The Destroyer (52 page)

“Shut up, old man. If you would have done your job correctly, Jessmei would still be here and wouldn’t be a bargaining chip.” Nanos walked toward the door as if to leave but Greykin stood up abruptly in his chair and moved in front of the young man. The prince was tall but only came up to Greykin’s chin. There was no mistaking the look of malice on the Old Bear’s face.

“Enough you two! I’m sure the empress would laugh if she saw us fighting amongst ourselves. Take a walk, relax, and return in half an hour with a clear head. I need both of you to be thinking about killing our enemies, not each other,” the king said from behind them. Nanos looked fearfully at Greykin before he stepped around the big man, opened the door, and walked out.

He hadn’t even shut the door before a massive boom of thunder and screams echoed through the hallways. Greykin was already standing, but the rest of us shot to our feet in surprise. It sounded like one of the Ancients’ Fire blasts had been set loose inside the castle's innards. The alarm started ringing its deafening cry of anguish.

The prince ran back into the room, his face painted with terror.

“The Losher soldiers are in the castle!”

“How is that possible?” The king pulled out his sword and ran to the door. I noticed it was the same one Kaiyer used during the banquet a lifetime ago. Before the king could get out of the door, Greykin moved in front of him and exited the room. The big man was the guardian of the royal family and he probably felt that this was his moment to atone for what happened to Jessmei.

“We have to get all of you to safety!” Greykin yelled over his shoulder as he led us down the long hallway toward the Royal Quarters. We didn’t see any soldiers, but we could hear screaming and the sounds of swords pounding against shields and flesh as we ran the many hundreds of yards of maze-like stone passages that led to the north part of the castle.

“What about my wife?” the king yelled toward Greykin.

“She’s with her group of guards in the Safe Quarters. We are heading to meet them. There is enough food and water in there for us to last a month.”

I noticed that everyone held a weapon in their hand but me. I had never seen Nadea use her slim long sword, but it looked like a perfect reflection of her body, thin, beautiful, and deadly. The prince was carrying a heavier broad sword with a protected guard over his hand. I just had my small leather bound book of notes, a pocket full of ink vials, and two feather quills. Then I remembered that I had a small pen knife I used to trim my quills. It was about the size of my thumb, but it was sharp.

I was terrified that I would have to use it.

We turned the thirtieth corner and I was completely lost. Suddenly the group skidded to a stop. I peered around Nanos and Greykin to see three Losher soldiers finishing off two of our men who were dying on the stone floor of the Great Hall. The Losher warriors looked up from their deeds at the same time as we stopped. They let out a piercing battle cry as they rushed toward us.

The one in the lead lifted up his curved blade to crush Greykin’s skull, but the big man slammed it aside with a grunt of rage and swung his axe as a counter. The axe blade caught the Losher man in the place where his neck met the shoulder and it bit deeply into the leather armor, spraying a crimson rain over the king and the second Losher warrior who were about to engage each other.

The king jumped out of the way of a shallow swing that the Losher soldier aimed at his midsection and countered with an overhand thrust with his ornate golden sword. The Losher man expected it and got his sword up in the way, meeting the king’s blow with a loud clap of metal. The Losher warrior was at least twenty years younger than the king and his body was hardened and muscled from combat. He leaned forward and kicked a foot out toward the king, connecting with his chest and knocking him back into Nadea.

The third Losher soldier saw his friend butchered by Greykin and tried to cut the big man’s legs off with a low sweep of his curved sword. Greykin was too quick though and he moved back enough so that the tip of the blade just scratched harmlessly off of the chain leggings that the axe man was wearing. With the same movement, Greykin screamed and slammed his large body into the Losher warrior who had kicked the king. The big man's attack pinched the soldier against the wall and Greykin got two head butts into the younger man’s nose before falling back to defend against the other attacker.

Nanos advanced a quick cut, but the Losher man just danced away with a return swing that was a good foot from hitting the prince. The prince fell back so quickly from the assault that he stumbled into me and we both tumbled to the ground in a mess of arms, legs, and curses.

By the time I made it to my feet, the king and Greykin had dispatched the last Losher soldier and finished off the one stunned with the head butts. The big man’s head was bleeding from a gash at his hairline, but it might as well have been water for how he treated it. The king looked pained by the kick to his chest, but appeared otherwise uninjured.

“Everyone unharmed?” Greykin asked as he eyed us. I nodded and looked to Nadea as she also nodded. “Let’s continue.” Too late I realized that I had forgotten to grab one of the fallen soldier’s swords.

We ran another hundred yards and I wondered again who had made this castle so big. It was like its own city. My chest was burning and I wished that this siege played out like it had in my mind. I would have arrived in the castle and told everyone of my desire to stand with them. They would have been happy to see me, the Losher forces would have failed to breach the walls and we would have remained safely inside, laughing them off all winter, then our reinforcements would have shown up just in time to rout them. The worst thing I would have dealt with was a few weeks of hunger and Nanos speaking to me.

I heard screams and turned to see half a dozen Losher soldiers down the hall. I was the last person in our little caravan of retreat.

“Behind us!” Nadea yelled before I found my voice. Greykin looked over his shoulder.

“Keep running! We are almost there!” the big man growled as he turned back toward the king and prince. I picked up my feet and tried to ignore the harsh pain through my lungs.

We ran for another ten seconds and I couldn’t help but glance back over my shoulder. The soldiers were gaining ground on me. I could see their insane hatred and I knew they were going to catch me and not merely kill me, but make me suffer a slow, tortured death. Fear grabbed around my heart like a frozen chill. It spread through my body, to my chest and arms, and to my hips and legs. My feet were like pieces of stone as I tried to move them faster and faster. It seemed that with each one of my steps they were advancing two on me.

Then I tripped.

I was too busy looking behind me and not where I was running. I screamed in terror as I went down and scraped my knees and palms. My book went flying and I knew that I was about to die. It seemed like I stayed on my hands and knees forever. My blood and heartbeat whooshed into my ears as if telling me it would be the last thing I would ever hear.

“Get up!” Nadea screamed into my ear. Her left hand yanked me up off of my knees and to my feet like I weighed less than one of my books.

“Keep running!” Greykin screamed at us as he stepped past me, in between the half dozen Losher men. I looked into his face and saw a calm determination. His eyes were focused intently on the advancing mass of men.

“Go now. I’ll hold them. Protect the king,” he whispered when he turned his head slightly to look at Nadea and me. He raised his shield and axe as Nadea yanked on my arm again. The king and Nanos were far ahead of us and I watched them turn a corner to the right. We set off again and I heard Greykin shout over screams and blades.

“For Nia! For the king!”

I didn’t turn around.

“We are almost there,” Nadea said over her breathing after we had turned the corner the king and prince had taken. “Next left turn and we are there.” I looked at her tortured face as she ran next to me. Mine probably looked the same way.

We made the right turn after the fleeing pair and went down another forty paces into an open room. Then we stopped. The king was on the ground in a quickly growing pool of blood. Nanos was standing over him with a bloody sword.

Nadea and I stared in shock for almost ten seconds until Nanos noticed us out of the corner of his eye and turned around to face us. His face wore its usual expression: a sneer.

“He never listened to me. I was his firstborn, the heir to the kingdom, and he never gave a damn about what I thought. Now I am the king. I’ve already made a deal with the empress. She extended me the same one she did to him,” he said as he looked down at the fallen body of his father.

“You fucking bastard!” Nadea said with disgust and hate. “You’ve doomed us all and killed your own father.” Her body was shaking with rage.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand. You always got what you wanted, everyone thought you were so talented, so smart, so capable, and beautiful. Your father was always so proud of you and my father wished that I hadn’t been born.” Nanos sniffed his nose in disgust, or maybe it was to hide tears as he started to realize what he had done.

“You are a coward. Your father never felt that way about you. But if you wish to never have been born, I am more than happy to grant that.” Nadea got into a relaxed fighting stance and took a few careful steps toward Nanos. The young man looked a little shocked that Nadea was going to attack him but he quickly grinned in satisfaction.

“I was going to offer you safety, Cousin, but I think I prefer this. I’ve always wanted to kill you.” He crouched down into a low slung stance and waved his sword in the air in front of Nadea.

They circled each other for a few moments. I wondered how long it would be until the Losher men killed Greykin and came to find us. I realized that I couldn’t even help Nadea, I had no weapon besides the pathetic knife in my pocket, and I even dropped my book when I fell earlier. The prince advanced suddenly and lashed out at Nadea with three quick cuts. Nadea blocked the first two and retreated out of the way of the third one. I didn’t know who would win this fight. Nadea was strong, quick, and deadly. However, the prince still outweighed her by probably fifty pounds and trained every day. I guessed Nadea could use her sword, but I had never seen her practice with it. I had never felt so useless. I couldn’t help my friend survive this. Just like I couldn’t help Kaiyer, Jessmei, or Greykin.

Then I noticed the king’s golden sword on the ground, its blade partially submerged in the pool of blood coming from the king’s dead body. It was on the other side of Nadea and Nanos, but maybe I could get there and use it. Maybe I could finally help one of my friends when they needed me.

Nadea feinted forward and Nanos took the bait; she bounced back lightly and then struck forward again, fast as a striking snake, and made a shallow cut across the prince’s right upper arm.

“Fucking bitch. You cut me!” he screamed as he scurried back and looked down at his arm.

“I’m going to cut your heart out and eat it you spineless idiot!” Nadea thrust her blade toward his chest with the words. The prince may have been injured, but he blocked her strike and pushed it away from his body. Then he sprinted forward and slammed his shoulder into Nadea, pushing her away and knocking her to the ground. I took this as my chance and ran behind the prince as he pressed forward an attack. Nadea flipped herself easily to her feet and twisted around three of the prince’s strikes like she was a dancer evading the dirty grasps of a hated suitor.

I reached down into the blood and grabbed the king’s hand-and-a-half sword. It was heavier than I expected it to be, but my fear must have given me strength enough to hold the weapon. Nanos had his back to me and I stepped forward, moving the sword back in both my hands like I was going to chop down a tree with its fine blade.

“What’s this?” the prince said with a chuckle as he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “The little mouse wants to die too?”

“Leave him alone, Nanos. I am the one who will kill you,” Nadea said as she pressed another thrust. The prince parried this one in much the same way as her previous attack. Nadea seemed to have expected this though and she stepped to her left, turning the blade at the last second and bringing it up to make a deep cut across his chain armor and into his chest. The prince screamed and fell back toward me. I took the opportunity and swung the sword with all of my might.

I was so foolish. I didn’t know how to use a sword. If I would have even spent five minutes training with Greykin during our two-month journey together, he would have told me that I needed to at least keep my eyes open when I swung a blade.

They did open when I made sudden contact against Nanos’s back, causing him to scream. The blade only marginally penetrated the chain mail, but it took his attention away from Nadea. I think I was too scared to smile at the young man but my heart was racing with joy. Nadea quickly closed in from behind the prince and raised her sword. I was finally able to help her. I wasn’t a burden. Kaiyer would have been proud of my bravery.

I didn’t expect the balance of the blade and it spun me around easily as the prince turned and slammed his sword against it. Something hot tickled my stomach and I looked down to see Nanos’s blade sticking a good six inches into the right side of my abdomen. I felt the warmth and pain slowly spread through my body. Then it seemed to spill out of me when Nanos yanked the blade away.

I heard the king’s blade crash into the stone floor. Did I drop the weapon? I looked down at the blade and my chest. Was blood supposed to come out that quickly? It almost seemed like I was pouring a bottle of wine from the inside of my shirt. It collided with the stones like rain falling against the castle walls, some of it mixed with the king’s on the ground and it formed an ocean of red-colored glass.

The pressure of the floor was suddenly on my knees. I hadn’t remembered making myself kneel, but I felt so tired. I wanted to lie down for a while. Nadea screamed my name, but it sounded so far away. I hadn’t realized that my eyes were closed. I opened them to see her fighting against a group of men. They wore brown and gray armor and had skin many shades darker than hers. She cut one across the face with her blade and a shower of red blood flew across the room, then she stabbed another through the chest. I felt myself smiling. She was so beautiful. I wished that Kaiyer was alive to watch her.