Brian McClellan - Servant of the Crown

“And them,” Erika said.

He glanced over his shoulder to see four more cabal guards heading up the street. They wore the same breastplates but bore long pikes in addition to their sabers, and they were coming on at a dead run.

“Let’s make this quick,” Erika said. She lifted her pistol as she spoke, shooting a guard in the face. She followed through by discarding the pistol and leaping forward, sword swinging at the next guard.

Tamas wasn’t able to watch how she fared. Two guards came at him quickly. One, the same person who’d elbowed him in the House of Nobles, was a tall, muscular woman. Her saber hit the base of his small sword with enough force that he worried she’d shatter it on a second blow.

He shoved forward but was unable to find purchase on the cobbles, his boots sliding under him. Abandoning that plan, he stepped to the side and let her momentum carry her past him. His sword flicked at the second guard, remembering the way Erika had showed him to use precision above brute force. He caught the tip of the man’s saber and slapped it aside, then stepped forward to plunge his sword into the man’s throat.

He spun, expecting to see the tall woman bearing down on him.

Instead, he found her on her back, twitching, blood fountaining from one eye. Erika stood panting above the corpses of all three of the remaining guards. Her face shone with sweat, her eyes alight with a kind of savage glee. “Pit,” she breathed, “I thought I was good, but with the powder trance …”

“Pikes,” Tamas reminded.

Erika turned toward the coming guards, and seemed to falter. “Do we run?”

Tamas caught sight of Dienne. She had gotten to her feet and fled during the brief fight and was now behind the other four cabal guards and running for a waiting carriage parked at the end of the street.

“No,” he said. “Load me a pistol.” He grabbed a powder charge from his kit, setting his own sword down in the snow and drawing his knife. He ran forward. Ten paces from the lead pikeman, he threw the charge overhand. It hit the pikeman in the face, and Tamas ignited the powder with a thought.

The pikeman went down with a cry, and Tamas was inside the guard of the rest of them within a moment. His knife flashed, opening two throats in the time it took to blink. A chance raising of the third man’s pike shaft knocked the knife from Tamas’s fingers. He grabbed the man by his cuirass and slammed his forehead against the man’s nose. The man went down in a spray of blood.

The first guard had recovered, his face a mess of blood and black powder, and rushed at Tamas with pike set. Tamas smacked the pike blade out of the way with the flat of his hand and bore down on the man. He snatched the guard by the throat and flexed his powder-strengthened fingers, crushing the man’s windpipe.

“Pistol!” Tamas shouted.

Erika finished loading the pistol and tossed it to him underhand. He twisted to catch it by the butt and brought it up, only to find Dienne’s carriage fleeing down the road and around the corner, out of sight.

He pulled up, knowing even he couldn’t make a shot around the corner like that. Erika came up beside him, steam rising from her face and shoulders.

Tamas retrieved his pistol and finished off the guards with his knife. He expected some kind of protest from her, but she watched silently. This was not, he decided, the first time she had killed. “You were magnificent,” he said.

Her eyes glistened. “You were like something out of the pit.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It was.”

Tamas could feel his heart still hammering inside his chest. He looked down, seeing blood on his hand.

“You cut yourself on that pike,” Erika said.

“Not as fast as I thought I was, I guess.”

Erika shook her head. “I’ve never seen anyone do anything like that.”

“Did she see your face?” he asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Are you certain?”

Erika hesitated. “No.”

“All right. We’ll have to …” Tamas paused. “We’re being watched.”

“A fight like this would attract attention. We should go.”

Tamas looked around. He traced the various footprints in the snow, glancing at the alleyways. He had sensed something more than just mild interest. “We’ll get our horses. Looks like you’re coming with me out of the city after all.”

Erika took his wounded hand, lifting it to inspect the cut, then threading her fingers into his. “That’s what I was hoping for.”

Tamas lay on a wooded hilltop above his cottage near the King’s Forest. A dusting of snow covered his back and shoulders, and his elbows hurt from propping him up for half the night. He burned a heavy powder trance to fend off the cold and his need for sleep. Erika dozed lightly just beside him, wrapped in a greatcoat and furs.

It was less than twelve hours after their fight with Dienne, and there was no sign of pursuit. Yet. His vantage allowed him a view for three miles toward the highway to Adopest to the south and to the west along the edge of the King’s Forest. If anyone came looking for him at the cottage, he would see them long before they saw him.

And most importantly, his bullet would take them off their horse before the sound of his gunshot hit them.

Tamas shifted slightly and glanced at Erika. Her cheeks were red from the cold, her face peaceful. He swallowed a lump in his throat and resisted the urge to look at the bedroll- his bedroll-they’d shared all night.

His greatcoat seemed suddenly very warm.

He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. Whatever had happened between them was a onetime thing. He would have to disappear, perhaps leave Adro altogether. Erika would have to lie low for a few weeks until she could discover whether Dienne knew her name. Tamas would never be able to see or speak to her again.

Tamas resolved to tell her this upon her waking. As if his thoughts had been a summons to bring her out of sleep, she rolled over and stretched. “Good morning,” she said quietly, without opening her eyes.

He swallowed. “Sleep well?” he asked.

“Very.” The word was almost a purr.

Tamas blinked, trying to remember what he was about to tell her. Something important, he was certain.

“Anyone coming this way?” she asked.

“Not that I’ve seen.”

“What time is it?”

Tamas glanced up through the bare branches of the forest at the sky above them. It was a low cloud cover, the sun invisible, so he pulled his stiff fingers from the stock of his rifle and fished in his pocket for his watch. “Half past eleven,” he said.

“Have you slept?” she asked.

“No.”

“I could stand watch.”

“I wouldn’t be able to sleep if you did,” he said. “Took too much powder.”

Erika sat up and stretched. “You still think they’ll come looking for you here?”

“I don’t have any idea. If the cabal knows about the cottage, they will. All I can do is wait and watch.”

“For how long?”

“Days? A week or two? I would rather force a confrontation with whoever they send where I can pick my own battleground.”

“I’m not sure if I can be gone that long,” Erika said. “My parents will wonder.”

“About that,” Tamas said, “You should get back to the city as soon as possible. You don’t want to raise any kind of suspicion.”

She gave him a coy smile. “You don’t enjoy my company?”

“Look, it’s …” Tamas hesitated, his mind blank. He spent so much time holding back what he wanted to say, that having no words at all was disorienting. “About last night,” he continued.

“Admit it, you were impressed.”

“I’m not talking about the fight. I’m talking about after.”