‘This,’ Dom said, hefting the sword, ‘this is
clearly an officer’s sword’ he said, looking at the sword in his
hand. ‘And I think you’re no officer’ he continued, handing the
sword back behind him to the Sergeant.
Erris heard more laughter from the
soldiers.
‘And this?’ Dom continued, reaching into the
bag and pulling out a book. ‘Where did these come from?’
Dom looked at the book in his hand, flipped
it open nonchalantly.
‘Banned.’ He said, throwing the book into the
air over his shoulder, the books binding stretching and its pages
flapping wildly as it flew. Erris heard herself whimper as the book
landed, its pages bending and tearing under the weight of the
toss.
Dom reached into the bag again.
‘Banned.’
‘Banned.’
‘Banned.’
Each time, a book flew over his shoulder to
land unceremoniously, painfully, on the grey cobblestones of the
street.
‘We clearly have a problem here, sister,’ Dom
said as he stepped closer to her.
She was still sitting on the wagon as Dom
stepped closer, his head level with her shoulders, and she wasn’t
sure if her legs would be able to support her if she tried to
stand.
‘You show up here unclothed, in a stolen
wagon, with a stolen Church sword, and a bag full of banned books.
What am I supposed to do, sister dear? I don’t really want to have
to take you in for questioning, little bird, I’m sure you
understand that.’ Soldiers laughed again as Dom continued. ‘Like I
said, I’m sure you understand, but unless you can explain, I’m not
sure…’
‘Why are you doing this!’ Erris yelled at
him, leaning forward in her seat, her hands clenched into fists on
her knees.
Dom leaned his head to one side, one eyebrow
raised.
Then his right arm lashed out, and he landed
an open-palmed slap to Erris’ left cheek that sent her sprawling
across the wagon’s seat, her hand flying to her face in shock.
‘I don’t like being interrupted, little
bird,’ Dom said angrily as he stepped forward and grabbed her
wrist, pulling her back towards the edge of the wagon. He pulled
her down to his eye level, and loomed.
‘Now, what are we going to do with you?’ he
asked, any sign of a smile on his face gone, and only religious
fervor burning in his eyes.
The soldiers behind him laughed again.
***
Gel had crept close enough to make out more
or less what was going on now. The wagon in the street was
surrounded by soldiers, maybe ten, maybe twelve of them, and it
looked like there was a girl sitting on it, her back facing him.
The girl was talking with one of the soldiers it looked like, the
rest of them laughing occasionally, but none of that mattered to
Gel.
He stopped creeping, stood and walked
open-mouthed towards the wagon, towards the soldier talking to the
girl, and he remembered.
In through the doorway stepped a large,
bearded man, who laughed as the fire from outside glittered madly
off his eyes. He was wearing a large, gold buttoned red coat, and
his large red beard seemed as wild and uncontrollable as the fire
from Gel’s dreams. He grinned as he saw Gel abed and walked towards
him, sword arm rising as he came. Each step he took, each time his
thick boots hit the wooden floor of Gel’s room, sounded like a peal
of a large clock, ringing out the time to Gel’s doom. The man’s
footsteps were the sound of death approaching, the grinning man,
with his fiery red beard, death himself.
Still half lying under covers, Gel could only
get his right arm free as the man reached the right side of his bed
and swung his sword. Gel tried to protect himself, tried to grab
the sword, to do anything, but there was nothing Gel could do as
the man’s sword swung inwards towards his head.
The last thing Gel saw through his splayed
fingers, raised on instinct in a vain effort to protect himself,
was firelight glinting off the metal blade as it angled towards his
head.
It was him. The man who had taken his
parents, his village, his fingers, and his life from him. He was
standing right in front of him, not thirty paces away. Standing
there, with the same giant beard, the same gold-buttoned red coat,
the same sword at his hip.
Gel snarled without noticing it, his face a
rictus of anger; hatred.
His right hand was snaking for his quiver,
reaching for an arrow, as the girl leaned forward and yelled.
‘Why are you doing this!’ Gel half-heard.
His left hand pulled the bow from around his
shoulder, held it tight, as the bearded man slapped the girl.
As the man grabbed her wrist, pulled her
closer, Gel knocked the arrow. The bearded man said something, and
the soldiers around him laughed, as Gel drew the fletching to his
cheek.
‘Die!’ he yelled as he released, and time
seemed to slow.
He watched as the arrow left his fingers, the
bowstring snapping forward and backwards as the arrow flew
forward.
He watched as the arrow shifted up and down
like…well…like nothing he could explain. The church soldiers looked
to him as the arrow flew; the bearded soldier started to turn
towards him, first his head, then his shoulders, then the rest of
him, turning slowly to face Gel, to face his anger and hatred, as
his death sped towards him.
The bearded soldier let go of the girl, her
arm dropping slowly as one of his feet moved forwards toward Gel,
and the arrow was almost there. He had turned to face Gel, to face
the arrow that would avenge Gel’s parents, his village, just as the
arrow reached him.
It was perfect, and an angry snarl of delight
filled Gel’s face. He could almost feel the scar over his eye
burning, could feel the heat of his missing fingers.
Gel swore as he saw the bearded man twitch a
smile, his eyes glancing to the side to watch the arrow miss by
mere inches.
And then it was past him, burying its steel
head into the neck of another of the soldiers behind. Blood spurted
from a severed artery; cries of surprise began to ring out from the
lips of the other soldiers as the man with the arrow in his neck
reached up to the wound, his hands scrabbling at the arrow as he
pitched backwards.
And then time was back to normal. Gel stood,
shocked into immobility for a second as the soldiers cried, grabbed
at their falling comrade, as the bearded man took a first running
step towards Gel, the fire in his eyes and the grin on his face the
same as the night Gel had lost everything.
Gel scrambled backwards as the bearded man
came closer. Panicking, he reached for another arrow, but his
fingers were sweaty, they wouldn’t grab on. Why wouldn’t one fall
into his fingertips. He just needed an arrow, just one arrow, he
wouldn’t miss again.
He looked back over his shoulder to grab one,
his eyes guiding his unsteady hand to an arrow as he pulled it from
the quiver, dropped his gaze to his lowered bow to knock the arrow,
and began to draw.
He looked up to aim in time to see the
bearded man reach him, watched in impotent silence as the man’s
hand reached out and ripped the bow from his grasp, threw it,
clattering, to the cobblestones. The man’s right arm flashed out,
grabbed Gel by the tunic, and picked him up, dangling feet off the
ground, pulled Gel’s face up to his level.
Gel could smell the man’s breath as he spoke,
feel the spittle hitting him.
‘You just tried to kill me,’ the man said,
grinning madly, ‘I don’t like it when people try to kill me.
Then he turned, pivoting on his left leg, and
Gel was thrown bodily through the air.
Gel flew, weightless for a few uncomfortable,
shocked instants, and hit the cobblestones hard, rolling when he
did. For a second, nothing made sense, and then there was pain
everywhere. His head, his shoulders, his knees. And then he hit
something solid, wooden. He tried to pull himself up with it,
shaking his head to try to clear it as his hands pawed for
purchase.
It was the wagon wheel. Pulling himself up
its spokes into a sitting position, breathing heavily and swaying,
he felt he might throw up.
He looked up, head spinning further, and saw
three of the bearded man walking towards him, swords drawn. There
were three of him…three…and they were moving too slow…
Gel closed his eyes, tried to stop himself
from spinning, tried to make the world stop swaying.
He opened them again, and the bearded man was
right in front of him.
‘I remember you’ he said, as Gel’s head
rolled, came back upright.
‘I think I killed you once. I don’t normally
have to kill people again. So be it.’
Gel, mirroring the night when his town had
burned, raised his right hand weakly again in a vain effort to
protect himself as the bearded man raised his sword high.
Some strange part of him in the back of his
head laughed. ‘Well, this seems ironic,’ he said to himself. He
chuckled weakly. He knew he was about to die.
Footsteps rushed closer. The bearded man was
turning. There was something behind him; a fluttering cloak and
legs were all Gel could see as he slowly slid down the wagon wheel
to sit in a slump.
The bearded man stopped in surprise, and then
a thump. Not just the sound, but the feeling; the feeling of
something bursting through the air, of something giant falling to
the ground. Gel wasn’t sure what, but he felt it in his chest.
And then the bearded man flew backwards over
Gel; over the wagon, and Dan’r was there, crouched, his arms thrust
forward. Two Dan’r’s were there. Or one.
Gel really couldn’t tell anymore.
***
Dan’r had watched in uncomfortable silence as
the soldiers questioned the girl.
He had watched in stunned silence as Gel
appeared from nowhere, as he shot at the bearded man. As he
missed.
Dan’r opened his cloak, took stock of what he
had. The man walked up to Gel, picked him up, and threw him. Dan’r
grabbed the slips of paper he wanted, curled them into his hands,
and then crouched, setting himself firmly against the ground.
The bearded soldier started towards Gel
again, drawing his sword as he moved.
Dan’r exploded forwards, like a sprinter
leaving the starting block.
He ran directly at the bearded soldier’s
back, slid and braced himself as the soldier began to turn, and
then thrust his arms forward at the man’s midsection and activated
the papers in his hand.
The papers were drawings of air. Difficult to
draw, most artists wouldn’t even think of it, but…well. When you
filled a space with way too much air all of a sudden…
Dan’r braced himself against the street below
him and bowed his head, but even as prepared as he was, the
resulting shock shook him, made him gasp for breath.
Looking ahead at Gel, the boy clearly
couldn’t focus. His head was bobbing up and down as he tried to
stay aware of what was happening. He must have hit his head.
Still, Dan’r couldn’t worry about him
yet.
He stood, looked at the soldiers standing on
his left, and twisted his neck to hear a crack.
‘Hi’ he said, and as if that one word was a
stopper holding back an ocean of water, the soldiers jumped into
motion. There were ten of them, including the one Gel had
felled.
It meant nine that he had to worry about, and
Dan’r watched them all.
Four of the soldiers in the center were
kneeling beside their fallen comrade, the one with the arrow in his
throat. They were futilely trying to save him. Dan’r could ignore
them for now.
The one with the beet red face, the Sergeant,
and the two men closest to him, all on the right near the wagon,
were drawing their swords; they would rush him, get in close. But
they were still a good twenty-five steps away. He had at least
three seconds before they mattered.
The two on the left were raising their rifles
to their shoulders; they had unlimbered them when Gel killed their
comrade. They were the most ready, and the most dangerous. He would
deal with them first.
His left hand flew to a pocket on the right
side of his cloak, grabbed all the papers in it, and then flung out
towards the two soldiers with the rifles. The air around his hand
shimmered. The two soldiers fired, and then there was a wall of
water, two feet thick and four tall, between him and the soldiers,
and the round balls from the rifle lost all their energy in the
water.
Sweat pooled on Dan’r’s brow from effort as
the water came crashing to the ground, gravity relieving it of the
shape it had held so briefly. The rifle balls joined the expanding
pool of water even as the smoke from the gunpowder drifted from the
rifles.
The two on the left were dealt with, for now.
Shock would slow their reaction speeds, making them slower to draw
their weapons. They would likely be ready at the same time as the
four that were still rising from the fallen soldier. All six of
them at once would be trouble.
'Focus, Dan'r,' he said to himself as the
three soldiers from the right of the pile, with their swords drawn,
reached him, 'you have bigger, sharper things to worry about.'
He jumped back as the first of the soldiers
swung, flung out a ball of fire that took off the soldier's sword
arm, and much of his torso. The soldier screamed briefly before
lapsing into pain induced unconsciousness. Dan'r skipped back once
more.
The Sergeant and the other soldier were
moving towards him, spreading apart, both with their swords held
low, tips pointed up towards him. They were more wary now, more
determined, and the other soldiers were spreading out too, now that
they had their swords out.
Which meant the odds were eight to one. And
Dan'r was starting to get tired.
He flicked both hands into his cloak, one on
either side, and then threw them out towards the two advancing
soldiers. Both dived out of the way, certain another blast of air
or fire would be coming. Instead, Dan'r dove towards the four
soldiers to the rear. In his right hand, a knife, which he threw at
the chest of the leftmost of the four. In his left, a long, curved
dagger.