David Mcintee - The Light of Heaven

Crowe leaped down, drawing into two of the soldiers with a flurry of cuts and blows. Gabriella blocked a series of lightning-fast cuts from the man still facing her, then pushed, not cutting or stabbing, but simply shoving his enemy back by brute force. The man's sword was knocked aside and Gabriella stepped forward, slamming her shoulder into the enemy's chest. The man, knocked off balance, started to fall. Gabriella slipped in the offal spilling from the bowman and crashed to the floor on top of him. Both her swords clattered aside.

Gabriella knelt astride her fallen foe and punched, then again, and again. Grunts exploded out of Gabriella's chest in time to the flashes of pain from her knuckles as she beat the soldier down. With each punch, the soldier's bare head smacked back into the floor.

"Dez!" a voice called, "Dez!" There was a pause. "Gabriella!"

It was Crowe. Gabriella looked up, startled by his use of her proper name. Crowe was the only man left standing in the hall. "He's dead, all right? That slab of meat you're trying to drive into the floor is not going to get up again."

Gabriella looked at the soldier she had been punching. The man had not moved even though the punches had stopped. Blood was pooling under his head. His face looked like it was wearing a mask of stewing meat. The anger that burned between her ribs and under her shoulder-blades was not subsiding. It was boiling the breath in her lungs and rushing in her ears. "He was…" Gabriella didn't know what he was now. A dead opponent and no more. That was all that mattered; that was all that could matter.

Gabriella let go of the corpse, scooped up her swords and stood.

"His name was Pett Wynn. He was a Knight of the Order of the Swords of Dawn from Oweilau." She pointed to another body, without looking round. "Johan Kroun. Knight of the Order of the Swords of Dawn from Malmkrug. You get the idea."

Crowe looked dazed. "These were members of the Swords? What — "

"Not were. Still are. Kell's bodyguards are a team of the Swords." Her voice was very small. She felt as dazed as Crowe looked. A door clattered then and she reached through it and hauled out the last face she expected to see here, short of the Anointed Lord herself.

It was Brother Markus, who had once guarded a crossroads right outside Joachim the assassin's escape route. He looked different in his mercenary garb and she supposed she had too, when she had worn Kannis' company's gear to slip into Turnitia.

"Sister DeZantez… This isn't what it looks like!"

"Isn't it? What in the Pits is it, then? A meeting to plan a surprise party for the Anointed Lord's birthday? Well, my lad, what shall the charges be? Apostasy, heresy?"

"What are you talking about?" Markus demanded, his voice shaking as much as his bones, he was so terrified.

"You and your friends, playing bodyguard for a ranking member of a proscribed heretical sect. One who, as it happens, was involved in the assassination attempt on an Eminence of the Final Faith!"

"What about you yourself?"

"What? Me?!" She was outraged at his retort.

"Why are you here, then? If you are on duty, why aren't you in the garb of the Order?" Markus sidled closer, his voice dropping. "Or could it be that you're looking for a way out of the Order? That you came, like all those worthless dregs of humanity out there, to leave your old life behind and start a new one? A new life that's free of the dogma of the Anointed Lord?"

"If you want to be free of your life, free of the 'dogma of the Anointed Lord,' all you had to do was ask," Gabriella said. Then she slid forward, one sword batting his out of the way and the edge of her heel darting into his solar plexus, making a good attempt to go through it. He doubled over as she spun and rammed the point of her other sword into his throat. She could feel it scrape the collarbone as it went in, severing the vertebrae on its way out.

Markus' eyes bulged as he collapsed. He tried to take a breath, but his eyes were already glazing over, as blood flooded his lungs.

"Consider yourself free," Gabriella told him and withdrew the sword, which held only the barest smear of blood. As it had before, that neatness always pleased her. Markus toppled forward, the look of disbelief never leaving his face.

"Orders…" he managed to gasp, clutching at the hole in his throat.

Gabriella didn't believe a word of it. "Who's orders?"

"Eminence — "

"Don't lie to me, you whoreson!"

"Eminence…"

"Liar," she whispered, but too late. Markus was in the Pits of Kerberos.

All hell was breaking loose as Crowe helped Gabriella out onto the terraces. More Brotherhood guards attacked them at every step of the way, but they were no match for Gabriella's dual short swords and Crowe's broadsword.

"It's a trap!" Crowe shouted, for the benefit of the unarmed people around. "The Brotherhood are selling us out to the Faith."

People looked at each other, pointing and gesticulating, all trying to judge how true that was. Gabriella took up the same cry as she fought across the terraces. "They worship the same God, dammit!"

That was enough logic for a few of the more alcohol-fuelled hotheads, who immediately started closing on the guards. As soon as an armed Brother cut down an unarmed gambler, it looked as if Crowe and Gabriella's claim was verified. At once, mercenaries turned on Brothers and drunks picked fights with each other. Crowe hoped there weren't too many true Brotherhood members in the vicinity; waving three or four pounds of iron around for a long time took its tool.

He cut down two more men and shouted: "Kell's dead! His guards were Faith assassins!"

The fighting was dying off quickly, as there were a lot more angry drunks and mercenaries than there were Brotherhood swordsmen. The last few Brothers broke out of a ring of mercenaries and made it to horses. A couple of arrows followed ineffectually after them as they galloped away, but they didn't get too far.

Halfway across the valley between the gatehouse in the ridge of peaks and the archway that — from this side — resembled a wide fish-mouth filled with fan-like stalactites, half a dozen riders in gleaming white swept out from a gulley and tore through them. Even at this distance, Crowe didn't need a spyglass to recognise Knights of the Order of the Swords of Dawn.

"It's the Faith!" someone called. One person cheered, but quickly fell silent. "They've come for us!"

They've come for somebody , Crowe thought.

People were gathering their belongings and preparing to get out of Freedom. Crowe was glad the place had lost its lustre for them. It was better that they found their own reasons for leaving, rather than him try to convince them. He knew they would never have listened. The thought reminded him that he still had the two ships' log books. He went to the nearest cooking fire and tossed them in.

Several people were approaching as he did so. Gabriella slumped onto a bench against a terrace wall, staring into space.

"You know what's going on," the nearest man said. "The Order of the Swords are out there! Are they going to attack?"

Crowe wondered how he was supposed to know and almost asked Gabriella. He caught himself just in time, not wanting to reveal her true identity to these confused people. They'd probably try something stupid like holding her hostage for safe passage.

"Maybe. Maybe not."

With a little cajoling, he got a few mercenaries to stand guard. They wouldn't do any good against the Order, but it would make them feel better. Then he returned to Gabriella's side.

"Gabriella," he said softly, so that no-one nearby would hear. "I know… I'm not the best role model for a devout lass, but one thing I've learned in my life is to expect betrayal. It's less of a shock that way."