The road left the swamp and its flickering lights and passed through a copse of pine trees and into a broad meadow. Almost there. Hope rose in Nathaliey’s chest. The bridge came into sight, arcing gracefully over Blossom Creek in the moonlight.
The ghostly riders had been pursuing them now for some time, so close that one last charge would have overtaken the three apprentices. But as the bridge came into sight, the riders pulled up short.
Nathaliey had nothing left, had already dug into her reserves and dug again, but somehow she kept her legs pounding forward. A wind blew up the road, swirling her robes, and she glanced over her shoulder.
“Go!” Chantmer gasped. “They are scared of the bridge. If we can only make it . . .”
No, that wasn’t why they’d stopped. Instead, they’d been holding for four more riders to join them, and now there were six ghostly figures. They gathered in formation and began their charge. And then Nathaliey’s pounding heart nearly stopped in fear.
The blue light behind now spread up the road for a good half-mile. Two had become six, and six had spawned dozens. They blurred one into the other, but here and there the haunted, miserable expressions came through: a woman with her face cut open, her teeth and jaw exposed, a dead soldier with his throat cut and his helmet cleaved nearly in two, an old leper in rags and covered in weeping sores. A dead child, limbs mangled. They pushed forward as if driven by an unseen whip.
Nathaliey saw all this in a single, horrifying glance. And learned that, indeed, she had not yet tapped the bottom of her reserves. She turned back to see that Narud and Chantmer had seen it as well. Their faces stretched into grimaces nearly as awful as those of their pursuers, and all three apprentices ran for their lives.
The bridge loomed ahead. Cross to the other side—that was all Nathaliey could hope. From there, the first whisper of power would reach them from the gardens. It would give them strength. And the inhabitants of the garden would sense the three apprentices, as well. They would send help.
But by now the first of the wights were so close that their screams entered her mind. She glanced back to see a long ghostly spear in the lead rider’s mailed fist. The wight reared back to throw.
“By the sword be damned!” a woman’s voice rang out.
A figure stood on the bridge in front of them, a two-handed sword gripped tightly in her hands. Red fire seemed to dance along the blade. She wore a breastplate that gleamed in the moonlight, and there was an unnatural fury in her eyes, visible even from a distance, that seemed to Nathaliey to belong to a god or a demon, not a woman.
The barbarian. Chantmer and Narud had warned Nathaliey of the woman. The one who’d come to destroy the master, who had murdered one of the keepers. She must have called the wights, sent them hunting on the road from Syrmarria. And now she blocked the path.
The woman came toward the three apprentices, sweeping her long sword ahead of her. Nathaliey had pulled into the lead and would be the first to face the blade. Stumbling forward, her strength exhausted, she was unable to do so much as lift her arms to shield her face before the barbarian was upon her.
But the woman shoved her aside, muscled past Chantmer and Narud, and swung her sword at the wights behind them. Nathaliey staggered on, reached the first flagstones of the bridge, and fell to her knees. Narud and Chantmer stumbled into her, one after the other, until all three lay in a heap.
A second figure loomed above them. It was Markal. He’d pulled back his sleeves and placed his hands down, and was chanting a spell. Her first thought was that he meant to renew the strength of his fellow apprentices so they could run to the safety of the garden, but the incantation was directed at the wights and the barbarian warrior.
A great pulse flowed through Markal’s limbs, like a maelstrom ready to roar free, and Nathaliey braced herself for its impact. Here it was. Her friend had found his power at last. But as Markal finished the spell, the bulk of it boiled harmlessly into the air. What remained flew past Nathaliey’s shoulder, as timid as a sparrow, and it entered the battle to some unknown effect.
She raised herself to her hands and knees and looked behind her. The barbarian was brawling with the mounted knights. They were spectral, nearly without form. They could do a mortal soul harm, but could not be harmed in turn by anything but powerful magic. Certainly no sword could touch them. Or so Nathaliey thought.
But the woman broke an enemy’s spear, cut through his glowing armor, and sent him crashing to the ground. She plunged her sword into his chest and tilted back her head with a growl. The wight was gone, destroyed. The ghostly horse sped off into the night and vanished into the mist.
Other riders came at the barbarian. She danced between their swords and spears, hacking them down one at a time and dispatching them the moment they fell. If not for the terrifying vision of an entire army of the creatures swirling down the road to join the fight, Nathaliey would have stared in amazement at her fighting ability, a combination of grace and power.
“Get back!” the barbarian yelled.
Her sword lashed in a blur as she fought her way back to the bridge. Markal helped the other three apprentices clear a space for her to enter. Once at the narrow opening, the barbarian stopped once again to face her enemies. Wights came at her with weapons, with teeth and fingernails. The long red sword hacked and slashed. With every swing, she battered through them, cutting and maiming as the wights fell apart like wisps of blue flame.
But they kept coming, and soon she was faltering. Markal tried to raise another spell, but he failed. The other apprentices had nothing. But they couldn’t retreat and leave the woman to her fate.
A long pike thrust forward from the mass of writhing, clawing enemies. The barbarian swung to counter it, but it was a sluggish parry from an exhausted defender, and it failed to turn aside the blow. The point struck her shoulder above the breastplate. The woman cried out in pain and fell back. Another wight came at her, and somehow she managed to bring her sword around for another blow. It decapitated the wight.
But this was the woman’s last effort, and she collapsed on the bridge. The wights had been faltering under her ferocious defense, their attacks weakening, but now they gathered in triumph and surged forward.
A collective howl rose from the mass of wights. Nathaliey braced herself to be overrun. The wights would tear them apart, and the four apprentices and the warrior would soon join the mindless rabble of undead.
But at that moment came a single long, haunting note that rolled through the night air. A hunting horn. The baying of distant hounds followed in its wake. The Harvester had come to claim his own.
The wights, so close to victory, fell back from the bridge. They scattered, screaming, from the road as the horn blew again. That call was not meant for her, Nathaliey knew, yet a mindless terror rose in her breast to hear the dark god’s horn, and she cowered with her hands covering her face.
A hand grabbed Nathaliey and yanked her to her feet. It was Markal, looking drawn. Chantmer had regained his feet, too, and tried to help Narud up. The woman lay groaning from her wound, the long sword at her side.
“Go!” Markal cried. “Run!”
#
Somehow Markal got them all moving, even the barbarian. His companions looked nearly dead, and both Nathaliey and Narud stopped to retch as soon as they got to the far side of the bridge, though there seemed to be nothing in their stomachs. Bronwyn moaned and clutched at her shoulder, blood streaming through her fingers from the pike wound.
Nevertheless, she had the sense of mind to reach her other hand over her shoulder to grope for her weapon. “My sword.”
Markal glanced behind him, half expecting to see wights streaming over the bridge after them. But the Harvester’s horn kept blowing, and now the baying hounds sounded closer. Whatever evil magic had driven the wights forward was apparently gone, as they fled from the dark god.
“We’ll get it in the morning,” he said.
Bronwyn drove her feet into the ground to keep
from being dragged along. “No, I will get it now.”
“We need to reach the gardens. The Harvester will take us all.”
“If the sword falls into the enemy’s hands, we are doomed.”
Bronwyn fought clear. But she hadn’t taken two steps when she staggered and nearly fell.
Markal went to her side. “You go. I’ll retrieve the sword.”
“Do you swear it?”
“By the Brothers, I’ll try.”
Bronwyn managed a grim nod and turned back to stagger after Markal’s companions lurching down the road toward the gardens. Markal’s heart pounded in fear, and his body was shaky from blood loss after the magic he’d sent to strengthen the paladin in her fight. Every fiber of his being balked at going alone over that bridge to where the Harvester and his hounds were hunting souls, but somehow, he kept his feet moving forward.
Bronwyn’s sword lay glinting in the moonlight where it had fallen. There was no red gleam—the blade looked like nothing but an ordinary piece of steel—but Markal was not fooled. There was magic in the weapon. Bronwyn might be a great warrior, but no mere sword could have hacked apart those wights, and Markal knew it wasn’t his own feeble spell that had done it.
Another blast from the horn. Close. The baying hounds, even closer. But Markal saw nothing, only a flat, grassy field, with blue lights still fleeing in all directions.
Quickly, he bent and grabbed the sword. It had some heft to it, which made it all the more impressive how Bronwyn had been sweeping it around, parrying and cutting down enemies. When his fingers wrapped around the pommel, a voice whispered in his ear.
Who are you?
Markal whipped his head around, thinking the voice had come from over his shoulder. But there was nobody there. Other voices entered his mind, both male and female. It was like walking into a room where a dozen hushed conversations were taking place, none of which he could pick out. And then the voices fell silent.
He hurried to join the others. They’d continued to trudge forward, but the instant Bronwyn saw him, she stopped again. Her left arm hung limp, the shoulder bleeding heavily. Bronwyn reached for the sword with her good arm.
“Give me that.”
“I’ll carry it. You’re in no condition.”
“Give me the damn sword!”
“Fine, you cut off your leg for all I care.”
Markal handed it over and pushed past her to catch up with the other apprentices. They reached the opening in the wall that led into the gardens. Still no sign of pursuit, and when he looked back and saw that the paladin was far behind, he was tempted to leave her to her own devices and look to his friends. Let’s see if she could get in now, the stubborn fool.
Nathaliey grabbed Markal’s arm with a trembling hand. “Help her, we’ll take care of ourselves.”
“You’re sure?”
“She saved our lives, and that’s worth something. I’ll send keepers to help. See that she doesn’t die before they find you.”
That was easy enough to say, he thought as the other three hobbled off while he waited for Bronwyn. There was restorative magic in the gardens, but Bronwyn was no wizard like Memnet, and she’d taken a brutal injury that would have been dangerous enough from a mortal weapon. From a ghostly pike, who knew what effect it had? Markal knew very little about such things.
He went back and threw her arm over his shoulders to help her through the gate. Runes carved into the stones whispered strength into his bones. Cool, restorative air filled his lungs. He shifted more of Bronwyn’s slumping weight onto his own body. The sword dragged in the dirt, but she wouldn’t relinquish it.
Two keepers found him before he’d made it out of the outer gardens. They helped him prop Bronwyn against an oak tree, where she sank, head slumping against her chest.
“Bring me a flagon of fresh wine from the south vineyards,” he told them. “And a round of bread and some honey. That will help, too.”
“I’m not hungry,” Bronwyn murmured.
“Quiet.” Markal took off her helmet and kept speaking to the keepers. “Bandages, and a poultice with the mud from the lakeshore. Herbs—you know the ones I need.”
The keepers set off, and Markal looked back to the injured paladin. The first hint of dawn stained the sky and combined with the waning light of the sinking moon to cast her face in gray. Her eyes rolled back as she appeared to fall senseless.
Markal removed the woman’s breastplate, which failed to rouse her, but she groaned when he took her padded cloth shirt and pulled it over her shoulders. He removed the blood-soaked linen undershirt beneath it. Linen bindings covered her breasts, but her torso was bare. A small pendant in the formed of a silver crescent moon hung from a chain around her neck.
Bronwyn’s complexion was paler than any he’d ever seen, which made the multitude of bruises stand out more. Some were an angry purple, but most were old, fading yellow. He guessed they matched divots in her breastplate, and wondered who she’d been battling in the not-so-distant past. These bruises were nothing compared to the big, ugly wound left by the enemy pike. It had torn open muscle and perhaps broken the bone.
A figure came up behind Markal and handed him a flagon of wine.
“Thank you,” he said without looking. “What about the poultice?”
“It’s coming.” It was Nathaliey. “The bread and honey, too. I just happened to have the wine in my cottage, which was a lot closer.”
Markal glanced at her. “Go get some rest.”
“Not a chance. What if the wights attack the gardens? I’d rather not be in bed when that happens.”
“Why not? You may as well die peacefully in your sleep.”
“Ha!” Nathaliey eased herself to the ground with a groan. “Oh, my muscles. They are not pleased.”
Markal lifted the wine flagon to Bronwyn’s lips and muttered encouraging words until she’d taken a little. Some of it even went down.
He tried to hand the flagon back to Nathaliey. “You could use this, too.”
“I already did. Why do you think it’s half empty? Go ahead and drink some yourself.”
Markal took a long drink. It was fresh wine, not yet aged in barrels, and it had an unfinished taste that nevertheless warmed his mouth and throat as it went down. He didn’t drink it all though, saving the rest for Bronwyn. The woman’s eyes opened when he put it to her lips the second time, and she gave him a bleary, not-altogether pleased look.
“How bad is it?” she asked.
“The muscle is cut open, the tendons too,” Markal said. “I can’t see the bone, but it might be broken.”
“I’m finished. A paladin with a crippled arm—what use will I be?”
“You let us worry about that. You are in the gardens of Memnet the Great.”
“I’ve seen wounds like this before,” Bronwyn said. “It’s no use.”
“Then you should be asking why you’re not unconscious from loss of blood. That you are awake should tell you something.”
This stopped her, and she took more wine when he offered it. Her eyes closed again.
“Thank you for coming for us,” Nathaliey said to Markal. “How did you know?”
Two keepers arrived before he could respond. One held a round of yesterday’s bread and a clay jar of honey, the other the mud and herbs in a jug, and a roll of fresh linen for a bandage. He took them, then sent the keepers to rouse the rest of the garden. He wanted keepers posted at the entrances to the gardens, readying whatever small bits of magic they possessed until daylight arrived.
“I didn’t know,” Markal said as he pressed cool mud into the barbarian’s injured shoulder. She groaned and tossed her head. “Bronwyn knew. Or rather, her sword did.”
Nathaliey glanced at the sword lying in the dirt and raised an eyebrow. “How can a sword know anything?”
“I have no idea. But the sword tells her things, or perhaps it is a message being passed through the sword from some other source.” Markal explained how she was always touchin
g the hilt, how when he’d picked it up, he’d heard voices. “Someone must be using it as a conduit to send her information.”
“Seems that a good deal has happened to both of us since yesterday,” Nathaliey said. She bound the wound as Markal held the healing mud in place. “What about the master? Is he all right? He wasn’t . . . you know?” She glanced at Bronwyn.
“No, she didn’t kill him. He’s alive. I even spoke with him.”
Bronwyn opened her eyes. “You know less than you think. Both of you.”
“Why don’t you tell us, then,” Markal said. “Why are you here?”
She closed her eyes and yawned. The wine and poultice seemed to be taking effect, and now she was merely pale instead of gray. They eased her onto the bed of leaves at the base of the tree and pulled off her boots to reveal feet wrapped in linens. Bronwyn’s breathing came slow and easy, but even as she fell asleep, her hand fell on her sword hilt and tightened.
“Shame she didn’t stay awake long enough to eat the bread and honey,” Nathaliey said. “Would have done her good.”
Markal tore off a chunk of the flatbread and used his thumb to break the wax seal on the honey. “The bread and honey is for you, actually. I knew you wouldn’t stay in bed.” He drizzled honey on the piece of bread and handed it to her.
“Thank you, Markal. You’re a good friend.”
Warmth touched his face. To disguise his embarrassment, he turned back to the food, tearing off his own piece and dipping it in the honey. It was restorative from the first taste.
Markal had already been fifteen years under the master when Nathaliey arrived as a girl. Memnet had gathered everyone by the pavilion to introduce the new apprentice, and she’d greeted them with a lofty expression that Markal now knew was an attempt to cover anxiety, but it had seemed smug and overly precocious at the time. It was winter, and Markal had just returned from Syrmarria having taken on some illness that left him with a wet cough and sneezing up mucous.
The Red Sword- The Complete Trilogy Page 10