Kill the boy, the half-blood mouthed. No sound. His lungs were stone like his legs and his bowels. A dream, he thought again, watching the Messaii soldiers file into rank.
They were two-dozen and they were one—a machine—a beast with teeth of wood and iron, hungry yet lumbering under its own size. Cain searched the line as the jaws encroached. He stood half way between the host and the helpless assembly, his hands empty, his body naked from the waist up.
It was over in a moment. The sacrifice filled his chest and charged for the nearest soldier—a green man looking scared as Adnihilo felt. The soldier panicked, and Cain faded away from a premature thrust. Then the other footmen struck with their weapons—too late. The sacrifice had grabbed the shaft and dragged his victim from the protection of the line, the whole time the green man clinging to his spear. Only after did the fear subside and the soldier think to draw his sword. But by then, the sacrifice was on him, seizing his wrist and twisting. He swept his victim’s feet and slammed him on the floor before following with the stolen weapon, point down, ploughing through maille and cloth and skin and breastbone, through heart and muscle till the tip chipped on the tile below.
Then the line encroached, their formation curling—wood and iron teeth, the beast’s jaws slowly closing around Cain. An envelopment. And Adnihilo was aware of nothing save for his mentor struggling to free the sword from the corpse; and he tore it free, but there were so many of them surrounding him. Cain hardly turned to see the first spear sink deep into his belly. A dream. This has to be a dream. Adnihilo gnawed his lips and cheeks. Wake up! He squeezed his fingers till his palms started to bleed onto his fingernails. Wake up!
“Adnihilo!”
The half-blood broke from his trance to Jezebel dragging him passed broken benches and up-ended tables, straining against separation amongst the stampede of fleeing Impii and Messah in every direction. Adam was a few feet ahead, vanishing and appearing again from behind the waves of terrorized bodies, guiding Jezebel toward the southeastern corridor, toward David. They were nearly half way there when the pastor’s son disappeared in a tide of Impii. The soldiers had them hemmed in by then, and the whole assembly could feel their fangs closing in. A few tried to fight. They died; and their screams and blood covered the armoured men like grisly mountains, like the parish had become some valley of death. And Adnihilo was trapped in its shadow, himself and Adam and Jezebel, and he could no longer tell which way was out.
“Behind you!” Adam’s voice broke through, and the singer spun in time to see a soldier break rank from his brothers. This one was older, shaved and weather worn, gray hair peaking from inside his nostrils. He came at her unarmed, half the size of Cain, yet strong enough to carry her off behind an overturned table, just out of view of the slaughter. He didn’t even seem to notice the half-blood, just left him to stand aside, paralyzed, as he pinned Jezebel on the far side of the barrier.
Adnihilo wanted to run, to cry, to fight, yet his body did nothing but chew his tongue till he coughed on the blood, and even then his knuckles were white and trembling. Dying would have been a mercy then. Instead, he was made to watch as David appeared in his place. The soldier, however, never saw the pastor coming, so fixated was he with mounting his prey. He saw the steel, though. It was impossible to miss the slender point jolting inches into his eye and out again. He winced at the tiny wound, his wrinkles deepening as he sputtered obscenely as David put a boot to his bosom and kicked his body aside.
The half-blood’s fear subsided only after Adam reappeared adjacent his father while the pastor helped Jezebel to her feet. It hurt, his cowardice—like salt in a wound, watching someone else do what he could not. He thought for a moment about the bodies on the floor, glanced toward the portal, and considered going back to look for his mentor. The formation had broken into lone looters and murderers, the assembly into heaps of black and white corpses. Perhaps they passed him over, he wanted to believe. Maybe he’s still alive. Maybe—
The singer called his name and again tore Adnihilo from his fantasy. Ashamed, he turned and waded through trampled food and furniture and over dead parishioners to sneak with the others along the southern wall. He kept his eyes to the floor as they ran toward David’s cell, into the corridor now wholly in shadow, its candles smashed onto the tiles and embedded with fragments of window. And there were more glass shards scattered about a pair of corpses—soldiers by the shape of their silhouettes. Adnihilo looked out the broken windows, saw the shadowy figures of men with spears in hand. It left a dread in his heart—they had the parish surrounded—and he knew then that they would never escape. Jezebel must have thought the same. She started to ask the pastor where they were going, but he hushed her and directed them into the kitchen.
The narrow room was abandoned, empty aside from the bramble of pan and pot handles, cluttered counter tops, rows of ovens, and at the end of the hall, a lonely, black-iron stove. David sheathed his sword and shut the door behind them. It was old wood, warped. The nails had rusted to almost nothing, and the
