Authors: Victor Gischler
Where the hell is the big savage? The one time I actually need a fucking bodyguard—
Rina suddenly felt Zarrik’s hand on her wrist, pulling her down the steps of the dais. “Lady Rina, hurry! We need to get you to safety before—”
Something metal flashed past her, and Zarrik grunted, twitched and let go of her.
The general fell dead at her feet. A ring of metal spikes had killed him, some sort of throwing weapon. One of the spikes had buried itself deep in the middle of his forehead. His eyes were open but lifeless, mouth twitching.
Oh, Dumo, help us
. Her hand went automatically to the sword strapped to her waist, but it wasn’t there. A young lady did not wear a sword with a dress on formal occasions.
Damn it!
The Perranese soldiers continued to slaughter the men of Klaar. In seconds, the battle would be over.
The Duke backed up the dais to stand next to his steward. “Giffen, take my wife and daughter and flee out the back hallway. I won’t be able to hold them, but maybe I can buy you a few seconds to—”
The Duke’s breath caught. He looked down, saw Giffen’s hand holding the dagger he’d just jabbed into his side. The Duke’s eyes came back up to Giffen’s smiling face; he worked his mouth, trying to speak, but couldn’t find breath.
Giffen withdrew the dagger, plunged it in again.
Rina watched in horror. “Daddy!”
The Duke dropped to his knees, the rapier tumbling from his hand to clatter on the stone steps. He turned his head to look at his daughter, his expression one of utter bewilderment.
Rina rushed to him, glancing at her mother who sat agape, nearly catatonic.
Rina scooped up her father’s rapier and swung at Giffen in the same motion. The steward threw up an arm out of reflex and the blade tore a gash across the bottom of his forearm. He screamed and backed away.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Perranese warriors approaching. She turned, sword in front of her. She was aware of all the bodies behind them. The Klaarian soldiers were dead to a man.
A young Perranese bounded up the steps, thrusting at Rina. His sword was long and curved, but only slightly heavier than her father’s rapier.
Kork’s teaching immediately took over.
His armor was made up of overlapping discs of some shining metal. Kork’s enormous sword could probably bite through easily, but she’d need to find a weak spot for the rapier. The mesh under the arms might be fabric or dark, thin chainmail.
But the Perranese warrior’s wide-brimmed helmet had no face guard.
She stepped past the thrust, parrying with the rapier. A flick of her wrist brought the blade around and over the warrior’s sword hilt and at his face.
The Perranese warrior had been surprised twice in less than a second. First, by Rina’s speed. Second, by the sword blade that buried itself deep into his left eye socket.
Rina almost lost the sword when the warrior screamed and turned away, but she held on and pulled it free of his skull, spinning to face the other warriors who came up more cautiously.
“Take her alive.” Rina heard Giffen’s voice behind her.
The remaining warriors stormed up the dais at her. She swung the sword, lunged, turned, swung again. She caught one on the hand, drawing blood, another on the thigh. Her blade bounced off of the chest armor of another, and finally she felt hands on her as they crowded around.
She kept thrashing as they pressed against her. There was no room to strike with the sword, but she swung backhanded and smashed the hilt into a warrior’s nose, heard the cartilage
pop
; blood streamed from his nostrils.
“It’s just one little brat,” yelled Giffen.
Something sharp struck Rina on the back of the head. The world tilted and blurred and then went black.
She heard the voices before she could open her eyes.
“Your men found the ropes at the secret spot near the back gate?” Giffen’s voice.
“Yes.” A light Perranese accent. “The men who came over the wall were in bad spirits. They had been hiding for two weeks, freezing their asses off.” A small chuckle. “But that just made them fight harder, I think.”
Rina still couldn’t open her eyes. Her head was spinning, throbbing.
“Still, you must admit it was a good plan,” Giffen said. “No one believes a threat to the back gate is possible. It was simple enough to position a score of men ahead of time, bringing them up by night. If they grew cold and lonely while waiting then they can be first in line at the brothels when you take the city.”
“
If
we take the city,” the Perranese voice said. “Taking the front gate from the inside was easy enough, but even now fighting continues in the streets. These people are sloppy fighters but stubborn. They are too stupid to know they are beaten.”
“You have my full confidence,” Giffen said. “I’m sure your men will soon subdue the remaining—Ah, she’s awake. Good.”
Rina blinked three times, her vision snapping back into focus. Her face pressed against the cold stone floor. Her head felt heavy like a bag of rocks knocking together. She shifted her line of sight enough to see Giffen and one of the Perranese foreigners looming over her. He had some kind of plume in his broad helmet; an officer maybe.
Giffen grinned down at her. “Get up, brat.”
Rina propped herself up on one elbow, head throbbing in protest. That was as far as she could get. The headache behind her eyes was nearly blinding.
Giffen snapped his fingers impatiently. “Get her up.”
She felt rough hands grab her under the arms and drag her to her feet. Her head flopped, chin bouncing against her chest. She forced herself to look, lifting her head. She was still in the audience chamber. How long had she been out? There were at least twenty Perranese warriors in the chamber now. What had happened?
She glanced sideways at the steps of the dais. Her father still lay dead, sprawled where he’d been murdered by the traitor Giffen.
A sob welled up in her chest suddenly, wracked her entire body.
Father
…
Giffen lifted a chin with her finger. “I know you grieve. But believe me, it can get worse. It can always get much worse.”
She wanted to curse him, but couldn’t summon the words. Her vision blurred with tears.
“Bring her!”
But Giffen hadn’t meant Rina. The Perranese warriors parted as two soldiers dragged another woman through the crowd.
Mother!
They threw her to the ground, where she knelt, her hands over her head, trembling.
“First, we show that we’re serious,” Giffen said.
He signaled one of the Perranese soldiers standing over Rina’s mother.
The warrior grabbed a fistful of the woman’s hair, jerked her head up and in one smooth motion slit her throat with a long, curved dagger.
Rina screamed, a long, anguished animal howl. She struggled fiercely against those holding her, murderous rage blinding her to everything but sinking her nails into Giffen’s face.
An instant later, she went limp, crying helplessly.
Oh, Mother, how did this happen? I’m so sorry. So sorry
. Mother and Father dead. Duchy seized by invaders. In an eye blink, everything had been taken away.
Giffen bent to look her in the eye. “Now, I think I have your attention, yes?”
Rina spat, the warm wad of saliva hitting the side of his nose.
He straightened, frowned and sighed, wiping the spittle away with a pinky finger. “A brat and a fool to the very end, I see.”
Giffen swung suddenly, backhanding her across the face, the slap of skin on skin echoing through the audience chamber.
Sparks went off in Rina’s eyes, her cheek hot and stinging.
She forced herself to suck in a mouthful of air, let it out slowly, trying to clear her head. When she met Giffen’s gaze again, there were no more tears. Only cold fury. Somehow she would survive this. She would live to hold Giffen’s heart in her hand. She would hack it out of his chest herself, with a dull rusty hatchet.
“The Perranese are putting me in charge of Klaar,” Giffen said. “We know how stubborn our citizens can be, and they’ll take it better if one of their own rules over them instead of a foreigner. I even have a little story prepared, how on his deathbed your father asked me to take charge of the duchy, to act as a buffer between his beloved people and the savage invaders from across the sea.” Giffen shrugged. “As a loyal subject of Klaar, what else could I do but respect your father’s dying wish?”
“They’ll see through you in ten seconds,” Rina said. “They’ll rip you to shreds as a traitor and hang your corpse from the city walls for the buzzards.”
“I don’t think so,” Giffen said. “But as an aid to my little fiction, I want your father’s signet ring. I’d like to show it to the people as I deliver my tearful speech, telling them how the Duke’s final thoughts were of their well-being, and how we should persevere even under Perranese rule. We’ve searched your family’s living quarters. You wouldn’t happen to know where that ring is, would you?”
“Go fuck yourself.” In fact, she didn’t know. Not a clue. But she wouldn’t tell Giffen even if she did.
“I want you to imagine that a dank cell in the bowels of the castle dungeon can seem like paradise compared to … other things,” Giffen told her. “We might even manage to toss you a crust of bread once a day.”
She said nothing, glared her defiance.
“Think about where that signet ring is hidden,” Giffen suggested. “It won’t change my plan one bit if I don’t have it, but, unlike when I was a mere steward, I expect to
get
what I want and we might as well start with
you
. So I’ll ask you the same question again in an hour, and you’ll have another opportunity to demonstrate your obedience. In the meantime, it’s my understanding that these men,” he gestured to the score of Perranese warriors, “have been without female companionship for a number of weeks.”
Rina went cold.
The chamber echoed with the fall of Giffen’s boots. He passed through the big double doors and they
thunked
closed behind him.
Silence stretched, and Rina was aware only of the panicked heartbeat thumping in her ears.
Then the hands holding her frantically pawed at her clothes, a sleeve ripped. Rina screamed. The other men crowded, reaching in, all trying to get at her all at once. She heard more cloth ripping. She struggled, tried to kick, hands on her legs, pushing her dress up. One of the men produced a dagger, sliced the laces of her tight bodice, and it popped loose. Her breasts shifted under the thin fabric of her shift. One of the men had a handful of her hair. She could not remember a time when she wasn’t screaming.
They lowered her to the stone floor, and one of the warriors knelt in front of her, pried her knees apart. She kicked at him, but others moved in to grab her ankles.
She tried to thrash, squirm, anything. Her arms and legs were held fast. This was it, the end. She had a desperate thought that maybe she could grab a dagger from one of the other warriors’ belts and plunge it into her own heart, but they held her too tightly.
Rina looked at the man kneeling before her, pleading with her eyes, hoping he could feel some sort of mercy.
A blur of movement, the glint of metal.
The head popped off of the warrior who’d been kneeling in front of her, tumbling though the air and raining blood. Rina blinked, unsure of what she’d seen.
Another metallic blur, and the hand holding her ankle separated at the wrist. Impossibly, the men crowding her seemed not to notice. They pushed in, hands grabbing at her breasts through the thin, silken shift. The point of a thick blade, thrust through the open mouth of a warrior holding her arm. His eyes shot wide as blood fountained out of his mouth and down his chin.
Now the Perranese warriors realized something was amiss. They released Rina, backed away, drawing their swords.
Kork whirled among them, swinging his sword in two-handed fashion, severed limbs flying in arcs of blood. They tried to rally and rush him, but he ducked beneath their sword swings, dodged their thrusts, batted aside their blades.
Kork’s hand flicked toward Rina. Something landed in her lap.
She fumbled for it, head swimming. A glass vial wrapped in leather. She uncorked it, the
ting
of steel on steel echoing in the audience chamber. She brought it to her mouth, the pungent tangy odor hitting her a split second before she titled it back and drained the vial. It’s warmth raced through her body, reaching every part of her at once.
Her head cleared, pain fading.
A healing elixir. They were fabulously expensive.
Never mind that now!
Kork spun among the Perranese warriors, the brute force of his huge blade hacking easily through the armor. Everywhere Kork struck, another invader stumbled back, spraying blood and screaming.
Rina shrugged off the bodice and scooped up one of the fallen Perranese swords. The would-be rapists had unwittingly done her a favor. Wearing only the silken, sleeveless shift, she was able to move more fluidly. The foreign sword was single edged, made more for slicing and hacking than thrusting. She instantly recalled Kork’s lessons with such weapons and waded without hesitation into the combat.
They didn’t even notice Rina at first, all of them crowding around Kork, trying to bring down the big man.
Rina swung the sword, an upward, backhanded cut. The blade slid under the back of a warrior’s broad helmet, laying open the base of his skull. Blood and brains spilled out hotly onto the floor as the warrior fell.
She turned to another, stabbed at the weak area of the armor under his arm. She pulled the sword out fast, felt a hot spray of blood across her face.
They’d noticed Rina now, and two of the warriors broke off their assault on Kork to come at her. She knocked one’s sword aside as he stepped in for a thrust, but flicked her wrist for a quick strike at the other, the blade dragging down the warrior’s bracer until it caught the fleshy part between his thumb and forefinger. He flinched back, hissing pain.