“Beata, please, she’s going to kill me. Please don’t let her through.”
“Riders coming,” Estelle called out.
Fitch nearly jumped out of his skin. Beata looked up at Estelle, but saw she was pointing to the rear, not out to the wilds. Beata relaxed a bit.
“Who are they?” she called up at Estelle.
“Can’t tell, yet, Sergeant.”
“Fitch, you got to give that thing back. When this woman comes, you have to—”
“Rider coming, Sergeant,” Emmeline called, pointing out to the wilds.
“What’s she look like?” Fitch called up, frantic as a cat with its tail afire.
Emmeline looked out to the plains for a minute. “I don’t know. She’s too far away.”
“Red.” Fitch called. “Does it look like she’s in red?”
Emmeline peered off another minute. “Blond hair, wearing red.”
“Let her pass!” Beata ordered.
“Yes, Sergeant.”
Fitch threw up his arms, looking suddenly terrified. “Beata, what are you doing? You want to get me killed? She’s crazy! The woman is a monster, she’s—”
“We’ll have a talk with her. Don’t worry, we’ll not let the little boy get hurt. We’ll find out what she wants and take care of it.”
Fitch looked hurt. That did not displease Beata, not after all the trouble he was causing, after he stole something as valuable as the Sword of Truth. A valuable thing of magic. Now the fool boy had gone and got his friend Morley involved in thieving and got him killed for it.
And to think, she once thought she could fall in love with Fitch.
He hung his head. “Beata, I’m sorry. I just wanted to make you proud—”
“Thieving is not something to be proud of, Fitch.”
“You just don’t understand,” he muttered, on the verge of tears. “You just don’t understand.”
Beata heard an odd ruckus from the next Dominie Dirtch. Shouts and such, but no alarm. As she turned to look, she saw the three special Anderith guards trotting in on their horses, the ones Estelle had spotted. She wondered what they would want.
She turned to the sound of the galloping horse coming in. Beata jabbed a finger against Fitch’s chest.
“Now, you just keep quiet and let me do the talking.”
Rather than answer, he stared at the ground. Beata turned and saw the horse race past the stone base. The woman was indeed wearing red. Beata had never seen anything like it, a red leather outfit from head to toe. Her long blond braid was flying out behind.
Beata’s guard went up. She had never seen a look of determination such as was on this woman’s face.
She didn’t even bother to halt her horse. She simply dove off it at Fitch. Beata shoved Fitch out of the way. The woman rolled twice and came up on her feet.
“Hold on!” Beata cried. “I told him we’d settle this with you, and he’d give you back what’s yours!”
Beata was baffled to see that the woman held a black bottle by its neck. To dive off a horse with a bottle… maybe Fitch was right; maybe she was crazy.
She didn’t look crazy. But she did look resolved to carry this matter into the next world if she had to.
The woman, her sky-blue eyes fixed on Fitch, ignored Beata. “Give it over now, and I’ll not kill you. I’ll only make you regret being born.”
Fitch, instead of giving up, drew the sword.
It made a ring of steel such as Beata, used to the sound of blades, had never heard.
Fitch got a strange look on his face. His eyes were going wide, like he might faint, or something. His eyes had a decidedly strange look in them, a shimmering light that gave Beata gooseflesh. It was a look of some kind of awesome inner vision.
The woman held the bottle out in one hand, like it was a weapon. With her other hand, she waggled her fingers, taunting Fitch to come closer, to attack her.
Beata stepped in to restrain the woman until they could talk it over.
Beata next realized she was sitting on the ground. Her face stung something fierce.
“Stay out of it,” the woman said in a voice like ice. “There is no need for you to be hurt. Do yourself a favor and stay down.”
Her blue eyes turned to Fitch. “Come on, boy. Either give it up, or do something about it.”
Fitch did something about it. He swung the sword. Beata could hear the tip whistle going through the air.
The woman danced back a step and at the same time thrust with the black bottle. The sword shattered it into a thousand pieces that filled the air like a storm cloud.
“HA!” the woman cried in triumph.
She grinned wickedly.
“Now I’ll take the sword.”
She flicked her wrist. When she did, a red leather rod hanging on a gold chain at her wrist spun up into her hand. At first she looked expectantly overjoyed, but the look turned to confusion, and then to bafflement as she stared at the thing in her hand.
“It should work,” she mumbled to herself. “It should work.”
When she looked up she saw something that brought her back to her senses. Beata glanced over, but didn’t see anything odd.
The woman seized Beata’s outfit at the shoulder and hauled her to her feet. “Get your people out of here. Get them out now!”
“What? Fitch is right. You are—”
She thrust her arm out, pointing. “Look, you fool!”
The special Anderith guards were coming toward them, chatting among themselves. “Those are our men. They’re nothing to worry—”
“Get your people out of here right now, or you will all die.”
Beata huffed at being ordered about by some crazy woman treating her like a child. She called over to Corporal Marie Fauvel, not twenty feet away as she was walking out to see what the commotion was all about.
“Corporal Fauvel,” Beata called out.
“Yes, Sergeant?” the Ander woman asked.
“Have those men wait there until we get this settled.” Beata put her fists on her hips as she turned to the woman in red.
“Satisfied?”
The woman ground her teeth and grabbed Beata’s shoulder again. “You little fool! Get you and your other children moving right now or you will all die!”
Beata was getting angry. “I’m an officer in the Anderith army, and those men…” Beata turned to point.
Marie Fauvel stepped in front of the men, held up a hand, and told them they would have to wait.
One of the three unceremoniously drew his sword and swung it with casual, but frightening, power. Accompanied by the sickening thwack of blade hitting bone, it cut Marie clean in half.
Beata stood stupefied, not really believing what she was seeing.
Working for a butcher, she’d seen so much slaughtering it hardly ever warranted a second look. She’d cleaned the guts from so many different animals that seeing guts seemed to her just a natural thing. Guts didn’t appall Beata in the least.
Seeing Marie there on the ground, with her guts spilling out of her top half, in one way seemed only a curiosity, a human animal’s guts so similar to other animals’, but human.
Marie Fauvel, separated from her hips and legs, gasped, clutching at the grass, her eyes wide as her brain tried to comprehend the shock of what had just happened to her body.
It was so dauntingly horrifying Beata couldn’t move.
Marie pulled at the grass, trying to drag herself away from the men, toward Beata. Her lips moved, but no words came out, just low, hoarse grunts. Her fingers lost their power. She slumped, twitching like a freshly butchered sheep.
Up on the Dominie Dirtch, both Estelle and Emmeline screamed.
Beata pulled free her sword, holding it aloft for all to see. “Soldiers! Attack!”
Beata checked the men. They were still coming.
They were grinning.
And then the world turned truly mad.
64
Norris rushed forward, like they’d
been trained, going for the legs of one man. The man kicked Norris in the face. Norris fell back, holding his face, blood running out through his fingers. The man picked up Norris’s fallen sword and plunged it through his gut, pinning Norris to the ground, leaving him to squirm in screaming agony, to shred his fingers on the sharp blade.
Karl and Bryce were rushing in with weapons drawn. Carine charged out of the barracks with a spear. Annette was right behind her with another.