Riot fought against the command, his muscles burning with the strain as he slowly regained control of his voice. “Back, get back inside!” He bellowed.
The High Faelen's word of command broke, and the company surged back inside the ruined farmhouse charging through the open doorway and jumping through the windows. Riot helped the others haul Ruddle inside, the old man gasping in pain.
They were all going to die here. The hedron was too valuable, and if Price really did have information to trade, then they wouldn’t be left alive to tell the story of what happened. There were rules of war and edicts of honor, but in the end, both sides wanted to win, and a group of dirty infantry with no officer going missing was too easy to cover up.
The door was slammed closed, but a shrill whistle pierced the morning, and it was blasted open again, almost torn from its hinges.
“Crossbows to the windows; shoot anything that moves!” Riot yelled.
Twenty-four men could still hold this place. It didn’t matter if there were a half-dozen high faelen out there; they rarely used whatever power they had; everyone knew that; they were too proud; or it was beneath them or something. He’d only seen it once on a battlefield, when a flash of dark red light blasted a great rent in the thick fortress walls of Fallow-Neck.
Outside, there came a buzzing sound just on the edge of his hearing, like a swarm of maddened bees and a handful of the older members of the company looked at him, ashen faced.
“Ye Gods,” Ruddle moaned, his face a mask of horror.
“Get down!” Riot screamed, diving to the floor as the whole front wall of the farm house exploded in a flash of dark red light.
Crumbling stones and rocks pounded down around Riot, throwing up a cloud of dust that choked him. With a groaning and snapping of tortured wood, the rest of the roof collapsed, and Emerson hit the floor with a sickening thump, the skin of his neck pulled tight as his head pointed almost backwards.
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The last of the smaller stones clattered down, and weak morning light filtered through the dust. Men coughed and groaned, and then shouted as faelen darts flickered in, cracking into stone and flesh.
Then there were faelen among them, and Riot threw up his sword instinctively, catching a blade as it came down on him, kicking the faelen in the stomach and slicing him wildly across the chest. He darted to his right and stabbed viciously at another, running the blade through him all the way to the hilt, so that they stood face to face as the faelen took his last breath.
To his left, two men of the company yelled like crazed animals as they stabbed one of the yellow-uniformed faelen before his allies charged in through the dust and cut them down in turn.
A Faelen dart smashed into the stone wall above Riot's head, and he stumbled into Swan and checked the wild swing of his sword. Swan's face wore a terrified expression under the thick layer of dust before his eyebrows furrowed and he looked down to see the point of a sword sticking out of his stomach.
Something heavy struck Riot on the head, and he stumbled back into a wall and slumped down. He tried to focus and saw Alar-dal stabbing down even as his quarry held up his hands in desperate surrender.
The faelen captain spotted Riot and gave a grim smile as he picked his way through the rubble to get to him. Riot felt so dazed he couldn’t even lift his sword.
See the last man now, about to die.
In truth, he felt something akin to relief. No more struggling every day to live up to a legend he never wanted; no more waiting for the day that his luck ran out. There was regret there too—disappointment that he hadn’t managed to lead them any better than men like Mercer.
Outside, the sluggish sun picked out the dull landscape under the iron gray sky. Beyond the farmhouse, figures waited on horseback, and next to them, the tall silhouette of Gerrard Price. Riot was certain that the hedron would kill Alar-dal and probably Price and the High Faelen, so that was something at least.
Alar-dal's sword was red with blood, and his eyebrows furrowed as he stared at the small object in Riot's hand, his eyes growing wild as he stumbled backward, tripping on the rubble and shouting a warning to his fellows.
See the last man now as he opens the catch of the hedron with his thumb. The two halves of the small sphere spring apart neatly on the hinge, and everything before him burns in the gray fury of the arcane.