Beyond the Hell Cliffs (35 page)

“Forward onto that spire, men!
  Kill anything that moves!”

The voice was that of a Saban.  Raegith had not heard the accent in over a year, but it was unmistakable.  Somewhere close, through the smoke,
were Saban soldiers and he had heard their orders as clearly as they had.  Beretta heard the voice, as well and turned.

“Was that…?”

A young man in armor and carrying a shield stepped around a shack and looked right at them.  Raegith recognized the emblem on the blue tabard hanging over his chest.  He was from the 9
th
Regiment.

“
By the Fates… a Demon!”  He brought his shield up and leveled his pike at Beretta.

The Infernal lifted her palm and green flame shot out towards the man, flaring off of his raised shield.  He took a step forward, blocking her attack, but the flame curl
ed over the top of his shield like the tail of a scorpion, hooking him in the back.

The man screamed as the flames quickly overtook him.  He died in a second, but not before his warning was picked up.

“Was that Eurestes?”

“Eurestes got hit!  Regroup and converge!”

“Contact left!  It’s a green… flame thing!”  The last command was close.  Raegith got to Beretta’s side and ran with her.

They started seeing the enemy now.  Saban soldiers, in their steel armor, were catching on to their position and trying to route them.  There were only a few of them, but they were armed and cohesive.  Raegith did not want to get cornered by them, even with Beretta’s considerable combat ability.  He had no weapons, nor did he have much training even if he did.  His skill had always been in unarmed combat, which was useless against men with swords and armor.

“They’re going for the gate!  Head them off!”

“Dammit!  They’re everywhere!”  Raegith kept up with the shorter Beretta, but they were both going to be intercepted at the gate.  “Aren’t there any guards nearby?
  They’re not even being resisted.”

“The
guards have either pulled back to the Spire or fled to their families,” Beretta said.  “This is the first time the Citadel has ever been attacked.  No one was prepared for this.”

Someone roared and suddenly a soldier mounted on a horse blocked their path.  Beretta barely pulled back in time to avoid the sweeping blade of the man’s pike.

“Rally on me!” the horseman yelled.  “I have him!”

Beretta flung more fire at the man, but as he blocked it with his shield, a fierce wind kicked up and extinguished it.

“Her flames are not of the Elemental; they are weak, indeed!”

A Faeir in white and yellow robes appeared beside the horseman and in the next instant Raegith and Beretta were both surrounded.  The Saban soldiers closed in on them, blocking off all of the routes in between buildings.  The South Gate was just in sight.

“Stay behind me, Raegith,” Beretta said.

“Sir, is that… does she have one of ours hostage?”

One of the soldiers finally noticed Raegith’s northern features.  Raegith looked to the side and saw a Twileen hunter with his bow drawn on both of them.  He looked hesitant.

“That doesn’t look like one of the ‘Darkies.’  He looks like… Rung’un.”

Raegith recognized the word.  Ebriz had called him by the term before.  It was what several of the older Twileen tribes called those of mixed heritage.  A twinge of doubt and uncertainty shot through him.  These were his people, standing before him, weapons drawn.  Even if the soldiers spared him, they would cut Beretta down immediately.  The only way they were both escaping the Citadel was to go through these men.  It had finally come down to choosing between his people and the ones who took him in.

The horseman drew closer and raised his pike.

“No, don’t!” Raegith yelled, holding up his hands at the man and stepping between him and Beretta.

“Sir, he’s one of us!” the hunter yelled, lowering his bow.  “Kid, get away from that thing!  We’ll get you out of here!”

“Corporal, do not address the enemy,” the horseman commanded.  “If you have the shot, dammit, then take it!”

“Sir, he’s Rung’un!  He’s not Greimere; he’s a Saban!  He’s probably that thing’s prisoner.”  The hunter was coming towards Raegith now and holding out his hand.

“Just let us go, please,” Raegith said, hardly thinking of the words coming out of his mouth.

“Corporal!”

“Sir, just let me get to him…” The hunter could not finish his sentence.  From behind him a large shadow appeared.

Dull green arms emerged from the shadow of the building and grabbed the Twileen’s head.  With a quick twist, the hunter’s neck popped and he slumped to the ground.
  The horseman had been trying to warn him.

From the roof of a building, a dark form took to the air like a bird and dove down onto the horse. 
Kimura landed on the back of the beast, behind the rider.  Something flickered in her hand and she pounded the side of his chest over and over.  The horseman groaned and threw his elbow back, catching her in the face and knocking her from the horse. 

All around Raegith, the Helcats stormed out of the alleys and engaged the soldiers.  Beretta caught the horseman off guard and burned him in his armor.  A tornado appeared before the Faeir and he screamed enchantments into the air, sending his deadly cyclone cutting into the Rathgar that had killed the hunter.

Raegith’s breath caught as the skin was ripped from the girl’s body by the force of the wind.  Her right arm was flung so hard that it popped out of the socket and whipped around the back of her head, spinning her into a wall.  The razor wind hit her again and grinded away her flesh.

Then Helkree was there,
grabbing the Mage by the neck, bending him over and ramming the top of his head into the side of a nearby wall.  The Faeir’s neck crumpled and his head sunk into his chest.  Helkree raised his corpse off the ground and flung it at an approaching soldier, knocking him to his back.  As the soldier squirmed under the dead Mage, Helkree grabbed the horseman’s still-flaming pike and skewered both of them.

In seconds the fight was over and Sabans lay dead all around.  Raegith had not even reacted to the situation.  Even after the death that he had seen in the Pit and at the hands of Greela on his first night, he had still locked up in actual combat.  Or was it uncertainty?  As Helkree called out to her Helcats, he realized that he was still staring at the dead Twileen; the one who had disobeyed a direct order to try and rescue him.

“Helcats?”

“Broosh!” the survivors bellowed, like berserkers.

“Grass… hair…”

Raegith turned towards the weak voice to his side.  As he looked at the mangled Rathgar, with half of her body eaten away to the bone in places,
he recognized which one of the Rathgar girls it was.

“Oh no, Enga,” he whispered.

He ran to her side and the others were there a moment later.

“It hurts…” she said, slumped against the wall.

“We have to do something,” Raegith said, looking up at Helkree.

She reached down and pulled a slim dagger out of the hunter’s belt and handed it to him.  “This is the only thing you can give her.”

“I… got one… Grass-hair…” she said.  Her voice was dropping off.  “It hurts.”

“You did
good, Enga.”  It was a lie.  Raegith could feel the revulsion down inside him.  He did not want the hunter dead; but he lied for Enga.  He lied to give her a good death.  “You’ve earned a spot among your ancestors.”

“Do it, Raegith.”
  Indie, the other Rathgar in the Helcats was beside him.  “She deserves to have this from you.”

Raegith looked down at the dagger and back at Enga. 
“Yeah.”

He stroked her good cheek with his hand and she closed her eyes.  Then he plunged the dagger into her chest, just left of center.  It was quick and he thanked the Fates for giving him a steady hand.

Then Helkree was grabbing him and hauling him to his feet.  Her face was inches from his.

“You don’t stray from my side, ever again.  Understand?”

“You were right,” he mumbled, looking behind her.  Kimura was bent over the form of Makat, her best friend.  They had lost two Helcats that night, rescuing him.

“Hey, snap out of this!” Helkree shook him.

“We have to leave now, Raegith.  The gate is open.” Beretta eyed the others suspiciously.  “My orders were to protect Raegith, not a group of convicts.”

Helkree turned on her.  “We don’t need your useless protection, Infernal.  Helcats, form up!  We’re leaving this sinking ship. 
Kimura, get moving.”

To her credit, the bubbly Lokai girl got to her feet and turned away from her best friend’s body with nothing but a hardened expression on her face.  For a moment her eyes met Raegith and he wanted to turn away.  He expected hatred in those dark eyes.  It was his fault that Makat was dead.  What he found was only determination.  Helkree had picked some tough women for her group.

There was little resistance as they left the gates.  The Helcats had salvaged what weapons they could from the soldiers, but the shields were too unwieldy and the short swords were foreign.  As women, none of them had any experience with weapons, except Helkree.

They passed below the gate and left the Citadel behind.  A few other groups of inhabitants had the same idea.  Rathgar, Lokai and Gimlet were fleeing the city
.  Beretta stood out among all of them, the green flames atop her head like a beacon.  No other soldiers appeared.  They were all converging on the Spire.

As they walked further from the fighting and smoke, Raegith looked back at the
Spire.  He wondered if the Rellizbix army had reached it yet.  He wondered if the Empress would somehow survive the assault.  Maybe the general in charge would have mercy or respect for royalty.  Maybe they just wanted to destroy any aspect of a resistance.

These were dying hopes.  Rellizbix had never invaded the Greimere before.  Even in the old days, when the Greimere Empire was a real threat, Rellizbix had stopped short of the Hell Cliffs.  For them to come all this way, into unknown territory with such a massive force, just to stamp out a possible rebellion was unthinkable.  Something had changed with the king.  Maybe Helfrick sent him down there to die as an excuse to end the treaty and destroy the Empire once and for all.

“How did you find me?” Raegith asked.

The group had settled down for the night, taking shelter with the large group of refugees that had coalesced as they put distance between them and the Citadel.  It was second nature to those in the Greimere to band together at night.  The dangers of the
darkness could be held at bay with large numbers and plenty of light, but the chances of one or two of them getting picked off by a Grabber or some other night beast were still high.

“Mostly luck,” Fenra said.  “Helkree was taking us all the way into the Citadel… to the Spire in order to get to you.  We had
set off for the west gate just moments before we heard the attack.  Our escorts bickered about what to do, but Helkree broke free from them.  Once we all started running, the guards just let us go.”

“And Noriko?”

“The Junie was too scared to come with us, I suppose.” Helkree rolled her eyes and played with the dirt at her feet.  “She didn’t even turn around to look when we heard the thunder.  She obviously didn’t give a shit about you; just like I told you before.”

“She was escaping, she said.  She told me that she would sneak away from the escort and head home, to the south.”

“There is nothing to the south,” Beretta said.  “Only the Gimlets go into the Bogs and not very deep even then.”

“The Junie bitch was out of her mind, it sounds like.”
Hitomi, the other Lokai girl, was a bit of a pessimist. “Doesn’t surprise me.  None of us like Junies, much.  They give us Lokai a bad name.”

“
They
do?” Indie asked.  “Lokai reputation not that great to begin with.”

Hitomi
lifted her hand and waved Indie off, dismissively, as Raegith had done in the Pit.

“Oh, dumb brat thinks she’s Grass-hair, now?”
Indie grumbled.

“It’s a good insult, I think.  I’m just helping it catch on.  One of these days, when Grass-hair rules this place, this will be the standard insult.”

“Is that what you think we’re doing, Hitomi?” Raegith asked.

His tone was not humorous and the others got quiet as
Hitomi just stared wordlessly at him.

“So, your idea of the future is that I will just conquer all of the Greimere?  I’m going to become the new Emperor and make all of you my… what, duchesses?  Do seek to be a noble now,
Hitomi?”

“I, uh…” she stuttered, looking around at the others.  “Grass-hair, I…”

“In case you missed it, Hitomi, the Greimere is back there, getting obliterated.  The Spire is falling and with it are all of the histories of this place.  The Sabans won’t care about any of it.  They’re probably burning it all as we sit here, just to make sure we’re left nothing.  Who knows what they’re doing to the ones who did not get out.  Who knows what they’re doing to the Empress…”