I almost changed my mind, though. I could see one of the outer emplacements had fallen, and now the defenders, hard-pressed by the sheer numbers and firepower of the Osterway attack, were pulling back to the second line, at least around the town’s southern side. If the second line collapsed, then only the third line remained—and it was inside the town. There was nowhere left to go after that.
A sudden surge of movement caught my attention as I clambered up a small rock-face, working my way around the Osterway flank and into their rear. I saw a half dozen massive figures, ogres, pour out from among the nearest buildings and crash bellowing into what was the new Osterway left flank. Other figures raced among them; at least one of them, I assumed, was Lanni or Gurdon. Before I could make out anymore, though, they’d vanished into a swirling melee.
I forced my attention back on the way ahead. I wasn’t here to be a spectator. I pulled myself over the lip of the rock-face, paused to guzzle some lukewarm water, then carried on. I wanted to try and take the Osterway troops from the rear, hopefully killing their officers, sergeants, and especially the slave overseers. If I could make it possible for more slaves to turn on their captors, or even just flee, it would weaken the attack.
I stopped, then ducked behind a hoary pine. Barely a dozen paces away, a group of figures stood among other pines, watching the battle unfold. It was a perfect vantage point, one from which a leader could monitor the battle, receive reports, and send runners out with orders. And that was exactly what was happening here.
I recognized the man at the focus of it. A massive bull of a man. It was Zagros.
Supposedly, he was Engor’s father. Well, I had bad news about his son, who was now dearly departed. He was also, according to Kai, Venari’s right hand and chief lieutenant. I scanned around for her, but saw no sign, nor did I see any of the Blackwings that were her personal guard. Zagros had three others with him; as I watched from behind the pine, he snapped something to one of them, who nodded and raced off, apparently delivering a message to someone, somewhere.
That left him and two others. I desperately wished I had Flint at my side, but I’d likely not get another chance like this.
I took a breath then raced around the tree, heading straight for the nearest man.
Zagros immediately turned, saw me, and fell into a competent fighting crouch. I ignored it and slammed into the man I’d chosen as my target, yanking his back while jamming my knee into his center mass, snapping his spine with a series of dull, gruesome pops.
Zagros lunged, and I shoved the man I’d just attacked into him, buying a few heartbeats as he caught the body and pushed it aside. In that instant I’d bought, I was able to catch the second man with a straight-armed punch to his throat that sent him stumbling backward, gasping for air.
Something slammed into me, hard, knocking me off balance. It was the man whose back I’d broken. Zagros had managed to react, recover, and shove the body into me far faster than I’d anticipated. He followed up by cuffing me across the side of the head with a meaty fist, once more making my head thunder and ring. I was just able to get my feet back under me before he came at me again, striking at my throat with a wicked knife he’d ripped out of his belt, the silver metal gleaming lethal in the sun.
I snapped my hand up, knocking the thrust aside. Zagros’s eyes went wide, and I was sure mine had, too. He’d expected this to be an easy fight . . . because he was a Legacy like I was. His eyes narrowed as he reached the same conclusion, and any hope for a quick death ended right there. We would punish each other until one man didn’t rise. It might as well have been written in the stars, but instead, it was written in our own blood.
I had never fought a Legacy before. I pulled back, thinking and planning. I could just withdraw, flee, and take my fight elsewhere on the battlefield, where my Legacy tech would give me a decisive advantage . . .
. . . but fuck that. Zagros and I flung ourselves at one another like wild bulls.
The world dissolved into a blur of move, countermove, punch, block, dodge, kick, backpedal, close back in, and do it all again. The time-distorting effect of my tech meant little; it made the rest of the world seem to run syrupy-slow, but Zagros moved as fast as I did despite his enormous bulk. After what seemed like an age of battle that left both of us gasping, but neither with a significant hurt or advantage, we disengaged, backing away.
“Who . . . the fuck . . . are you?” Zagros gasped out, wiping blood off his lip.
I considered just throwing myself immediately back into the fight, but I wanted this man to know my name.
“Custis Mars,” I said. “The man who’s going to kill you.”
“You’re the one that’s been attacking us this whole time. You and . . . and that fucking hellhound of yours.” He shook his head. “I knew it had to be a Legacy. Knew it.”
“Yeah. And now your army is fucked.”
“High opinion of yourself.” He spat on the ground, then spat again, frowning at the blood.
I shook my head. “I’m just a part of it. The people in that town . . . they’re going to be the ones left standing today.”
Zagros narrowed his eyes. “How about this? We call off the attack. Leave the town alone. You join us. Another Legacy. Fuck, we’d be unstoppable.”
“Yeah. I could replace your son.”
“Egnor? You killed him?”
“No. One of his ex-slaves did. Took her time, too.”
I waited for the reaction and was only slightly surprised when it was a shrug. “Figured he’d go out in something like that. Anyway, with Egnor gone . . . you, me, and Venari? Who’d be able to stand against Legacies like that?”
I considered spitting back something like, I don’t side with slavers, but something else occurred to me, something that might give me the edge I needed.
“Just one thing you should know,” I said. “That hellhound, as you called her, isn’t mine. Flint’s her own creature. I don’t keep slaves. But there’s something else about her you might want to know.”
I saw Zagros tense, about to lunge. He knew I’d never accept his offer, he was just buying time to do a bit of recovering . . . just like I’d been. Still, he raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“Where she is right now.”
I looked past his left shoulder. On instinct, he started to turn that way—
—which gave me the instant I needed to leap inside his guard, get my hands around his throat, and bear him backward, onto the ground.
Still helping me out, Flint, my girl, and you aren’t even here.
Zagros fought back desperately, hammering away at me with his fists. I just took the thunderclap blows, refusing to relent with either my choking grip around his neck, or my body weight holding him down. He was big, I’d give him that, big and muscular. But even as a Legacy, he’d relied on sheer size and ferocity to win his fights. He’d never developed any real finesse. And finesse was what he needed now, the instinctive skill required to throw me off and break my chokehold on him. He just didn’t have it. Like a vise, my hands began to close on his throat, inexorable as the tide, driving his breath away with each punishing flex of my steely grip.
Any second, another Osterway soldier could have arrived and bludgeoned or stabbed or shot me, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t afford to care. Only one thing mattered right now—extinguishing the light of life in this fucking man’s eyes.
Zagros’s face purpled, his eyes bulged, and a wet gurgle sputtered out of his gaping mouth. He hit me one last time, then the light in his eyes finally did fade, flickering, then going dark. His hands dropped to the dirt and he went still. The acrid stench of hot piss stung my eyes, and I knew he was dead.
But I wasn’t done.
I yanked out my knife and cut his throat from ear to ear. Then I crawled away from him, wincing and gasping at the hurts from the beating he’d given me. I made it back to the rock ledge I’d climbed and flopped over it, rolled a few paces, and went still in the grass, looking up at b
lue sky, white clouds—I began to drift.
So peaceful up there, I thought. It would be nice, being up there, floating among those fluffy clouds, free---
One of the clouds suddenly seemed to expand, enveloping me, turning everything first grey, then black.
I opened my eyes to dazzling light and a rush of noise, like wind, or thunder. I remembered the clouds overhead and thought, huh, they must have turned to thunderclouds, and now a storm had hit.
I needed to get up, get moving, or I’d get caught in the rain.
Wait.
I blinked. The searing brightness resolved back into the sky above me, still pale clouds framed by purest blue. And the roar was gunfire.
I sat up, just as yet another mortar round whumped and flung dust and clods of dirt and pieces of bodies across the field. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been out . . . probably no more than minutes, because the battle still raged off to the northeast. I checked the sun. It had moved, but only a bit. Okay, just minutes.
I levered myself to my feet, groaning at the effort. Mere minutes of recovery time wasn’t enough by far. I needed a lot more—hours certainly, maybe days, to get over the multitude of cuts, scrapes, bruises, tears, and other wounds I’d taken. Some of them were days old now, and still not properly healed.
I gritted my teeth, though, and forced myself back into motion. Again, I angled south and east, determined to come at the rest of the Osterway force from behind. And I needed to do it fast. Through the pall of dust and smoke shrouding Watermanse, I could see the outer defensive ring had obviously fallen, and now the Osterway forces were using it to gather themselves for a push at the next. The town still seemed to be making a fight of it—the mortar was still firing—but I had no idea how bad their casualties were, how many defenders they had left.
No idea if Nicolet had taken Flint into the town.
No idea what had happened to Kai, or Reyna, or Aldebar, or if any of them were even still alive.
I shoved all those thoughts aside, turned away from Watermanse, and focused on what lay ahead. I had to find Venari. If I could take her out, it could break the assault. As I dragged myself back up the steep rock incline, and forced myself over the top, though, I thought about something Zagros had said.
. . . you, me, and Venari? Who’d be able to stand against Legacies like that?
So Venari was a Legacy as well.
I sucked in a breath that tasted of gunshots, dust, and blood, then started eastward, doing my best not to limp as I pondered just how I was going to fight yet another Legacy—and one relatively fresh, at that, not to mention surrounded by an elite bodyguard.
“Shit.”
I’d said it out loud before I’d even realized it. I had to nod at my own word, though.
Shit, indeed.
At least she wasn’t hard to find.
I made out the distinctive shoulder armor of her bodyguard, the Blackwings, before I actually saw her. Crouched behind some boulders, I could see them crowded up against a captured emplacement on the southeast side of Watermanse. The battle had surged forward from there, probably driven by Venari’s immediate presence. I saw Osterway troops assaulting the second line of defenses ahead of her. They pressed hard, using their still-superior numbers and firepower to suppress the defenders as they closed in for the kill.
And now I saw Venari. Even in the distance, she was unmistakable—tall, imperious, standing contemptuously of incoming fire at the head of her Blackwings, directing her forces forward. At least a hundred paces away, and I could feel the presence she radiated. It was clear. Venari was Osterway. Remove the first, and the second is just a name.
Alright. Time to remove the first.
I scanned back and forth, across the rear of the Osterway line, trying to pick the best approach. None were good; I was going to have to settle for the least bad. Without Flint to back me up, this was going to be tough. Tough, as in failure definitely was an option. But I had no choice.
I settled on a run more or less straight at Venari. Hopefully, I could use surprise to take me at least halfway to her, before anyone could react. Then I’d have to count on outfighting the Blackwings to get the rest of the way to her. And then I’d have to hope I did it all without taking any more wounds of significance along the way.
“Fuck it,” I said to the dusty air, then I got to my feet and—
Promptly went down again. Venari had turned, ordering her own bodyguard forward in a flanking move to their right. She’d obviously seen a critical opportunity. If she was going to commit her own escort to it, it must be something pivotal. I had to intervene now. At least the Blackwings would be less of an issue, as they were moving right, crouching, passing around a captured bunker. They spread out, skirmishing their way across the field beyond the bunker, moving up to assault the second defensive ring—
Wham.
A flash, then a cloud of dust and smoke shot up from among the Blackwings. The crew on the Watermanse mortar must have seen them coming, recognized the threat. Perfect. I jumped to my feet—
Wham.
Another blast tore through the Blackwings. I had no idea the mortar could fire that fast. I charged forward, hoping the crew didn’t overshoot their target—
Wham.
I slowed, crouching again.
The Blackwings had stopped and were taking cover. A few near the back of the group began to pull back toward the captured emplacement where they’d started.
Wham.
Another round hit home with lethal effect. That time, I saw a man vanish into a flash, only to emerge of a viscous cloud of body parts. The mortar couldn’t possibly be firing that fast or accurately. It must be mines, explosive charges that detonated when you stepped on them. Somehow, Watermanse had got their hands on some, or rigged them up. I suspected the first, realizing I’d never actually plumbed the depths of what Lanni and Gurdon had stashed in that wagon of theirs.
My bleak prospect of reaching Venari had suddenly and dramatically improved. I charged, aiming myself straight at her. Her Blackwings were pinned down, cringing among the mines, unwilling to move without knowing where the fiendish devices were. This left Venari standing almost alone on the emplacement, shouting furious orders at her elite soldiers, frantically trying to get them moving again.
I crested a rise and found myself facing a skirmish line of Osterway troops closing in on the outer defensive ring. Most were armed with hand weapons, followed by men with guns—slaves and overseers. I veered that way, taking down the nearest overseer, then grabbing his rifle and using it to gun down three more, before they even realized they were under attack from the rear.
I sucked in a lungful of air. “You’re free! You can run away!”
Slaves spun about, gaping at me. An overseer raised a shotgun and fired, wounding two; I shot him through the head. Another overseer finally saw me as the true threat and snapped a shot in my direction. I dodged the bullet hissing by to my right. A slave, a young woman, thinking more quickly than the rest, turned and plunged a spear into his chest, sinking the leaf-shaped point to the hilt with a fantastic spray of blood.
The rest of the slaves turned on the overseers. Soon, the entire line had fallen into chaos, some slaves running back the way they’d come, others toward Watermanse—and a few toward me, shouting for me to lead them. I tried to wave them off as I resumed my way toward Venari, but they fell in behind me, a half dozen newly free men and women, my own personal little army.
Venari turned and saw me when I was about twenty paces away. She shouted an order to her remaining Blackwings, four of them who hadn’t yet entered the minefield. They raced in front of her, trying to form a skirmish line to block me from their precious leader, raising rifles—
—then ducking for cover as rounds snapped past me, to my left and right, fired at them from behind me. I glanced back and saw my new followers had retrieved firearms from the fallen overseers, and now they banged away at Venari and the Blackwings, giving me covering fire. I suspected they
just wanted to kill the Osterway leader, but I wasn’t going to argue.
Free people make good allies.
I winced as a bullet cracked past my left ear. Okay, I could only hope my new allies didn’t manage to gun me down as well.
I reached the Blackwings. One rose to face me and I dove at his legs, knocking him back down. He tried to grapple me and I slammed my fist into his throat, leaving him gasping and turning purple on the ground. I had no more time or desire to fight minions. Venari was right there.
She stood, waiting for me in the captured Watermanse emplacement. As I reached her, she drew a broad-bladed knife. I did likewise, pulling my own blade from its scabbard.
Battle still raged around us, to the west and to the northeast, toward the lakeshore east of Watermanse. With the failure of the Blackwings’ assault, the whole Osterway attack seemed to have lost momentum. The outcome was still far from certain, though. If I couldn’t take out Venari, she could still rally her forces and finish what she’d started here today.
Everything that had happened since that moment Lorna convinced me to investigate rumors of raiders from east culminated here, in this moment. But the outcome of this was far from certain, too. Venari was fresh and well-rested; I was battered, sore, and near exhausted.
I took a moment to size her up. As I’d noticed from afar, she was tall, a commanding presence. Up close, that was only more true. She had an imperious air, the arrogant confidence of someone used to being obeyed. Much of it, I knew, came from her being a Legacy amid a lot of people who weren’t, but the rest was all her own toxic arrogance. I could see it in her eyes, the dark blue of Le’kemeshaw under the lash of a storm . . . layers of ambition, cunning, ruthlessness, shot through with contempt for anyone who wasn’t Venari herself. A goddess in her mind, and a sadist with her hands.
She stood in a trench that had been excavated into the small hillock, part of the defensive works that had turned the terrain feature into an emplacement. I remembered walking along this same trench with Kai, discussing something about the upcoming battle. I couldn’t remember what, but I dropped into the trench a few paces away from her, knife ready, held close to my side, my other hand extended toward her, ready to fend and block.
Legacy Page 18