The wizard hadn’t even had time to scream.
But Magda heard herself screaming, screaming with ferocity that was a match for the sword’s.
The killing strike thrilled her, filled her with wild joy. It was nothing short of a sense of magnificent completion.
As the blade came around, his headless body was still falling. Parts of his head still sailed away into the night. His arms were lifted out at his sides, the wizard’s fire smothered by his instant death and massive loss of blood.
Behind the wizard, the soldiers were momentarily frozen in shock at the sight. That shock broke all at once. With weapons raised, they screamed as they charged in toward her.
Magda sidestepped the first man to rush in. As she did, she came around, bringing the blade with her in a circle to split his skull from behind. The strike took off the top of his head. A clump of dark hair flew off into the darkness. His forward momentum drove him face-first into the hard ground.
Magda ducked under a mighty swing of another man’s sword. He wasn’t used to fighting someone as small and fast as Magda. His method was mighty blows, not swift, precise strikes. As Magda came up, she drove her sword straight through his heart.
She heard men roaring in rage as they came after her. She didn’t have time to think. She acted on instinct acquired in part from learning to use a knife to fight and in part out of the single-minded drive to kill them. She struck without hesitation or pause as they got close enough, using her smaller size to move faster than they did and to stay out of the way of their reach and weapons.
She didn’t try any clever moves, any fancy tricks. With every opening she saw, she simply went in for the kill.
She kept moving, ducking, rolling, and twisting to avoid their blades. Not being a soldier, she didn’t move the way they expected. There was no time for her to plan her moves. As they swung, she followed up with a strike of her own, allowing them no time for another try.
She pulled back as a man’s arm shot past her, his stabbing move narrowly missing making contact. Still in the grip of rage, Magda whipped the sword around with a scream of power, taking off the arm he had thrust out toward her. As the man fell to the ground screaming, she let the swing of the sword follow around, bringing it up behind her to run it through a man rushing in with his sword raised to chop her from behind. As he was collapsing to the side, she yanked the sword free and brought it around in a circle, gripped the hilt in both fists, and drove it straight down into the armless man writhing on the ground. She hammered it down so hard that the blade stuck in the ground.
Before she could yank it free, another man charged her, his sword flashing through the night air. She knew instinctively that she wouldn’t be able to get out of the way fast enough.
At the last instant, just before his blade made it to her, Merritt crashed into him from the side, knocking him off balance. The big soldier stumbled from the impact and fell to a knee. Before he could get up, Magda brought the sword down from above, splitting him all the way from the top of his head to the center of his chest.
The man toppled, hitting the ground with a wet thwack that spilled organs out the gaping split and across the ground.
The night was suddenly still. There were no more men coming at her.
Chapter 86
Magda, on her knees, sword gripped in both hands, eyes wide, ready to defend herself, gasped for breath. The night was silent. There were no men screaming battle cries. There were no more blades coming at her.
Her head swiveled, looking everywhere, scanning for threats. She was surrounded by bodies. Blood and gore and unrecognizable bits of flesh lay scattered all around her.
There were no men left standing to come at her.
Not far away, Merritt, in the iron collar and hand restraints, struggled to get to his feet. Once up, he rushed to stand over her, a small, proud smile lighting his face.
With the threat ended, the Sword of Truth dropped from her hands.
And then, searing torment started like a spark deep inside, quickly expanding into an inferno of pain, burning through every part of her. Magda doubled over. She cried out as she collapsed onto her side, arms crossed over her middle, trying to quell the torture that felt like it was consuming her. She desperately needed air, but try as she might, she couldn’t draw a breath. The weight of suffering pressing in on her wouldn’t allow it.
Merritt knelt beside her, but with his wrists shackled into the device locked around his neck he couldn’t reach out to her. He was helpless to do anything, but it was a relief to simply not be alone with the terror of the suffering.
As quickly as it came, the pain released her.
As the agony lifted its grip, Magda flopped over onto her back. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she gasped, getting her breath. She looked up at the concern on Merritt’s face.
“I don’t know what’s wrong,” she finally said between panting breaths.
“It’s the sword’s magic,” he said. “It extracts a price when you kill with it. The first time is by far the worst. You’re fortunate. The sword’s power was derived from your life force, so it was already somewhat familiar with you.”
Magda rolled onto her side and pushed herself up off the ground to sit back on her heels. “I’d hate to experience worse.”
“Anger is a shield for the power of the sword’s magic, so that helped, too.”
“Then I was well protected.” She reached out and turned his head to see the wound. “This doesn’t look so good.”
“I’m all right now. I’ll be better when I get this thing off from around my neck.”
“Can you use your gift to break it?”
“No,” he said. “It’s shielded to prevent a gifted person from using magic to escape.”
“Shielded,” she said. She remembered the shielded shackles on Naja. “I think I might have a key that would work on it.”
She retrieved the sword and worked the blade under one of the iron cuffs. She turned her face away. With a mighty pull the iron exploded in a shower of pieces. Merritt held the bar to stabilize it for her to break the collar. In short order she had the rest of the immobilizing apparatus off him.
Once he was free, she threw her arms around him. “I was so afraid. I thought you were lost. I was so afraid that they would kill you.”
He pushed her away for a moment. “‘You are surrounded. Do as I say or you will all die.’ That was your plan? Are you out of your mind?”
Magda winced self-consciously. “It was the best I could come up with on the spot.” She frowned. “And it turned out to be true, didn’t it?”
“It certainly did,” he said with a smile as he pulled her back to hold her tight in a grateful hug. “Thank you, Magda. I have to tell you, that was quite something to behold.”
She felt shaky in the wake of the fear from the fight, but it felt good to have his arms around her. “It was the sword,” she said. “Your creation is magnificent.”
“The sword is just a tool. The one wielding it has to be the right person. That’s what matters most.”
She cast him a skeptical look as he stood. “If you say so.”
The clouds were beginning to break up and the moon had emerged to cast light over the landscape.
“We need to get rid of these bodies,” Merritt said as he surveyed the area. “If they’re found it will bring the whole army looking for who was responsible. They’ll look for the missing men soon enough as it is.”
“It’s quite a drop over there,” Magda said, gesturing. “We can roll them over the edge. No one is likely to spot them, at least not for a time. That should buy us a day or two at least.”
In short order, with the aid of Merritt’s gift, they had all the bodies in green tunics and their body parts moved to the side. Arms and legs flailing, the big men rolled and tumbled and bounced down the steep drop, vanishing into the dense underbrush. No one would be able to see anything from the road, and unless they noticed a lot of scavengers no one was likely to clim
b down looking for the men. Merritt then used his gift to eliminate any trace of blood from the fight. With his foot, he smoothed the gouges in the ground. In the moonlight, the road again looked completely normal.
“We have to get off the road,” he said. “There could be more of Lothain’s soldiers about. With the moon out, we could easily be spotted out in the open like this.”
Magda looked around in the moonlight, getting her bearings. She pointed, then, to the dark wall of trees on the opposite side.
“There’s a trail over there coming up the mountainside. It passes by near the road not far off through there. It’s steeper and tougher going in places than taking the road, but it’s also shorter. No one is likely to be traveling the trail at night. The forest is pretty dense, so we can use the lantern in places if we have to. If a patrol passes, they won’t be able to see us from the road.”