Where Serpents Strike (Children of the Falls Vol. 1) (70 page)

“We know they are here,” Garnock said. “We
caught up with a group of wanted fugitives in Thalmia. They told us
where to find the rest.”

Dana felt her chest tighten. “Brayden,” she
breathed.

She felt Ariella’s hand on her arm, heard
her whisper in her ear, “Do not believe him. They would never tell
anyone that we are here.”

“We slaughtered them,” Garnock added, “and
if the traitors don’t come forward we will slaughter everyone here
as well.”

Dana’s hand shot to her mouth to stifle her
horrified gasp. Ariella threw her arms around her and held her
tight, urging her to be silent.

Gravis staggered to his feet, his hand
cupping the generous flow of blood pouring from his mouth.

“If you wish to spare the life of your
leader you will surrender the rest of these criminals,” Garnock
said. He jerked the reigns of the second horse, bringing the beaten
duktori closer to him. He grabbed the man by the back of his hair
and jerked his face toward the sky. The people gasped when Garnock
placed a blade at the duktori’s throat. “Give us the Aberdourian
fugitives.”

Gravis lifted his hands toward the viper
commander, begging for calm. “Please, m–my lord. We have nothing to
hide.”

“Then give us the criminals. We know they
are here.”

Gravis looked up at the duktori, an elderly
man with long gray hair, who regarded the crowd with teary blue
eyes of regret and pain. Then he nodded his consent to Gravis.

“My lord?” the prior said, his voice
quivering.

Garnock pinched the duktori’s throat with
his knife.

“Yes,” the captive choked over the cloth
gag. “Give them up.”

Gravis faced the crowd, his eyes
scanning.

Dana slunk back, horrified that those who
had promised to protect her were now surrendering her to the enemy.
She looked passed the lay servants and nuns standing at her back,
to the monastery wall behind the chapel. If she ran as fast as she
could she might reach the wall before any of the soldiers loosed
their arrows. But even if she made it over the wall, where then
could she go?

“Nairnah,” she whispered. “Where’s
Nairnah?”

Several black vipers dismounted and walked
up behind Gravis, their hands perched on the hilts of their
swords.

Gravis called to Ariella. “Where is
she?”

The woman scowled at him. “Don’t you dare,
Gravis! Don’t do this.”

“Either the criminals give themselves up,”
Garnock said, “or my men start killing your children.”

Panicked gasps and cries wove through the
crowd.

“Dana!” Gravis shouted, pointing in her
direction.

She froze, her eyes slamming shut, half
wishing, hoping, praying that she was trapped in nothing but a
nightmare. Perhaps if she pinched herself she’d wake up back in the
frigid dormitory, her legs and feet still aching from the cold.

The black vipers pushed their way toward
Dana and grabbed her by the arms.

“Damn you, Gravis!” Ariella cried.

“I’m doing it for the good of the many,”
Gravis said. “Now where is the other one? Where is Nairnah? Where
are the two little ones and the man they call Pick?” He stood back
and shouted to the crowd, “Any refugees from Aberdour need to come
forward now.”

Dana’s heart raced arrhythmically as the
soldiers brought her before the marshal and threw her at his feet.
The soiled dirt and horse manure from the road stained her
dress.

“No!” Nairnah shouted. She burst out from
the crowd. Pick was right behind her, trying to reel her in, but it
was too late.

“Ah, the soldier,” Garnock said, eyeing
Pick. “Your two comrades fought bravely against my men in Thalmia…
for a time.”

Dana watched Pick’s jaw tighten in rage.

Two soldiers moved behind him and Nairnah
and forced them to their knees.

Gravis found the two orphans, Joseph and
Pan, who were younger than Scarlett was when Aberdour was attacked.
They were brought out from the crowd by impatient vipers who forced
them to the ground next to Dana.

“As you all should know, harboring fugitives
from the high king is a crime punishable by death,” Garnock
shouted. He looked over the crowd with dark and guileless eyes. “By
the order of High King Orkrash Mahl I order this monastery burned
to the ground and everyone within sentenced to death.”

The black haired marshal shoved his knife up
into the duktori’s throat, spilling his blood all over the neck and
forelegs of his horse. The old man’s body toppled forward and into
the muddy street.

“What?” Gravis yelled. “Please don’t—”

The black vipers unleashed a barrage of
arrows into the crowd. People screamed as they took wooden shafts
in their chests, necks, and heads. Others scattered, running for
the safety of the nearest buildings.

Pick jumped up and thrust his palm into the
chin of the soldier behind him. The man’s mouth slammed shut,
ejecting shards of broken teeth into the air. Pick tackled the
viper standing behind Dana. They tumbled along the ground through
the mud.

“Kill them!” the commander ordered. “Kill
them all now!”

Dana grabbed Nairnah with one hand and Pan
with the other.

“Get up!” she shouted. “Joseph, on your
feet!”

A third black viper rushed toward them, his
sword drawn. He took a swipe at the boy, severing his tiny head
from his impish body.

Spatters of the child’s blood hit Dana’s
face and she froze, horrified. For a moment, she forgot even to
breath.

When she saw the soldier grab Pan her shock
turned to fury that exploded into violence. She charged the man,
surprising him and throwing him off balance. With a sharp elbow she
caught him in the eye socket and knocked him over. In the next
couple moments she lost herself in rage and fear and pounded on his
face with her bare fists. She grabbed his sword and thrust it down
into his mouth. He gagged, eyes wide, his body convulsing. She
stabbed him again, pushing the blade down through his cheek and
into the ground.

The next thing Dana knew she had been lifted
off her feet and slung over Pick’s shoulder. She screamed, bouncing
violently atop his back as he sprinted toward the safety of the
chapel with Pan and Nairnah in tow.

Dana watched one of the soldiers behind them
raise his crossbow. He loosed an arrow in her direction. She closed
her eyes and screamed, dreading the moment the arrow pierced her
skin, but the bolt missed her head and landed in the back of Pick’s
shoulder. He toppled forward, spilling Dana onto the ground.

“Get up, Dana!” Nairnah yelled, just as an
arrow flew past her head and impaled one of the priests.

All around her people screamed as blood
poured on the grass. The black vipers took torches to the
dormitories, slaughtering the male and female lay servants as they
went. They set aflame a hay cart and wheeled it into the barn,
leaving the horses and donkeys to scream and buck against their
stalls as they burned. They set the orchards on fire, smashed
through windows and doorways and sent flaming arrows into all the
buildings.

Pick staggered to his feet, wincing at the
arrow in his shoulder. Dana and Nairnah helped him toward the
chapel.

Ariella was already inside, her hand
extended to Dana through the entryway.

“Behind you!” she yelled.

Pick threw Dana to the grass and whirled
around, catching the incoming attack of a black soldier. The man
had a massive iron mallet, which Pick managed to knock from his
grasp. They wrestled for a moment until they fell to the
ground.

Dana scurried backward into the chapel. She
watched as Pick got the upper hand, lifted the soldier’s mallet,
and flattened his skull against the ground.

“Pick!” she shouted.

He hurried into the chapel behind Pan and
Nairnah, his shoulder a bloodied mess. He took another arrow to the
back just as he passed through the doorway.

“Close the door!” Ariella said.

Dana reached for the latch and pulled the
heavy wooden door away from the wall. It groaned on its hinges as
she pushed it into place.

Just before the door closed Dana glimpsed
Prior Gravis on the road outside hurrying toward the chapel. The
man was surrounded by violence. He stepped over bodies as he ran,
ignoring the pleas of those dying around him.

“Wait!” he said, extending a bloodied hand
toward Dana. “Wait, please!”

She hesitated. Her first instinct was to
help him, but the thoughts that filled her mind a moment later were
just the opposite. Gravis was the reason this was happening. If not
for him, her brothers would still be alive. If not for him, Khalous
and Stoneman would be here to help fight this assault. If he wanted
mercy, he could beg it from the Black King’s army.

“Close it!” Ariella shouted again.

Through the western gate Dana saw a second
contingent of horsed vipers thunder down the main road. They
stormed into the monastery, swinging spiked flails, and long
halberds, charging over fallen bodies while lopping off the limbs
of fleeing residents.

“Wait!” Gravis pleaded, nearing closer.
“Wait! Wait!”

Dana pushed the door shut and slammed the
drawbar in place.

“The west end,” Dana said, pointing toward
the garden through the door on the left side of the sanctuary.

Ariella hurried toward it and closed off the
entrance.

There were three other people within the
chapel—an elderly nun and a young dark-haired widow with her
daughter. The girl couldn’t have been older than five. They huddled
together against the exterior wall, terrified faces bowed to the
floor in desperate prayer. Nairnah joined them along with Pan.

“We can’t stay here,” Dana said. “They’ll
find a way in.”

“They’ll burn us out,” moaned Pick as he
struggled to rise onto his hands and knees.

Dana knelt, urging him to stay still. Two
arrows protruded from his back: one right above his shoulder blade,
the second in the muscle along his spine.

“Go,” he said, “out the window, ’cross the
grass… over the wall.”

Dana shook her head. “What about the cliffs?
We’ll have no place to go.”

“If we can get over the wall there’s a
narrow trail that leads down to the shore,” Nairnah said.

“They’ll kill us before we get out.”

One of the stained glass windows shattered
into a rainbow of small shards that collapsed on the heads of the
huddling women and children. Pan screamed. A torch came spinning
handle over flame into the sanctuary. It splashed down onto the
pews in a spray of sparks.

Another window shattered and a second torch
flew into the room. A third followed, then a fourth. A pitchfork
crashed through a window near the pulpit, its prongs clutching a
large heap of flaming hay. Black vipers ran by the windows,
shouting for more fire. Bit by bit the flames took hold and the
sanctuary started to burn.

“Mama!” cried the child of the young
widow.

The woman jumped to her feet and ran for the
door.

“No!” Ariella shouted.

The woman lifted the drawbar.

“If you open that door they’ll skewer
you.”

“I’d rather that than be burned alive!”

“She’s right,” Dana said. “Don’t do it!”

The widow paused.

Dana felt Pick tugging on her skirt. She
looked down. He pointed toward the basement door.

“The crypt?”

The mere thought of all those ancient bones
nailed to the wall in their death mural sent a cold shiver down
Dana’s spine. “We’ll be entombed down there. When this place burns
it will fall on top of us.”

“It’s our only… chance,” he said. “Open the
door. Go down. Hurry!”

A series of flaming darts shot through the
broken windows, igniting the chapel’s maroon tapestries on the
opposite wall. Other arrows aimed at a steeper angle dug into the
sanctuary’s vaulted ceiling where their flames licked at the wooden
beams and began to grow.

Dana went to the crypt door, lifted the
latch, and heaved it open. The dank darkness beyond rose to welcome
her like the shadowy arms of death. She pulled a torch off the wall
and handed it to Pan.

“Into the crypt!” she shouted.

She went to Pick and lifted his arm up
around her neck.

“Ariella!” she called. “Help me.”

Pick groaned as they took his arms and
hoisted him onto his feet.

From the corner of her eyes Dana saw the
front door to the chapel open, sending a thick shaft of light
careening into the smoky sanctuary.

“No!” she yelled.

But the young widow and her daughter had
already sprinted through the doorway, their arms waving away the
smoke in front of their eyes. The first arrow caught the woman in
the chest and stopped her in her tracks. The second hit her in the
shoulder, spinning her around, giving Dana a clear look at the
shock of death that filled her terrified eyes. A third arrow
pierced the back of her head and pushed her down into the dirt.

The girl was beyond Dana’s view when she
heard her scream.

Another arrow careened through the doorway
and into Ariella’s side. The woman gasped as though she’d just been
slugged in the stomach. She toppled to her knees, losing her grip
on Pick who fell forward and tumbled down the first flight of steps
into the basement.

Dana hurried down to him. “Get up, Pick!
Please!” He wasn’t moving.

She looped her hands under his arms and
pulled him down the second flight of stairs. Once at the bottom she
laid him on the stone floor.

Pan was standing nearby with the torch, her
tear-streaked face alive with fright.

“Wait here,” Dana said, trying to sound
brave.

Sprinting back up the stairs, she saw
Ariella crawling through the doorway, clutching the end of a bloody
arrow protruding from her right hipbone. The sanctuary beyond was a
nightmare of flames. Dana could hear the beams of the once gorgeous
ceiling cracking and giving away.