The youth was rubbing at his throat, his eyes wide and scared. “H-he was going to kill me.”
“It’s the thing about murderers,” Maeve agreed, “they aren’t all that original. Now,” she said, “are you okay?”
He cleared his throat, wincing as he rubbed at his neck. “I…I think so.”
Maeve nodded. “So what happened? Did they find Chall? Where is he?”
“Chall’s fine, Maeve,” he said quickly, “he’s still at the house.”
Maeve frowned. “I don’t understand. If no one found you both then why are you here?”
“I thought…” The youth hesitated, as if embarrassed. “I wanted to help.”
Maeve blinked, glancing between the boy and the dead man on the ground, the one who had been well along the process of killing him when she’d arrived. “You wanted to help,” she said slowly.
“Y-yes.”
“Gods, you have no idea what you’ve done, what you’ve risked.”
“It’s alright, Maeve,” he said, “I’m fine, really. My throat’s just—”
“I don’t mean you, you damned fool,” she snapped. “I mean, Chall.”
The youth winced, clearly hurt, but a moment later a defensive, angry look came on his face. “I’m not a kid to be hidden away. I want to help and—”
“You were helping, damnit,” Maeve hissed, “by keeping Chall alive. Don’t you get it? If something happens to Chall, it won’t just be a friend I’ll lose, it’ll be all of our lives, for if he dies, the illusion—“ And then, as if her worries, her fears, had called it into existence, there was suddenly no need to explain anymore, for the mist, and the imagined creatures lurking therein, suddenly vanished as if they had never been.
Which was bad. What was worse was that, as the mist cleared, Maeve and Matt were left staring at four soldiers with bared blades, no more than two dozen feet between them.
“B-but what happened?” Matt asked. “To the illusion?”
“Don’t you see? If something has happened to the illusion, that means that something has happened to Chall, who you were meant to watch.”
“I-I’m sorry, Maeve,” he said, “I thought—”
“It doesn’t matter what you thought,” she snapped, watching the soldiers. “It’s done now. The world isn’t some fairy tale, boy, where the good guys always win no matter how stupid they are. In the real world, good guys die all the time, if there are even any left. Now, grab that sword,” she said, motioning to the blade that had fallen from the dead man’s hands.
“But Maeve,” he said, “I’ve never…I mean I don’t know how to use it.”
“Then you’d better learn, boy,” she said. “Learn to fight or learn to die—your choice.”
Unsurprisingly, the youth bent and retrieved the sword. Maeve paid him no more mind, however. Instead, her attention was focused on the four soldiers who had overcome the terror that the imaginary Skaalden had caused and were now moving toward them, their blades bared. Relieved, no doubt, to be faced with human opponents instead of the monstrous ones which had lurked in the mist.
Maeve withdrew a second knife, holding one in each hand as she waited for the approaching soldiers. She would do her best, but she knew that she and the boy stood little chance. She had once been known for her deadly skills, but that had been long ago and, anyway, her reputation had not been for standing and fighting as Cutter’s had been. Instead, her skills had lain in different areas. Seduction. Assassination. Not an axe to be wielded on some battlefield against countless foes, but instead a knife in the dark, one that might slip in like a thief and do its bloody work without anyone knowing it was coming.
But these four men were ready, and there was no chance for subtlety, no opportunity for surprise. The soldiers gathered speed, coming toward them confidently, aware that they had the upper hand. When they were less than a dozen feet away, something flew out of the night, whistling, and one of the soldiers grunted as an arrow embedded itself in his back. He staggered, a look of surprise crossing his features before he collapsed to the ground.
His fellows let out shouts of surprise, spinning to look around them, and Priest leapt down from where he’d somehow managed to climb on top of the inn’s roof in the confusion, landing in a crouch and firing another arrow almost in the same moment he hit the ground. The second missile’s path was as true as the first, and it buried itself in the stomach of one of the soldiers who’d turned to look.
Then with a shout of rage and fear, the two men rushed the archer, and Maeve didn’t hesitate, charging at their backs. She reached them as Priest was forced to parry one of the soldier’s blows with his bow, and she buried one of her blades in the side of the soldier’s throat as the second took him in the back, digging up into his chest.
She was just pulling her blades free when she heard a shout behind her and saw that another soldier had come up on them and was rushing toward Matt. Maeve let out a hiss, starting forward at a run but knowing she would be too late even as she did.
***
Matt had always imagined himself as a soldier, as one of the brave knights from the stories his mother had once read him. Knights who never felt fear and who always spoke about things like honor and courage and who would not hesitate at the thought of fighting a single man, who would not hesitate even if he faced ten times that number.
But if the last few days had not confirmed the fact that he was not one of those knights from the stories, then that moment in which he saw the soldier charging at him with a shout, his blade drawn and murder in his eyes, did it well enough. Matt did not feel brave, and honor was the last thing from his mind. What he felt, more than anything, was terror.
The soldier’s sword flashed toward him, and Matt raised his own blade, his hands aching where they gripped the handle tight. He let out a whimper of panic as the man’s sword came on, and he was just able to get his own blade up in time. But even though he managed to get his sword in line, he was not prepared for the brutal, shocking force of the impact as the two weapons met. Pain lanced up his hands all the way through his arms, and he stumbled, nearly losing his feet as his sword was ripped out of his hands.
The soldier let out a barking laugh. “Time to die, boy.”
Here, one of those knights would have said something brave, something to show that he was not afraid, but Matt’s throat was dry, and he could say nothing to show that he was not afraid, mostly because he was afraid. Terrified, in fact. He wanted to run, but he knew that, if he did, the man would cut him down before he’d made it half a dozen steps.
Yet, that was not the only reason he did not run, for as he stood there watching the soldier and his grin, watching him stalking forward, taking his time, something happened. The overwhelming fear Matt felt began to change, to shift within him, and he found that while he was still afraid, he was not just that. He was angry. Angry at himself for risking them all, for abandoning his post by the mage, angry at Cutter for bringing him here in the first place. But mostly, he was angry at the soldier in front of him, the man who looked so confident, who was staring at him as if he were a bug he meant to squish and doubted he’d have any trouble doing it.
So before he was fully aware of what he was doing, Matt let out a shout and charged forward. The man had not been expecting it—no surprise as Matt hadn’t been expecting it himself—so he didn’t get his sword up in time before Matt tackled him. The blade flew from the soldier’s hands, and then they were both tumbling across the ground, hissing and spitting and struggling.
But while his anger had helped to banish the worst of his fear, to dull the edges of it, no anger, no matter how consuming, could make up for a lack of skill and training, of strength. The soldier was on top of him before he knew it, and Matt cried out as the man’s fist struck him a hard blow in the face which rocked him, bouncing his head off the hard ground. The coppery, sharp taste of blood filled his mouth. He fought to dislodge the attacker, pushing against him, yet it was useless, for the soldier was too st
rong, a man grown with years of experience behind him, and he brushed Matt’s meager efforts aside with ease.
The man flashed him a bloody grin, his lip busted, perhaps, when Matt had tackled him, then he wrapped his hands around Matt’s throat and began to squeeze. Matt struggled beneath him, trying to dislodge him from his perch as his vision started to fade, shadows creeping into the edges of it, but it was no use.
I’m going to die here.
The thought was a shock to Matt, for out of all the things he had imagined, he had never imagined that, had never imagined that his decision to leave the mage behind would lead to his death. Perhaps he should have, but he, like so many youths, had thought, somewhere deep down, that he was invincible, that death was something that happened to other people. He realized now, as his vision tunneled and black specks began to dance in what remained, that he had been wrong. He had been a fool, and Cutter had been right after all.
It seemed wrong to him, perverse, that it should be so easy to die, the easiest thing in the world. He realized, too, that he had been a fool to squander his life as he had, that he had not fully appreciated it and the lives of everyone else until he saw, up close, experienced on a personal level, how easily those lives might be snuffed out, with no more effort than a man might give putting out a candle.
Then, suddenly, the pressure eased, and the soldier was pulled back away from him. He saw that Maeve had gripped the man by his hair, jerking his head back, and he saw, too, the blade in her other hand. No, Matt thought, seeing what was going to happen, thinking, in that moment, that no life, not even that of the man who had meant to kill him, should be discarded so easily. “P-please,” he croaked, “wait—”
But Maeve did not wait. Instead, she brought her knife across the grunting soldier’s throat, and the blade ripped a deep furrow into the vulnerable flesh there. Blood spewed over him, and Matt gasped at the warm, tacky feel of it, unable to look away as he saw the light, the life, fade from the soldier’s eyes.
Then, when his weak struggles ceased, Maeve grunted, shoving the lifeless corpse unceremoniously to the side. The body landed on its stomach, the man’s face, his eyes, turned toward Matt, a look that seemed somehow accusing on his features. Matt could not pull his gaze away from that face, those features which, moments ago, had been full of life and now were nothing, pale and waxy like the features of a doll, no sign to show that life had ever existed there at all.
“Why?” he rasped. “You…you didn’t need to. We, we could have—”
“Could have what, boy?” Maeve demanded as she pulled him to shaky feet. “Tied him up? Carried him along with us hoping he’d be a good boy while we fought the rest of his friends and rescued those he and the others mean to burn alive?” She gave her head an angry shake, meeting his eyes. “The world is not a fairy-tale, boy, not a storybook. People die—it’s what we’re best at—and one mistake, one selfish decision, and those people might be your friends.”
Matt knew that she was right, knew that he had messed up, and that likely Chall was now dead because of it, so he said nothing. She watched him for a moment longer, then Priest walked up, the man covered in blood and displaying a slight limp. Maeve looked over at him then back at Matt. “How many need to get hurt, boy, how many need to die, before you learn that?”
Still, Matt said nothing, for there was nothing he could say, and she gave a disgusted shake of her head, turning away from him. “Come on—if we hurry, maybe we can at least die with those poor bastards in the inn.”
Matt followed silently behind the other two as they crept along the inn’s wall, Priest with an arrow already placed on his bow, Maeve with two blood-stained blades in her hands. But as much as he knew he should be focused on the present, for the gods alone knew how many soldiers were left stationed around the inn, he found himself instead thinking of the dead man, of the way his eyes had looked, of how quickly it had all happened. Alive one moment, breathing and thinking with hopes and dreams, perhaps a family, and the next, the man was dead, everything he was, everything he had been, come to nothing.
Matt had seen death before, of course. He’d attended several Sendings during his life in Brighton, most due to old age and some few to men or women who had gotten taken by the elements, by the frigid cold or the unexpected blizzards that sometimes arrived out of nowhere so far north. He had seen more of it in his time following Cutter, the Fey creature who had attacked him, the villagers in Ferrimore who had suffered at the hands of such creatures. But while he had seen death, he had never seen it so close, had never felt its breath on his neck, had never felt its hand in his as it considered tearing him away from the world of the living. But he felt it now, and in that feeling, he felt something else—change. He did not know the exact nature of that change, perhaps never would, knew only that he had been irrevocably altered by what he had witnessed, the guard’s death, and how close he had come to dying himself. He found himself wondering again at Cutter, at how the man could be so cold and so unfeeling in the face of such death.
They reached the door to the inn moments later. Two more dead men lay here, the arrows protruding from them proof that Priest had come upon them while Matt was stumbling through the mist or perhaps before he had foolishly abandoned Chall. He glanced at Maeve’s back, wondering if protecting the mage, protecting him, had not been the only reason she had ordered him to stay behind. He wondered if part of that reason had been so he would not see death so close, thought that probably it had been. He wished only that he had listened.
But it was too late now, for what was done could not be undone. Death had caught him in its gaze, he had felt it, and it was not a thing he would soon forget.
“Come on,” Maeve whispered to them. “We have to be quick now—Feledias might have left some on the inside.”
***
The smoke was roiling through the walls and into the inn, and what conversations they’d had, mostly revolving escape, had devolved into fits of coughing from everyone inside the common room. Several of the men were still trying to break their way through the doors, but whatever the soldiers had used to barricade them was not budging no matter how much they tried.
Netty considered telling them not to bother—after all, she doubted Ferrimore was the first village Feledias had burned and he probably had it down by now—but didn’t, deciding that if it helped them, if it allowed them to hold onto a little hope, then there was no point in stealing that from them. She did her best to offer comfort to the others, whispering quiet words, saying quiet prayers, but the fact was that they were scared, and so was she. It was heating up inside the inn, and already her face was covered in sweat, her clothes, like the clothes of those others around her, drenched with it.
Worse, more and more smoke was pouring into the inn by the moment, and it was getting difficult to breathe.
“What do we do, Netty?”
Netty turned to look at Emille, the girl standing beside her, her eyes wide and frightened. Perhaps some of Netty’s despair had made it onto her face despite her efforts to hide it, for when she met the girl’s eyes, Emille seemed to blanch, her skin going even paler. “W-we’re going to die, aren’t we?” she asked, keeping her voice low, quiet, so that the others wouldn’t hear. Not that there was any real fear of that, not the way the men were banging on the doors, desperately trying to find a way out when Netty was growing certain there was none.
Tears filled the girl’s eyes then, and Netty did the only thing she could think to do—she pulled her into a tight embrace. “It’s okay, lass,” she whispered, her voice feeling raw and sore from the smoke, “it will be okay.”
No idea whether such a thing was true or not, for Netty had never died before and so had no idea of what the land beyond the veil might look like. If it were anything like the world they were leaving behind, then she thought she’d just as soon not go there, but then it wasn’t as if she had been given any choice in the matter. Still, it was the best she could think of, the best she could offer to the girl.<
br />
There was a shout from one of the groups of men at the back door. What now? Netty thought, turning to see that, to her shock, the door—which had remained stubbornly closed despite their efforts—was suddenly open, and three men, Mack and Will among them, stood staring at it, stunned.
Netty understood that. It was too much to hope that the soldiers had decided that burning an entire village to death did not sit well with them and had chosen, instead, to let them go. More likely, they had decided to finish it quickly, perhaps to practice their sword work on innocents before they let the fire do its work.
The men must have thought much the same and decided that their only chance—the only chance for their loved ones—was to rush the men who came through, for they started forward, toward the opening. But when a figure stepped through the door and into the inn, Netty was shocked to see that it was not one of the prince’s soldiers. Instead it was a woman and a gray-haired man, ones who she did not recognize, though they could have been her closest friends and she still wouldn’t have, not with all the blood staining their clothes and faces. It wasn’t until the third person stepped through, a young lad that looked no more than fifteen or sixteen years old, that the pieces of the puzzle clicked into place.
“Hold, lads!” Netty shouted at the three men who’d started forward, wielding broken off chair legs. Not that she doubted they would have done much harm to the newcomers who, based on their grim expressions looked like death on two feet. Save the lad, of course, whose face held the dull, vacant look of someone who has felt such fear he has had become numb to it. She knew that look well, for it was plastered across the faces of many of those in the inn.
“Relax, Netty,” Mack said, doing his best at a menacing growl, one he’d tried to adopt from Cend but hadn’t gotten quite right yet. He turned back to look at the newcomers. “What do you want?”
“Well,” the woman said dryly, “we were considering saving you all from certain death, how’d that be?”
A Warrior's Burden: Book One of Saga of the Known Lands Page 32