Энтони Райан - Queen of Fire

They kept on towards the suburbs in a tight formation, Garisai skirmishing in front, Drakerʼs company on the right and Illianʼs on the left. Karavekʼs people followed in a dense mass with the Politai acting as rear-guard. Frentis set a punishing pace; moving across open ground with no cavalry to secure the flanks instilled a keen sense of vulnerability. More bodies were discovered on the march, grey-clads and a few slaves with the occasional black-clad. Most had wounds to the back, indicating they had been cut down whilst running. Frentis counted over a hundred by the time they reached the first houses whereupon he stopped counting.

What is she doing?

They lay in every doorway, every street corner, the gutters running red as evidence of the freshness of the slaughter. There was no sign of torture on the bodies, few with more than two wounds, most with one. This had been an efficient massacre, performed without regard to age, sex or station. Children lay alongside the elderly, slaves were entwined with overseers. Black, grey and enslaved all united in death.

“The queen?” Draker asked Frentis, skin pale beneath his beard. “I know she wanted justice, but this…”

“This was not the queen,” Frentis told him. “The Empress has set her Arisai to work.”

“Those red bastards? Thought we killed them all.”

Nine thousand more… He sighed at his own stupidity. They must have all been given the same lie to tell if captured.

“Varitai and Free Swords are one thing, brother,” Karavek said. “Even Kuritai. But my people canʼt stand against the red men…”

“Then go back to the beach and beg Lord Ell-Nurin to take you home.” Frentis turned back to Draker. “Choose your fastest runner, send them to the Notch with a request the Fleet Lord come ashore with every sailor who can hold a blade.” He turned to view the death-choked streets ahead. “Heʼll find us at the arena.”

They were drawn by the screams, a shrill chorus of terror and pain echoing across the bloodied streets. Frentis led the Garisai towards it, ordering Illian and Draker to work their way around on both flanks and sending the archers onto the rooftops. A hundred paces on the streets opened out into a square, displaying typical Volarian orderliness with its neatly arranged lawns, spotted with statuary and bisected with stone pathways, and, in the centre, a dense crowd of Volarians being systematically slaughtered by some two hundred Arisai. The people had been hemmed in on all sides, clustering together in instinctive terror as the red men methodically hacked their way through the throng, visibly shrinking by the second amidst a growing circle of corpses.

“I donʼt expect you to fight for them,” Frentis told Lekran, raising his sword to the archers on the rooftops.

“I fight with you, Redbrother,” the tribesman told him, briefly twirling his axe. “Until this is done. You know that.”

Frentis nodded and lowered his sword. The archers unleashed their volley, the arrows streaking forth to claim at least a dozen Arisai as he sprinted forward, the Garisai following with a collective shout. Until this is done. For good or ill, itʼll be done today.

The Arisai rebounded from Sister Merialʼs outstretched hand to collide with a wall, tendrils of grey smoke rising from the blackened handprint burned into his breastplate as he sank to the ground, all sign of life vanished from his frozen features. The sister turned to Frentis with a tired grin and flexed her fingers. “Handy in a tight spot, arenʼt I, brother?”

“Down!” He grabbed her shoulder and forced her aside as an Arisai charged from a shadowed doorway, short sword outstretched and a joyful smile on his lips. Frentis turned the blade with his own and spun, bringing the sword around to slash across the Arisaiʼs eyes, finishing him with a thrust to the throat as he staggered, laughing in gleeful surprise.

Frentis paused to drag air into his lungs, surveying the street, littered with corpses from end to end. He spotted Ivelda among them, lying dead atop the Arisai she had killed, her dagger still embedded in his neck. They had fought from street to street for close to an hour now, forcing the Arisai to leave off their slaughter and face them. The fighting descended into chaos the farther in they went, as the streets grew more narrow and the Arisai revealed a fiendish talent for ambush. They would attack alone or in pairs, launching themselves without warning from alleys, doorways and windows to assault his fighters in a frenzy of delighted carnage before being brought down by weight of numbers or a well-placed arrow from one of the archers above. They had learned their lessons well in New Kethia, their advance made possible by the archers, who continued to leap from rooftop to rooftop, killing any Arisai seen in the streets below.

Frentis spied Lekran with half a dozen Garisai at the north end of the street and ran to his side, Merial following with an unsteady gait. He had seen her kill three Arisai already and knew she was risking collapse with every use of her gift.

“The last of the cowards from New Kethia pissed themselves and ran,” Lekran reported with a grimace of disgust. “I will kill Karavek with my own hands.”

“Youʼd have a difficult task,” Merial groaned, leaning against a doorway, ashen features sagging. “I saw him die two streets back.”

Frentisʼs gaze rose at the sound of someone calling his name, finding Illianʼs slim silhouette standing atop a two-storey building twenty yards away, waving her crossbow above her head. “Weaver!” she called down to him as he ran closer, indicating a point where the dense streets opened into what appeared to be a market square. “And Master Rensial!”

Frentis gestured for the Garisai to follow and sprinted for the square, finding it in shambles, carts and trestles overturned amidst the slumped forms of murdered slaves and free folk. At the north end of the square some fifty Politai were formed into a dense wedge, moving steadily forward against a seething wall of Arisai perhaps twice their number. The Politai moved with all the precision born of their years of ingrained discipline, their broad-bladed spears jutting out like the spines of a porcupine as they edged forward, Weaverʼs blond head visible in their centre. Curiously the Arisai seemed to have lost much of their maddening humour when confronted with the former slave soldiers. Frentis saw naked fury on many faces as they launched themselves at the well-ordered ranks, most dying on the unyielding hedge of spears but some managing to hack their way into the formation, claiming one or two Politai in the process.

At first Frentis was puzzled by the determined nature of the Politaiʼs advance; there appeared to be no one left in this square to save, then he saw him, a lone rider amidst the Arisai, wheeling his mount with matchless grace, sword moving in elegant arcs as the red men fell around him. But he was just one, and they were many.

Frentis forgot all caution and hurled himself into the Arisai, sword gripped in two hands as he hacked his way through, whirling and killing as the Garisai charged in his wake. He dimly heard a shout from the Politai, not in exultation, for such emotions still seemed to be beyond them, more an acknowledgment of an order. Their formation doubled its pace as the Arisaiʼs ranks thinned about them, forcing their way closer to the lone rider.

Frentis ducked under the sweep of a sword and drove his blade through the breastplate of the Arisai who held it. The man refused to die however, latching onto his sword arm and holding Frentis in place, red teeth bared in a broad, affectionate smile. “Hello, Father,” he rasped, hands like a vise on Frentisʼs arm.