Alex Archer - The Other Crowd

“They’re here…”

Annja felt the breeze that moved her ponytail from in front of her shoulder to her back.

Then she paused.

There was no breeze.

She must have moved, flipped her hair over her shoulder with a jerk of her head. It was the only thing that made sense. Until a strange flutter made her look down.

She didn’t know what was causing her sudden nervousness, or making her hear things.

It had to be an insect. It had sounded like that, like wings fluttering.

“Just a bug,” she whispered.

A male cry of pain alerted her. She heard a body hit the dirt and the clatter of the plastic-encased camera followed.

“Eric,” she whispered.

Footsteps crunched. Those were not Eric’s rubber-soled Vans.

Sucking in a deep breath, Annja calmed her racing heartbeat.

She swept out her right hand. Looking into the otherwhere, she opened her fingers and closed them around her battle sword.

Slapping her left hand to the hilt, she prepared to meet whatever was coming around the corner….

Destiny

Solomon’s Jar

The Spider Stone

The Chosen

Forbidden City

The Lost Scrolls

God of Thunder

Secret of the Slaves

Warrior Spirit

Serpent’s Kiss

Provenance

The Soul Stealer

Gabriel’s Horn

The Golden Elephant

Swordsman’s Legacy

Polar Quest

Eternal Journey

Sacrifice

Seeker’s Curse

Footprints

Paradox

The Spirit Banner

Sacred Ground

The Bone Conjurer

Tribal Ways

The Dragon’s Mark

Phantom Prospect

False Horizon

The Other Crowd

Rogue Angel ™

www.mirabooks.co.uk

…THE ENGLISH COMMANDER TOOK JOAN’S SWORD AND RAISED IT HIGH.

The broadsword, plain and unadorned, gleamed in the firelight. He put the tip against the ground and his foot at the center of the blade. The broadsword shattered, fragments falling into the mud. The crowd surged forward, peasant and soldier, and snatched the shards from the trampled mud. The commander tossed the hilt deep into the crowd.

Smoke almost obscured Joan, but she continued praying till the end, until finally the flames climbed her body and she sagged against the restraints.

Joan of Arc died that fateful day in France, but her legend and sword are reborn….

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Her forged steel battle sword clanked against an iron-plated chest cuirass. The shock of connection had ceased to clatter up her arms and vibrate in her molars. Over the course of the day, she’d become physically numb to violence, to blood.

To her faith.

No, she still clung to faith, to blind trust and humble servitude. It was all she had.

A thunderous warrior’s cry from behind her prompted her to spin about. Slick mud made footing unsure. The soles of her laced leather boots had worn thin; she could gauge the rises and fall of earth with a mere flex of foot. She maintained balance.

With no time to deliver an overhand slash of her sword, she plunged it up into the charging soldier’s gut. The blade slid under her enemy’s bloodied leather cuirass. She felt the soft acceptance as the sword tip sunk into flesh. The soul had been pierced. May God have mercy.

Blood purled down the flat of the blade. Her victim’s triumphant cry changed to a gurgling requiem. A mace glinting with the blood of her fellow soldiers fell from his limp grasp. For a moment he loomed before her in the rain, arms spread, yet hands limp. Mouth open and eyes horrifically wide. Poised between life and death.

As a child she had enjoyed playing in the rain. The world would never again be so carefree.

A heel to his thigh pushed his body off balance. He dropped backward. Mud droplets spattered his face and her leg greaves.

Death proved far too easy.

The violet sky briefly teased at the corner of her eye where mud did not blemish her vision. Too pretty for battle. It promised an end to the abominable weather. A rainbow was swirled in an oily slick before the castle wall.

“Jeanne!”

The familiar voice cut through the cacophony of warfare. Lieutenant Charlier. Just last night his wife had birthed a baby boy who was not breathing. The lieutenant mourned as a black cloud had entered his life. The child had not been baptized before burial, which Jeanne had protested until her throat ached. Now the lieutenant signaled and she followed him. He did not see the English infantryman swinging a deadly halberd behind him.

“No!” She rushed across the battlefield, slick with blood and mud.

A body lay between her and the lieutenant. In the moment Jeanne took to look down and leap over the sprawled enemy corpse, the tip of the armor-piercing halberd poked out from the lieutenant’s chest. His arms flung backward as his torso curved unnaturally forward.

She swung madly, utilizing no martial skill save a fierce determination honed over the past months. Lieutenant Charlier was dead before his palms hit the ground.

Jeanne’s sword soughed the air. Impending death held an utterly voiceless tone, yet it sweetened the air as a bird’s wings during flight. Her blade connected with the head of the Englishman who had gutted the lieutenant. Because he wore no helmet, the top of his skull was shaved off just above the eyes.

Gulping a surge of acrid bile, Jeanne thrust ferociously following the backswing, but the counterattack wasn’t necessary. The man toppled at her feet, his dissected brain oozing out like fresh porridge.

Stumbling backward, metal slapped against metal. Caught by the shoulders, she slammed into an unmoving force. Unable to lift her sword, she struggled, but the man who held her against his armored chest was too strong.

“The Maid of Orléans,” he growled. “Does your faith allow forgiveness for murder? You claim power with your sword, vile wench. It is not your power to own. I’ve never killed a woman, but you are no female. You are a—”

Warm blood spattered her cheek. The man holding her suddenly fell away from her body. She didn’t look down and back, because she’d seen too much death. Another man charged at her with a sword to match hers.

The clank of opposing weapons stung her ears. The enemy was right. Who was she to claim power with a battle sword when violence only seemed to beget further violence? Was this truly the path she had intended? How could God command such destruction?

Following a guttural battle cry, a new opponent slashed his bloodied sword toward her. Scrambling to counterattack, her blade tip caught on the screw at her knee greave. She wouldn’t be able to deflect the blow. The blade would cut through her skull—

A TRILLING ALARM startled her upright on the bed. Slashing her arms out before her to deflect the blow, Annja Creed cried out, “No!”