezekiel sat across the circle from her, happily puffing on his pipe.
Hannah looked over at Dardanus. “So, you found her?”
“Vatan?” he asked, his eyes on the fire. “No. She isn’t in Baseek, that’s for sure. It didn’t take long for me and my men to search the place. She’s gone now. But your man did his job.”
Hannah glanced over at Hadley, who pushed his hand through his hair. “Is that right?” she asked.
“I have a way of sniffing out the enemy,” he said with a grin. “Found nearly a dozen of those bastards who worked with her. I doubt it will take much time to find her, but on her own, she won’t do much damage anyway. We’ve cut the snakes legs off.”
“Um,” Laurel said, “you know snakes don’t have legs, right?”
“OK,” Hadley sighed. “Bad metaphor. Anyway, she doesn’t have anybody now. I think all will be safe in Baseek.”
Dardanus cleared his throat. “We will find her. You don’t have to worry about that, and Sef is going with full guard day after tomorrow to Kofken. We still assume that Vatan was working on her own, trying to vilify Kofken so she could gain power, but better safe than sorry.”
Karl ambled over to the crew, shirt still in hand.
“That didn’t take long,” Hannah chirped.
“Eh, dat one was an OK fighter. Almost felt badly for him,” Karl snorted. “Well, when ya find that Vatan, give her hell fer me. I got a few broken ribs that are just screamin’ for payback. Now, fer once in my life, I’m sick of all this war talk. Can we drink and laugh for a while? Scheisse, we bloody won!”
Hannah raised her glass. “I’ll drink to that!”
They all cried, “Here, here!” and clinked their glasses, drinking down the Baseeki brew.
Ezekiel stood, raising his mug toward the heavens. “Friends, I am glad you got a chance to stretch your legs, though I never thought it would result in this kind of adventure. But I have no disappointment. Our friend Marcus, who stayed back in our fair city, once said, ‘Any injustice is an injustice worth righting.’ And I agree with him. So, tonight, we rejoice for Baseek. But tomorrow, we continue on, for we need to make it to the Oracle. She holds—”
A sound like thunder interrupted Ezekiel’s speech, and it rolled on as if it would go forever. The magician looked over to Laurel, but the druid shook her head. It was no natural disruption, but something altogether different. He narrowed his eyes and turned his gaze toward the grassy slope that fell toward the sea.
“We’re not alone!” Ezekiel screamed into the night air.
Hannah looked up to see hundreds of torches lighting the night sky. Drums beat on without rhythm or order, filling the air with noise.
“Roamers,” Dardanus said through a clenched jaw.
“There’s hundreds of them,” Karl snorted.
“Well, hundreds of torches at least.” Hannah eyes glowed red in the excitement. “This is going to be fun!”
Aysa jumped to her feet. “What’s a party without a little bloodshed?”
The sound of hooves rumbled from above as the roaming men descended.
“To arms!” Sef screamed over the roar.
Men and women alike, sprang into action. Most of them spun bolas by their sides, waiting for the warriors they could hear to come into sight. Others were already launching rocks blindly in the direction of the approaching forces. Older ladies scooped up the youngest children and ran for shelter.
The sound of approaching horses stopped, and the night air became dead quiet.
“The hell are they doing?” Parker whispered.
“Aye, maybe they saw me hammer and thought better of a fight,” Karl responded, his eyes squinting into the darkness.
The silence broke with the whistling sound of arrows, scores of them, piercing the night air.
“Zeke, you take the right side,” Hannah yelled, already throwing her arms toward the sky in an attempt to block the volley.
A few got through the seam between her shield and Ezekiel’s, several finding their targets in the Baseeki fighters ahead of them. Hannah shifted as the next round came, overlapping their cover.
“They won’t be able to hold that for long!” Hadley yelled. “And if we can’t take out the archers, we’re screwed.”
“I got this,” Laurel said. As she ran in the direction of the attackers.
****
Laurel moved through the darkness, toward the sound of hooves.
She narrowed her gaze at the man leading the charge. Armor bouncing with the horse’s rhythm, his eyes were filled with violence. A smile split across his face when the young druid came into view. Raising a club hewn from the bone of something truly massive, he let out a war-cry.
But Laurel didn’t move. She held her ground, calm as a summer morning. Her apparent boredom drove him to ride faster.
And still, she didn’t move.
Hannah yelled as the horse flew toward her, about to trample her into the sand. But at the last moment, the druid twisted, side-stepping the horse on the opposite side of the roamer’s attacking hand. She reached up and grabbed the man’s cloak, pulling herself onto the horse’s back behind him.
“Yeah, I’m gonna need your ride,” she said as she jerked the guy off the steed.
With her hands on the bridle, she whispered a word into the horse’s ear and pulled it off its main course. Kicking her heels, she pushed the steed toward her group.
“You! Get on!” she yelled at Parker. He pulled himself up behind her and draped an arm around her waist. “Gonna take a stronger hold than that!” she shouted over her shoulder before turning the horse back into action.
They charged toward the archers, Laurel guiding the horse through the oncoming horde of attackers. The creature danced with every flick of her wrist on the bridle, as if their minds were connected and working as one.
Parker held tight with his left arm and swung his spear with his right, dropping anyone who got close enough. As the crowd thinned and the oncoming men fled from the path of the horse and its ass-kicking passengers, Parker flipped the spear and steadied it under his arm so he could send blasts of magitech energy into the scurrying crowd.
“Suck it, bitches!” he shouted as he volleyed beams of light at anyone he could find.
/> “Nice work!” Laurel shouted. “Now, keep your head down.”
“What do you—” Parker didn’t need to complete the question. Looking over the druid’s shoulder, he saw they were getting close to the archers, but they had turned their bows from the sky to them. “Ah, shit!”
Laurel could hear the commander’s call, as they all let loose their arrows at once. “You’ve got this,” she said to the horse between her legs and dropped the reins.
Her trust in the animal was not misplaced. The war horse cut and weaved, somehow finding a path through the wall of arrows. Five feet from the archers, Laurel screamed to Parker, “He’s all yours!” She gave the animal a swift kick before she dove off of its back. Parker shouted as the steed ran into the darkness.
Hitting the ground, Laurel rolled onto her feet, crouching with her blade in hand. The captain of the archers only had a second to grasp what was about to happen to him.
Laurel spun the blade, then launched it toward him. He grabbed his bleeding throat and fell to the ground.
Wasting no time, Laurel spun, pulling the blade with her and took out two more men. The archers figured out what was happening and exchanged their bows for blades.
Laurel pulled a second dagger from her hip, ready for close quarter combat. “Need some help here!” she shouted. Devin crawled up out of the folds of her cloak onto her shoulder. “Sorry, buddy.” She grinned as she threw her secret weapon toward one of the archers.
Devin responded perfectly, biting and clawing at the man’s eyes until he ran for his life. The squirrel dropped to the ground and bounded toward her next victim, who tried to swipe the squirrel away with his longbow. Laurel laughed as her friend hopped left and then scurried up the man’s leather clothing.
“Laugh at this, bitch,” a voice shouted from behind her.
Spinning, Laurel stared down the head of an arrow ready to launch.
The archer loosed it, and Laurel dodged, the projectile sinking deep into the gut of a man behind her.
“Who’s the bitch now?” She took three quick strides then jumped, landing on his chest. He was dead before they hit the ground.
A hand grabbed her ponytail and pulled. “You’re gonna pay for that,” he said, raising his sword.
Her only response was to smile, as she saw blue light reflected off the man’s blade. A half second later, the blast from Parker’s staff leveled him.
“Let’s go,” he said, pulling her up onto the horse’s back in front of him. “I think you’ve sown enough chaos here. But you’d better drive—I hate these things.”
“Thanks,” Laurel said before ticking her tongue against her teeth.
Devin hopped off a man’s fallen body and ran for them, jumping up into Laurel’s arms. “Good girl,” she said as the bloody squirrel squirmed into the folds of her cloak.
“That thing is freaky scary. Someday, you’re gonna have to tell me how she got her name.”
Laurel scowled as she pulled on the reins, turning the horse downhill where the fighting was heating up.
“Over my dead body!”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Come on, I ain’t even broken a bloody sweat yet!” Karl shouted as he bowled over men and women, one after another.
His war hammer was a terror, and the short blades and clubs of the roamers were no match for it. He kept pushing through the crowd, leaving a wake of broken bodies in his path. Leveling two more men, he broke into an open space by the edge of the sea. Taking a deep breath, he looked for his next victim.
“Damn,” a voice said from his right. “I didn’t know the Baseeki came in fun size.”
Karl turned to see a man larger than any of the others walking toward him. The moonlight caught his sword shaped from a human bone. It was dirtied with the blood of the Baseeki fighters he had killed.
“Step a little closer, and I’ll show ya how fun I can be.”
The man laughed, but he began circling. “You know, my father once told me a story about short men like you from the east. He said he knew a man to kill a hundred fighters without pause, only to pick up his hammer and kill another hundred more. Are you that man? Because I’ve always wanted to try my luck against him.”
Karl laughed, moving to the right so as to keep his distance. “Not yet.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Think I have ten or twelve to go.” He gripped his hammer in his right hand. “Ya wanna be next?”
The man sneered. “Not until you tell me your name.”
“Aye, the hell ya askin’ for?”
“I collect the names of the men I kill, when I can at least. It’s nice to know who I wipe off the face of Irth. It’s my offering to the old gods.”
Karl snorted. “Then ya won’t be needin’ mine, ya half-wit son of a twat.” He grit his teeth and then yelled, “Let’s do this!”
With a scream, he rushed the man, hammer swinging down from over his head as he went. Karl’s opponent swiped it away with his bonesword, and dodged to the right.
Karl laughed. “Finally, somebody worth fightin’. Most of you roamers have shit for brains and piss for talent.”
This time, the man attacked, swinging the sword for Karl’s head. Ducking, he stepped in and drove the butt of his hammer into the man’s gut and then snapped it up, knocking the man’s head back.
He wiped a line of blood from his lip and smiled. “Oh, yes. I’m going to enjoy this.”
“Good,” Karl spat. “It’ll be the last thing ye enjoy.”
He drove his sword at Karl too quickly for the rearick to respond. The tip of his blade found the crease between his leathers, biting at his left arm.
“Scheisse!” Karl yelled.
“Your name, sir? I’ll make this quicker.”
“Screw you!”
The man drove again, but this time, Karl was ready for him. Instead of ducking, he swung his hammer to meet the attack. It shattered the blade into a thousand pieces. Karl dropped his hammer, grabbed the man’s hand and shoved the broken blade backward into the man’s soft belly.
The roamer’s eyes grew wide as Karl twisted the hilt.
“The name’s Karl, ya filthy bastard. When ya get to hell, you can tell ‘em who sent ya.”
Karl pulled the blade up, slicing through the man’s chest. He watched as his foe dropped to the ground, blood spilling all around him.
****
Hannah blasted a group of attackers back and into the cold, dark waters surrounding them. Eyes flashing red, she pointed her finger at the sea and it froze it over, covering the enemy in an icy grave.
She turned, looking for the next person to fight. But for the first time, she was alone on the beach. “Damn,” she said as she took a second to watch the battle raging around her. The rocky ground was covered with bodies, roamers and Baseeki alike. Her eyes caught movement up the shore.
“Samet!” she shouted as she ran toward Sef’s son, wondering what the hell he was doing out in the melee. He held a bola meekly in his hand, but he looked scared shitless by the battle. He was too distraught to notice the tall, dark figure approaching him from behind.
Focusing her energy as she sprinted on the soft sand, Hannah raised her hand toward the attacker, but before she could fire, a shocking pain penetrated her leg, dropping her to the ground. “Queen Bitch!” she yelled, finding a roamer’s arrow lodged in her quad. Gritting her teeth, she tried to ignore it and turned for the boy.
In the light of the moon, she saw his assailant. “Vatan, no!”
The evil woman must have used the chaos of the fight to sneak close to her prey. Even though the whole village now knew of her treachery, it seemed she was still intent on drawing blood.
Hannah limped as fast as she could, but it was too slow. Vatan grabbed Samet, threw him to the ground, and raised a wicked knife.
But before the woman could land her deadly blow, a rock came out of nowhere, crashing into her hand. The knife fell, and in a flash, Aysa was on top of her, landing punch after punch with her one arm on the woman’s
face.
By the time Hannah reached her, Vatan, the traitor, was dead.
“I saved you,” Aysa said to Samet, who lay quivering next to her. “Holy shit, that was awesome.”
A man came out of nowhere, tackling Aysa off of Vatan’s lifeless body. He pinned her down, hate and rage dripping from his lips. “You’re too pretty to be out here now. Looks like I’ll have to teach you a lesson,” he said with a yellow glint in his eye. “Should be fun.”
Aysa turned to Samet. “Help me!”
The boy looked at her wide-eyed. He shook his head, only a little, got up, and ran off into the darkness.
“You’re not having any fun tonight,” Hannah grunted as she pulled the arrow from her leg and drove it through the man’s throat.
“Thank you,” Aysa wheezed, pushing the body off of her. “I can’t believe he…” She looked off in the direction that her friend had run.
Hannah reached down and pulled Aysa to her feet. “Don’t worry. You don’t need him to protect you. Not when we girls stick together.”
“You bet your ass we will,” Aysa said, a smile creeping onto her face. “I thought I loved him. But did you see that dickweed run?”
“Hell yeah!” Hannah yelled. She looked up toward the battle and saw the marauders gaining ground, pushing the Baseeki and her crew back toward the water. “Come on. Let’s go end this!”
****
Hadley stood between Karl and Ezekiel, watching the roamers advance. The mystic did what he could, warning his friends of danger. But he wasn’t a fighter—not like the two old men next to him. Karl spun like a wild man—his hammer a blur of metal and death. Zeke took down scores at a time with fire and light and illusion. But the roamers kept attacking, undeterred by the prodigious display of force.
“They got us pinned,” Karl grumbled as he smashed a roamer’s head in. “Too many of the damned bastards, even if they fight like children. Ya knock one down and three more are on ya.”
“Agreed,” Ezekiel said. “I guess it’s time to bring in the heavy guns. Hadley, see if you can buy me some time.”