Chapter 16

Escape

*Tassim*

I pull on Leuke's arm again. "No, there's too many ... we can't ... can't fight them all, not like this." I grimace as that soundwave passes through us again, causing my eyes and ears to swim, my muscles to cramp and my stomach to try jumping out of my mouth. "We've got to do something about that damn horn!"

"It's Lord Hagasu."

I don't know why I didn't look back sooner, but one glance confirms his words. "By the Essence ... he's one of them ..."

I know what I should do. Or I know that I know what I should do. But my mind is sluggish. My feet feel like I'll fall if I move them. I can't remember how to tell my body to ask my brain what to do next.

"Sei." Leuke's speaking again, addressing the pearl-haired girl. The healer. Yes. My mind clues in on what he's thinking a moment after he addresses her, but the girl needs to hear her name again before she can bring herself to focus on his face.

"Sei," he says again, sharper, and her eyes stop moving around his face and focus on it. "Can you do something about it?" He hesitates and seems to remember he might need to specify. "We're sick."

Another brown note from Hagasu breaks her focus, and this time, I speak up. "The symptoms, girl." I try to put more confidence in my tone than I feel. I don't know how close those things are, and I feel like I forgot they existed for a bit. Everything feels like I'm going to float away in a current. I force myself to take a breath. "Nausea. Disorientation. He's doing something to our heads. Can you stop it?"

Seina has to clamp her eyes shut to focus. "It ... there's nothing ... nothing in our minds ... I don't know ... it's so hard ..."

Leuke takes the opportunity to reach over and slowly clamp a hand on Benarou, to confirm where the man's attention is, meets his eyes, nods, gets a short nod back. He's rallying us, one at a time.

He turns back to Seina. "Forget the caush." He tweaks his head and spits, then tries again. "Just get us fit ... fit to charge down the hill. You can do that. You can do that, Sei. You're a Hero. You can do that."

Down the hill? Into the horde? That's suicide. Suicide while Hagasu is ... oh ...

Another belting from the noble causes a migraine behind my eyes. Damn it, how is Mr. 25 thinking better than me?!

The migraine clears and my stomach settles as light begins to radiate over us from Seina.

"I ... I don't know ... how long I ..."

Right, the girl can't treat herself while she's treating us. Which means we need to act now.

Damn it, Hagasu is inflating again. If he gets another belt off, it'll disrupt Seina's concentration!

Benarou recovers first. His aim isn't perfect, but the fireball lands close enough to freak the noble out.

I draw my Luwei Fangs and slap Leuke on the arm. "Right behind you, Muscles."

The boy nods back, then raises that stupidly huge sword and bellows back at that fucker, and we charge.

Hagasu has the gall to look shocked and affronted that we're running at him with killing intent, but he doesn't look afraid. Maybe his mind's too far gone, like everything on the other side of that ugly, purple line.

"Have you all completely lost your minds?! Don't you realize you're attacking a major Imperial Noble?! Heroes or no, the Emperor will have your heads on pikes for such treasonous beha--"

It's like he doesn't think we'll actually do it, clear up until I pull his stomach open and Leuke takes his head clean off. Even as it rolls to a stop on the ground, it still stares up at us with blank disbelief.

At least that means that the entire time we were charging down the hill, he wasn't blowing out like a horn again, and Leuke and I are only alone at the bottom for a few moments before Benarou and Seina catch up.

The short girl seems worse for wear, probably due to not having the symptoms cleared out with magic, but color is returning to her quickly enough. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like we'll have the time to wait.

"We've got to go," the battlemage insists emphatically. "Now. Or we'll be overrun."

Leuke quickly looks both ways, then bolts for the carriage. He hardly reaches it, however, before he swears, but wastes no time climbing up and throwing the coach hand off.

I've seen a lot of blood, but even I almost turn away at the sight of the body and what Hagasu must have done to him after we got off.

Somehow, Leuke manages not to dwell on the implications at all, that a man had been mutilated by a monster mere meters from the Heroes summoned to protect him and we hadn't even known.

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"Sei! I need you up front with me! I know it's rough on you, but we're going to have to push the horses! I need you making sure they don't hurt themselves! Benny, cover our backs!"

He gives the orders naturally, and I find myself surprised not to have any instructions of my own. I look around, but mentally slap myself to get my head back in the right mindset, and clamber into the back behind Benarou.

I pull out my hand crossbow and begin changing out the grapnel bolt for one meant for combat. One I would dunk in poison if I wasn't worried the coach would knock the vial all over the floor boards and drive us out with the fumes.

"It's not lightning," I tell the noble as I brace my shoulder against the rear seat, "but every bit will help."

He nods back, and within another ten seconds, Leuke launches the coach into motion.

Not a moment too soon as monstrosities crest the hill and begin pouring down its side, still rabid at the sight of us.

They're inhumanly fast, and we're not pulling away from them nearly as quickly as we should be. Even when we round a bend in the road, it's not long before they do so, as well. Benarou and I are spending most of our efforts shooting birds out of the sky, as they're the quickest to close on our position, but if anything at all goes wrong with our escape, we won't have time to come up with another plan before we're overrun.

And then I see him. I know Benarou has, too, when his spells lag and he swears in disbelief.

We shouldn't be able to see Lord Hagasu, even if we didn't leave his body decapitated and disemboweled back there. He should be lost in the horrible menagerie behind us. Instead, he stands out clearly as his head bobs back and forth above the mob like a prop at the end of a spring.

I can still see the cut where Leuke took his head off. Out of the base of that wound is a long, segmented neck, thinner than his own had been, black and shiny like an insect's carapace. His glasses have fallen off, but his eyes are still too big for his head. He looks like he's laughing, and I think I can only barely hear it over the racket of the monsters and the coach.

When I see him inhale, I brace for another blast of that horn, but instead, words reach us despite the volume that must require. They're broken, stilted. They no longer sound like they're coming from a man, but some broken thing pretending to be one.

"WHere aRE YOu goING, heroES?! YOU're leAVINg me BEHIND!!! ThAT's nOT veRY heROic!!!"

And this time, we definitely hear his laughter.

"SLow dOWN!!! WAIt foR ME!!!"

There's a break in the horde and I catch a glimpse of the rest of his body. Extra limbs have folded down out of where I opened him up so that he's galloping after us on all six like some sort of twisted beetle-giraffe wearing a man's face as a sack over its head.

We're coming into a valley that serves as a natural marker for separating the Western Demesne from the next province over, and I'm struck with an idea born of pure madness.

I shoot my iron bolt into another bird, but the next one I load has a flared end wrapped like a torch. The whole end is stiff like it's been dipped in wax.

It's not wax.

I pull away from the back window and stick my head out the side door, attempting to aim the crossbow and pick the right section of cliff face.

The moment I pull the trigger, the friction from the firing mechanism ignites the end of the flare bolt even as it goes shooting high into the rock of the cliff face. If it were night, the fizzing, whistling stick would be visible from a kilometer away. Even in the afternoon light, it's blinding to look at directly.

I pull my head back in and get Benarou's attention, grabbing the hilt of his Staff of Six. "As soon as they reach that flare, hit that cliff with as big an explosion as you can cram through that stick, you hear me?!"

He nods once. "I understand."

I nod back to him, then lunge forward to shout up to the other two. "Big blast incoming! Don't let the horses spook or we'll get caught in it!"

"We're read--" Leuke starts, but then Benarou lets loose and the shockwave rips through our bodies. "HOLY SHIT!!!"

He keeps a firm grip on the reins, though, and Seina never once loses her focus on keeping the horses calm and refreshed.

I know their competence isn't any doing of mine, but I feel proud of them all the same.

I let myself fall back into the rear seat again, turning around to see if my crazy idea worked.

Rubble is still falling, but the bulk of it has already crushed the horrible mob. I can even see Hagasu's neck dangling out, and the way it's bubbling, I'm pretty sure it really is broken this time.

I let out a breath I'd only half consciously been holding and pat Benarou's arm. "Don't let us forget why you're the battlemage, eh, noble boy?"

"I aim to please." He pushes his glasses up with his free hand. "Besides, it was your idea."

I just scoff and slump down in the seat again. How are they all so competent? I can't help but question if I'll really be able to keep up.

In unspoken agreement and for no particular reason, we keep riding hard, as if those monsters might dig themselves out and jump upon us again at any moment. For good measure, I have Benarou blow the valley cliffs three more times before we're clear of them.

No one's getting back to the Demesne by this route without a lot of manpower, and I can only feel like that's a good thing.

By the time we see an imperial waystation, it's getting dark and it's been an hour since we shot the last of the birds out of the sky. The coach starts to slow, and I don't have to ask why. Just the sight has me feeling like we're in the clear, and the adrenaline I've been riding feels like it flushes out of my system all at once.

Sure enough, the horses only just stop as Leuke and Seina stumble into the coach proper, slumping against each other as they collapse into the deeply cushioned seat.

"I know it's right there," Leuke gasps tiredly. "It's just, I ... Well, I figured the horses would like a breather ..."

"Mmm," Seina agrees, and I'm pretty sure she's already all but asleep. I wouldn't be surprised if she's nearly burned through all of her mana keeping the horses running all this time.

"It's alright," I groan as I force myself up against every protest my body can give me. "I'll bring us in."

"I can't believe we did it," Leuke sighs before I can move past him. "We killed a capitol noble ..."

My eyes harden, and I lean down to grip his shoulder. "No." I give him a shake to make sure I have his attention. "No, we did not." I look to the others, too, but only Benarou is listening. Seina is snoring, so I keep my statement at an indoor volume.

"You get any thought like that out of your heads right now. We did not kill a capitol noble. We killed a monster that was posing as one, and the empire is better off for it."

Once I have the two boys nodding their understanding, I climb up onto the driver's bench, ignoring the sneering shade seated beside me. If she had any definition to her, she'd look exactly like me.

"You've given that speech before, haven't you," she mocks me as I ease the horses into a lazy walk.

I don't bother answering her rhetorical question, and she vanishes before the waystation's torches can clearly illuminate the bench.

Besides, it's hard for her barbs to mean much when, for once in my life, those words are literally true.