The maid, Ephalla, crawled from under the carriage, groggy with sleep. Jaen grasped her arm and lifted her to her feet. He shook her. ‘Listen to me — take my daughter — flee to the house. Do you understand? To the house!’ He flung her hard against the side of the carriage and then wheeled.
His Houseblades were retreating, closing in around the carriage on the side facing the forest.
Behind him he heard the door swing open; heard his daughter’s frightened cry as Ephalla dragged her from the carriage.
‘We withdraw!’ Jaen shouted to his Houseblades. ‘Back to the house. Fall back!’
His guards formed a curved line, backing quickly. Jaen glanced over a shoulder and saw the two women running for the house.
The attackers were rushing closer. There were too many of them.
‘Slow them down!’ he commanded.
The first line of the enemy reached his Houseblades. Weapons clashed, blades slashed down. Two of his guards fell, overwhelmed. The others fought on, desperately hacking at the swords slashing and thrusting towards them. Another fell, his skull crushed.
The ones who remained continued to retreat. Lord Jaen backed up with them, helplessly trapped between his Houseblades and the two women striving to reach the house. Another moment’s hesitation and then, with a curse, Jaen spun round and ran after his daughter and the maid. He would hold the door if he could, knowing that the gesture meant nothing.
Andarist had not built a fortress. A grand home and nothing more. Jaen doubted the bar would even hold.
The women reached the door. Ephalla tugged it open and pushed Enesdia through.
Before her husband — not side by side — ill omen, a marriage doomed -
The thought tore through him on a spasm of absurd guilt.
He heard scores of footfalls thudding on the ground behind him, fast closing. My Houseblades are dead. Another dozen would have made no difference. Oh, Cryl -
He reached the gaping doorway, saw the terrified faces of his daughter and the maid in the hallway inside. He met Ephalla’s eyes and nodded.
She slammed the door shut, even as Enesdia shrieked.
Jaen wheeled on the threshold, readying his sword.
He had lost one of the horses to the river, watched it swept downstream with its head raised and neck straining. Grainy-eyed, feeling leaden, Cryl clung to the remaining beast as it finally reached the far bank and stumbled up the slope. Without a pause he kicked the creature’s flanks and it struggled against its own exhaustion, building into a plodding canter up and on to the road. Still he kicked and somehow the horse found the will to stretch out into a gallop.
He would be coming up to the house from the south. Before him the road was empty, with dawn only now edging the sky.
In the distance he heard shouts and then the clash of blades.
Above a line of trees, he saw the freshly tiled roof of Andarist’s house. Cutting down from the road, he drove his horse hard across an open sward, and then through brush and into the shadow of the trees. Before him, as he rode towards the back of the house, he saw figures spilling to the sides at the run. He understood that Jaen had retreated into the house — his only choice, for there were scores of attackers.
Cryl’s eyes fixed on a shuttered window on the main floor, to the left of the back door. He pushed his mount to even greater speed, riding straight for it.
Someone shouted — they had seen him, but that did not matter. He was almost there.
He kicked his boots free of the stirrups. He clambered up until he was perched on the saddle. At the last moment, as the horse veered of its own accord to avoid colliding with the back of the house, Cryl launched himself across the intervening distance, angling his shoulder down and protecting his face with his arms.
He struck the shutters and wood exploded around him.
Splinters lanced into him as he landed on the floor and skidded across slate tiles. Picking himself up, he drew his sword and rushed towards the front of the house. He could hear hammering against the front door and the sound of splitting wood. The rooms blurred past unseen as he ran.
Enesdia screamed as the front door was battered down.
Cryl plunged into the hallway — saw Enesdia. Ephalla had drawn a dagger and was standing before her mistress. A sword lashed out, the flat of the blade striking the maid’s forearm, breaking bones. Another blade punched into her chest, lifting her from the floor Cryl rushed past Enesdia. He did not even register the faces of the figures before him. His sword flickered out, opened the throat of the man who had murdered Ephalla, tore free to bury half its length in the gut of a second attacker.
‘Run to the back!’ he shouted. ‘Get on the horse! Go!’
‘Cryl!’
More attackers were pushing into the hallway.
From somewhere off to his right, in another room, a window was being broken through. ‘Go!’ he screamed, flinging himself at the three attackers.
He was a Durav. The blood was on fire in his veins. He split the face of one man, sliced through the kneecap of another. A blade stabbed deep into his right thigh. He staggered back, pulling himself free of the weapon. Strength poured out of that leg. Cursing, he stumbled. More were coming in, eager to reach him. He blocked a thrust, felt his blade slice up the length of someone’s arm. And then something slammed into the side of his head and the world flashed white. As he fell forward, twin punches met his chest, pushed him back upright. He looked down to see two swords impaling him.
Another blade slashed, cut through half his neck.
He saw himself falling, in the hallway, almost within reach of the entrance threshold and the hacked body of Lord Jaen lying beyond, where boots and legs crowded past and drew close. Someone stepped on his hand, breaking fingers, but he only heard the sound — the feeling was a sense of wrongness, but there was no pain.
There was only a growing emptiness, black as the river. He waited for it to take him. He did not have to wait long.
They had caught the nobleborn woman in one of the back rooms, trying to climb out through a window, and dragged her into the main hall. And then the raping began.
When Narad was pushed forward — his sword unblooded and hanging from his hand — the woman who had run with him laughed and said, ‘This one to finish her! She’s a beauty, Waft, and she’s all yours!’
To the crass urgings of a dozen onlookers he was shoved to where she was lying on the hearthstone. Her clothes had been torn away. There was blood on the stone under her. Her lips were split from hard kisses and bites, and the once unmarred flesh of her body now bore deep bruises left by hands and fingers. He stared down into her glazed eyes.
She met them unblinking, and did not turn away.
The woman behind Narad was tugging down his trousers, taking him in hand to wake him up. Laughing, nuzzling the side of his neck, she pulled him down until he was on top of the nobleborn.
He felt himself slide into a place of blood and torn flesh.
Having delivered him, the woman stepped back, still laughing.
The nobleborn woman’s body was warm under his, and for all the bruises it was wondrously soft. He reached to hold her tight — to the howls of the others — and he whispered in her ear, asking for forgiveness.
Much later, they told him that she had breathed out her last breath while under him, and Narad had then realized that on that morning, upon the hearthstone, beauty had died in his arms.
Kadaspala woke with a start. He sat up. In his mind there remained the echoes of screaming — a terrible dream he could not even remember. He rubbed at his face, looked down in the pale morning light to see that his bruised thigh had swollen to twice the size of the other. Groaning, he sank back down.
But the faint echoes of the screams did not fade away. They did not fade at all.
No. Oh, no no no no -
