by Jon Kiln
She lowered the sword and laid it flat upon the ground. Berengar’s eyes widened and his grip tightened.
She swept her arms out at her sides and parted the fur of her father’s cloak. Berengar saw between the bones of the slouching skeleton that she wore only two bands of black cloth under the cloak. One was tied around her chest in a dark bow in the front. The other was bound around her waist. He could not decide if it looked like an obscenely short dress or skirt. He had faced many armies of men that girded their loins by tying up the stretches of their tunics. This lower band of black cloth resembled that in its twists. He was not used to seeing a woman this way, and he could not tell what type of battle she was possibly preparing for in this state.
She knelt and slid bones around the floor near the bars. She added a few more pieces to the dead, bony tree. She then began a new twisted pattern of bone shards on the floor. It was almost mesmerizing in its curves. She seemed to be in a trance herself as she worked.
A shadow passed over the wall of the cell from above, and voices drifted along. She did not react to them.
Berengar considered lashing out and trying to strike by surprise, in that moment before she could snatch up her sword. He did not like the distance, nor the feel of his muscles from crouching for so long after running like he had.
She said plainly, “I’m doing the best that I can.”
Berengar parted his lips and drew in air almost thinking to answer her, like this were nothing but a casual conversation. She continued before he could, and he wasn’t sure if he actually was going to speak or not.
“I am trying to be Solag, Father. I have drawn much blood in your name as the agent of his hand. It is difficult to maintain. They know I am a woman and some of them question whether you truly speak through me,” she said.
Berengar swallowed and licked his lips.
“I know that.” She seemed to answer a voice the captain could not hear. This was not the first time he had heard someone in a dungeon talking to unseen companions or tormentors. Her pile of bones was growing tall. It was looking like a bee hive. “I need more time. You will drink his blood, I swear. I will spill it for you. We have him trapped below these very floors. There is nowhere for him to go.”
Berengar was beginning to believe that that much was true.
“I’m trying … Well, it will have to be good enough. I have grown your army and fear of your name far further than you did in your lifetime … No … No … I’m sorry, Father. I do respect you. I could not have done it without you, I know.”
She moved away from the pile and away from her sword. Berengar shifted to watch her. She reached the gap of the stone door and clawed through the spill of bones. She picked up a couple pieces that interested her.
“I have taken much from him, and I will take him next. You will see.”
Berengar liked the distance more now. He moved to the side and prepared to spring at her back.
She stopped and scattered the bones from her hands. She bolted back across to the bars. Berengar charged and his knee tumbled the throne of skulls, spilling the skeleton onto its face.
She grabbed her sword and rolled, toppling her beehive and knocking two armed limbs from the bone tree.
Berengar swung over to catch her from above, but her blade shielded her laterally from the strike. She rolled his blade off away from her and slashed across at his stomach from her knees. Berengar shuffled back as her blade whistled through the air. The point barely missed his skin, and the torch above them flickered wildly from the motion.
She took to her feet and they squared in front of one another. The captain’s back was to the dead end at the cell blocks. His heel struck a skull and it rolled back away, clattering into others.
She shouted. “He is here! Get down here now!”
Berengar thought she might be shouting at her father’s spirit, but then shadows crisscrossed the walls from the light high above the cells.
A voice called down. “Where are you?”
“Down here.”
Berengar charged and thrust. She parried and cut at him. Her blade sliced his sleeve, but failed to catch skin as he circled away. They clashed blade to blade by their heads and along their ribs, failing to connect with anything but metal from their matched speed and skills.
The first bandit dropped down into one of the cells with a thump. He rolled to his side and clutched his ankle yelling. More men dropped down to the cells on both sides of the torch. They ran out to the bars and reached through at Berengar.
He backed toward the stone door. She swung in and connected hard against his sword with three ringing blows, trying to drive him back into the bars. Berengar gritted his teeth and stood firm, answering her attacks with shuttering blows of his own. She backed up a step, but kept him pinned in the dead end.
The bandits pulled at and kicked the bars trying to open them. Failing that, they reached between the bars with their own swords and swiped at the captain, giving him less room to maneuver.
She took advantage and pressed her attack forward. He swiped her dark blade aside over and over, but being unable to pivot, she had him on his heels.
Berengar stumbled on a leg bone. She drove into the opening. He brought his sword up in time and locked blades up hilt to hilt. He pushed, but she was surprisingly strong, and they held with swords shaking in their grasps.
She snapped her teeth at his cheek, but missed. He brought a knee up hard into her gut. She grunted, but took the impact and held her ground. Berengar began to feel real fear as he realized he had never seen a man take that shot like that in their exposed stomach.
She bit at his face again. He ducked his head and she staggered him back and to the side a step. The bandit swords were close. She was trying to push him into the wall or into the blades. He moved his head to the other side of the swords to stay away from her teeth.
She brought up her knee toward his groin. He felt the shift and turned his body to take the painful strike to his thigh instead. Once she was on one foot, he shoved hard and she staggered back away from him.
Berengar swung and knocked one of the bandit swords out of a man’s grasp to clatter to the dungeon floor.
More bandits dropped into the cells and pulled at the bars. As soon as an archer dropped in, Berengar thought, he was going to be in real trouble.
“You should give up.” She growled as she stalked into the narrow space between swinging swords and the stone wall. “Your family is dead, and you soon will be too.”
“You will pay for that evil.”
She showed her teeth as they pointed their swords two-handed at each other. “I have already paid my entire life for what you have done. Now you will die for it, knowing I have taken everything from you. I just wished you could have seen her die.”
She licked her teeth. Berengar waited. He knew she was trying to goad him into a headlong strike.
A few of the bandits threw their swords and daggers at him, but Berengar dodged as he kept his eyes on her.
“You lost your hold on my daughter and she lives. Nothing else matters to me.”
“She came back for you with your men, and we killed them all.”
“You lie,” Berengar said, taking the opportunity to regain his breath as well. “I had only one man with me. I know now that they escaped. Thank you for revealing that.”
She shook her head. “I saved her head to show you, but you surprised me here. I would have brought it down, if I knew we would meet. I’ll just have to be satisfied that you know now.”
“You lie.”
She shook her head again. “They must have found more of your friends and that gave them courage to come back for you. We cut down all your men. They formed a circle around her, but we still got to her. One last man helped her and tried to cover her with his body – the one that fled with her across the dead lake. He fell too. I wanted to save her for you to see, but I was so angry that I just cut her to pieces with this blade. I took her head and mounted it outside t
o show you. I came here with bones I cut from her body to build offerings to my father’s spirit. You watched me build with her bones. That will have to be enough.”
“You lie.”
Her smile and her voice dropped. “I do not care about you enough to lie to you.”
She drove in when Berengar would not. He met her blade to blade. He rolled around her to get to the outside. She took a step to try to stop him, but he slashed along her cheek drawing blood, and she screamed.
She came forward as he tried to back away along the torch lit corridor. He tried to push her off to continue his retreat, but she pressed forward and turned him toward the wall. Berengar tried to twist her sword out of her hand, but she pivoted back and brought her blade close to his throat with the captain against the wall.
She thrust her energy into her forearms to try to force closed the distance between the blades and his throat. Berengar held her off and pushed back. He felt a waver in her strength and it gave him some small hope.
“I will burn your mangled body just like I burned your family in your village and outside this castle,” she growled. “I will burn every member of the Guard and all their families until your king’s land looks like this one.”
Berengar spit in her face. She snapped her teeth at him and he twisted her sword out of her grasp, away from his throat. It clattered to the dungeon floor.
He shoved back away from her, but she lowered her body and slammed him back to the wall. He gasped for breath from the impact and tried to bring his sword down between him and her. She grabbed the wrist holding his sword with both of her hands and pushed his own blade back toward his throat.
He pushed against her face with his free hand. He felt her jaws snapping closed over and over, but he kept his fingers clear. He felt blood seep under one finger from where he had sliced her cheek. Berengar dug in hard with that finger. She pushed her head into his chest to foil his leverage on her head.
Berengar had a wild twist of thoughts pull through his mind as he fought. Normally, he thought nothing while fighting and just relied on his training and instincts. Here, he was frazzled and weary. He thought about the smell of smoke and burned flesh in his village. The smell of it never really seemed to leave his nose and thoughts anymore. He remembered Holst’s body, in the stables at Darkenhauls, terrorized into attacking them by this creature pretending to be the son of a dead bandit. She terrorized the entire land.
He wondered if Nisero and Arianne had found a small band of allies and came back with them in a desperate, loyal attempt to rescue the captain. They might have done so. He hoped not, but his head swirled with doubts. Nisero would have been the last left trying to protect Berengar’s daughter with his own body. How would Solag know that was what would happen unless it possibly did?
With her head on his check, he thought about his own daughter lying on his chest when she was small. He thought about his wife laying on him in the rare moments he was home. Those moments were denied him in a future he thought he had in his grasp, but no more.
Berengar realized in his mental wanderings that the girl warrior, Solag Son of Zulag, was pushing his own sword toward the artery in his neck. He pulled his hand away from her face and grabbed his sword fist to push back against both her hands. He gained the advantage again.
She shouted into his chest as she continued to fight and hold him. “Burned them all.”
“You are a monster.” Spit flew from his lips onto his sword. “You are broken in your mind and heart – no longer human.”
“I will break you.” She screamed until her voice cracked and echoed shrill off the walls. “I’ll cook you alive and use your skull to build my own throne.”
“You rule a dead land for a dead, unworthy monster that was your father. The world is better for him being dead, and you with him.”
She yelled and shook until it sounded like she was crying. The bandits in the cells behind her were shouting over one another and yelling threats at Berengar. The bars to one of the cells scraped and leaned out a little. The bandits redoubled their efforts, trying to push them down. Others still swung their swords out between the bars.
Berengar pushed back against her and managed to gain a little room. He brought one boot up behind him against the stone of the wall.
She released his wrist with one hand and brought it to his cheek. She dug in her nails just below his eye and tore down along the flesh of his left cheek. He felt fiery pain as blood welled up in the furrows she cut into his skin.
He roared with the pain and anger of it all. He braced his foot higher on the wall behind him and kicked out with all his remaining strength.
She staggered back away from him toward the extended swords of her own bandits. They retracted their blades and jumped back from the bars to avoid skewering her. Solag bounced against the bars and grunted with the impact. The bars shifted and tore loose from the stone wall on one side and the ceiling above.
Berengar bolted to the side and leapt over piles of bones. He sheathed his sword and ran headlong through the torchlight.
Solag dove for her sword instead of pursuing the captain.
The bars tore loose and fell with a crash. Skulls and bones shattered to powder underneath the fallen bars.
“Get him,” she screamed. “Tear him apart and bring the pieces to me to burn along side his daughter’s bloody head. Go.”
He heard the bandits screaming and charging after him.
Berengar followed the torches and found stairs spiraling upward. He ran without his sword in his hands. He hoped the added speed would serve him.
The captain thought that if the bandits knew the way around these stairs to Solag’s secret bone playroom, they would have come that way instead of jumping down into the barred pits like they had.
He wasn’t sure what he would face once he reached the surface or the outside beyond that, if he made it that far.
“Please, don’t let her have come back for me.” He whispered without breath as he ran.
Chapter 17
: The Way Back
Nisero topped the pit and saw the pitched combat in the direction the dark figures had gone. He looked down at Arianne staring up at him in fear, and then back out at the fighters.
One of the bandits with his back to Nisero took the upward slash of a blade hard under his chin. His head flung back as blood spluttered up into the air with propelled force. The bandit’s helmet rolled back off his crooked head, and Nisero saw the strap had been severed through.
The bandit folded to the rocky ground and twitched as his skin went visibly pale. Standing with his sword ready for another, Nisero saw Forseth from the Elite Guard. His eyes focused around the bloody ground and he saw more familiar faces and crests of the king as more bandits fell. It was Nisero’s entire fighting unit.
Forseth scanned the field of battle and then his eyes focused on Nisero. He sheathed his sword and held out his arms toward him.
A bandit broke away from combat with one of the other guardsmen and advanced on Forseth’s back.
“Look lively,” Nisero called and pointed.
One of the other men finished his opponent and caught the bandit across the back of his knees as he passed. He collapsed forward, but still swung at Forseth. Forseth turned and snatched the dark sword out of the bandit’s grasp. The bandit bounced on his face on the rocky ground. He tried to rise, but Forseth drove the blade into the bandit’s heart through his back.
He left the blade planted and turned back to Nisero still smiling.
Nisero rose fully to his feet, just in time for Forseth to wrap him in a tight hug. He lifted Nisero off the ground and shook him before setting him back down. “Tell me former captain Berengar is still alive, please.”
Nisero swallowed. “I don’t know.”
Forseth’s smiled dropped away. “Were you separated?”
“We were.”
“These bandits were pursuing you?”
“And the captain’s daughter.”
&nb
sp; Forseth shook his head. “We thought his family was in the hands of the bandit leader. Information has been sporadic at best in the panic that has spread since the burning of Patron’s Hill. The entire western border lives in fear of Solag. Rumors of all kinds about Berengar pursuing the evil bandit spread as well.”
Nisero looked down below him and held out his hand. “Arianne, come. We are among friends.”
She climbed up far enough to take Nisero’s hand, and he pulled her out to the surface.
Forseth bowed his head and touched his forehead in salute. “I would kiss your hand, but I am dirty and washed in bandits’ blood, so you will forgive me, dear lady.”
Arianne nodded quickly. “Of course, but we need to go back and save my father.”
Forseth narrowed his eyes. “Back to where?”
“There is an abandoned castle in partial ruin,” Nisero said, “which has been claimed as camp for Solag and his forces.”
“Her forces,” Arianne said.
Nisero waved a hand in the air and continued. “Captain Berengar freed Arianne, but then we were separated in the escape. We believe he may still be fleeing or fighting within the castle, if not captured.”
“We must get there quickly,” Forseth said.
“They are large in number,” Nisero said.
Forseth laughed and looked over his shoulder. “Getting smaller in number all the time. You aren’t scared, are you, Nisero?”
“Not at all. The captain and I came out here alone to face them and save her. I just want to be sure she is kept safe by Berengar’s wishes. Can a small contingent of the men stay with her at a safe distance while we go back for the captain?”
“We can,” confirmed Forseth.
He turned to call the order, but Arianne grabbed his shoulder. “I will not hear of it. He is my father and I am going. I can keep myself alive. I want all your men fighting to save my father from Solag and her forces. I do not want your forces weakened on my account.”