David Dalglish - Blood Of Gods

“Thanks,” Rodin said with a grin, and then pressed his opponent into the corner.

Moira was a whirl of motion, flipping this way and that, thankful that her new sword, a short one, was only slightly heavier than her own twin blades. She cut through ankles, stabbed into stomachs, and left everyone who confronted her bloodied. The men they fought were certainly skilled, but she and her Movers were still their betters. . and they had the advantage of actually having their armor on their backs instead of heaped on tables. Of all the blows she suffered, only one-a slash to the forearm-drew blood.

After jamming her sword through the eye of yet another man, she spun around to see that only three of the conquerors of Omnmount remained standing. One of them was Lommy, who retreated on shaking legs while a bored-looking Gull pressed in on him. Gull lifted his eyes, caught sight of Moira, and then took off Lommy’s sword hand with a downward hew. Blackbard dropped to his knees, his mouth an “O” of shock, staring at the empty void where his hand used to be. The other two men dropped their weapons in surrender.

The floor of the dining hall was a mess of blood and hacked-off limbs as Moira strolled across it, approaching the kneeling Lommy. Gull backed away, inclining his head in respect. She knelt before the would-be lord, who still held tight to his spouting stump, and forcibly grabbed his chin.

“Please. .,” he whimpered.

“You deserve worse,” she said before slitting his throat from ear to ear. A waterfall of red cascaded over his padded tunic. He gargled out a few words before his eyes rolled and he collapsed. Moira watched him until his body stilled.

“What of these two?” she heard Tabar ask.

“Kill them,” she said without turning around.

Protests and pleas for life followed, silenced by the sound of steel ripping through flesh.

When it was over, she rose to her feet and looked around. Lommy’s thirteen brethren were strewn about the hall, and a near lake of blood rippled on the floor. She felt more alive than ever, her body experiencing no pain, not even her mouth, which had still been sore from the sickness. She took in each of her five sellswords, who were in the process of jamming their swords into the skulls of those on the floor just in case any still breathed. Although they had suffered cuts, and Danco had a nasty gash on his left cheek, they were relatively unharmed. I made the right choice, she thought.

Moaning reached her ears, and Moira turned around. The fool was propped up against the dais, his knees drawn to his chest, his eyes filled with horror as he took in the carnage. She dropped her sword and approached, kneeling down beside him. He looked over at her, tears running down his cheeks. He wiped them away, taking clumps of white paint off in the process. Doing so revealed how terribly wrong her initial guess had been; he was likely not any older than fifteen.

“You have a name?” she asked him.

“E-E-Elias. Elias Gandrem.”

Moira scrunched her face, knowing that name. . and then it came to her. “Gandrem? Any relation to Faysia Gandrem from Hailen?”

The youth nodded, his tears still falling. “Faysia is my mother.”

She considered him. Faysia was born Faysia Gemcroft, Peytr’s sister. Just hearing the name made her think of Rachida, and she felt a longing in her gut. Moira put her bloody hands to Elias’s cheeks, rubbing them, trying to calm him.

“Here now, you’re safe,” she said. “So you sent a bird to Veldaren, even though you were told not to?”

The boy nodded.

“Very brave of you.” She rustled his hair. “Very brave indeed.”

“Th-Th-Thank you,” Elias said.

She helped the boy to his feet and handed him off to Gull, who brought him over to where Danco, Tabar, and Willer were cleaning their wounds. The boy seemed to relax as he went, even laughing uncomfortably when Danco made a crude joke.

“Courageous youngster,” Rodin said, sidling up beside her. “But what do we do with him?”

She shrugged. “I have no clue. He is Peytr’s nephew, probably sent here by his father to help care for Cornwall’s affairs while he was ill. He most likely knows quite a bit about the family business.”

“And what about us? Cornwall isn’t exactly here to read Lady Catherine’s letter.”

“Right now we find the rookery, see if there are any birds left, and then send word to the Queen Bitch.” She smirked. “And after that, we head to the docks and finish what we came here to do. As deeply as I miss Rachida, I think I’ve missed swinging a sword just as much.”

Rodin grinned.

“Missing a good fight as much as you miss time with a woman?” He laughed cheerfully. “I think all us here know what you mean. Come then. Let’s go set some fires.”

During the day she had no name, just a corpse walking among the other corpses that populated the city, toiling with them in the fields to the west, supping with them and sharing a cup of dirty water while the sun was still high in the sky. Come late afternoon she became a ghost, slithering through the alleyways of Veldaren’s poorest district, unseen even by those who laid their eyes on her, nothing but a filthy rail of a woman with soot in her disheveled hair, grime on her face, and a reeking burlap sack hanging from her shoulders.

But come dusk, life flooded her veins. Come dusk, she was no longer Laurel Lawrence. When she sought out others who lurked in the shadows, binding the weary, the angry, and the frightened into a slowly growing army, she bore a new name, one the tired people gave her out of a mixture of fear and pride. They called her “Specter.”

Laurel dashed from one building of drab gray stone to another while destitute mothers and daughters hawked spoiled wares from their carts along the side of the road. She slowed, walking with a pronounced limp, when she spied a Sister of the Cloth, one of many women found guilty of crimes and whose freedom was stripped from them. The wrapped woman glanced her way and squinted, seemingly unconcerned with such a haggard old thing on this cold day. These new daytime guardians of the city always seemed to regard her the same way now-as if she were unworthy of so much as a glance.

The large woman beside her, another nameless female in a veritable sea of them, looked her way and nodded. With the Sister out of sight, she and Laurel picked up their pace, heading west along the Merchants’ Road.

“I see her,” the large woman, Harmony Steelmason, said. It was still odd to hear her voice after she’d gone so long without speaking a single word.

“Where?”

“Over there.” She tilted her head slightly. “The one sitting beside the fish market.”

“How can you tell?”

“The note said to follow the scent of fish.”

“That could mean anything.”

“Yes, but look at the way she is sitting and tapping her feet. This one is anxious, not dejected.”

Laurel squinted against the glare of the setting sun, and sure enough she saw the way the girl on the other side of the road shook her legs as if they’d fallen asleep, and her instincts insisted it wasn’t from the cold.

“We do this now?” Harmony asked.

“We do.”

Together they crossed the road and approached the fish seller’s window. Harmony stepped up to the hag behind the counter while Laurel sat down beside the fidgeting girl.

“Tristessa?” she asked, keeping her voice low and slurred.

“Yes?” asked the girl.

Laurel slid closer, keeping her back to the hag at the window.

“Where are they?”

Tristessa hesitated and bit her lip. Harmony continued quibbling with the hag at the window about how much a hunk of catfish was truly worth.