Azurite (Daughter of the Mountain Book 1) (52 page)

With that, he brought the blade of his sword down on the back of Briggs’ scrawny neck, severing his head cleanly from his body in a spray of blood.  The Nomans behind Olger did the same, decapitating the two innocent Samarian women who dared to defy King Olger.  The crowd erupted into chaos, threatening to overtake the murderous Noman soldiers, attacking the men who held their shields against them. 

The headless bodies of the three martyred Samarians lay twitching in the street as their dark blood and tissue poured out of the gaping hole in their neck.  The crimson fluid poured into the cracks where the cobblestones met, flowing like molten lava among the black ash of a volcano.  Like the violent savage he was, Olger grabbed Briggs’ still seizing head and impaled a spear right through the neck and out of the crown of his skull.  Blood dribbled down the wooden spear and onto Olger’s hands. 

“Detain every single one of them,” Olger instructed his men.  “If they run, kill them.  I want the prison full by morning!”

The King mounted his horse with the spiked head in hand.  With the other soldiers of the Noman cavalry, he rode into the crowd of fighting Samarians.  They tackled those who resisted, binding them in chains to be taken to Mizra’s prison, just like Alvard told Brutus they would. 

Brutus watched helpless and horrified as the bloodbath commenced before him.  He heard several of his Guards retching as they watched their fellow townsmen being persecuted and murdered.

“We have to help them!” one of the Guards exclaimed.

“How?” Brutus asked shortly.  “There are twenty-five of us and hundreds of them.  Olger and Alvard won’t hesitate to kill us if they think we’re against them.  If you so much as look at the King the wrong way, he’ll have you beheaded.” 

Brutus glanced at the remnants of Center Market, which was now covered in the blood of innocent Samarians.  He couldn’t stand to be there any longer.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.  “I can’t look at this any more.”

He kneed his horse and sprinted off down the road leading back to the castle with the rest of the Guard in pursuit.  Behind him, blood-chilling screams continued to roll in with the wind.  Sharp gales raided his body as he breathed in the air of inescapable oppression.  The men galloped underneath the shadow of the towering buildings, all of them empty and deserted.  When Mizra’s gate came into focus like the bars of a prison cell, Brutus skidded to a halt, his horse rearing on its hind legs with an angry wail.

“Open the bloody gate!” Brutus yelled at the gatekeepers.  It seemed like it took an eternity for the gate to finally swing open with its mournful song of rusty pivots.  Brutus and his men rushed into the gardens.

The visions of bloody, headless corpses and spears being impaled into living flesh made Brutus sick to his stomach.  He turned around and emptied the remains of his supper onto the grass.  Twice.  The remaining Castle Guards surrounded him, cursing Olger and plotting his demise under their breath.

Brutus was wiping his mouth clean when he saw Talan Leatherby emerge from the shadow of a willow tree where he had been waiting.  The wind had puffed out his already bouffant hair, proving that Talan had been sitting there waiting for a while.

“What is it?  What happened?” Talan asked as he stopped in front of Brutus.  “All I could hear was screaming.  It came in on the wind nonstop!”  Talan looked at all the Castle Guards as they circled their Captain.  Their faces were either as pale as winter snow or beet red with anger. 

“For the sake of all things good in this world,” Brutus avowed, his voice low and as hard as rock, “we have to rescue Zora from Montanisto.  She is our only hope for restoring this country.  I WILL NOT stop fighting these tyrants for one second until the last of the Winnser line is placed back on this throne.”

Brutus looked at each and every one of the men standing near him until his gaze settled on Talan.  The miner had never seen his friend possessed by such a righteous anger before.  It teetered on lunacy, but whatever it was, his eyes were wild with it.

              “We will fight with you, Brutus. For Zora, for Samaria,” Talan said, feeling his resolve harden.

              “For Zora!” the Guards mimicked passionately, but their voices got carried away by the summer winds and into the mountains beyond.