Aeryn studiously avoiding thinking on the horror of being drawn and quartered.
“. . .to the end of days. May he live forever.”
Beads of sweat dribbled from Aeryn’s forehead, down her nose and fell to the wood dais in a puff of dust. She strained her ears, listening. With the sun rising ever higher and the day becoming ever lighter, Aeryn could now barely make out the chests ten feet in front of her. Asher would be completely blind. If not for the murmuring crowd, he would not even know which direction to face.
This would have been so much easier a month hence, bathed in twilight at the end of the month-long celebration. At least then Aeryn would be able to see. As an added benefit, most of those in the crowd would have been drunk and much more susceptible to their words.
“In honor of this momentous occasion, to mark and seal this day. . .”
Aeryn froze and perked her ears. Was that clinking coming from the crowd? Or was it coming from beyond the Lord’s Gate? She wished Jynx were here. He would be able to tell and point his nose at the approaching danger in warning. But he wasn’t. He was needed elsewhere.
Speak faster, Merek. We’re running out of time.
“. . .present to you, citizens of Maerilin, patrons and defenders of light, disciples of the one true god, Nameless, your God.”
The crowd went deathly silent. Though her heart pounded in her ears, Aeryn could make out the noise she had heard before. Louder now, it was definitely clinking. Clinking and the heavy thump of a thousand boots marching in unison.
Merek left the front of the stage. He shot Aeryn a worried look.
Asher took his place at the fore. Fully Drifted and invisible to the masses before him, he raised the thin, flattened metal cone to his lips. Amplified by the cone, his voice boomed out unnaturally loud throughout the square. Aeryn prayed no one would recognize the source of the tin-like tone and instead mistake it as the awe-inspiring voice of their god.
“Citizens of Maerilin, it is with great pride that I, Nameless, stand before you. Your steadfast dedication and unwavering support of my rule for the past thousand years humbles me,” Asher—Nameless—said. “With hope in my eyes, I have watched you grow from a ragtag group of farmers huddled together in ramshackle hamlet poised on the edge of annihilation to the strong, independent Maerilin that stands before me today. Though Shadows will ever continue their unrelenting assault on our principles, our core values, on our very soul itself, you have endured and proved yourselves of sound body and mind.”
The crowd rumbled at the verge of an uncertain cheer. Though nearly all those assembled stood straighter and with puffed out chests, no doubt many wondered if this could really be Nameless. Not in their generation, in their father’s, or their father’s father’s, had anyone reputably claimed to hear Nameless himself speak.
Could it actually be Nameless himself? Would a God, making his first appearance in generations beyond counting, extol the virtues of its people? Much more familiar to those assembled would be the demand of tithes and preaching of a city hanging on the brink of death and destruction from Shadows.
The clinking and stomping rumbled in the distance like an approaching thunderstorm.
Hurry! Aeryn wordlessly screamed.
Asher’s voice took a hard note. “With good comes bad,” he said. “There are those among you that have failed me. Those that have sought to corrupt my purity and twist it into the very thing I founded this great city to avoid. I speak of course, of Shadows.”
The crowd began to murmur and nod to themselves. So long indoctrinated by the Shades and Voices, this was the Nameless they had expected.
“But you have been deceived!” Asher said, voice rising in volume and tone. The hushed conversations died. All eyes locked on the dais.
Aeryn glanced over her shoulder. Squinting at the buildings beyond the Lord’s wall in the darkness of her daylight Drift, she could make out the pitch-black flashes that signaled light reflecting off polished armor.
Here comes the storm.
“Shadows are not just formless scourges that hunt solely at night. They walk among you during the day. They take many forms, all which seek to oppress you. They prey on the weak, the strong, the rich, and the poor. They dishearten the stalwart and torture the meek. They silence the outspoken and demand total obedience.”
Aeryn found herself nodding with his words. First, raise their spirits. They needed hope to stand against what was coming. Next, strengthen their resolve. An unquenched, untempered sword would break the first time it encountered resistance. Third, introduce doubt to prepare them for the outstretched arm that pointed out their true enemy.
The head of the columns of soldiers tromped through the gate, drawing all eyes.
Asher pulled the crowd’s eyes back to him one final time. Last but certainly not least, shock them into action.
“My disciples have deceived you!” he said. Magnified through the thin metal cone, it carried to every ear in all corners of the square. “They seek to prevent what I do next. They seek to rule in my steed. Citizens of Maerilin,” he screamed at the top of his lungs to drown out the soldiers’ pointed shouts and calls for his head, “I give you back your tithes!”
Asher wound back. Putting all his weight behind it, he kicked the centermost chest. Before it had toppled, he jumped to second and heaved. They rose, teetering on the brink of falling. Time gelled, each fraction of a second lasting a lifetime. If they did not go over, all was lost.
One heartbeat and thousands of swords, both from the Voice’s soldiers and the nobles’ sellswords, slid from their sheaths. The rasping cut the air. A few eyes in the crowd turned to the noise. Aeryn’s remained locked on the chests.
On the second heartbeat, sword met sword and soldier met sellsword. More eyes turned. The first mouth dropped open and sucked in a breath for a scream.
By the third, an armored boot hit the steps leading to the dais, breaking beyond the knot of men guarding the base. Tearing her eyes from the chests, Aeryn Drifted back into the Physical Plane. Against trained soldiers and at a disadvantage by Drifting during the day, she had no choice. The crowd was torn between the fight and the lure of their tithes returned.
The fourth beat of Aeryn’s heart and a high pitched scream came from somewhere off to the side. She did not give it a second thought. Pulling out her simple short sword, she embedded its tip in the unarmored gap between the leading soldier’s helmet and pauldron. He fell before his eyes were able to focus on her sudden appearance.
A breath of wind rushed through the square, as if the God himself gave the chests a final push. Though the fall was only four feet, the weight of the contents was more than enough to shatter the chests on impact. Coins exploded out, showering those closest to the dais. The bulk was copper, but enough gold and silver had been strewn in to make them glitter like ten thousand suns.
The shout of “Gold!” overpowered the clash of steel.
Aeryn was grateful few knew much if anything about sums. They only knew how much they individually paid in tithes—and that by counting on their fingers—and did not understand how quickly an entire city’s tithes added up. Without time to think it over, no one would realize that the two chests were far from sufficient to carry all of Maerilin’s tithes.
Turning and sprinting from a second quickly dispatched soldier now that her advantage of surprise was lost, Aeryn launched herself from the dais, swiping at a man-sized figure clad in grey as she went.
The Shade, hindered by the very ability it had used to terrorize for so long, never saw the blade coming. He fell, materializing fully in the Physical Plane even before he hit the wood platform.
Still Drifted because their plan called for it, Asher and Merek were a moment behind, pausing only long enough to topple the other pair of chests. Both exploded on impact just like the two before it. The new chests contained the hundreds of iron daggers and short swords Ty had made for Aeryn over the past months.
“Rally to Nameless!”
&nbs
p; “Run!” came an opposing cry a moment later.
Faced with a choice, each of which worked equally well for Aeryn and their party, though only one of which mirrored their heart’s desire, the crowd surged. Chaos erupted.
The greedy and desperate rushed to the littered sea of coins. The faithful and courageous snatched up knives, loose cobblestones, and anything else that could be used as a weapon. The rest ran. All shouted at the top of their lungs as they made their choice. It was positively deafening. Aeryn could not have heard Merek shout in her ear from an inch away.
Combined with impersonating a God and manipulating the beliefs of those gathered, it was the least honorable way Aeryn could think of to start a war. Hopefully that would also mean it was the most effective.
As Aeryn ran from the dais, she quickly pushed the thought aside and dropped to her stomach. A sword whistled though where her neck had been a moment earlier. She stabbed up into the leather strap that held the soldier’s metal greaves in place. The man fell with a scream, clutching his bleeding groin.
Honor be damned, Aeryn thought. No doubt she would do much worse before this was finished.
Gods was she ever right. There was not a single bloody scrap of honor in any of the scores of ambushes she set up over the next hours. And she used every trick she knew of.
After using the pandemonium in the square to affect an escape, she had rendezvoused with their army of hired swords. They had spent the remainder of the day setting up one honorless ambush after another.
Ambushes like setting a spear trap and luring a soldier into it. Or using a snare or tripwire to catch their feet and stab them when they were down. Or removing a cobble, placing a sharpened stake in it and covering it back up with refuse until a soldier stepped on it. Or taking over a widow’s house, cutting holes in her walls, and stabbing out into the columns of soldiers as they tramped by looking for her.
Then again, Aeryn thought as she hid, Drifted, in the lengthening shadows cast by the tight press of buildings that made up the latest refuse strewn alley, there was nothing honorable about what the Voices or Shades had been doing for hundreds of years.
Waiting in the latest darkened alley to ambush a lured company of soldiers, Aeryn tried not to breath. At the same time, she stretched out her ears, listening for the telltale pitter-patter of approaching feet. All she heard was her thumping heart.
Not for the first time, she wished Jynx were at her side. The draven’s hearing was ten times what hers was; his sense of smell a hundred times better yet.
Soon. You’ll get to see and worry about him soon.
Settling back on her heels, she waited.
A minute became two, became ten. Just as she was about to stand and stretch aching joints, she heard the sound she had been waiting for.
A scrawny boy appeared in the alley mouth. The son of one of Mareen’s trackers—that woman had more surprises up her sleeve than a fish had scales—the boy streamed towards them. Just as he came within three paces, he hopped a nearly invisible length of rope and scooted to the side of a set of wood spikes hidden beneath the rubbish.
“One block,” the boy whispered as he passed by.
Aeryn tensed and unlimbered her fingers. They had just begun to lose feeling from their white-knuckled grip on the knife. The sound of scores of sellswords readying themselves as they shifted into an arrow-straight line behind grated on her nerves. She looked over her shoulder and put a finger to her lips, intending to shush them. She dropped her hand and turned back, realizing all they would see was a misty black form.
“See. I told you they were here,” came a voice at the end of the alley. The wrong end.
Aeryn whipped her head around. Three paces away hugging the opposite wall of the alley, Merek and Asher did likewise. Scores swords snapped into position and blocked Aeryn’s sight.
“I don’t see her.”
The men closest to the mouth were already in motion, slashing and stabbing.
“No, stop!” came a shriek from a familiar voice. “We’re here to help.”
Aeryn jumped into the center of the alley. “Stop!” she barked.
She reached out a hand as if she could recall the swords whistling down to meet wooden clubs, cudgels, rusty blades and even a few of the simple knifes Ty had made. Two boys fell, their weapons all but useless against hardened steel.
“Stop! They’re friends!” Aeryn screamed, desperately trying to cut through the sound of death and dying as another set of boys dropped lifelessly to the ground.
Merek saw what Aeryn was attempting do and added his voice to hers. It was just enough to get through. The men pulled their strikes short while the street urchins worked desperately to rally against a foe that should have been a friend.
“Katelyn, what are you doing here?” Aeryn asked.
“Who are they Aeryn?” Asher asked. A dangerous look played across his face. He had yet to lower his weapon.
“I came to help you, Lady Aeryn,” Katelyn squeaked the tip of a sword pressed against her chest. “I brought all the Bigs and Littles I could find.”
“It’s ok,” Aeryn said. “They’re friends. Lower your—“
“Death to the traitors!”
Bloody hell. Aeryn whirled.
The real threat—better than four times their number of the Voice’s soldiers—charged in. The soldiers had taken the bait Aeryn had sent out and charged the small squared into her trap. Only, the trap had just backfired due to Katelyn’s unplanned and untimely arrival.
Blocked by the confusion in front, and without the expected clear path bristling with weapons to lead their quarry through, the squad acting as bait slid to a halt. Many fell, caught by snares and tripwires and wooden stakes that had not been meant for them. Many more fell to swords in their backs before they were able to turn. The other rest stayed alive just long enough to buy Aeryn and her companions the time they needed to form loose ranks and meet the threat.
Drifting as far as she could while still able to see the ground at her feet and soldiers before her, Aeryn dashed forward. If they did not slow the brutal momentum of their attackers, they would not live long. All the blood spilled up to this point would be nothing but a testament to the Voices’ superiority: a footnote in the annals of history that spoke of a failed assault on Nameless’ glory by a few traitorous and conniving Shadows.
Hacking and slashing, as invisible to her enemies as they were to her, Aeryn weaved back and forth with every ounce of skill she had cultivated as a street urchin and had used time and again to escape in a crowd after filching a meal.
Dodging a strike that would have gutted her to her spine, she earned a score across her arm. The initial confusion sowed by her attack was rapidly wearing off.
Merek’s voice barked out from behind. “You. Take half and cut around left.”
“Yes, sir,” barked a hired sword.
Aeryn dove to the ground, swinging wildly at every ankle and calf within reach.
“You, girl. If you are really here to help then swing around right. It’s our only chance,” Merek said.
“For Lady Aeryn,” came a high-pitched reply.
A blade stabbed towards Aeryn’s chest. She rolled to the side and slammed against a soldier on his knees clutching a severed hamstring. The blade sliced through Aeryn’s clothing and missed gutting her by a hair.
Another blade descended in an arc toward her neck. Penned by a sword embedded in the ground on one side, the downed soldier on the other, and unable to get her feet under her in time, Aeryn watched death come.
Asher’s sword slid in front of Aeryn’s nose, so close she could smell the copperish blood coating it. A shower of sparks erupted as it slowed and deflecting the other blade, just enough that it slammed into her collarbone instead of her neck. It felt like a burning coal had been lodged beneath her skin where the two blades hit.
A twist and thrust and the hilt of Asher’s sword crushed the helm of the soldier. Aeryn wasted no time thanking the former Shade and stab
bed her knife into the attacker’s eye.
Asher roughly pulled her to her feet.
“Don’t just stand there,” Merek shouted, his Drifted form twirling this way and that to hold off the soldiers.
Asher gave Aeryn a grim smile and released her forearm. “We have to hold until our flankers are in position,” he said. He charged in to keep his one-time father-in-law-to-be from being overrun. Aeryn followed a step behind.
A triple whirlwind of nearly formless death and destruction, mortared with the more concrete men garbed in bloody, threadbare clothing, they fought as Shadows were supposed to: without mercy. Still, their attackers pressed and forced them back pace by pace.
Aeryn could feel the street approaching at her back. If they stepped out there, their advantage was lost. Instead of forcing their enemy to line up and attack three abreast, they would be able to fan out and swarm over them in moments.
No sooner had the thought come and the pressure before her lessened. Soldiers that only moments ago were so sure of their victory, now hesitated long enough for Aeryn to dance inside their guard and strike home. Others cast a worried glance over their shoulders, only to find death strike them down from the other side.
A minute later, the last soldier crumpled to the ground from swords at his front and back. A sweating, panting man in dirty woolens appeared in his place. A Big as wide and muscle bound as Ty, stood at his side holding a massive two-handed cudgel that could have doubled as a wagon’s axle.
No, Aeryn thought, shaking her head. It was a wagon’s axle. Aeryn had no idea how he lifted the thing, much less managed to swing it. Even more astonishing were the Littles behind him who were swiftly cutting off the screams of those fallen but not yet expired.
Aeryn had a tingle of revulsion that made her sick up on the spot. But not because the sight of the street urchins cutting and stabbing—having grown up on the streets like her they were no stranger to death—but because her entire body was soaked in blood, gore, and offal. That she was most definitely not something she was used to any longer. Aeryn blamed it on bathing.
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