I scramble to my feet tucking the knife back into my waistband and daring to take another second to retrieve the soldier’s sword from the sand. I take off, kicking up sand as I dart between the fallen. I turn to see if Faelyn follows and I come skidding to a halt.
He’s completely alone now, the only one who didn’t retreat with the rest and is holding his post. He draws his blade in wide arcs as the soldiers begin to swarm him, his injured leg struggling as he constantly turns to meet each of his new challengers.
He gets slashed deep in his chest, he swings erratically before another plunges into his side and he crumples to one knee. Even now he fights, thrusting into gaps in the armour, forcing them back to lean against the barricade. More join the fray. He catches a couple in the legs and they go tumbling, they approach him from behind as well now. One last wild look from those sharp eyes, teeth bared as he makes a warrior’s final stand, before the armour closes in around him.
One of the soldiers falls, brought to the ground by some unseen force, another stumbles away from the group hand pressed firmly over a bleeding gut. Finally, the activity stops. The soldiers finally disband, resuming their advancement towards the sea, leaving an abnormally long body in their wake.
With no time to mourn, I obey Faelyn’s dying command. I run.
A thundering begins on my right, Orrian and the others before me devote their attention to the source. Without breaking stride, I glance in dread as a familiar rhythm forms, their cavalry has arrived.
Prince Arron leads the charge, they must have skirted the barricade further down the beach. He rides with perhaps fifty others, almost matching us head-for-head without even counting the infantry chasing towards us from the other side.
I arrive at Orrian’s side, the horses only a few hundred meters away now and approaching quickly. With us between them and the sheer cliff face and the sea at our backs, we have nowhere left to run. We rotate at such an angle that both forces attack our fronts, the remnants of the tribe forming a protective barrier between the colony and the rafts.
“Take the children,” Orrian commands Jaq.
“My king,” says Jaq shocked, “I can’t leave you.”
Orrian turns to his second in command, “Jaq, back there is our future. Take Tharrin and get out of here, that’s an order.”
Jaq hesitates for a moment longer, two different kinds of loyalties warring in his mind. He grabs Tharrin by the arm and they disappear behind us. Tharrin’s prisoner is left by himself in the sand suddenly without a guard. Orrian watches as the spy launches to his feet and darts for the safety of the trees. Clearly Orrian has decided that the spy is unworthy of any more of his people’s time or attention given the situation and watches the man kick up sand behind him in contempt.
Orrian turns to me, “Ready?”
I nod nervously, sticking the sword between my legs momentarily so that I may wipe away the sweat that has gathered on my hands. Orrian takes his remaining three arrows in his free hand, and then without another look back, he steps forward to greet the charge.
The first two arrows take out the prince’s bannermen, the third goes straight through his steed’s eye. The horse topples, sending the prince hurtling through the air. Unfortunately, the spread of the cavalry is too thin to crush him underfoot and through the hazel blur a gold embroidered figure still rises to his feet.
Orrian didn’t stop to check that his arrows hit, he has already discarded the bow in favour of a sword. He charges the horsemen, the fastest of the tribesmen barely keeping up. He ducks as the first horseman swings low and he sweeps away the horse’s feet, separating the soldier from his ride. He doesn’t even wait to deal with the fallen man, leaving him to the charging mass as he heads in Arron’s direction.
Astera wakes me from my daze, pulling me after her as we lead the assault on the foot soldiers in the other direction. I pursue the twins as they join the battle, iron converging on us from all sides. We duck and weave, I slash with my stolen blade and they with their knives. We dance around the soldiers. They may be protected under all that armour, but it makes them far to slow, not agile enough to keep up with us.
Horas and Astera work in perfect harmony. Each covers the other as they litter the ground with bodies. They fight with the same mind, a single united force laying havoc to those that have wronged them. When Horas had confided in me that he hadn’t wanted to be the Akanian I had assumed he perhaps wasn’t as able a fighter as the rest of them, I couldn’t have been more wrong. He may do everything he can to avoid the conflict, but once involved I certainly wouldn’t want to be his target. As I roll and slash between legs and through gaps, I marvel at their movement. The pair move through the crowd as fluidly as water, as if each block, each dodge and parry, was all part of a familiar routine.
Twisting to narrowly avoid an arcing blade I emerge back into the open, slicing behind at the unarmoured backs of the legs behind me and bringing one more into the sand. I’ve come out the other side and now trap the colony men between myself and our forces. Sweat beads my forehead and panting I look down to find several long cuts streaking across my arm, I hadn’t even noticed I’d been touched.
All formations have been lost now, Halpian, tribesman, cavalry, all mix in one single chaotic swarm. For a moment I spot Orrian, his face coated in blood as he
