by Lyn Lowe
This time, there was no safety. Within seconds of Mola’s cry of warning, it seemed every soldier in the area poured into the side street, blocking both exits.
Kaie acted without thinking, grabbing Peren and Vaughan and shoving them as hard as he could in a single movement. The two stumbled against the nearest building, Vaughan’s elbow catching Henry and winning them all a curse from the man as he dropped his sword.
Kaie didn’t take the time to apologize or worry about the brown-haired man. He spun to face their attackers with his own blade at the ready.
The streets were working to their advantage. The soldiers of the Fourth pressed in as tightly as they could, but only managed to send four at them from either direction. Of course, that still meant that they were facing eight well-armed warriors at once.
Mola’s laughter cut through the shouts and grunts as she and Judah reached the first of their opponents. For a breath, Kaie could do nothing but watch as she threw herself into the cluster of four men, both daggers flashing in the moonlight, moving fast as lightening. Before Kaie could blink, one of the men toppled clutching at his throat, and she was moving on to the next.
Two of them pushed past her, and he was lost in his own battle.
It took Kaie about three seconds to realize he was overmatched. He considered himself a quick study, but his training with the soldiers wasn’t enough for two at once. Judah’s advice – use your speed, always be on the offensive, don’t give them a moment to realize you can’t handle a sword – ran through his head for a moment, but it was all he could manage to keep out of their reach. He snapped his sword from one side to the other, using the thick steel to deflect their swords as best he could, falling back on the quick movements he learned with Gregor to avoid the rest.
Sweat broke out on his brow in seconds. If it didn’t end quickly he would get too tired to keep up the flurry of motion that was keeping his skin whole, he knew.
With a bellow, Henry appeared at his side. He barreled into the man on his left. The man went down, and Henry stayed up. With some of the pressure removed, Kaie faired a little better. He was able to deal a cut or two of his own before Henry cleaved the other man in half.
It won them both a breath or two.
Mola was a whirlwind, weaving in and out of the soldiers in front of her at a speed they couldn’t hope to keep up with. The cobblestone was growing slick with blood and Kaie doubted a drop of it was hers.
Judah was doing well. Two corpses were at his feet and his sword danced around in a barrage that the others were struggling to defend against. A woman slipped past his guard on the right, clearly meaning to take him from behind. Before she could lift her sword, Kaie rammed into her. They collided against the wall with a thud, and the woman’s sword fell. His own was no use to him this close, so he dropped it and fell into a much more familiar stance.
Her brown eyes narrowed and she pulled a dagger from her belt. He darted forward, ducking under her swing easily, and landed two hard blows into her stomach. The woman stumbled forward, surprise written all over her face. Kaie couldn’t help a grim smile as he rushed forward to hit her head. This dance he knew.
Her eyes fluttered closed and she slumped down. He ripped the dagger from her hand and scooped up his sword, kicking hers back into a small space between two buildings.
Henry and Judah were working together holding back at least five more soldiers without much sign of trouble. He couldn’t see Mola at all, though he heard enough screaming from the other end of the street to know she was still at work. There were four soldiers pressing in on Vaughan and Peren. The two blondes were holding their swords in front of them like they were brandishing torches, swinging them around aimlessly. Kaie grimaced.
Vaughan was a greater threat then the soldiers. Helpless as he looked, Kaie saw the wild look in the man’s eyes and knew what was coming. He could almost smell the magic as it burst out, twin streaks of light bursting from the man’s hands and catching two of the soldiers through their chests. Both toppled to the ground, with a new hole big enough to shove a fist through.
Kaie slammed into one of the remaining two. The man stumbled backward several steps, tripping over one of the bodies. Peren leapt forward and bashed the hilt of her sword down on the guy’s head three times. The man’s eyes rolled back and he was out.
Kaie spun on the last one, but it was too late. The remaining soldier’s sword was up, close enough to shave his chin, and his own was still at his side. Peren and Vaughan were behind him, useless. He listened to them both gasp as they realized what was about to happen. Kaie snarled at the woman holding his death, wanting nothing so much as to tear her apart with his bare hands.
Her eyes widened, and for a second he thought it was because of him. Then, with a thick gurgle, a blade cut through the meat of her throat. Blood splattered across his face and she fell. Mola pulled the dagger out of the side of the woman’s neck with a wild smile.
She wrapped a finger around his shirt and tugged him forward. Kaie resisted, thinking he was about to get the same dagger in his stomach. She pressed her lips against his.
“Mine,” she growled into the kiss. A shiver ran down Kaie’s spine. Then she shoved him backward and dashed away. A moment later, her flashing blades were buried in the stomach of another soldier. She used the man’s body to propel herself upward, into the middle of the enemies bunched up at the mouth of the street, and disappeared.
Breathing hard, Kaie spun around. He took in the state of the blondes quickly, relieved to see neither of them seemed badly injured. Two sets of huge blue eyes blinked up at him, but he didn’t spare them another second. Judah and Henry were nearly finished dealing with the enemies on their end, so he ran to help Mola on the other.
All three of the soldiers he could reach were standing with their backs to him. Kaie used the opportunity to swing his sword wildly, putting all the strength in him behind it. The blade cut through the shoulders of the first man and lodged itself in the spine of the second. They both fell, alive but done fighting. The third turned around to face the new threat, but Kaie was faster. Using the momentum of his swing to keep him moving, he thrust out his leg and caught her knees with the heel of his boot. She dropped onto the cobbles, face exploding in blood with a sharp crack, and didn’t move. Kaie fell back into his stance, holding tight onto his stolen dagger, ready for the next one.
There was no one left.
With a feral giggle, Mola dropped down beside the woman Kaie just felled and, with one startling motion, lifted the girl by the hair and slit her throat so deep it nearly severed the woman’s head. She did the same with every other enemy that was still breathing. Within moments, every fallen soldier was unequivocally dead. Then she slid up to his side, dripping and red from head to foot. After a minute, Peren and Vaughan joined them, clinging to each other like frightened children. Judah and Henry weren’t far behind, though the giant was limping and the other man looked to be short an ear.
Dazed, Kaie looked down at his own body, surprised to see he was covered in cuts – some of them deep enough to worry over. He wondered vacantly where they came from.
“I count seventeen,” Judah muttered lowly. Kaie shook his head free of the numbness threatening him and did his own tally of the fallen. His number matched.
“Was this the group left behind, or the one you thought followed Mola and I earlier?”
The giant shook his head. “Let’s not find out, huh?”
“Good plan,” Henry chimed in, hand pressed firmly against the wound on his head.
He wanted to know if it was an ambush, or just happenstance that set the seventeen on them, but the other men were right. There were more pressing concerns at the moment. It wasn’t worth standing around until more soldiers showed up.
Mola all but danced as she took the lead again. The battle seemed to give her a charge too great for the slight girl to hold. She darted ahead, then waited for them to catch up. Kaie couldn’t help a tired grin, watching her. She was chi
ld-like in her glee. She was finally wearing the blood of her enemies. He envied her, more than a little.
His enemies were harder to bleed.
Thirty-Five
The rest of their tired march was remarkable only because it wasn’t. Mola was clearly disappointed, but the rest of them were grateful for the small miracle. They found both Tania and Hail’s squads with little difficulty. Neither was at the place selected for the meeting. But despite Judah’s faith in them, the two squads were gathered within two miles of the place. They seemed to be in the middle of a heated debate.
There was no question what the soldiers were discussing. The looks they got when they stumbled into what used to be a jeweler’s shop said it all. Guilt and fear was written plainly on almost all of the eleven faces.
Not Alex’s, though.
The doctor flashed a smile that seemed genuine at their arrival, then scrambled to her feet. She eyed each one of them, giving Mola a great deal of scrutiny. “How much of that is your blood?”
The brown-eyed girl glanced down at her once-white dress and shrugged. “Not much.”
Alex nodded, as if she were expecting that answer, and turned to Henry. The stream running down his right side most certainly belonged to the soldier, and he said so. With another nod, she directed him to sit on one of the tables and within a second Henry was lost to her fussing.
Certain it wouldn’t be long before she finished with Henry and turned her attention to him and Judah, Kaie cleared his throat and grabbed every eye in the building.
“It’s time to gather the squads. Once the doctor is done with him, Henry will tell your runners where they’re going.” Before they split their numbers, he and Judah made sure to put in place a method of drawing everyone back together. There was a designated runner in each squad, and they were each tasked with meeting two other squads, and so would the runners from those two squads. The plan was that all fifteen squads would be contacted within six hours, and could be safely gathered in less than twelve. “I need several others to run an errand for me”
For a second, Kaie thought he wasn’t going to get any volunteers. His whole body tensed, as though some kind of physical reaction could change that. If they wouldn’t follow him then everything would fall apart. He needed these people, for at least a little while longer.
One man stepped forward. Thank the gods.
The guy was small and wiry, built a lot like Vaughan. There wasn’t a bit that looked like a soldier. For his life, Kaie couldn’t remember the man’s name. But he knew that the man was one of the most important components in nearly all Gregor’s victories: one of the Ironfist sappers. Three more soldiers joined the sapper. Kaie nodded to signal that was enough, struggling to keep a relieved smile off his face.
“I need you four to find every clothier in the area. Mola will help.” He cast a quick glance at the woman at his left, winning a glare but no argument. “Grab every drop of brown and black dye you can find. Brown and black, especially. Paint too. As much as you can find. If you can think of any other places that might have some, hit them too. I want enough here for every one of the Twelfth to bathe in by the time all the squads are gathered.”
The sapper’s eyebrow lifted, but not one of them said anything more than ‘yes sir’ before heading out with Mola in tow.
Judah waited exactly as long as it took the door to shut behind them before he turned on Kaie, tired face set in a firm expression.
Kaie didn’t let the giant ask. He grabbed Judah’s arm and led the soldier as far away from everyone else as the small shop would allow.
“They’re not going to help us,” he murmured.
Judah’s eyes widened, but the giant didn’t say anything. Quickly as he could, Kaie laid out the situation. He left out any mention of the prophesy. Judah, even with his magic, was not a fan of anything he couldn’t explain.
“I’ve never been bait before,” Judah muttered when he was finished. Kaie grimaced his commiseration. “It won’t work.”
“What won’t?”
The giant frowned. “Their great escape plan. The city is not the prize the empire’s after. Not the whole of it, anyway.”
Kaie only needed to think about it for a moment. Gregor’s words echoed clearly in his mind, almost as if the man was standing beside him and speaking them. The empire needs bodies. Their whole approach to war was to throw endless streams of people into the conflict, until their enemies were overrun by sheer numbers. This city already cost Urazin a whole battalion, and to replace that number with fresh lives would require an influx of new slaves to take the place of the old ones recruited. It was more than that, though. The Empress couldn’t allow a population the size of Huduku’s to simply walk away from her. She couldn’t afford that, any more than she could let the Twelfth escape. With or without them, Lady Dau was going to find her people hunted to the very edges of the Abyss.
“You’re done with Mola.”
Kaie blinked, drawing himself back to the conversation. Judah’s face was hard and blank. “I am?”
The giant crossed his arms over his chest. “You just said she’s helping her people betray us. Find another way to entertain yourself.”
“One that doesn’t upset Peren so much, maybe?” Kaie sneered. Judah’s arms dropped and for a second, they both knew the man was going to hit him. A yelp from where Alex was tending Henry broke the tension before it happened. With an effort, Kaie let the moment slide away. He sighed and leaned back against the wall. “I know what I’m doing.”
Judah scowled, but folded his arms up again. “I’m finding that increasingly unlikely.”
“You’re right, she’s betraying us. But she doesn’t know I know. She didn’t even see the old lady. So long as I don’t give the game away, we can keep her away from her people for the next few days and watch for the first sign of it. Unless you know of a better way to figure out when this whole ‘leave the city’ plan of theirs reaches the final stages?”
The giant was silent for a time, his expression thoughtful. Finally, his eyes peered out from beneath shaggy hair and met Kaie’s. “You’ve got a plan then.”
Kaie grinned. “I’ve always got a plan, Judah.”
Before anything else could be said, the doctor appeared beside them, as if with magic, and insisted on treating Judah’s lip and a host of other injuries. Kaie was soon subjected to the same treatment. When Alex was done with him, she insisted he get some rest and dragged him to the upper level of the shop where several cots were set up. It wasn’t until his head hit the cloth that Kaie realized just how exhausted he was. Within minutes of lying down, he was asleep.
He woke with a warm weight pressed against his right side. It added to the stale heat of the room and made him sticky with sweat. Kaie opened his eyes slowly, not convinced he was ready to resume consciousness just yet.
Almond eyes watched from beside him, delicate fingers reaching up to slide through his hair. “Did Kale miss the girl?”
“Yeah,” he agreed groggily. Kaie shifted so that he could wrap his arms around her shoulders and draw her closer still. “I actually did. Aren’t you supposed to be helping my volunteers?”
Mola snuggled her head against his chest, her hair tickling his nose. “This girl helped. She told them where to look and sent them on their way. Then she decided to do something less boring.”
Kaie considered being upset about that, but decided it wasn’t worth it. He took a second to glance around the room, pleased to find they were alone. “Did I sleep so long they left me behind, or did you chase everyone out?”
She giggled, the same sound she made when she was covered in blood. It was chilling, that giggle. Chilling and exciting.
“Which would make her boy happier?”
His eyebrow arched. “Since when do you worry about my being happy? Aren’t you here to punish me for my wickedness?”
She looked up at him, her dark lips twisting into a smile that sent a shot of lust through him. “That too. This girl wonders if s
he can make Kale shout her name so loud that all his little soldiers rush up to see that wickedness.”
Kaie opened his mouth, not sure what he was going to say. ‘Don’t’ maybe. Or, more likely, ‘oh gods yes’ and ‘please’. Before he could get out a word, though, her hand left his hair and traveled downward. All that made it out of his lips was a gasp.
She wiggled and shifted, each movement sending jolts through his every nerve. Before he realized what was happening, his clothes were off and she was crouched between his legs. For a second, a bad second, Kaie remembered the last time someone looked up at him from that position. But then she giggled again, and moved her hand a bit more, and he slammed that door closed.
All of a sudden, she stopped. He could still feel her legs pressed against the inside of his thighs, but her hands vanished. Kaie moaned something that might be words begging her to continue, or simply a sound of frustration. He wasn’t sure.
And then something cold slid into his side.
Kaie gasped, black specks floating across his vision. His hands flew to the spot just below his ribs. The place where the dagger was lodged.
Mola’s weight left the cot, and she moved to tower over him. Her beautiful lips were still wearing that excited, enticing grin. “Will Kale shout for her?”
His body curled up around the pain spreading through his stomach. Kaie fought against the pounding need to rip the metal out of his body, some small part of his mind still alive enough to tell him to leave it. Leave it there, call for Vaughan. Vaughan.
His lips worked, but he couldn’t get the word out.
She giggled. That same giggle. Mola lifted a hand, one covered in blood – his blood – and grabbed a fistful of his hair. With a swift jerk, she used her other dagger to cut off a hunk and tucking it into the purse at her hip. She slipped the dagger back into place and raised her hand again, wiggling each of her fingers. Then she turned and ran for the shuttered window. She reached it in an instant, then threw herself through it with a clatter of breaking wood.
It was a long fall, he knew.