Take the Darkness...: Epic Fantasy Series (14 page)

Chapter 30

The four pale and silver-haired creatures were exactly the sort of thing she shouldn’t be facing in open battle. They stood as tall as her guise of Seth, which was a good foot taller than her, and they were built like giants. Their huge bodies looked ungainly, but they moved with strength and they all carried huge broadswords that should have been wielded in the Northern double-handed style, though they held them in a single hand and she knew they could use them with the ease of a short sword. They were a lot stronger and faster than their bodies should have been capable of.

They walked passed her with no hesitation and stood four in a line in the large receiving area at the top of the platform. So they would kill her in front of the waiting crowd. She turned to Silver, who was also drawing her sword.

‘I thought you couldn’t kill your kindred?’ Seraphina asked.

‘The more I see of them the more I realize they are nothing like me and I am nothing like them, besides, you’re too weak to fight them on your own.’

‘Thanks,’ Seraphina said back. She was sure that it wasn’t a light decision for Silver to make. The entire journey she had spoken of the moon’s teaching and who they had strayed from the path but she was clearly concerned that her “champion’ would indeed die here without help.

‘Becare however, they are the masters and have trained every day since they were boys. It’s a high honour to guard my mother.’

Seraphina forced herself to laugh. ‘We’ll win, just kill anyone who isn’t you, okay?’

They walked across the open area to where the four stood. They could have been brothers as they were all identical to her eye, and that would help. She didn’t want to reveal her full powers to Silver, but what choice did she have? She’d only get out of this alive by using every underhanded trick in the book. As they walked Silver turned to the waiting mass of watching monsters. ‘We will kill these “masters” and then her, and lead you all back to the true path,’ she shouted.

They stood facing each other. The four pale creatures side by side. Long silver hair flowing and cold blue eyes. Their faces had no expressions. They were far from naked and wore dark black leather armour to match their weapons. Across from them stood Seraphina and Silver. Seraphina spoke to Silver again. ‘Remember, kill anyone who isn’t you, even if they look like you.’ Time for the show, Seraphina thought.

She held her hands out wide and the bloated mass of onlookers looked afraid, but also hopeful. Looking at their faces, she saw that there were some that actually looked like they wanted her to win, strange as that seemed. ‘Father sun, burn these wicked creatures,’ she cried, pointing at the four. As she did, she created a huge flash of light, and when it passed, she had changed them. Now they looked burned and wretched, their bloated flesh and armour charred and burned. It was frighting to behold, and she heard a groan came from the mass of watching creature. She knew they would be unaffected, but she hoped it would rattle them.

Silver was in the air in moments and brought her huge sword swinging down at the first creature. He still held his blade, but Seraphina had removed it from his own sight. She had enough power now to create different visions for different targets. He could feel the weight of it in his hand but not see it. The shock of this and the look of his own burned flesh had him stunned. Silver’s black blade caught the tip of his forehead and sliced down to his chin. He fell back screaming with his face split open.

Seraphina was then being attacked, as two of the creatures had charged at her. She saw them drop their blades because they couldn’t trust them and they came on with brute force. They moved like cats and were at her in moments. She knew they would be trying to bite her. The first lunged at where she stood and passed completely through her image, hitting the ground hard. The second stopped before her image and, reaching with both hands, grabbed at it. His hand passed through. Seraphina stood back a few meters from her image and now thrust her blade through the face of the fallen creature again and again. He seemingly died for no reason, huge cuts and slashes appearing on its neck and head from nowhere. She heard their crowd of onlookers cry in shock as it happened.

She leapt at the second, which was still trying to fight a ghost, and with a huge cut of her lady’s sword took its head clean off. She had the sense to make her guise do the same, so it looked like she couldn’t be hit, but could strike back. She turned with a bloody face and looked at Silver. She was doing badly: the last one of the four was fighting on even if his sword was unseen. He was well trained and knew its weight and length. He was unfazed by all Seraphina’s tricks.

He slashed down with his sword and Silver blocked it. Silver was strong, but he was still much faster and better trained. Silver’s blood was running from her arm in two places, and from under her eye where she’d been cut.  Seraphina yelled to him, ‘Hey, come and kill me!’

In a moment, the creature had turned and lunged at her. She thrust with her sword, which he neatly dodged. It was a shame that it wasn’t really her sword. The real one unseen, and in her other hand, slid into his heart. Seraphina looked at his blue eyes as they widened in surprise. ‘I know, life’s not fair,’ she said, and spinning on her heel like a dancer, let her slightly blunt blade cut through his neck and take his head from him. The bloody mess spun through the air with a shower of silver blood and landed at the base of the killing table.

Silver stood up panting and Seraphina saw her wound already healing. She looked at Seth. ‘You burned them – it was incredible.’ She looked to the sea of pale faces that watched and saw they were etched with fear, but more than a little hope... maybe they wanted liberation from this queen. Who could imagine what kind of a ruler she was?

They turned to look at the throne and saw the mother sitting and staring with her mouth almost opened in shock. She seemed to be trying to grasp what had just happened with her slow mind, and then she just started laughing and laughing.

‘That was a fine display, daughter: you’re very graceful with your pretty skinny body and your new friend, but there is a problem with your plan,’ she said, standing up slowly, pushing her arms hard from the stone chair to force her huge bulk up.

Silver pointed her sword at her open mouth. ‘And what’s that?’ She spat.

‘I have a lot more friends than you,’ she screamed back. ‘Take them both! Alive, but broken!’

Seraphina turned in time to see the huge mass of hundreds of creatures charging up the stairs towards her. She thought she heard one mutter ‘sorry’ before its huge fist found her face and sent her to the stone floor.

Chapter 31

Goldie, his feet resting on a small wooden stool, and sitting back in the lounge seat of the Bastards’ command tent, he tried his best not to laugh in the man’s face. His pretty looks were distorted with pain as an old woman did her best to remove the arrow barb from his shoulder. He screamed like a little girl.

‘Don’t think I can’t see that fucking smile!’ He yelled at Goldie.

‘What? How is it my fault that your men got all revved up? At least it’s a believable battle now.’

Somehow Grimm, and he knew it was by design and not accident, had gotten both sides all heated up and then provoked the fight with a few well-placed arrows. The men of the Red Bastards had seen their beloved leader get hit, and that was it. The casualties were massive. Three hundred of the Twin Plains soldiers killed and at least half that for the Reds. Goldie was actually surprised it wasn’t the other way around, but apparently in a battle, rage helped, and more so when your enemy is thinking it’s meant to be pretend. The poor little Twin Plains soldiers thought it was all just a game until they started dying for real, and then they’d started running, a bad idea.

It had only stopped when the Duchess of Twin Plains herself had ridden out from camp and just yelled at them all to cease. It was hilarious.

‘Oh, I know you Northern prick, I know you had something to do with it,’ he yelled as the woman finally got the barbed arrow from his pale shoulder. Blood was splattered all over his fine clothes. That’s why you wore armour thought Goldie, and not fine robes and silks like this fool.

‘Me? I’m on your side, and those in the Keep will love this; it just looks like you gave the Duke’s force a real hiding! So when does she take her little toy soldiers home?’

As he said the words, a mercenary guard was shoved roughly into the tent and fell to his knees. The Duchess of Twin Plains strolled into the tent after, her pretty face red with anger and her sword drawn. At her side like two shadows were two guards with black sashes and equally dark expressions. With lightning speed, she slapped the face of the King Bastard and sent him to the ground as well with the force of the backhand blow from a full mailed fist. Blood sprayed from his broken lip, but he stayed down as the Duchess pointed her rapier at him.

‘You idiot, you’ve cost me three hundred men and a lot more than that. Do you know how many have deserted? I’ve had to send out riders to round them up and try to find them all. Don’t you know what ‘pretend’ means? Now they think it’s all my fault!’

Goldie got a glimpse and finally saw what she was. In her rage, he could see her teeth starting to sharpen and her eyes growing blackish. She was the risen dead and that made the little blonde thing very dangerous, so he put his smugness aside and then, thinking ‘fuck it all,’ brought it back.

‘It’s not my fault,’ he sputtered through his split lip. ‘Someone shot me with an arrow!’

‘It was probably your second in command looking to be King Bastard himself!’ The Duchess shouted. ‘And you,’ she said, pointing her blade at Goldie as she saw the smirk firmly on his face. ‘What part did you play in this?’

‘Amused bystander?’ He said back with no respect.

‘Amused bystander’? More like instigator! How do we know you weren’t hiding in those bushes firing shots, or that you didn’t get word to your friends in the Keep of our plans?’

‘I’ve been here the whole time and all my people have been here as well,’ he said.

She walked right up to his face and he saw the bloodlust in her face, it was incredible; he’d heard tales from Seth of what these things were like, but had no idea they could walk around like people, and she was losing control.

‘I would have thought you’d be happy,’ he said to her.

‘And why would you think that?’ She spat, inches from his face, and he could see the raw hunger and that she was actually holding herself back from sinking her teeth into him.

‘Well, now you have atleast 300 bodies, and isn’t that the special number?’ He said back.

‘You know a lot more than you’ve been letting on Northman, and I don’t like it. Guards, take this smug bastard: he’ll be staying close to us until this is all over.’

Goldie just stood and bowed deeply. ‘Nothing I’d love more than the pleasure of your company.’

She couldn’t believe she’d missed the shot. After all of her vengeful thoughts towards the Bastard and the type of man that he was, her arrow had whistled across the battlefield and hit him in the shoulder. It was a disgrace. After her time with Elizebetha and the blood wine, she’d thought she’d be better. She’d consumed the memories of a master at archery, but when the time had come, she just defaulted to her own training. It was a long distance, but still she could have made that shot, fucking wind.

Josette crouched low as she ran through the sparse scrub of the field and tried not to be seen; the sun had almost risen and she was more than a little bit late for her rendezvous. She had been pinned down by fighting happening right in front of her, and couldn’t leave her spot or else she would be seen. Her body ached and her muscles had screamed as she crouched in the cover, just waiting for the fighting to move away.

Grimm’s plan had worked more than a little well. She wasn’t sure what he had said or done to the men of the Red Bastards, but as soon as her arrow had knocked the Captain down from his horse the bloodshed had started. The front line of a hundred or more men had charged in, screaming with weapons raised, and attacked the shocked levies with a fury she’d not seen before. They were veterans compared to young boys, and what they lacked in formal training and proper equipment, they more than made up for in lack of remorse and anger. She’d take a man who had actually killed over one who had trained by stabbing stuffed straw targets any day of the week.

She had watched as the bodies of men came together and met each other in bloody combat. Axes and short swords against pikes and a solid line. The discipline of the Twin Plain army had broken almost straight away as their own Captain fell and all she saw then was bloody hand to hand combat. In front of her face, she’d actually seen Grimm himself fighting on the front line of the Bastards. He’d done his best to focus on the men in the black sashes and moved like a force of nature.

She saw him run in screaming in a deep Northern tongue and, bringing his massive axe down, he’d cut deeply into the first man’s shoulder as he tried to sidestep the mighty blow. Blood gushed from the wound and he collapsed in moments with a horrible scream, but Grimm was already past him. He slashed right and left with huge overhand hits and spun out of the way when a sword blade was thrust at him. She’d never expected the man to move with such grace and speed. She realised now that the reason the Northmen were so good in battle was their fearlessness, he fought with a solid smile on his face the whole time, just waiting to be cut down and taken to his father halls with pride. It didn’t happen, but he was ready for it.

His axe came down into one of the black sashes who actually had on full mail, and the axe got caught in the bloody links of his chest. Grimm just dropped the axe and, rolling to the ground, came up with the man’s short sword. He plunged it left and right, and again moved like a god of war. Then, as if realising where he was, he just dropped the weapon and let himself sink back into the force that was swelling around him, and he let them take over. She wished she too could have run, but they were all around her.

As she crouched breathing slowly, trying not to let her fear of discovery take over, she saw what she wished she hadn’t. Micker, the boy and his friends fighting right near her. They were rage-filled, but she could see the fear etched deep in Micker’s face. He was fighting a man who, much like Grimm, had a huge axe against his short sword. The boy spun to the left and dodged the fall of the massive weapon, and then he plunged his sword deep into the man’s chest. He fell to the ground with a grunt. Micker turned back to his comrades with a smile and a laugh, and then two arrows appeared in his chest from the bushes. Someone had spotted him as a leader and taken him down. She almost cried out, but put her hand over her mouth and held herself back. Tears welled up in her eyes as she saw the boy who probably couldn’t even grow a beard hit the ground. It worked as planned, of course: his friends pushed forward, filled with anger, and so it kept going.

She tried to blame the Duke for bringing them here and making them fight, but she couldn’t help but feel guilty. The battle finally stopped when the Duchess herself came riding across the hill on her lean grey horse, and entered into the middle of the melee. She screamed, ‘stop, stop, stop,’ in Pellosi, Northern and any other language the mercenaries might speak. The fury on her face and radiating from her was such that everyone did stop. She shouted that they get back to their camps, and slowly, like people coming awake from a dream, they seemed to realise the extent of what had happened. The Twin Plains army retreated in an orderly fashion and she got to see the Red Bastards actually laughing and looting the bodies of the fallen. She overheard one saying, ‘Where's the bloody gold he’s meant to have’, searching through the dead boy’s pockets and boots.

Once they were gone she could see the light of the sun starting to lighten the sky, and she knew it was only a few hours ‘til dawn. She stood up and stretched out the cramps in her legs, and started to jog back to the meeting point. She was almost there when she heard voices speaking in dark tones. She looked through the short trees and saw what she didn’t want to see: Grimm and his group of fake mercenaries on the roadway, along with her friends, dressed in their tattered and blood-stained uniforms. The troop of men guarding them was small and she saw a horse light out to bring more. There were just five of them left guarding the group of more than twenty, and she hoped the rest were already safely within the wall.

Crouching, she looked at the five soldiers. Could she actually take down all five? Before she’d have been able to take maybe two before they had her, but now she was meant to be so much more. Still, her previous effort had done little to boost her confidence. Josette let her mind drift back to the cellar, the wine, and the memories of the old archery master. She imagined the look of his old hands on the bow and held it the way he had, with her top finger pointing out; she adjusted her quiver so it pointed a bit to the left and ruffled the arrows as he would have before a shoot, attempting to loosen them. She was feeling the connection with him and stepped out into the roadway.

Without trying to look at her targets too closely, she drew and fired again and again. Four of the arrows found their targets within seconds of each other and the four men fell back with arrows neatly in their left eyes, and one in the open mouth of a stunned target. The last whistled past the target who had turned to his falling comrades. He drew his sword and started running the short distance to her. Grimm was on his feet but bound from behind, but he lunged and smashed his face into the running man’s legs. Her next arrow was already in flight and caught the lone survivor in the throat. He fell back with a muffled cry and collapsed onto Grimm.

She walked casually up the road and looked down at her fallen targets. That was more like it. As she stood over Grimm and the dead man, she heard a voice in tired Northern say, ‘Get this fucking guy off me please,’ and relief washed over her and the rest of the troop. She pulled the body off of Grimm, and going from one to the next, cut the bounds that tied her friends’ limbs.

When the rest of their fake army was through the hidden doorway, Grimm looked at her and motioned her in first, she just shook her head.

‘I’m going back I only wanted to make sure everyone else made it’ she said.

‘Why? Because you missed the shot? We played on making them fight and win did, tonight was a win for us.’ he said with passion.

‘The Duchess Dierda, I have to try get to her, Elizebetha is afraid she’ll call her man back, or worse’

Grimm exploded with rage and then calmed himself ‘Whenever killing needs doing she’s happy to send someone else, never bloody her royal hands but send a young girl that’s fine. Look, I know you have to do this, but I’m telling you to trust Goldie if you have to. He’s still with us.’

She just shrugged, as she was far from sure. ‘You know where to go?’ She asked.

‘Yeah, I got a good look at the blonde bitch on the battlefield, and she doesn’t look that tough.’