“Fall back, my lady!” cried Bertha far behind her. “Or we shall all surely die waiting for you!”
Had they all gone so quickly? She retreated, step by step, holding the enemy at bay simply because she existed. More than two score men lay in ruin around her, some dead, their fingers and arms curling like charred twigs. A few, the unfortunate, writhed on the ground, whimpering, moaning, skin melted off or hanging like rags. Smoke, sweet with scorched flesh, drifted in a haze around her so it seemed she moved backward into a miasma.
So I do.
She fought an urge to run. To turn her back would be certain death as arrows still rained around, many burned away within an arrow’s length of her body. Hundreds of furious, fearful men kept their distance but moved with her, pace by pace. She saw her death in their gaze. They hated her for what she was.
“Liath!” cried Breschius from far away, but not so far, where moments might seem like an hour, where three strides might seem like three leagues The stockade still burned; she heard the rattle of the wheels of Sorgatani’s wagon crunching away over dirt. Had she taken more than ten breaths between the collapse of the stockade and now?
She was almost there. The heat of the burning logs whipped along her back.
“Bright One! Run quickly!”
Gnat’s voice came from the wrong direction. She lost track of her footing. With her next step she tripped over the leg of a fallen horse.
She was able to catch herself as she rolled onto the body of the beast, but before she could rise, an arrow struck through her thigh, piercing her flesh and burying its head deep in the horse’s belly.
She screamed. Pain bloomed. Flames spit up from the earth. As she twisted, seeing fletchings protruding from the leg, a second arrow hit through the same thigh, at a different angle.
Mosquito appeared, dodging through burning tents, ducking behind a fallen horse. “Mistress! I come!”
Fire shot up in a wall, driving her foes back. Horsehair singed, its scent stinging her.
“Go!” she screamed. “I command it, all of you. Gnat! Mosquito! Retreat! Save Sorgatani!”
tockade roared.
The enemy pushed forward step by step, calling out, readying a charge.
“Go, Arnulf! Go!” cried Bertha.
Liath glanced back. They were twenty still standing, no more. One of Bertha’s soldiers, a giant of a man with massive shoulders and thick arms, threw a cloak over his head and braved the flames with ax in hand, hacking at the wood. The cloak began to burn, but the logs crumbled into flaming splinters. The heart of the wood had burned away.
“Move!” screamed Bertha. “Go! Go!”
“Charge them, men!” bellowed a captain among the enemy. More massed behind that front line. Archers with burning hands wept. A horse thrashed on the ground beside her, pierced by a dozen arrows.
The Kerayit slave women drove the wagon headlong into the burning wall, their horses frantic with fear as they plunged through the fiery gap. Under the press of the wheels, logs crumbled like burning straw, and the flames that licked along the painted wagon guttered and failed as Sorgatani’s magic killed them. The wagon was through! A cheer rose from the survivors as they pressed forward in its wake, seeing escape.
A roar unlike that of fire rose from the enemy.
“Forward!” The captain took a step, then a second. “Forward, you cowards!”
The line doubled, swelled, gathering strength for the charge.
“You must go, my lady!” cried Bertha, coming up beside her, still mounted. Her horse’s eyes were rolling with fear, and it was streaked with ash and flecks of charcoal, but it held its ground. An arrow dangled from its saddle, fixed between pommel and seat. Bertha’s shield had been lopped in half, and she cast it away.
“Mount up behind me!” she cried.
“Go on!” shouted Liath. “I’ll hold the rear. Hurry!”
Bertha did not hesitate as Liath delved into the iron rimming of shields; she sought deep within swords for sparks of fire bound tightly within. Boot and belt, hair and bone, all bloomed as fire scorched through the front line, and yet they came on and on, screaming, shrieking, while those behind them yelled and cursed and some ran toward her all over fire like torches.
I am a monster.
One passed by her and threw himself on a Kerayit who hung back with a few others to protect her back. She saw their faces change shape as fire ate flesh down to bone. Their eyes were black pinpricks, bursting open at the moment of death. The tents within arrow shot burned so bright it seemed like day. Yet nothing touched her. She was the center, the sun.
“Fall back, my lady!” cried Bertha far behind her. “Or we shall all surely die waiting for you!”