Oathen (9 page)

“That buys us a little time.” Kemsil began to
tighten the gauntlet’s straps.

Three men darted into the foyer, swords
lowered. “Patrus…?” one began.

“Thieves!” another exclaimed. Their swords
snapped up.

Alima screeched at Kemsil and stabbed him in
the arm with her hair wand. He backhanded her with a cry of
desperation, knocking her to the floor again.

“Foul witch.” His hands trembled violently as
he finished buckling the gauntlet onto his left arm.

The three Aldibans cried out, enraged, and
rushed forward. Geret, Salvor and Meena stepped forward to engage
them, while Sanych dropped back, eyes wide.

Rather than using his sword, the blond man
facing Meena chose to lunge at her. He earned a sword through his
shoulder for his trouble, but his momentum carried Meena into the
wardline, which flared red and sounded a low warning gong. The
Shanallar screamed as she fell beneath the pavilion’s roof,
convulsing.

Geret had already traded half a dozen strikes
with his opponent when Meena’s scream distracted him. The Aldiban
he faced, short and stocky with a full beard, stepped close and
slammed his hip against Geret’s, driving him toward the wardline as
well.

Salvor leaped backward from his own sword
fight and blocked Geret’s body with his own, deflecting the prince
toward Sanych, who reached out and steadied him. They looked back
in time to see Salvor stumbling toward the wardline, unbalanced by
absorbing Geret’s momentum.

“No!” Geret shouted, rushing back to pull him
to safety, though he knew he was too far away.

Then Kemsil’s gauntleted arm reached through
the barrier, catching Salvor on the back of his shoulder, holding
him mere inches from death. The tip of Salvor’s braid swung past
the wardline and shriveled into nothingness. He gave Kemsil a
breathless word of thanks.

Several more Aldibans rushed into the foyer
from the twilit grounds, shouting and readying their swords as they
pelted across the room. Salvor and Geret stepped up to engage
them.

~~~

Beside them, inside the wardline, Kemsil
turned his attention to Meena, who had turned a silent, ashy grey
beneath her wounded opponent. He yanked Meena’s sword from the
man’s shoulder and repositioned it in his back with a firm thrust.
Then he rolled the man off of her, ignoring his final
gasps.

“Kemsil…” Alima’s voice quavered.

“You’ll want that sword when they find what
you’ve done, Alima,” he said. Putting his hands under Meena’s
shoulders, he slid her back across the wardline. Fragments of her
grey skin flaked off onto the floor.

“Sanych!” he called. The girl ran over, and he
exited the pavilion, creating another white pulse and a chime.
Together they dragged Meena back from the fight. “How long until
she wakes?”

Sanych looked down; Meena’s skin was already
pinking up. “Soon.”

He fiddled with the glassy Circuit embedded in
his gauntlet. “I need to turn the accursed thing on—”

“Kemsil, look out!” Sanych cried, dragging at
his shoulder.

He looked behind him to see Aldiban forces
thundering out of one of the building’s main corridors. Swearing,
he scrambled to his feet, jamming a finger at the symbols on the
magical gauntlet. When the closest soldiers were a dozen paces
away, the world went orange as a pulse of light flooded out from
the Circuit in all directions, washing through everyone and
disappearing through the walls of the building.

Everyone in the room paused to look, except
Meena. Seemingly dead, she lay ignored near the feet of the closest
Aldiban. Whirling into motion, she swept his legs out from under
him, commandeered his sword and slew him with it. Rising from her
knees, she positioned herself between the newly-arrived Aldibans
and her unarmed friends. Three of them engaged her blade
immediately. A swift kick to one of their sword hands garnered her
a second weapon. Pivoting and weaving, she parried their swords
with her own in a deadly, swirling dance. In seconds, the three men
were writhing around her feet, but several more stepped up to take
their places.

While Sanych kept watch on both fronts of the
battle, Kemsil studied the black symbols etched into the Circuit’s
surface. “I’ve heard nearly all the stories of Aldib’s conquests
using the Circuit,” he panted, resting a finger on the
triple-circle symbol. “Entire Aldiban armies have hidden inside the
Circuit. Other times it’s just been a single assassin.” He frowned
in concentration, and the orange light returned through the walls,
hovering at arm’s length. Its ripply surface steadied to a smooth,
barely visible glow. Still touching the same symbol, he widened the
orange barrier toward Meena on one side, and toward Geret and
Salvor—now fighting nearly back to back against several Aldibans—on
the other.

“No!” Alima shrieked from the edge of the
pavilion, as Kemsil and his companions vanished from her
sight.

Kemsil gave a triumphant laugh. “It
worked!”

Meena hadn’t stopped fighting, nor had Geret
or Salvor. But their opponents suddenly couldn’t seem to find them
with either eyes or swords. Their slashes and cuts became ever more
wild as they searched for their targets.

Meena stabbed her last opponent, then backed
up to Kemsil and Sanych, pulling a dagger from between her ribs as
she did so. “Immortality makes me so lazy,” she commented, wiping
her own blood off on her pant leg. “Geret, Salvor!” she called.
“Time to go!” The two men gave one last slash at their frustrated
opponents, then dashed toward Kemsil. The group gathered close and
angled toward the main entrance.

“Search the whole room! Leave no space uncut
by your blades!” one of the Aldibans shouted.

As the soldiers drew near, blades flashing,
Geret swiped the dagger from Meena’s hand and hurled it across the
room. It jammed itself into the back of a man near the far
corridor. Instantly, Aldibans converged near him, angrily waving
their swords about. Others insisted they’d seen the dagger fly from
various points around the room.

“I believe that’s our cue,” Salvor murmured.
Keeping close to the rounded wall, the group ran in single file
past the arguing, flailing soldiers and out into the
night.

Kemsil’s eyes were on Alima, who had crumpled
to the pavilion floor. Tears ran unheeded down her cheeks, and she
gazed at the swarming Aldiban guards with wide, pained eyes.
Meena’s bloodied short sword rested in her hand.

One of the men stepped close to her, demanding
answers. His tone left no doubt as to which side he believed she
was on. Her sword hand twitched.

The group slipped through the doorway and ran
through a shrubbery garden. Shouts of treachery went up inside the
foyer and spread across the grounds like wildfire.

They had just settled behind a low hedge to
assess their escape options when a woman’s ragged scream echoed out
from the foyer’s marble walls. Sanych put a hand to her mouth and
winced. Geret put a comforting arm around her shoulders, then
glanced at the Jualan nobleman. The prince’s eyes were hard, but
Kemsil wore a small smile of triumph.

Whether by her own hand or another’s, Alima
had suffered Kemsil’s revenge.

“
This way,” Meena said. The group ran for the seacliff, passing
frantic and furious Aldibans who were slashing wildly at the air,
cursing and shouting at the top of their lungs. Many had stopped
attacking the retreating Clansfolk, even though some of the pirates
carried loot.

Rhona was holding a line of defense at the
cliff’s edge, ready to defend the lifts when the fight reached
them. The elevator ropes were whirring madly in their cantilevered
pulley systems as Clansfolk cranked them down the cliff’s
face.

Kemsil touched a finger to the multi-circle
symbol again; Rhona swore loudly as its radius crossed her, making
the small group appear before her eyes.

“I see you got it,” she said to Kemsil,
recovering herself. “Get on the next lift down; we’re pulling out.
And you,” she said to Sanych, eyes narrowing. “Later.”

Sanych gulped.

Meena led everyone to an elevator that had
returned to the cliff top. They received a series of surprised
looks from the Clansfolk they passed as they flickered into and out
of their sight.

They clustered onto the small wooden balcony,
and Salvor and Kemsil cranked the handles. Sanych gripped the
wooden railing as the elevator began to descend down the cliff in
the dark. Large explosions erupted on the cliff top.

“Cannons?” Geret asked.

“They’re firing on our ships,” Meena said,
pointing. The Clan fleet was already at anchor parallel to the
beach. The muzzle flashes from their return fire were silent in the
distance.

“Faster, please,” Sanych begged the cranking
men.

A moment later, most of the Clan’s cannon
balls landed among the buildings in the Aldib compound, exploding
brightly.

But not all of them.

“Look out!” Geret cried, as a cannonball
crashed into the cliff’s crest above them. One of the shards that
splintered from the rock face fell toward Sanych’s side of the
elevator. The roar of the distant Clan cannons echoed off the cliff
a heartbeat later.

“Sanych!” Salvor called, trying to grasp her
hand.

Sanych leaped toward Meena, throwing her arms
around her just as the man-sized rock crushed an entire corner of
the lift, ripping away both rail and floor. What remained of the
elevator spun crazily, slamming into the rock face several times in
quick succession.

Wind whipped at her hair, and she heard
retreating voices.

“Sanych? Where’s Sanych?”

“Meena!”

“Folly, Folly,
Folly
! Get us down
there!”

Meena’s arms were already around Sanych as
they both tumbled toward the sand. Sanych whimpered in pain and
fear, her fingers digging into Meena’s shoulder.

“Hold tight,” the Shanallar murmured, her
voice soothing and calm.

Sanych gasped, arching, and her eyes opened of
their own will as a massive rippling sensation washed through her,
tingling every nerve nearly to the point of numbness.

Then her world was pressure and sand. An
earthen rain of dry kisses fell from the sky, lightly blanketing
her skin.

Meena pulled her arms out from under Sanych
and rose to her knees, leaving the girl face up in an
Archivist-sized crater.

“Well, that was a nice change of pace,” Meena
commented with a grin.

Above them, what remained of the elevator
clattered downward. Worried voices hailed them.

“I feel so good, I don’t want to move…” Sanych
trailed off, brushing sand from her skin with slow, gentle strokes.
“This feels fascinating.”

“Hmm. Might have overdone it. No
lollygagging—we need to get to the ships.” Meena stood and hauled
Sanych to her feet, just as the men’s elevator crashed to the sand
a dozen feet away.

Geret was the first one out of the lift. He
ran to Sanych and grasped her shoulders in disbelief.

“You’re all right?” he asked.

She smiled, tipping her head up at him.
“Geret. So concerned.” She stood on tiptoe and drew his head down,
pressing her lips gently against his. “That’s sweet.”

Geret’s eyes widened at the unexpected kiss.
“Uh…” He looked to Meena, who grinned apologetically. Sanych leaned
against his chest. He looked down at Sanych’s blonde hair and
rested a tentative arm on her shoulders. “Just glad you’re not
hurt.”

Kemsil and Salvor arrived. “No one died?”
Kemsil asked in disbelief.

“Meena has that effect on people,” Salvor
said, frowning at the placement of Geret’s arm.

Kemsil shook his head in amazement, and
everyone began jogging toward the longboats. The cannons boomed out
again, from the ships first, and then from the cliff. Everyone
except Sanych ducked, but no projectiles struck the beach or the
cliff. The group waded into the surf with the retreating Clansfolk
and piled into a departing longboat. Meena sat and grabbed an oar,
and Kemsil and Geret sat behind her. Sanych sat down and studied
the wear patterns on her oar’s handle, frowning and blinking as she
began to feel more like herself.

Salvor asked, “What did you do to her? I
wasn’t like that, was I?”

“It’s a form of shielding,” Meena said,
pulling in time with the other rowers. “I started healing her
before
she landed, and didn’t stop until we were down in the
sand.”

“You must have really not wanted me to die,”
the Archivist murmured.

Meena smiled over at her, working her oar in
rhythm with the others. “I may have panicked over your impending
fate for a moment. And Sanych?”

“Yes?”

“Row.”

Sanych focused and got her oar to move with
its mates. The occasional Aldiban cannonball splashed around them,
but the Clansfolk in the longboats did not react with fear. They
hooted and taunted the Aldibans for having terrible aim and
shooting like little boys. Men and women alike, unaware that
Kemsil’s Circuit made the entire boat invisible, bared their
bottomcheeks to the cliff, joking that maybe the Aldibans could see
better with the light of a few more moons. Sanych, still happy and
relaxed, chortled to herself and didn’t enlighten them.