Everyone was looking to her for answers.
Peering out one of the front windows, she could see the wind whipping at the trees, leaves moving through the air like panicked shoals. The row of riot troops stood unaffected, batons in hand. The building was reflected in their visors, scared, twisted faces peering out of the windows.
And at their head stood Mallory, pacing like a caged animal, the bat swinging in his hand. Even from inside, Karina could feel the power of that terrible thing, potent enough that it should have shimmered the air with smouldering heat. Even behind the protective wards, she could feel the fear coming off it. The air tasted of all those panicked last moments of Mallory’s victims, biting at her resolve, reminding her of what awaited her if she failed.
‘There you fucking are,’ he pointed the bat as he spotted her. ‘Get out here, we need to have words.’
‘We can hear you just fine from in here, Mallory,’ she called back, her voice brittle. ‘What do you want?’
Mallory’s eyes bugged. ‘Fuck do you mean, what do I want? Get out here. We’re going to finish what we started.’ He pointed to the spot of road before him with the tip of his bloodied bat.
‘No. We’re quite happy in here. And the weather… We know what your boss is doing to the storm wards…’
‘There is no boss,’ Mallory was shouting over her. ‘No one tells me what to do. Now get out here.’ He let out a burst of power that rattled the doors. The barricade of chairs on the other side shifted.
‘I’m not going to do that,’ said Karina. ‘If you want me, you’ll have to come and drag us out. But I don’t think you’ve got the time. Has he told you how you’re getting off the island?’ she asked the guards. ‘They’re planning on leaving you all here to die with the rest of us. I hope you know that.’
‘Don’t listen to her,’ Mallory was shouting, drowning her out. ‘Not if you want to get paid. More money than you’ll know what to do with. But no one gets anything until that bitch and her friends are on their knees right here. You see what they’re doing?’ he pointed with the bat again. ‘You fucking feel it? They’re putting up wards. Think they can keep the storm out. You want to get paid, there can be no witnesses. Just one of them survives and this whole thing is fucked. So do your fucking jobs and get this back under control.’
No one moved, the guards looking to one another.
‘They’re not going to do it,’ said Duncan, a note of hope creeping into his voice.
Mallory had noticed the hesitation as well, rounding on the armoured men and women, bat raised. Whatever they saw in his eyes was enough to spur them, the guards shifting their footing, raising the warded riot shields.
There was no military precision to their advance. They were simply a mass of armed troops moving forward, jostling at one another up the steps to the door. Mallory was given a wide berth, the guards flinching away from the waves of terror coming from his weapon.
‘They’re coming! They’re coming!’ Duncan bellowed. ‘Defend the door!’
People rushed forward, fear of capture overpowering the fear holding them back. They had covered the doors and windows with anchor wards, a lattice to focus their power on, more effective for group incantations.
The burning scent of magic thickened, vibrating the air like heat. The wards they’d painted began to glow; there were small crystals in the liquid, made to shed excess magical energy as light.
Karina watched as the guards set down their shields, a firm line against attack. More guards ducked in behind them, weaving assault spells.
There were no other weapons in play. If this had been an ordinary prison, Karina would have expected tear gas or pepper spray, guns even. But there was no need for them here. Every guard was a trained weapon, the magic they were licensed to wield more than capable of incapacitating unruly prisoners. Gas and guns could be turned on the people that held them, manipulated with magic. Not so with hexes.
In a fight between trained guards and political prisoners fuelled by desperation, there really wasn’t much of a contest. Once those guards came through those doors, this was over and there would be nothing but blood on the floors.
Karina spotted Mallory just in time. His hands were finishing weaving around one another, bringing his power to bear. Ducking, she felt, rather than heard, the glass smash above her head, the sucking thump of displaced air at her back. For a fraction of a second, the space where she’d been standing was filled with razor-sharp shards.
‘Fuck!’ Reaching to the back of her neck, her fingers came away bloody.
Others hadn’t been so lucky, their faces and hands peppered with red streaks. A man staggered away with a wail, hand up to his left eye.
Looking back to the other side of the room, Nadia was waiting by the rear door as she’d been instructed. The woman shook her head, her fretting body language telling Karina that they would have to hold out a while longer.
A crack of thunder erupted above them, drowning out the sound of the fight. The lightning came a strange second after it. The wind picked up and a curtain of rain slammed against the hall windows on the right-hand side, blurring the glass and shivering the building. The rafters creaked. She could feel the force of the wind coming through the broken window, whipping at her hair.
The wards on the doors began to grow brighter as more force was brought to them. The prisoners were keeping their focus fixed, holding out their hands to aid concentration. The more disciplined were simply staring, hands down by their sides. Blood addicts, wounds open on their arms, were bringing all their borrowed energy to bear. The guards outside were battering the doors with both muscles and magic.
It was the first time the inmates had put up such a fight. Only now were the guards realising the strength and skill of the people they had been keeping under their boot heels. The wards were well made, excess power distributed to keep the network intact.
But still Karina could feel the heat beginning to come off them. More of the prisoners were breaking away to bring their power to the storm wards that they had created. Right now, with the wards around the island breaking, this was the safest place to be.
Guards were appearing at the side windows now, batons and gloved hands at the glass.
Prisoners rushed to stop them. Blasts of magic pummelled the walls, doing some of the guards’ work for them by breaking the panes, but their efforts had no effect against the warded armour.
Picking a chair from the barricade, Duncan shattered it against the floor. Grabbing a wooden chair leg, he brought it swinging round, connecting with a guard’s visor as it appeared in the window.
The guard reeled back out of sight and another burst of percussive magic in response caused Duncan to duck, more windows blowing in. The guards were surrounding the building now, realising that the front door was going to hold out longer than they were in the increasingly ferocious weather.
The prisoners were doing their best, but between the two sets of wards demanding their attention, their fear and the sheer length of walls they had to defend, they were spread thin and exhausted already. The guards were becoming increasingly desperate.
Marshalling her power, Karina lifted a spare chair and blasted it from her hand, catching a guard a body blow as they lifted themselves over the lip of a broken window. Rushing forward, she wove a second spell, condensing the moisture in the air to a mist. Sending it out, the vapour obscured the guard’s vision as she rushed to meet another hand trying to gain purchase on the sill. Grabbing at the baton, she wrenched it from their grasp only for the thing to slip immediately from her hand. A strip of leather held the weapon to the guard’s wrist, and the club clattered against the wall as they retreated, pulling it back after them.
‘Karina!’ Nadia’s shout was almost overwhelmed by another crack of thunder. Her friend was jumping up and down, pointing into the small office and waving her over.
This was it!
Grabbing the nearest prisoners, Karina shoved them towards the rear door. ‘Go! Go
on!’
The wind was howling around the broken window, the rain lashing and swirling in the empty spaces where the glass had been, the wards on the window frames the only thing keeping the weather at bay. She could feel the heat coming off the paint as they began to strain.
Duncan had got the message now, grabbing the injured who had huddled by the stage and leading them away. Karina herself began to wave people back, watching the windows. If the guards were spotting the retreat, they were too busy trying to get out of the storm to give it much mind. What did they care if the prisoners left their self-made sanctuary to the staff?
But as more inmates broke away from the fight, the wards began to fail. The barricade started to fall apart as the door opened an inch, then two, flecks of rain spitting through the gap. The glowing wards were beginning to dim. Some had already fizzled out, the too-fresh paint melting from the heat, crisping and bubbling. Most flickered and died, the magical laws of their geometry turning them from meaningful glyphs to random symbols.
One or two shorted, the random work of the running paint creating new instructions for a moment. One struck down the woman who had painted it, the symbols drawing too much energy too fast. Clutching at her chest, she fainted, her cheek crashing against the floor with a loud smack. A second ward malfunctioned, folding the power inside out, blowing back chairs, benches and noticeboards in a pinwheeling wave of shrapnel.
The prisoners were in full retreat now. Breaking away from their fights, they rushed towards the back of the room, tens of people trying to squeeze through the one narrow door.
A blast of magic caught Karina in the head, knocking her off her feet. She lay dazed a moment, squinting foolishly at the ceiling. With the windows gone and the wards failing, the air was filled with rain and wet leaves.
Someone was grabbing at her, pulling her to her feet. She began to struggle before seeing Duncan’s concerned face.
Unimpeded, the guards were finally making their way inside. Gathering themselves at the windows, they readjusted their equipment, catching their breath, making room for the men and women behind them.
The siege had lasted less than an hour.
‘We have to go,’ said Duncan, pulling at her.
‘Just make sure that everyone else has gone.’
‘Everyone’s taking care of themselves. For fuck’s sake, do the same for yourself. Come on.’
They joined the retreat. Some prisoners were still firing off blasts of magic, but they did no good, barely slowing the guards.
Thunder was cracking every other minute now, lightning blinding the room.
Karina worked at raising the mist again, and Duncan, seeing what she was doing, tried to help. They had none of the practised co-ordination of the guards. It took them a few precious seconds more, Duncan following Karina’s lead. But the water began to rise from the floor, hazing the space between them and their oppressors. The curtain of moisture shivered as blasts of magic passed through in both directions. It thickened and thickened, closing the space and preventing either side of the room from seeing the other.
More guards were climbing in through the windows, passing through the riot shields. They were lining up for one final push.
Backing away, Karina, Duncan and others kept up the enchantment, falling into the rhythm of it, eyes half-closed against the rain.
The last of the wards died and the front doors blew in, chairs, wind and rain flying in all directions. It was all anyone could do to defend themselves, guards and prisoners alike, raising their arms to ward off the flying splinters.
Mallory strode in. With a full-blooded swing of his bat, he knocked Karina’s enchantment out of the air, the mist falling to the ground in a sheet of water.
‘Get here now,’ he roared, pointing the bat at her. ‘You lot. Fucking grab her.’
‘No!’ Duncan made to step between Mallory and her, but Karina held him back.
‘Get out of here,’ she hissed. ‘Go on.’ They were at the door, the last few slipping away.
The guards had noticed now, realised that there were too few prisoners. Though she couldn’t see it in their eyes, she could see the confusion in their postures, the way they looked to one another, their weapons lowering.
She could see the look mirrored in Mallory’s expression. ‘Where they fuck are they?’
‘You didn’t think we’d stick around, did you?’ said Karina. ‘Enjoy your deathtrap.’
The hall may have been made a safe haven, but between the damage done to the windows and the shonky, hurried wards that wasn’t going to last much longer, not without constant maintenance.
They stepped back through into the office. Karina threw the door closed as she saw Mallory screaming towards her. The man’s face was a bright pink as he realised that he had been thwarted, tricked in front of so many people.
The ward portal was open at the back of the room. Though no sound carried across its threshold, she could see Steph on the other side working the gate, feeding it power.
The young woman had been right, the ring of storm around the island kept people from portalling on and off the island, but travelling within the ring was a different matter.
The room behind her was filled with the other prisoners, all of them already working on creating better storm wards on the walls around them, making a proper fort that would help them outlast the storm.
With the guards drawn inside, all Karina had to do was step through and kill the portal and the staff would be left high and dry. To survive, they would be stuck feeding the wards until help arrived.
There was an anchor ward painted on the office door. She barely had time to activate it before a resounding thump rattled the door on its hinges.
Mallory bellowed abuse from the other side. Even with the ward, she could feel the influence of that terrible bat leaking through, setting her heart racing. It was all she could do not to release the ward and let him in.
Duncan was feeling it too, the fear making him slack-faced and pale. There were only four of them left in the room. The portal had to be small to conserve energy, the last pair stooping and squeezing themselves through, helped by their friends on the other side.
‘Just go,’ she told Duncan. ‘Don’t argue. Sooner you’re through, the sooner I’m behind you. Go.’
Duncan didn’t fight. The ward on the door was flaring with each impact, making Karina’s nose bleed so badly that the red began to drip off the tip of her chin.
The back door behind them began to rattle and shake. Guards braving the weather had come around to try to get in via the fire exit.
‘Come on!’ Duncan was ducking through the portal, folding his tall frame, wincing as he tried to avoid the razor-thin edges.
He slid through, hands reaching and helping him, his passage cutting off his shouts. He began waving, beckoning her, pleading and terrified. He held his hands up to help her but didn’t reach back through the portal for fear of overpowering the ward and causing it to collapse.
The door before her thumped again and the anchor ward let out a wave of heat. Another blow and it would be open. The door behind her was shivering as the guards kicked it in, the hinges buckling.
Karina backed away towards the portal, keeping her focus on the anchor for as long as she was able. She let go and turned just as the door blew in, Mallory’s bat shattering the ward to flinders. He stepped into the office, eyes filled with fury.
The movement of her ducking towards the portal caught his attention. The sight stunned him a moment, realising too late how thoroughly he had been tricked. Not only had they been getting away but it would take a skilled reader of portals to be able to discern where they had passed through to once it was closed.
Holding her breath, she began to slide backwards, feeling hands grab at her waist to help. The air pressure changed as she slipped into a whole other room across the island, her legs dangling down, knees bumping against a wall. They’d set the portal high on the other side. As the storm wards in front of her st
uttered out, she could feel the wards behind her were strong and safe. She’d made it.
Only for a hand to make its way into her hair and pull.
She called out in pain, first a yelp, then a full-throated cry as Mallory started to drag her back into the office of the town hall.
Grunting, she dug her nails into the flesh of his hand, but it made no difference. Her only piece of luck was that he had no room to swing the bat, but she could feel it, its influence sinking into her pores, making her kick and scream. She would let him tear the hair from her head if it meant getting away.
The people around her were shouting, Steph calling out about the strain on the ward. They didn’t have much time. Duncan was yelling, stopping someone from wiping the symbols and cutting off the portal, not wanting to get Karina hurt in the process.
She could feel her nails digging in, her ears a confused mess of noise as her head hovered on the threshold of one room and the other.
But the fear was giving way to anger now. Gritting her teeth, she braced her legs against the wall. Grabbing Mallory’s wrist in both hands, clamping his fist to her head, she began to pull.
‘Bring him through,’ she shouted. Surprise gained her an advantage. Catching Mallory off balance, she pulled herself fully out the other side, taking the man’s arm with her. ‘Make it quick,’ said Steph. ‘We don’t have much time, I can feel it.’
Others rushed to help, reaching past and grabbing Mallory’s arms. Despite all his anger, all his wiry strength, he was still a skinny, small man and he started to come through, his arm, then his shoulder. Refusing to let go of his bat, he tried to brace himself against the wall on his side, the weapon rolling under his palm and working against him.
Fixed on escaping, he released his grip on Karina’s hair. She looked up to see the panic in his eyes. They only had to cut the portal and he would lose the arm. But they weren’t going to do that, they weren’t animals like him.
Changing his stance, he tried to kick, fend Karina and her cohorts off with one of his boots. Then they had his leg, quickly followed by the other and all at once he was through.
Strange Ways Page 31