The second officer charged at Hugh. Hugh braced himself and met the charge, driving his shoulder into the man. The officer bounced off, knocked aside.
Hugh kept the momentum and swung. The commander parried, letting the blade slide off his sword, and came back with a devastating strike from the left and down.
Fast asshole. Not fast enough though. That armor had a price.
Hugh shied back, letting the point of the sword whistle by, and cut at the man’s elbow. Sword coated in magic met metal and bit through it. Blood wet the blade. One arm down.
The bigger man reversed the blow, as if the wound never happened, slashing high from the right. Hugh dodged, surged into the opening, and buried his sword in his opponent’s armpit. The blade screeched as it cut through metal and struck home.
The commander staggered back, blood pouring over his armor.
The second officer rammed into Hugh from the left, locking his sword against Hugh’s. Hugh jerked his knife out and stabbed him in the left eye. The man fell as if cut. Behind him the commander opened his mouth. Shit.
Hugh dropped down, scooping up the fallen officer’s shield, and raised it. Fire splashed over him. The shield turned too hot. Pain scoured his arm. His left hand blistered. He sank his magic into it, trying to keep the flesh on the bone, healing it as fast as the shield cooked it. Agony tore at him. Dark stars wavered in his vision. He could barely feel the hand, bathed in blue glow.
The fire ended. Hugh surged to his feet and hurled the shield at the enemy. The big man batted it aside and stomped forward, eyes bulging.
Die, you persistent sonovabitch.
The commander swung, blows coming fast and desperate.
Cut, dodge.
Cut, dodge.
Cut.
Hugh batted the sword aside and thrust. It was a precise, lightning-fast stab. The sword caught the commander in the throat, piercing it through just above the Adam’s apple. The man’s mouth gaped. He struggled on the blade, like an impaled fish. His sword crept up.
Sonovabitch.
“Arhari arsssan tuar.”
Magic tore out of Hugh. The pain bit his gut with molten fangs, letting him know he’d overspent. The commander’s body split, his ribs thrusting up and out, through the armor, like bony blades. Gore sprayed Hugh’s face. The commander gurgled, still alive. How the hell…
Hugh reversed his grip, snarled, and drove the blade with all his weight behind it into the man’s waist. Metal and flesh gave way and the top half of the man’s body slid to the side, hanging by a narrow strip of muscle and gristle. Hugh kicked it, toppling the body, raised his sword like a hangman’s axe, and chopped the commander’s head off.
The three pieces that used to be a human body lay still.
Hugh dragged his hand across his face, trying to clear blood from his nose and mouth, spat, and turned. A dozen mrog warriors stared at him. As one, they raised their weapons.
He swung his blood sword and bared his teeth. “Next.”
14
The woods looked different at night, the dark trunks and braided branches crowding the road. It was well past midnight and the forest was pitch-black. Things shifted in its depths, calling out with eerie voices. Glowing eyes tracked the long column stretching behind Hugh, filling the woods with human military noises: horses snorting, gears clanking, and muffled conversations coming from the back.
After he finished off the leader, he’d expected the warriors to run. They didn’t. They simply stood. When approached with a weapon, they fought back to the bitter end. They screamed when cut, but they didn’t speak. They didn’t fear. They didn’t speak even when overpowered, and when the Iron Dogs managed to restrain one long enough to tie him up, he burst into flames from the inside, burning the four people holding him. It cost him a good deal of his power to heal the burns.
They’d had to kill every last mrog fighter, and Hugh had walked that line, making sure the kills happened. It wasn’t fighting. It was slow, methodic butchery. Some of his people couldn’t do it. They would kill something that was fighting back if the odds were even, but hitting another person over the head with a mace until you were sure his skull was mush while four of five of your friends jumped them was beyond them.
He spared his people from it as much as he could.
It took forever. And when they were done, he worked with the wounded, while the rest of his troops fought the fires. By the time they put the flames out, it was well past midnight. Nobody wanted to sleep in Aberdine tonight. It took another half an hour to arrange the survivors into a column, load the injured onto carts, and move out to Baile. He was dragging almost half a thousand extra people with him. Elara would just love that.
He wanted to go home and wash away the blood. It clung to him, seeping into his pores and coating his tongue, and he had to fight the urge to spit every few seconds to clear it out. He’d been through hard battles before, but it never felt that raw. The void was so loud tonight, Hugh could almost see it hovering over him.
The woods parted, the trees falling back, and Bucky carried him into the clearing. A full moon shone in the sky, spilling silvery gauzy light onto the grassy slopes. On the left Baile rose. He had expected it to be quiet and dark. Bright fires burned on the side towers. Someone had set out fey lanterns along the path leading to the gates, and their pale bluish glow fought back the night. The place was lit up like a Christmas tree.
A lone figure stood on the battlements, her dress bright white against the darkness. She’d waited for him.
He jerked himself back from that thought before he read too much into it.
A horn sounded in the castle, triumphant. The gates swung open. Bucky raised his head and pranced.
“What are you doing, you fool?” Hugh growled.
The stallion doubled down. They pranced to the gate. A huge cistern was set by the gate, with a shower rigged to it. The air smelled of fresh bread and roasted meat.
“Oh my god,” Stoyan groaned behind him.
They went through the gate. Long tables waited in the bailey, with a buffet line against the outer wall, the cooks waiting.
“I’m going to cry,” Bale announced from somewhere down the line. “Does anybody have a hankie?”
People ran up to take their horses. Hugh turned in the saddle. Elara was still on the battlements. They looked at each other for a long moment. Then June came to take Bucky’s reins and Hugh dismounted.
Hugh stepped out of the shower, toweled dry, pulled on a pair of pants, and dropped into the chair by his desk. He’d stayed in the bailey long enough to make sure everyone would be settled, but it was quickly clear he wasn’t needed, so he’d climbed the stairs to his bedroom, took off his armor, cleaned it, then went into the shower.
He’d stood there for a good quarter of an hour, letting hot water run over his face. Alas, he couldn’t stay in the shower forever. Tomorrow he would need to review their losses. Three of his Iron Dogs had died. Twenty-one of the villagers. Twenty-four was better than two thousand, but math didn’t make the weight of the dead any lighter.
His whole body ached, but his brain was awake.
He’d made a blood ward and used a blood weapon. How? The purge hadn’t failed. He couldn’t feel Roland. He shouldn’t have been able to do it, but he did. And he could do it again. He stared at the cut on his arm. He could feel the magic humming in his blood. That was one hell of a mystery.