Swords At South Gate Part 3 - Final

Gatehouse juts out over the cliff edge to our right and from it the city wall ringing Beacon runs proud and strong past black and white houses. Left side the harbour wall rises from flush with the gatehouse and it’s on the gatehouse roof that the rock trap waits to fall. We’ll have to cut the ropes. City boys are too far to help but in fairness they’re busy again arrow after arrow.

Imp pokes his head around the door, I shout the crossbow and miss but they still run.

“I’ll do it,” says Adina. That’s the second time she’s surprised me today. She grabs my arms to stand.

“Don’t even,” Carys says. “This is my moment. I’m the better climber, and I’m better protected than you.”

“You’re not wrong on any particular point. But my spell – the one that’s keeping us all alive – will fade in minutes. I can prolong it if I go closer.”

Some right stern looking in the eyes between ‘em. Adina real quiet says this isn’t one of your stories my sweet.

“Settled, eh?” I says.

“And I just wait?”

“You watch my back Carys, I’ll keep ‘em off your Ma. Tall building.” One of the fishers must’ve done well for himself as he’s got one of them houses what sticks out over the top of itself. “Nala, can you-“

Hoofbeats. She’s mounted and gone. Can’t blame her though. Brave to last how she did especially when she would have been killed if not for magic. The world’s just too dark a place for her. Probably why she left the Order.

The daughter’s turn to surprise me. “Go well, Nala Longshadow,” she says. “We best move then. Get climbing Aunt- Ma – Adina. Scath I’ll keep you alive you keep her alive.”

“Deal,” I says. Spit my palm, she does hers, shake. Cracking lass.

Adina limps across the cobbles to the gatehouse wall. I shout my crossbow through the door to ward anyone off. She gets her feet into the crumbling mortar – strength’s coming back, she can fix my hand soon – and makes the roof. Pulls a dagger saws the rope but it’ll take time.

Carys and me dash to the high house, she breaks the lock and we go in, fishers cowering in the back room. They’re not fighters like what we are. Top floor’s a bedroom, I pull the bed to the window and kick the shutters open. Rain throws it down again poor Adina sawing those wet ropes. More lightning vivid threads of it.

Imps full plate thick shields pile through the gatehouse door, behind them skirmishers, scouts behind. Fifty men. I shout the crossbow but lightning flashes and throws my aim off, I don’t see if I get any. Reload.

“Whenever you feel like hitting them, Scath, that would be superb.”

“How messed up is your hand?” I’m an archer, bitch.

Shout the crossbow. First rank take it on shields. They’ll be on us in seconds.

Hoofbeats?

A mounted knight in polished plate ploughs in shatters the ranks of ‘em. Bloody Nala. Carys cocks an eyebrow.

“Change of plan.”

“Aye.”

Claps me on the shoulder. “Maybe you’ll hit something up close!”

Out the door onto the cobbles. Nala’s sword does red work and the shield pulls it weight too. She’s right good with a horse and then some, scouts line up some shafts and she squeezes her knees making the warhorse dance a full circle, comes round her shield stuck through but she’s fine. Carys charges in from behind rests eight Imps before they know she’s there.

When I swing the crossbow to aim, the Imps freak and jump out of the way. But they form up even with Nala on that warhorse giving any group she can a faceful of hoof. Lots sent flying and plenty cracked ribs but there’s too many.

“Done!” Adina’s shout goes up from the gatehouse roof, the Imps’ heads that snap round don’t stay long on their necks. She hangs from the edge of the roof and drops, legs it to us pulls out a brown crystal-

-Scout draws bow on her it’s the little shit that ran first scuffle –

`    -Shout the crossbow-

Miss.

A wooden needle slowly pokes through her skull as the scout’s shaft kills her, same time her cast completes and I feels my draw hand put back together. Unsling my bow he runs again not this time

speak speak speak speak speak

until he’s a fucking pincushion and I keep speaking as the other Imps form up on us. Magnificent Nala Longshadow riding her horse back and forth across a closing circle. The ranks sprout spears.

Only the thick lumps of rocks slamming into the drake wrecking the slope blocking the gate as the trap finally triggers is what stops them.

They close in on us, shafts would do us too quick I guess, I’m out and no room to pick from the rested as we back across the cobbles encircled by blades.

Warhorns sound and close. A lot of hooves.

I’m looking dead in the eye of a five-scarred Imp when his eyes go right wide. Sword drops, hands go up and clang clang clang clang clang as the others do the same.

Lying beautiful bastard said a quarter bell.

The blessed Order of blessed Emerald fucking Dragons and that big bastard Albrecht Brightlance gallop into the courtyard ringing in the Imps in three seconds flat. Still don’t like him but lords he’s got good sense of timing. Well almost.

Nala and Carys save their talking until the Imps are stripped of arms and armour and sat in a big sorry huddle. Won’t be happy life for them I wager but that’s war eh? Can’t go round resting folk and go scot free like what I did.

But it’s done and that brings me to rule three: Leave when it’s done.

Albrecht goes over first of course and he blubs over her just fine but it’s definitely for show. He’s a killer like me with the taste for it, got lucky found a god that needed killers. Enough sense in his head to leave us be for now, he oversees the dispositions or some bullshit, sends a full company of bow up to the walls and these aren’t old widows and titless washer girls like the rest of the city boys, these are honed men killers all and the Imps won’t know what hit them.

We help Nala off the horse. Can’t lift her sword arm no wonder.

“I rode for him, Carys.”

“I saw,” Carys says. “Saw you too Scath. That’s a lot of arrows you put in him.”

“And?”

“One would’ve done it.”

“Had to make sure,” I says. Why’s she got to poke a man’s innards? “Sorry for missing.”

“Only one person to blame.” She draws her long pointy sword and heads for Albrecht. Nala spins her round by the shoulder.

“You’re an idiot if you think you can take him.”

“Do my best.”

“And he’s to blame?”

“Who else?”

I hate this self-pitying crap even if her Ma was just done for. “You called hold,” I says. “Your fault if it’s anyone’s only really its hers cause you make your own choices and you get lucky or you don’t.”

“She should have lived,” Carys says. “She shouldn’t have even been up there.” She goes on a dozen different ways getting higher and louder until knights start looking at us so I grabs her shoulders.

“Don’t matter love. Ifs and buts don’t bake your bread. She’s gone. Say goodbye.” And I grab the pointy sword from her.

“You’re not my-“ And she breaks. Guess she was going to say Aunt, and realised, and realised again. Her steps to Adina start high and proud but each add weight till she’s slumped like an old fisher with baskets of dead dreams.

Too far to hear what she says to her Ma. Nala says, “Bit long for you this, isn’t it?”

“I broke rule two,” I says. She blinks, doesn’t get it of course. Rules are just in my head. “You girls still got to pay me.”

She rolls her eyes.

Albrecht walks over with Carys and neither are at guard so I guess that’s something.

He says nothing till she elbows him. “For your defence of the Realms of Life, I grant the forgiveness of your sins, and formally declare that all penalty against you is null and void.” So on, so on. He sounds old and tired so maybe it wasn’t all for show. Maybe it’s a long game to get his daughter back on side.

Doesn’t work. She says thanks and she hopes she never sees him again and fair enough the guy nods and gives her a promise note for twelve hundred king’s marks. She screws it up in a ball. But doesn’t rip the seal so it’s a show too. Lords but these Brightlances don’t half play pretend. Adina must have been the only sensible one.

Silence the storm as I looks at her body. I feel nothing. But it’s a different sort of nothing. Something should have been in it.

We get all clear and Nala says Bolvander. We’re heading into Beacon to buy a room.

“We all made it through Bolvander,” Carys says. “Next time we’ll be saying like Beacon. But it doesn’t have to be. Plenty of skilled sword at the coast this time of year.”

Fuck me if that’s not the first sensible thing she’s said.

“I left the Order because I didn’t think it could make difference. Well I just saw what four of us did. Next time there’ll be twenty.” Nala smiles and it’s still sad but less so. “You in, Scath?”

What’s one more rule to break?

“Aye.”

 

One more thing before me tale’s done. A certain King likes to greet the dawn, well the Order still haven’t put him in chains and I don’t care what anyone says the guy’s guilty as all sin. Adina might have stopped me but she’s dead. It’s in my head to teach Albrecht a thing or two about justice.

 

I sit up on the wall, bide my time, speak my bow.

 

THE END