Brian Ruckley - Corsair

He blinked and saw Enna rising unsteadily to her feet, hobbling past him into the open doorway. There were strips of blood across the back of her gown. Old welts, re-opened, bleeding once more. Anguished memories of the past and its terrible, tangled meanings all raw and fresh in her body.

Beyond her, Hamdan had been thrown down just as Yulan had. He was scrabbling for his bow.

‘We’re all going,’ Enna was saying. ‘We’re all going to find him. All together.’

She glanced at Yulan as she turned in the doorway and stood there upon the threshold of the wrecked menagerie. Her red gaze fell upon him, though he did not believe she really saw him, or knew him. The awful extremity of her distress and fury destroyed cages, but it was not setting her free.

‘I hate you,’ she said. ‘Where are they? Who killed my father? I want everyone.’

Again the walls and the roof and the floor trembled. A fever had hold of the castle, and shook it. Blocks of stone fell and shattered with thunderous booms.

Yulan pushed himself up and forwards. He drew back his sword and swept it in at Enna’s head. Fearing, as he had never done before, what he was about to do and what it would mean to him. But the sword never reached the child. Another blade blocked it and pushed it back.

Lake stepped between Enna and Yulan. He had his shield up over his head. Debris from the arch of the doorway, and from the roof above, pattered onto it.

‘She is my charge, my promise,’ the Orphanidon said.

The shield dipped suddenly and an arrow Yulan had not even seen coming smacked into it and stood there like a quill. Yulan took a step back. He was not as steady on his feet, or as clear-sighted, as he would have wished to be if he must face Lake once more.

‘She’s going to shake this castle to pieces,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t know what she’s doing.’

As if in confirmation of his words a piercing screaming of metal erupted behind him. First one of the cages, then another and another unfolded like an opening flower, the bars tearing themselves free and spreading. Splaying out.

‘Enna,’ the Orphanidon shouted without looking at her. His eyes darted between Yulan and Hamdan. Between sword and arrow, both aimed at him.

‘Enna,’ Lake cried again. ‘It is Lake. I can help you, child. I can keep you safe.’

Yulan could not clearly see the girl behind the Orphanidon.

‘I can’t hold it,’ he heard her say. ‘I can’t send it back. It’s all wrong. I just want everyone to …’

Whatever the last word she spoke, Yulan did not hear it. None of them did, for a storm rushed out from her. A wind such as Yulan had never known, with weight and malice and irresistible strength. It flung him backwards, spinning and sliding him across the floor. As he went, helpless, he lost hold of his sword. He saw Lake hurled high, almost to the ceiling, and coming spinning down like a loose-limbed doll. He saw Hamdan tumbling, trying to roll with the blast.

Stone slipped from stone and the furthest section of the hall began a slow collapse. The grinding rumble was engulfing and deafening, but Yulan heard Enna through it: screaming not with a human voice but with the voice of the sky, howling out the tempest.

And then it was snapped out. As if a door had been slammed shut. The air passed in an instant from chaos to calm. The noise quietened. Enna’s cry was gone. As Yulan lifted his heavy head, peering through shifting veils of dust, he saw that she herself was gone. The doorway stood empty.

Yulan rolled onto his front and pushed himself up. Every muscle ached. His sword lay close by. He picked it up. Hamdan was lying unmoving, close to the far wall. Yulan limped across to the archer. His ankle throbbed with the memory of the twist he had given it in the passage up from below.

As he knelt at Hamdan’s side, searching for signs of life, he heard a wet moan and looked round. Lake was impaled upon one of the splayed bars of a cage. The round iron shaft had punched through the shoulder of the Orphanidon’s shield-arm. The ageing warrior was trying to pull himself free. A fatal wound, Yulan guessed, feeling a distant, unexpected kind of regret at the thought.

Hamdan was not dead yet, at least. The archer stirred beneath Yulan’s hand.

‘Get up,’ Yulan said.

‘Easy for you to say,’ Hamdan rasped indistinctly.

Yulan heaved him to his feet and got his shoulder under Hamdan’s arm. He half-dragged him towards the door.

‘Find a way, you lazy bastard,’ he hissed, for want of anything more helpful, and was rewarded with a grudging snort of a laugh.

Together they stumbled their way out into the passage, weaving around chunks of fallen stonework and great cracks laid into the floor. Hamdan’s strength grew bit by bit, and Yulan was grateful as the weight laid across his own shoulders diminished.

When they came to the corner, ready to turn and work their way past the dead bear to the waiting balcony, a sound behind him made Yulan pause and look. Enna was there in the corridor, back by the doors to the menagerie hall. She had one hand pressed to the wall and was leaning against it. Her head was down so that her lank hair hid her face.

‘Where are my brothers and sisters?’ Yulan heard her groan. ‘I want them. Now.’

A rising wind brushed Yulan’s cheeks and he felt hope carried away upon it. He glimpsed a future and felt it pulling him, irresistible.

He shook Hamdan off and pushed the archer inelegantly towards the bear, and the balcony beyond it. He did not know if Hamdan had seen or heard Enna.

‘Make sure the girls are safe,’ he said without taking his eyes off Enna. ‘Get them down to the boats, if they haven’t gone already.’

‘What?’ Hamdan said, sounding still dazed.

‘Now!’ Yulan shouted. ‘Jump. I’ll be a step behind you, that’s all.’

The archer hesitated. Yulan glared at him, gathering up all the command and authority he could.

‘Go!’ he snarled. ‘Ready the boat.’

Hamdan frowned and moistened his lips, licking away the dust of the crumbling castle.

‘I’ll see the girls are safely gone, but I’m not jumping without you,’ he muttered as he moved towards the dead bear. He sounded weary, pained. But firm.

Yulan only nodded, and started back towards Enna. His battered body was rebelling, protesting every step. He forced it on. Do what’s needful, he told himself, and his limbs and his heart.

Enna was not reacting to his approach. Unless the rumbling shivers that passed through the walls and floors were reaction. Somewhere outside, Yulan heard a great crashing and booming. Another tower surrendering out there along the walls, probably. He imagined the whole keep collapsing and spilling back and down into the cove below. Vast slabs of stone raining upon water, boats. He moved more quickly.

Lake came reeling out from the hall between Yulan and Enna. The Orphanidon’s shield was gone. His left arm hung limp at his side, and that whole flank from shoulder to waist was drenched in blood. His tunic was heavy with the stuff.

Yulan knew a dying man when he saw one. Lake’s eyes denied it, refused it. They were as sharp and full of intent as ever, fixed upon Yulan.

‘Leave her be, sellsword,’ Lake hissed.

Yulan grimaced in frustration.

‘You want a Permanence here?’ he snapped. ‘Is that what you want?’

‘You don’t know,’ Lake insisted.

Behind him, Enna was moaning. Trembling.

‘Hold firm, girl,’ Lake said, ‘Just for another moment.’ And he lunged at Yulan.

A man so maimed should not have been a threat. But Yulan was all bruises and pain and weariness, and Lake was, in the end, still an Orphanidon. The Empire of Orphans had crafted him from childhood, and made him a weapon. He had disavowed that history but he remained a weapon.