Paul Kemp - The Hammer and the Blade

"Open the door!" Nix shrieked.

Sweat poured into his eyes, stung the scalded skin of his face and scalp.

Egil roared and picked up his pace. Nix saw right away what the priest intended and lagged a couple strides behind him.

From behind, flaming hands reached for Nix. Something hot scalded the back of his neck, burned his hair.

Egil lowered his shoulder and sprinted full speed up the stairs and into the metal door, his shoulder lowered. He hit it like a battering ram. The slab of metal shrieked as the impact drove the hinge bolts from the masonry. Egil and Nix tumbled into the room, landing on their stomachs atop the dislodged door.

The startled guards stood around them, eyes wide, blades in hand.

"We thought you was something else entire," Derg said. His relief lasted only a moment as he looked back into the columned hall, saw what was flowing up the steps.

Nix was already on his feet, pulling Egil up behind him. "Run for your life, you dumb gits! Run!"

He didn't wait to see if they heeded his words.

Fire, heat, and the roaring guards burst up the stairs and through the door. One of Baras's guards screamed, an agonized, pitiful sound, and the stink of charred flesh chased Nix through the narrow corridor that led back out to the natural cave. Despite the absence of murals, the flames and burning guardsmen chased them still, turning the cave into a furnace.

More screams from behind; more stink. Nix's legs felt numb. He was gasping, his hair singed, his throat raw from smoke and heat. He stumbled, slammed into a stalagmite.

"Keep going!" Egil said, both of them now communicating between exhausted gasps. "We grab the ropes, climb for our lives!"

"Too slow! We have to jump!"

"That water's too shallow!"

"The tide is in by now!"

"If it's not?"

"Then we're fakked!"

Egil muttered prayers to Ebenor as he and Nix drained their final reserves of energy and sprinted the last fifty paces for the cave mouth. But they were too slow and the crawling flames caught them at last. The walls of the cave turned to curtains of fire. The floor under their feet blazed. Nix's boots smoked. His cloak and trousers caught fire. He had breath enough only to scream at the pain.

Egil echoed his pained shriek but both kept running.

The howls of the guards rang in their ears. Swords of smoke slashed the air beside Nix. Blazing hands grabbed at his cloak, causing him to stumble and threatening to turn his clothing into a conflagration. In the crackle and roar of the flames he thought he heard the distant, mumbled sound of the Afirion tongue.

They reached the cave mouth at a dead run, both of them screaming, both of them aflame, and neither of them so much as slowed. They leaped out into open air, arms flailing, clothes ablaze and trailing smoke, twin comets falling into the watery void of the Bleak Sea below.

The flaming guards pursued them even over the edge. In the few heartbeats it took to plummet down the cliff face, Nix saw the blurry glow of the guards' blazing forms reflected on the surface of the water below, trailing them down.

Nix tensed his body and tried to angle himself slightly, but nothing prepared him for the force of the impact, the sudden cold. He might as well have crashed into a rock wall. The impact rattled his body, made him see sparks, forced the air from his lungs. He sank deep into the dark, quiet water, his body already turning numb from the frigid water.

Around him the water lightened then glowed brightly as the flaming guardian spirits knifed into the sea and floated toward them. Bubbles and steam boiled away from the flaming guards' forms as they descended, the holes of their eyes fixed on Nix.

Nix kicked his legs and recoiled, going deeper, until his back thumped against the rocky bottom. And still the guardians came, diminishing with each stroke as the water claimed more and more of their forms, but performing their vengeful duty even as it destroyed them. They descended closer, closer, and a flaming hand reached for Nix's face… and surrendered entirely to the sea before reaching him. The flaming bodies died out, dissipated with the faint echo of Afirion curses.

Nix's lungs burned. His clothes were soaked, weighing him down. He had no idea how deep he was, though he could perceive the filtered light of dusk. Panicked, he pushed off the bottom with what strength he had left and made for the surface.

Water, unending water. He needed to breathe, and the instinct to gulp air became overwhelming. He was lightheaded, failing.

A hand seized him by the cloak and jerked him to the surface. He broke the waterline into the gray light of twilight, felt cool air on his face, and drew it into his lungs in greedy, heaving gulps.

"Breathe," Egil said, gulping air himself and keeping Nix afloat. "Breathe."

Nix could not speak. He nodded, gasping, coughing. Egil held him by the collar and kept his head above water.

The waves surged them back and forth, driving their wounded, burned bodies into rocks, pushing them toward the cliff. Nix did not have the energy to resist the water's will. He and Egil just fended off the rocks as best they could with their legs and arms.

"Good," Nix said after a time. "I'm good."

"Anyone else get out?" Egil said.

"I don't think so," Nix said.

They called out, hoping to hear a response over the rush and hum of the surf. When they heard nothing, Egil uttered a short prayer to Ebenor, wishing the guards' souls a safe journey into the spheres of the afterlife.

"Let's get out of the water," Egil said. "We'll die of cold."

"Aye," Nix said.

"Got the horn still?"

A moment of panic seized Nix at the thought he might have lost it, but the strap hadn't broken. The horn still hung around his neck. For good measure, he felt for his satchel of magical and mundane paraphernalia, his weapons. He had everything. Except the men he'd come in with. Damn.

Abn Thuset's final ward had gotten some good men, but she hadn't gotten them all. Somewhere under him, he knew, the stone face of the wizardqueen's statue looked up at him with ire.

"You have a lovely home, milady," he said to her.

They fought the waves and their wounds as they tried to make for the distant beach, further exhausting themselves. They swam, floated, and sputtered along the cliff face toward the shoreline. By the time they made it, Nix felt as though he had swum a league. His arms hung dead from his shoulders. He was giddy when he felt a sandy bottom under his feet. He and Egil stood in the chest-high water and waded in, assisted by the rolling surf. Nix's body ached all over. He was burned in places, and he'd wrenched his right leg. He favored it as the water grew shallower, stumbled often.

Beside him, the priest looked slumped, bedraggled, his mustache, beard, and ruff of hair sodden. Burns pinked his face, forearms, and his tattooed scalp.

"Hurt the leg?" Egil asked Nix. "Can you walk?"

"Barely," Nix said, limping on the wounded leg. "Must have twisted it fleeing the flames."

Gulls flew around them, cawed irritably. Shouts sounded from their left, from atop the cliff. Nix saw figures there, and raised a hand to hail them, but they must not have seen him. More shouts from behind the rise that hid the beach from the plains. Sounded like Jyme.

"Here," Nix tried to call, but his raw throat mustered a poor shout. He stripped off his cloak and shirt as he plodded through the surf, wrung them out. Egil did the same. Both of them shivered in the cool air.

"Anything?" Nix said, holding his arms out and turning a circle so Egil could see his back.

"An unimpressive physique and a few burns, but nothing that'll kill you," Egil said, and held out his own arms and turned. "Me?"

Nix eyed the priest's broad back. "How am I supposed to see anything through all that back hair? No wonder you didn't get burned. You've a pelt."