Making Peace, page 31
Ina let out a sob of rage, her face bright red. Tears spurted from her clenched eyes, fury burning there through the dampness. She clutched her long knives in her hands and circled Marack, coming in almost immediately for an attack on his right side, toward his back. I hurried to keep up with her assault and came in on the Hegemon’s front left. The floorboards erupted with wild colors under our charge.
With seemingly effortless grace, Marack swept his curved sword up from the floor and into a twirling motion. He danced toward me, bounced my sword aside, and scored a deep cut across my leather breastplate. The spin continued and deflected first one then the other of Ina’s knives. His gloved hand lashed out and dealt her a vicious backhand to the face, spinning her.
Ina went with the spin and swept around, ending in a half-crouch. I also stepped back, fingering the depth of the cut in my breastplate. The blade had gone straight through and kissed the skin beneath, drawing a bloody scratch. I wanted time to assess this enemy and figure out some plan, but Ina didn’t give me the chance. She pressed forward again, a whirlwind of blades and hate.
“I hate you!” she screamed, slashing at Marack. “All the things I’ve done!” She slashed again with both knives. He deflected them with little effort. “You’ll pay for what you did to my son!” Marack blocked every slash and thrust. Words came pouring out of Ina as she went into a frenzy. “I hate you I hate you how could you take my baby I’ll kill y—“ The words stopped abruptly as Marack lashed out with his foot, kicking Ina square in the stomach. Her body folded up around his boot and she flew several feet away, crashing to the ground.
The Hegemon tried to follow through with his sword but I moved in, engaging him to take the pressure off Ina.
She managed to get to her hands and knees, gagging for breath.
The Hegemon twirled and slashed around me, my own strikes making no impact on his defense. I was panting and soaked with sweat, while he wasn’t even breathing hard.
Ina struggled to get back to her feet. “My son…” she gasped. One hand clutched her stomach while the other pushed her little body up off the ground. She wasn’t going to give up. Her rage sustained her even as her natural strength was failing.
My heart went out to Ina, and as she rose, I saw Maren’s face, her body pierced with arrows. I saw Cora cut down in the street. I saw Shield sobbing and clutching at Cora. I saw Cheena, the girl who threw herself from the window, bruises covering her wrists. I saw Marsa, housekeeper here, her expression when she thought I wanted to hurt her. Where was she now in the midst of this slaughter?
Most of all, I saw little Ina. The Hegemon’s favorite, the other servants had whispered. The mother of a son whom Marack had killed before the boy could draw breath. The agony of her life and, yes, even her horrible crimes against the women of the First House, her obsessive crusade to end the line of the man who had murdered her son.
My strikes grew harder, more force behind them. The Hegemon’s apathetic contempt broke for a moment as he furrowed his brow in concentration. His left hand came up, mesh-covered fingers taking hold of a subtle handle forged into the back of his curved blade. He had to deflect my strikes using both hands, and I felt a rush of savage pride. Each hammering blow I landed brought another face before my eyes, and another roar from my lips.
Ina was up and she joined in again, pressing the Hegemon hard from his flanks. We drove him around the room, and at last I saw sweat standing out on Marack’s brow. He lashed out at us, scoring small hits on our legs and arms, but the two of us worked together as one, harrying the Hegemon and keeping him from focusing. We resisted his attempts to circle and smash us together, flanking him from opposite sides. He had to constantly whirl back and forth, striking out to parry my attack before moving to the other side to deflect Ina’s, with no time to take advantage of any openings he might see.
The toll of battle after battle, though, began to show in Ina and me. Our strikes slowed, while the Hegemon stayed strong and energetic. He began batting aside our strikes and landing harder ones on us. Finally, he had an opening on Ina that looked like the end. She was down on one knee, and he chopped down at her head. Ina raised both knives in an X pattern and met the downward strike. She stopped the blow but both knives snapped, and the force knocked her arms down.
The Hegemon lashed out with his boot and kicked Ina in the chin. The blow lifted her off the floor and tossed her backward through the room. Her body skidded along the ripplewood floor and left a colorful wake. Ina bumped against a pillar and didn’t get up.
Marack bore down on me like a storm of death. I deflected as many blows as I could, but my tired arms were sluggish. I took cut after cut to my arms and legs, even one to my face. He whirled and kicked me in my chest. I slid backward and fell to one knee, bracing myself up with one hand. I tried to rise but my muscled refused. I tried again, but felt a hand take hold of my shoulder from behind. I looked up to see Ugly standing over me, smiling down at me.
“You’ve had enough, Scribbler. My turn.” Ugly strode past me, both blades hanging comfortably from his hands. I looked around to see Shield limping toward another golden guard and Sen pulling his sword from the body of one of the giants. They’d wiped several of them out while Ina and I dueled with Hegemon Marack.
I saw Vapor locked in her own duel with the enemy nano-mage. Fire blazed from his hands, and ice flew from hers. She hovered off the floor, toes pointed straight down, hair rising in a cloud around her. Her eyes flickered through colors faster than I could follow.
The enemy nano-mage threw fireball after fireball at Vapor, but she deflected them with hands gloved in ice. She cast one hand outward and forged a spear of ice from thin air, and hurled it at her foe. The lace melted as it passed through an orb of fire held in his outstretched palm. I could see a growing puddle of water around his feet where the scorching heat had not yet evaporated it.
Vapor hovered, moving and circling, while her opponent stood rooted to one spot. He battered her with a combination of fire and pure force. I watched him launch a flurry of telekinetic blows at her. She blocked most of the attacks, but a few got through. One blast of pure force smashed her against one of the pillars, pummeling her. Vapor fell to one knee, gasping. She cast another wave of ice at the nano-mage, but he melted it. The water around his feet was so deep now it splashed as he shifted his stance, but he didn’t seem to notice it.
Ugly clicked his blades together, issuing a challenge to his enemy.
The Hegemon opened his mouth. “We—“
“No. Shut up,” Ugly said. He kicked off and launched into an immediate attack, thick short swords flashing in with precision thrusts. The Hegemon rocked back onto his heels, one hand again holding each end of his sword. Marack held his blade horizontally and worked to deflect Ugly’s lightning-fast attacks, spinning and moving his hands in a blur of motion. The two men were masters of their art, moving in a dance older than the civilization over which they dueled. The floorboards beneath them erupted with explosions of color.
I joined Sen and Shield in their struggle against the last guard, who was trying to work his way back to his master. Shield was limping badly, and Sen was stumbling with exhaustion. I came in from a third direction, giving the giant guard no quarter. He cut at us viciously with his glaive, spinning in place to try to keep us all in view. Shield caught his strike on her kite shield, but the blow knocked her to one knee. The giant kicked out at Shield, knocking her sprawling across the floor. Colored ripples spread with each bounce of her body.
Sen and I closed in, slicing at the giant’s flanks. He deflected Sen’s attack but I managed to draw blood on the guard’s arm, and he growled at me. I tried to back away from his counterattack but tripped over a corpse, falling on my rear end. He stood over me and kicked me, launching me out onto the balcony. He followed and raised his glaive, ready to strike, but a tiny ball of fury came from nowhere and slammed into his back.
It was Ina, stabbing away at the giant with one of her remaining knives. She wounded the huge man deeply, but he managed to get ahold of her and punch her in her already injured stomach. He tossed her back into the throne room, where she hit the floor and curled up into a little gasping ball.
Sen rammed his sword through the giant man’s spine, the tip of his blade sprouting through the giant’s chest. The huge man tried to spin in place, but Sen moved with him, moving his blade in a sawing motion. At last our enemy fell, Sen’s blade stuck fast in his bones. Sen went back inside to help Ina and Shield. I stayed where I was on the balcony, struggling to get my breath back. My strength was utterly spent and I knew it.
Ugly and the Hegemon were still furiously slashing and cutting at each other just a few feet from me. Both men were dripping blood from a dozen wounds. Ugly made a series of fast strikes, rapid fire. The Hegemon tried to block them all by rotating his blade between his hands, but couldn’t catch them all. Marack was forced to take his meshed hand off the back of his blade, and that was when Ugly struck. He rammed one of his blades through the Hegemon’s mesh glove, piercing the metal fibers and skewering the hand.
The Hegemon winced with the pain, and his attacks slowed for just a moment. Ugly dropped the sword in his left hand, the one not pinning the Hegemon’s hand, and was able to slip inside his opponent’s guard to get ahold of the wrist of the Hegemon’s sword hand. With his enormous muscles, Ugly held the Hegemon’s sword arm completely immobile while twisting the short sword imbedded in Marack’s other hand.
The Hegemon screamed.
Ugly gave a hideous, feral grin, snarling through clenched teeth. “Keep screaming. I want Cora to hear you.”
Ugly let go of the short sword and smashed his fist into Marack’s face. The weight of the weapon embedded in his hand made it unwieldy, and the Hegemon could do nothing as Ugly continued raining blows down upon his head, neck, and shoulders. With every strike I heard bones snapping. Blood splattered from the Hegemon’s broken nose and mashed lips. Teeth clattered across the floor.
Marack hung more and more limp in Ugly’s grip with every blow. At last Ugly stopped, his bloody fist poised in the air for one more strike. He seemed to be fighting against himself. Marack was an unrecognizable mess, choking on his own blood. Ugly let him go, snatching the curved sword from Marack’s limp hand and tossing it away. The Hegemon slumped to the floor, gagging and rasping
There was a scream of rage from the other side of the room, and we all turned to see the enemy nano-mage, hands and eyes burning. Seeing his master beaten and bloody, he summoned an enormous amount of telekinetic force and hurled it at us. It flew in all directions, spreading out all around us, smashing into walls and support pillars. I heard cracking sounds and wondered for the first time at the wisdom of fighting on the top floor of a tower.
Vapor, who had been pummeled down by her enemy rose up. Her outstretched hands rimed with frost. The nano-mage turned back to Vapor and intercepted one long blast of ice, grinning.
“How easy you make this!” the enemy Gifted mocked her. Her spent ice torrent pooled around his feet.
Then, with a sudden grin, Vapor clenched both of her fists. The water around the nano-mage’s feet suddenly burst into billowing clouds of scalding steam. The steam rose, boiling him alive. I could smell his flesh cooking, roasting, as the sheets of water she had been carefully soaking him in and splashing all around him superheated in seconds.
“Academy nano-mages only think inside the box,” she had said. She had certainly proved this was not a failing she shared. In a moment, she had turned minutes of intentional manipulation into an unforeseen victory.
Her enemy screamed inside his boiling flesh, his entire world becoming a riot of agony. In his dying rage, the enemy Gifted sent telekinetic blasts thundering out in all directions, desperate to hurt the ones who were killing him. Pillars cracked and floorboards warped. Fireballs streaked from his fingertips and exploded all around us.
Timbers cracked and the balcony floor beneath me dropped several inches. Alarmed, I tried to scramble toward the doorway, but it was too late. With a crash, the entire balcony gave, tipping up onto one side and plummeting toward the ground. I slid over the edge and flew out into empty space.
Time slowed to a crawl. I felt myself falling, arms clawing to grab hold of anything. Ugly had been mostly in the doorway and was able to grab onto a piece of railing. He had Marack by the wrist, holding him out over open space. He saved his life, I thought with a strange kind of detachment. He could have let him drop, but he spared his life. Good for him.
What about me? screamed the rest of my brain. There was no way Ugly could get to me. I saw agony etched in Ugly’s face as he watched me plummet away, my hands reaching for him. He called my name. Splintered wood exploded all around me, thundering in my ears. I saw blue sky above me. It’s not so bad, I thought, if I can at least see the sky when I die.
I had fallen a whole floor, with five to go. It’s taking a long time to die, that detached part of me thought. Do something useful! the frantic part of me screamed. But there was nothing but splintered wood and blue sky.
A flash of purple robes fluttering against the blue sky above caught my attention. Vapor had hurled herself over the edge and was diving toward me, arms tucked in at her side, wind at her back. She fell faster than I did, pushing herself to greater speed with her Gift. She reached me and wrapped her arms around me, burying her face in my chest.
I felt resistance against my back, weak at first but growing more intense as we went through it, layers upon layers. Above us, broken sheets of ice twinkled in the sunlight after we passed through them. The sheets of ice beneath my back grew thicker, steadily increasing in density. I crashed through them much harder. Time was increasing again, hyperawareness wearing off as I realized we were both falling to our death, and she was doing her best to save us. We were going too fast to be saved by her slow falling spell she’d used before, our velocity already too great. She was combining her anti-gravity slow fall with the creation of thin ice, straining against multiple scientific laws at the same time.
Shattering ice sounded all around us as we fell through layer after layer in a desperate attempt to slow our descent. I couldn’t see the ground beneath us but I could see the floors of the palace as we passed them. We were still falling way too fast. I held Vapor to my chest and curled my body around her, determined to absorb as much of the impact as I could to give her the best chance at surviving. Her flesh burned under my fingers as her magic bled all heat from the air around us.
We passed the third floor, the gaping wound where we’d breached through clearly visible as we fell past. Our own troops watched us fall, too fast for them to do more than gape.
The end of the fall was coming, the ground waiting just below us. I closed my eyes. This is it. Goodbye, Vapor. I hope you survive. Thanks for trying.
I felt an impact, and my entire body went cold. Darkness wrapped around me. I tried to draw breath and couldn’t for the stifling weight pressing down on me.
This is it. This is what death feels like.
I realized I could still feel Vapor’s burning heat pressing against me, and feel my arms around her. The cold outside was stinging my skin. I opened my eyes to a world of pure white. I tried to speak but the white, cold fluff filled my mouth and stung my teeth.
Vapor pushed off from my chest and clawed around above us. Sunlight filtered in, along with fresh air. I drew a deep breath and helped her dig.
We climbed out on top of a huge snow bank, gasping for air. I checked myself all over and couldn’t find any damage from the fall. I turned to Vapor in disbelief, feeling my face light up in a look of stupid glee I couldn’t do anything to stop.
“Snow?”
She grinned at me. “Hey, don’t complain. The ice didn’t do it, and a smart girl always has a backup plan.”
I picked her up and spun us in a circle. The snow was deep and we fell over, both of us laughing. We lay there in the snow, dressed all wrong for the cold but enjoying the feeling of being alive.
Eventually Vapor tugged at my hand, and we slid down the already melting pile of snow to land on the grass. We looked up at the top floor of the house, but no one was visible through the big, broken archway.
The danger past, my body threatened to give out on me. I had to sit down in the grass, then flopped onto my back. Vapor looked torn between going back into battle and staying with me, but the sounds of fighting in the mansion had mostly died down. We’d seemed to be winning, anyway. She settled down next to me in the grass, resting her head on my chest. Then we both laughed again. And kept laughing. In fact, we were laughing uncontrollably, unable to hold it in.
It wasn’t right to be laughing. I knew it wasn’t right. We should have been crying. Captain was still upstairs, chained and dead. So many of our friends were dead. We shouldn’t have been laughing like this. But it was finally over, really over. Months of fear and pain and torment, all finally finished. We laughed because if we didn’t get it out, we’d scream. And we laughed because it felt good to laugh, lying there in the warm grass in the sunshine, having just escaped death. And maybe some of those tears in my eyes weren’t just from laughing.
A few minutes went by, and we heard footsteps approaching.
“I think they fell right here, by the…snow.” I heard Sen call out. Then he was standing over us, looking dumbfounded to find us lounging in the grass.
I looked at him through one eye, the other closed, my head propped up on my hands. Vapor snuggled in closer, enjoying the warmth. Sen raised one eyebrow at me.
I raised two fingers. V for victory. Vapor giggled.
“How’s the war, soldier boy?” I asked.
Sen shook his head and settled down to sit next to us. “Good,” he said. “Real good. Just about done, all cleanup now.”
Shield and Ugly arrived with Ina tagging along behind them. They spotted us. Shield laughed when she saw us relaxing. “Oh my,” she said, covering her mouth with her hands, and laughed again. Ugly turned to her, smiling at seeing her mirth.
