by Lana Nielsen
The fires from the blasts burned low and bright; they were not out of control yet.
“No one leaves till we get a handle on this,” one of the Nureenians told Meldane, not looking at the Northman. The soldier’s eyes were fixed on the crowd. He tightened the chin strap of his helm.
“We have the fee,” Meldane said, calmly rolling up his sleeves.
“No exception.”
The Nureenian finally looked at Meldane, his eyes widening when he took note of all the weapons strapped on him.
“Lord Bear,” he muttered respectfully. “Sorry, no passage even for you.”
“I’m going to have to disagree,” Meldane growled. Arithel rubbed her fingers across the polished metal exterior of the hand-cannon. She kept the weapon situated in her lap, hidden beneath the soft folds of her cloak.
She looked at Darren and nodded in encouragement. He thumbed the sheath of his sword.
Meldane grabbed the gatekeeper by the throat. The gold of his bracelets glinted in the shadows as he lifted the fellow off his feet. He grunted as he squeezed harder.
“Do you have any idea who you’re looking at?” Meldane hissed.
The Nureenian shook his head and attempted to eek out a pitiful response. No sound emerged from his crushed windpipe. He was a head shorter than Meldane. Even beneath layers of leather and mail, it was obvious he was skinny and weak.
He flailed his arms. Meldane dropped him. There was a twinkle in the Northman’s eye.
The soldier lay there gasping, barely able to cough. The other gatekeeper looked on dumbly from his post, too stunned to have drawn his sword. Arithel thought this man either stupid or incompetent; a good soldier would have at least tried to defend his comrade. Meldane had left himself totally exposed. He was so absorbed in the thrill of combat that he wasn’t paying much attention to his surroundings. Gutting him from the back would have been easy.
“You understand business,” Meldane said to the gate-cranker as he pointed his sword at the man.
He mumbled in Nureenian and turned the heavy iron wheel to lift the gate. The soldiers on the battlements noticed this. The commander barked at the gatekeeper. They argued, and the gatekeeper gestured at the soldier Meldane had choked, who was now staggering to his feet. Arithel heard them say “Lord Bear.”
“Is this supposed to happen?” Darren whispered.
“I don’t know,” Arithel answered.
“Just raiders who want to get to the wild,” shouted the cranker to his superiors.
He must have wanted them to hear that, if he used the Central Tongue.
The commander waved them on. All the soldiers returned to their posts. When the gate was fully open, and the wheel anchored in place, Meldane ran his sword through the gatekeeper, sticking him between belly and groin, straight through his coat of plates.
Meldane yelled in Padenite as he pulled the blade from his victim, and beat his chest in triumph. The Nureenian was in complete shock. Before he could cry out, Meldane slammed his sword into the man’s temple. The soldier who had been choked shakily raised his blade against Meldane.
Meldane responded by slashing diagonally across his face. The Nureenian’s eye and nose were cleaved in two. A geyser of blood erupted from the wound. His scream didn’t last long; Meldane jammed his sword into the man’s neck. The delicate bones of his throat crunched. He fell to the ground.
Darren was inhaling louder. Two more guards saw what Meldane had done and rushed the Northman. To Arithel and Darren’s amazement, he slayed the first with just two swift strokes of his blade. As he battled the second, a third Nureenian took up his spear and climbed down from the ramparts to join the fray.
Arithel wasn’t sure why, but her first instinct was to draw her sword rather than the hand-cannon. She leapt off the cart, and temporarily ceded the cannon to Darren. She charged the Nureenian closest to her, planning to gut him through the back as he fought Meldane. The man noticed her approach at the last moment, and spun around to dodge her blow; her sword connected with his upper arm instead. The blade tore through the flesh of his bicep, slicing it into dangling strips of muscles and veins. As he cried out and attempted to squelch the bleeding, Meldane finished him off with a quick jab through his left armpit. Arithel gawked at the wound. The end of a Nureenian spear suddenly came down on her sword. Her blade immediately flew out of her grasp and came dangerously close to hitting Meldane in the hips. Her arm throbbing, Arithel cursed and ran for the cart. Meldane threw his knife deep into the spear-bearer’s thigh. The man fell to the ground a few feet behind Arithel.
Meldane picked up Arithel’s sword, and tossed it back into the wagon. Darren jumped as it landed near his feet. Arithel retrieved the hand-cannon, slipping her fingers into the protective covering around its handle, reveling in how well it fit. She threw off her cloak, and sprinted back to Meldane.
The Nureenians sounded a trumpet for aid. Time seemed to slow. The guards shouted amongst themselves. They gathered closer together, more out of fear than strategy. They clumsily and noisily prepared their crossbows.
Arithel could feel the gaze of several bystanders upon them, but she dare not look back. As Meldane kicked the body of a Nureenian soldier out of his way, he sharply turned his eye toward Darren. She wondered if this was a cue for him to speak, or merely an admonishment for Darren acting like a foolish sitting duck.
One of the Nureenians cast his javelin at Meldane. The Northman ducked. It landed in the mud between Arithel’s feet. She shrieked a little and slipped as she dodged it. She cursed when the back of her head hit the ground.
Arithel looked around as she lay there. She watched a young mother and her child lean out their second story window, clinging to crooked shutters with wonder as they observed the scene unfolding. She thought of Anoria, wading through the southern marshes on her way to Nureen. Of young Inara, the shepherdess, rescuing a swaddled, abandoned foundling named Agron from wolves.
Arithel tried to get up, but her head screamed with pain and her legs wouldn’t cooperate. She groggily reached for the javelin with her left hand and pulled it towards her.
There was some issue with the Nureenians’ crossbow bolts; either they weren’t the right size or there weren’t enough of them. A page boy sprinted down the wall to another station.
Three more men rushed down the ladder and set upon Meldane. He fought them like an animal, slashing with his two swords, kicking, and snarling. He grabbed one fellow by his arm, threw him on the ground, and half-decapitated him.
“Get up!” Meldane roared at Arithel as he spun around. His eyes were angry slits, his face was violet-red, both blood and drool leaked from his swollen mouth. He looked terrifying; a nightmare come to life. He pried the rest of the man’s head off with his bare hands. The other two Nureenians fled in terror for the relative refuge of the gate.
Arithel had been in a daze. She scrambled to her feet as thunderclaps went off in her skull and hurled the javelin back at the gate with all her strength. She cried out as her shoulder briefly popped out of place from the awkwardness of the motion. The spear hit the Nureenian commander squarely in the left side of his chest, denting his breastplate as he shouted for his men to fire. He winced and staggered forward a few steps, but otherwise didn’t let on about the blow.
She pointed the hand-cannon towards the sky and once more felt its power energize her, electrify her blood. As the swiftest bowman released his arrow, Arithel sent the blue current of light into his belly. It seared metal to flesh, and flesh to bone until a wide hole occupied his gut. He gurgled and tumbled off the wall, his arrow having landed far from its intended target. The feathers stuck out from the straw of a nearby roof.
Several bolts struck their wagon. They sounded like hammer strikes.
Darren screamed.
“Do something,” she spat at him. “Get my bow, start picking them off!”
“But the quiver, I don’t know where…”
Arithel groaned in frustration and tossed him one of Meld
ane’s heavy wooden shields, which had been nestled between sacks of flour.
“Stay behind it,” she ordered.
Arithel aimed the cannon again. She fired it clean through the head of a sentinel. The man’s face boiled and caved in, the pointed helm falling down atop the new cavity. He collapsed and his body slumped over the edge of the wall. His helm fell off, leaving some strange raw stump of a head for all to see. No blood dripped from his wound.
It was strange how the bright river of cool fire never kept going beyond its target; it simply made things implode.
Another guard aimed his spear at Arithel. She took cover behind the wagon and shot him down before his weapon left his hands. The other guards hesitated with their crossbows when they saw their comrade’s leg being sundered at the knee. He screamed and clutched what remained of his joint.
Arithel didn’t think any of it felt real. Perhaps she should have just severed limbs instead of outright killing; she didn’t know why she hadn’t restrained herself. The power of the primordial weapon had guided her, improving her mental clarity far above and beyond the rest of mankind. She shuddered, watching the wounded Nureenian scream and curse and babble.
The remaining guards set down their weapons and surrendered. They raised their arms. A few even removed their helms to demonstrate further good faith. One of the younger soldiers, who with his ruddy complexion appeared Elinmoorian, openly wept.
Arithel wondered where Fallon and the others were. Had they been apprehended by the Nureenians? The fires from the explosions grew. Somehow, she felt them simmering. The now darkened sky was tinted red and gold from the wispy clouds of low-hanging smoke.
“Who are you people?” one of the sentinels asked in a halting voice.
Arithel nodded at Darren. He stared, open-mouthed, at everything around him. His eyes shifted back and forth frantically, the whites gleaming in the dark.
He didn’t speak. Arithel waited for Meldane to speak. He stood there like some dour monument, surveying the dead.
Arithel sighed and adjusted her fingers around the handle of the weapon. It was so smooth and warm to the touch.
“This is the true King of Nureen,” Arithel said, shakily at first. “He will supplant your Tiresias and his murdering, colonizing regime. He is the lost child of the Princess Milisadia Ankarian. Bow before your rightful lord and master, men—you have seen today what you can expect in the red hills outside Mt. Aerys in a few months’ time.”
The soldiers exchanged skeptical looks with each other. Arithel pointed her hand-cannon at them.
“Bow!” she repeated.
“She’s a witch! Look at that thing—it sucks out the very soul of men! Tifalla has sent her to kill us all!” The Elinmoorian soldier moaned hysterically as he knelt.
“You all will live,” Arithel spoke over the frenzied whisperings of supernatural powers. She stood on the driver’s seat of the cart to give herself greater height. As long as she possessed the ancient weapon, none could harm her. She wondered why Fallon had been so quick to cede its responsibility to her. He would be the one who needed it more, getting out of the inner quarter.
“You must promise,” Arithel shouted after a pause in which she had once again hoped either Darren or Meldane would speak, “to spread the word about what happened here. Tell everyone that the Ankarian dynasty lives, and that Darren is backed by the princes of Paden.” She used her free hand to motion to Meldane. Meldane bowed his head and placed his sword hand over his heart. “And many lords of Neldor. He is Agron’s reckoning for your rape of the continent, for your decadence and greed. The usurper’s throne will be taken back by force. The Ankarian crown will be brought out of the crypt. Tell it to everyone. Your captains, your wives, the merchants, slum dwellers, peasants, and slavers. Everyone. Tell them it was our party who slayed the Nureenian patrol in the Thespolid wilderness weeks ago. No woodcutter, no raiders—us—Arithel Nicose and the Ankarian.”
She spat on the ground. Her throat was dry.
The Nureenians nodded.
“Get off the wall,” Meldane said. “Leave your weapons behind. Go home, or Arithel here will burn you alive from the inside out, just like your friends.”
The men obeyed and filed down the ladder to the battlements. They kept their hands behind their heads and walked down the road, their metal-plated boots heavy in the muck. The slum dwellers jeered as they marched. They picked up rocks, mud—anything they could get their hands on—and chucked it at the soldiers. The last soldier down the ladder attempted to escape down a nearby alley, but Meldane caught him, yanking on his cape so hard that he fell on his back.
He begged not to be harmed. Meldane pulled him to his feet and maintained his grip on the soldier’s wrist.
“Tell him the prophecy,” Meldane gruffly commanded Darren.
Darren left the refuge of the cart for the first time and recited, “The prince is damned to die despite his servant’s watchful eye. The echo of a star returns to curse your race, as the errants wander, forever freed from time and place. One forgets their name, but they all forgot his claim. A king in the shadow, true of heart but callow. I ask you, child, empty your hazy mind, rouse the sleeping and awake the blind. See what’s always been there, in the soil, in the air. Deeper than blood, darker than night. Soon, I promise, we can live without light.”
The soldier was spooked. Arithel could not blame him. On its own, the prophecy sounded silly, like some rhyme from clever, bored children on a long winter evening. Within the context of everything happening there, it must have been terrifying.
“Go,” Meldane whispered. The Nureenian stumbled away, tripping over his own feet. Some of the young brats nearby charged him, snatching off his helm, stripping away his cape and breastplate. A teenaged boy kicked him in the groin. The slum dwellers swarmed and chanted, “Ankarian.”
Arithel felt a sudden surge of nervousness. The grip of her cannon slipped about in her sweaty hands.
She shouted at the serfs, ordering them to leave the guard alone. When they refused to listen, and continued to kick, hit, and scratch the fellow, she pointed the weapon at the crowd and invoked the name of Inara. They ceased. The soldier broke free of the sea of arms and legs, sprinting down the road as fast as he could.
She retreated back to the cart and wondered why it was so quiet.
The silence was quickly broken by crazed pleas from the crowd to witness the power of the hand-cannon once more. The slum dwellers were overcome with what seemed to be a religious fervor. Many were on their knees, muttering prayers and charms, faces turned towards the heavens.
An old woman begged, “Shoot it at the clouds, my lady, destroy them once and for all so the sun might return!”
Arithel’s answer was, “Listen for news of us in the west.”
The cart moved. Meldane was driving. Darren wiped the blood from the Northman’s sword. They passed through the unmanned gate, leaving the awestruck slum-dwellers behind.
Arithel finally let go of the hand-cannon, re-wrapping it in fine silks and placing it safely in her pack.
As her adrenaline subsided, a heavy realization hit her.
“What about the others? They should be here. They were supposed to meet us at the gate. We were to burn it…”
“Should we wait all day?” Meldane said. “I know Fallon gave you the same orders he gave me.”
“We haven’t given them enough time.”
“We have. It is already dark,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. The road is clear—would you like to linger about until it is not?”
Meldane whipped the mule. The cart moved faster. The slender birch trees lining the road were a blur. The mountains loomed just a few miles ahead, a barrier of granite and ice rising straight out of the plain.
“That’s it?” Darren asked. “They’re dead is what you’re saying?”
“Dead, lost, whatever you call it. Arrested, perhaps. The journey continues,” Meldane declare
d. “They’d be here by now.”
Arithel laughed and jumped off the cart. The mule stopped in its tracks.
“No,” she told Meldane firmly. “We are going to wait.”
“Those soldiers I stupidly allowed to live have probably gone to their masters by now. There’s probably another patrol on the way. They won’t be as dumbstruck. The Nureenians don’t stay down for long. I’d be leery of the townsfolk too, if I were you. You worked them into a frenzy. They may charge you for that weapon,” Meldane said.
Arithel swallowed hard and retrieved the hand-cannon. She pointed it at Meldane. Her brow was sweating. Her eyes became moist. She did not trust him. He was all too willing to make off with Darren. Perhaps he even had his thrall kill Fallon in the city, and Zander was waiting somewhere up the road. Meldane would not have wanted to leave if there was some chance Zander was alive but in danger. She saw how much the giant meant to him, the tenderness in his eyes when they joked with one another.
“We will turn around and wait.”
“Your hand is shaking,” Meldane observed calmly.
“Turn us around or I’ll shoot you. Darren and I will go ahead without you.”
“If you think the two of you alone can make it through the mountains, go ahead. I am not afraid to die.”
“Damnit, Darren, back me up. Say something. Are you going to leave our friends behind like this? Dear Mira?” She appealed to his sensibilities.
Darren shrugged. “What’s done is done. Agron wants me to continue no matter what the circumstance. We cannot go back and put ourselves in grave danger.”
Darren disagreeing was a heavy blow.
“Keep going,” she said. “I will catch up. I want to at least see if they are alive. I’ll be fine as long as I have this.” She nodded at the hand-cannon.
She turned her back to them despite Darren’s feeble protests. She headed back to Belhaven. The cart made its way up the foothills.