As she reached for the second, the Szun’s hand grabbed her ankle.
“Now,” it hissed. “Kill me now.”
“No,” Willow said. “Follow me. I’m rescuing you.”
“You cannot. They will catch me and hurt me. Kill me.”
“I will not.”
“You promised!”
“I promised to kill you or rescue you, and I am going to rescue you. Now follow me!”
Without a backward glance, she climbed to the second axe, and from there, onto to the side of the tower, which was now the top of the bridge. She looked up its length to where it intersected with the Warlord’s box.
There had been a lot of death and destruction today. Now it was the Warlord’s turn.
She hobbled along the length of the tower towards the Warlord’s box. She was three quarters of the way there before the Warlord had recovered his wits enough to stage a defense against her. He shouted orders at nearby soldiers, but they were stunned and slow to react. The two black-hooded figures were struggling to climb onto the tower, but there were no hand-holds for them to grip.
Almost there.
The Warlord was smiling now. He beckoned to her, and he spoke though she could not hear the words.
I’m not afraid of you.
A barbarian on the tier above the Warlord’s threw an axe at her. It whistled by her face and she heard it thud into flesh.
“It hurts!” hissed the Szun from somewhere behind her. “It hurts!”
Willow couldn’t even stop to look. “Keep running!”
One of the black-hooded men had managed to get onto the tower. He ran down its length towards Willow, but as he reached her, she pivoted and pushed him from the tower. He plummeted to the ground and landed in a broken pile beside Tee-Ri.
Willow leapt from the tower-bridge and plunged into the Warlord’s box.
She landed on her bad leg and white pain exploded throughout her entire body. She cried out.
“Captain Willow!” Vazerian’s voice.
She shook her head to clear it. Willow struggled to her feet. All around her was chaos and noise. “Your Highness, I’m here to rescue you.”
The remaining black-hood charged her, axe raised high above his head. She waited for the swing and when it came she stepped into and under it. She pivoted, grabbed the black-hood’s weapon arm and hip-threw him over the edge of the balcony and down to join his dead comrade.
“Captain Willow, help me!”
There was a confusion of motion. She shook her head once more and saw two figures struggling. One of the figures was the Warlord, and the other was Prince Vazerian. The Warlord wielded an enormous axe.
The fight was only fleeting: Vazerian was no match for the Warlord. The Warlord caught the Prince in the chest with a powerful front kick that sent him stumbling towards the precipice.
“Your Highness!”
Willow dove towards the precipice. The haft of the arrow embedded in her chest broke off, leaving the arrowhead buried beneath her bleeding skin.
The Prince fell from the precipice.
Willow slid forward on her belly, her arm outstretched. Her hand closed around the Prince’s wrist, caught it. Her shoulder dislocated again and tears streamed from her eyes.
“Grab my arm, Your Highness!” she shouted, and whipped her head about to spot the Warlord.
He was standing over her, his axe raised.
“Welcome home, Waeh-Loh,” he said, and swung the axe down.
Willow kicked the Warlord’s knee. It cracked, and he fell to the floor of the box, howling.
The Prince’s hand clamped the side of her arm, wrenching it further from its socket. The blood ran from her face, and she felt an intense nausea.
“That’s it, Your Highness,” she gasped.
The Warlord was crawling towards his axe. Willow flailed at it with her foot, sent it skittering. He adjusted his course, relentlessly pursuing that axe.
“Hurry, Your Highness.”
Prince Vazerian had pulled his upper chest up from the precipice. He was struggling to get a knee up onto the ledge.
He got one knee up, and was about to get his second one, when suddenly his eyes widened at something behind her and he cried out. She had just enough time to move her head the tiniest distance. The Warlord’s axe sheared her right ear off instead of splitting her head.
She drove her instep into the Warlord’s groin. He shrieked and dropped the axe, which fell from the precipice to clatter on the stone below. Willow fumbled at the axe tied to her waistband. She felt her consciousness slipping and she fought to remain alert.
Discipline. This is where discipline mattered most.
She could not fail.
The knot came undone. Her axe slid towards the precipice.
She grabbed the axe just as the Warlord’s hands closed around her neck. She tried prying them off but he was too strong. His fingers dug into her flesh, drawing blood. Orange spots danced before her eyes .
She tried to swing her axe but her arm was losing strength. The Warlord appeared to be miles away from her, at the end of a long tunnel.
You need to do something, said some distant rational part of her. If you don’t get his hands off your throat soon, you’re going to die.
She bucked her hips but couldn’t shake him off her. However, she had made a little space between their bodies and she slammed her knee into his groin and then butted his face with her head, breaking his nose. One of his hands released her throat.
She took a single gasping breath and then rolled onto her side. As the Warlord brought his hand back to her throat, she rolled back, swinging her axe. She caught him just above the collarbone.
He snarled and yanked the axe free.
Blood jetted from the wound. He teetered on top of her, then fell to the side, his face white as parchment.
Willow grabbed the axe and hacked at his neck with it. He didn’t move. She chopped again and again, until at last his head came free from his body. She flung it to the arena floor below. There it rolled a few feet and then was motionless.
Its eyes did not open. Its mouth did not laugh at her.
“Stay dead!” she shrieked down at it, her voice bordering on hysteria. “If you come back, I’ll kill you again!”
She crawled to her knees and took inventory. The Prince had climbed to his feet beside her. The Szun was nowhere to be seen. Barbarian guards were cautiously approaching from all sides.
“Time to leave, Your Highness,” she said.
“But … but … how?”
She grabbed his hand.
“Just trust me,” she said. “Come away from the edge as far as you can. Then, when I give the word, I want you to run as fast as you can towards the precipice, and leap into space.”
The Prince paled. “You’re … you’re not serious!”
She slapped him across the face.
“Stop it, Your Highness! This is no time to argue. Do as I say!”
He looked as though he might have been on the verge of tears, but he controlled himself. He nodded.
“Very well,” he said, and walked away from the ledge until he reached the stairwell. Willow hobbled up next to him.
The guards were almost upon them.
“I’m going to run first,” Willow said. “Wait until I’ve taken three steps and then follow me. Run as fast as you can and leap as far into space as you can. Stay directly behind me.”
Once again, the Prince nodded.
Willow looked around. The guards had arrived.
“Now!” she said, and ran towards the precipice.
She leapt into the air. Beneath her was nothing but a thirty foot fall and death.
“D’Arbignal!” she shouted, invoking Suel’s magic.
A dark tunnel appeared directly in front of her, suspended in the air.
She hit the tunnel floor, rolled forward, agony exploding in too many places for her even to know where she hurt anymore. Behind her, she heard the Prince’s gasps as hi
s fingers grasped the tunnel entrance.
She knew she should go to save him, grab his hands, lift him into the tunnel. But she was just too tired, she hurt too …
Who was she kidding? Of course she’d save him.
She rolled painfully onto her hands and knees, crawled to the tunnel entrance. She extended her good arm towards the Prince. He grasped it, and she pulled him into the tunnel.
She looked back at the Warlord’s box, separated by several yards of open air. The barbarians with the box were dumbfounded by the appearance of the tunnel and they argued and pointed, but none pursued them yet.
“You’ve rescued me,” he said, his eyes wide as though he scarcely believed what happened. “You’ve saved me!”
“I told them I would,” she said, and then the world seemed to spin around her.
Chapter 110
She awoke to the sound of cloth tearing. She opened her eyes to find herself prone on the shimmering floor of Suel’s magic tunnel. She raised her head. Prince Vazerian was sitting beside her, ripping long strips from his shirt, exposing his pale and skinny chest.
“What are you doing?” she asked, clambering into a sitting position.
“I’m making bandages, Captain. How are you feeling?”
Truth was she felt horrible. Her entire body felt like one broken, bruised, and bleeding thing. Even the slightest movement caused her pain.
But worse than the physical pain was the emotional anguish as her memories flooded back to her: Tamlevar’s death, the loss of the Szun, poor Pyto-Etha, the battle.
She had saved the Prince of Bryanae, yet she knew she had failed. Damn Tamlevar’s ‘emotional healing’! Without his meddling, she would have been perfectly content. She had set out to rescue the Prince and she had damn well done that. The old Willow would have been perfectly satisfied with that.
She realized that she’d never again hear Tamlevar tell her that he loved her. It stung her deeply.
“I’m fine,” she lied. Keep control of yourself, Willow. The mission isn’t complete yet. “We need to keep moving. It’s only a matter of time before the Kards find their way into the tunnel. We need to put some distance between us.”
The tunnel opening was only a twenty or so yards from where they sat. From what she could make out, all sorts of pandemonium was going on at the arena.
“Just a moment, Captain. I’m almost finished.”
“Where are you hurt, Your Highness?” As far as she could tell, he was uninjured.
“They’re not for me, Captain. It’s for your ear.”
“My ear?” She brought her hand up to feel for any damage. “What about my—?”
Her hand found the spot where her ear should have been, touched instead a bloody, agonizing hole in the side of her head. The world seemed to lurch and she felt bile rise in her throat.
The Prince caught her as she started to fall. “Easy there,” he said. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
He reached forward to apply his bandages, but she intercepted his hand. “I’ll do it.”
She held one end of the bandage under her chin and wrapped her head as best she could. She couldn’t get enough pressure against the wound, so she pressed the cloth against the blood and held it there until the drying blood made it stick.
“Ok,” she said, her voice raspy. “Let’s get going.”
Her knees buckled as she tried to get up, and she fell back down. The Prince tried to help her up, but she waved him away.
“I can do this,” she said.
She struggled to her feet, her wounded leg complaining, and her knees as weak as parchment.
“I’m sorry about Private Tamlevar,” Prince Vazerian said, and Willow almost fell again.
She was about to tell him to be quiet, but held her tongue. “Thank you,” she said instead.
“You know, my mother always said that you were heartless. I don’t think she knows you very well.”
Willow stared at Prince Vazerian. His guileless hazel eyes met hers, reminded her of Tamlevar’s.
“Thank you … I think.”
Prince Vazerian smiled and they resumed walking.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to give Private Tamlevar a posthumous commission.”
“That’s very kind of you, sir.”
“And I’ll send a letter to his mother, telling her how bravely her son gave his life, and offer her my personal thanks and condolences.”
“I know Elidon would really appreciate that,” Willow said.
They walked some more.
“And I’ll have a day named after him: Tamlevar Day.”
“I think you’re getting a little carried away, sir.”
Chapter 111
She thought about Tamlevar the entire way back. The way he had saved her at the castle. The way he had volunteered to journey with her to Ignis Fatuus. The way he had saved her in the village from the barbarians that Mar-Ra had alerted.
The way he had risked his very identity to save her from her own retreat into herself. And finally, how he had sacrificed himself to prevent her from being trampled by Pyto-Etha.
She thought of his warm, uneven smile and his kind hazel eyes, and she began to cry silently.
It was only now that it was too late to do anything about that she realized that she probably had loved him after all.
If this wasn’t damnation, Willow didn’t know what was.
Chapter 112
“Ah,” said Suel, as Willow and Prince Vazerian emerged from the tunnel into his laboratory. “Back already, eh? How’d it go?”
He hadn’t even looked up from the lab apparatus with which he was experimenting, nor even turned to see who had entered.
“Tamlevar’s dead,” Willow said, and the words stung.
“Um,” Suel said, tapping the side of a beaker with a thin glass rod.
“But we were able to save His Highness.”
“Ah!” Suel put down his beaker and rod, and turned to greet his prince. His enormous wings fluttered behind him once then folded. “Ah! Welcome back, Your Highness!”
“Thank you, Suel.”
Suel regarded Willow. “What are your plans now?”
“I’m going to return the Prince to his mother, and then I think I shall take a long vacation.”
Suel shrugged. Very few things interested him for long.
“You should know that the Queen is extremely angry at you right now,” he said.
Willow sighed.
“Of course. The sun rose in the sky this morning.”
A half-smile flickered onto the Royal Mage’s face.
“Indeed,” he said. “Are you heading to the castle? If so, your timing’s excellent. They’re having their masquerade ball.”
“Still?” said the Prince. Willow heard the bitterness in his voice.
Suel shrugged as if to say, well, you know your mother.
“I think I’ll make one stop first,” Willow said, “and then we'll join the party.”
Chapter 113
Vazerian, Prince of Bryanae, inhaled the night air deeply as Willow fitted her key into the lock of her office door.
“You know,” he said. “This is the first time I’ve ever been on my own.”
“You’re not exactly on your own.”
Willow opened the door to her office, inside all was dark, and something stank. She only needed to stop in there for a few minutes.
“You know what I mean,” Vazerian was saying. “Without an armed entourage. Without my mother. This city, Bryanae … it’s really quite lovely, isn’t it?”
“It’s my home,” Willow said, suddenly realizing that that it was the truth.
Something moved inside her office. Willow reached for her rapier, then realized she’d long ago lost it. She didn’t even have any axes left.
“Walk to the center of the street, Your Highness,” she whispered.
“What …?”
“Don’t ask any questions. Just do it.”
She crouched low, h
er wounded leg screaming at her, and she waited until she heard the sound again. Then she ran at the source of the noise, leading with her shoulder.
The light of a lantern flared up.
“I say,” came a scratchy voice. “Is that you, Captain?”
Willow skidded to a stop a mere finger-span from Lieutenant Marcus. Her eyes goggled.
Marcus looked dreadful. Dark circles ringed his eyes, which the flickering light made look wild and bestial. His face was gaunt and bearded.
And the smell! It smelled like a stable in here.
“M-Marcus,” she stammered. “What are you doing here?”
“Captain Willow,” he burbled. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Marcus,” she repeated. “Why are you in my office?”
Marcus’s free hand flailed, as though trying to grasp an elusive thought that flitted about in the air.
“Well, uh … you told me to.”
“Marcus, I’ve been away. I haven’t told you anything.”
Marcus shook his head. “I remember it quite clearly. “ ‘Marcus,’ you said. ‘Wait for me in my office.’ So I did.”
Willow searched her memory, to her trip to Ignis Fatuus, to back before then, to when she …
Oh no.
“Marcus, you can’t mean back before the barbarians kidnapped the Prince. That was weeks ago!”
Lieutenant Marcus nodded, his eyes solemn.
“Have you been waiting here the entire time?” she said.
Again, he nodded.
Willow burst out laughing.
“I’m sorry,” Marcus said. “Did I do the wrong thing again?”
Willow shook her head, brought her laughter under control.
“You do know that I was relieved of duty, right?”
Once again, Marcus nodded. “Yes, but nobody countermanded your order, so I figured it was best to do what you had told me to do until someone told me otherwise.”
“But how … how did you eat?”
“I flagged down some privates from your window. They brought me food and water, emptied the pot, that sort of thing. I figured that was the right thing to do, what?”
Willow shook her head, struggling against laughter.
“I say, are you feeling all right, Captain? You don’t seem to be quite yourself tonight.”
Prince of Bryanae (Bryanae Series) Page 41