An Ember in the Ashes

Within half a minute, I have nicks all over my face and a gash in my left arm.

“Aquilla!” I holler. She staggers to her feet. “A little help, yeah?”
She draws her scim and plunges into the fight, forcing two of the attackers to engage.
“They’re wraiths, Elias,” she shouts. “Bleeding, burning wraiths.”
Ten hells. Masks train with scims and staffs and our bare hands, on horses and boats, blindfolded and chained, with no sleep, with no food. But we’ve never trained against something that isn’t supposed to exist.
What did that damn foretelling say? Cunning to outwit their foes. There’s a way to kill these things. They must have a weakness. I just have to figure out what it is.
Lemokles offense. Grandfather created the offense himself. A series of full-body attacks allowing one to identify a combatant’s deficiencies.
I attack head, then legs, arms, and torso. A dagger I fling at the wraith’s chest goes right through him, falling to the floor with a clatter. But he doesn’t try to block the dagger. Instead, his hand flashes up to protect his throat.
Behind me, Helene shouts for aid as the other two wraiths press the attack.
One lifts a dagger high above her heart, but before it comes down, I whip my scim around and through his neck.
The wraith’s head plunges to the ground, and I grimace as an unearthly scream echoes in the hall. Seconds later, the head—and the body it goes with—disappear.
“Watch your left,” Hel shouts. I sweep my scim in an arc to my left without looking. A hand closes on my wrist, and piercing cold numbs my arm to the shoulder. But then my scim strikes home, the hand is gone, and another eldritch scream pierces the air.
The assault slows as the last wraith circles us.
“You really should run,” Helene says to the creature. “You’re just going to die.”
The wraith looks between us and sets upon Helene. They always underestimate me. Even wraiths, apparently. She ducks beneath his arm, light-footed as a dancer, and takes off his head with one clean stroke. The wraith vanishes, the smoke dissipates, and the barracks go still, as if the last fifteen minutes never happened.
“Well, that was—” Helene’s eyes go wide, and I lunge to one side without needing to be told, turning just in time to see a knife hurtling through the air.
It misses me—barely—and Helene is past me in a blur of blonde and silver.
“Marcus,” she says. “I’m on him.”
“Wait, you idiot! It might be a trap!”
But the door is already swinging shut behind her, and I hear the crash of scim striking scim, followed by the crunch of bone beneath fist.
I burst from the barracks to see Helene advancing on Marcus, who has a hand to his bloodied nose. Helene’s eyes are ferocious slits, and for the first time, I see her as others must—deadly, remorseless. A Mask.
Though I want to help her, I hold back, scanning the darkened grounds around us. If Marcus is here, Zak won’t be far.
“All healed up, Aquilla?” Marcus feints left with his scim, and when Helene counters, he grins. “You and I have some unfinished business.” His eyes inch over her form. “You know what I’ve always wondered? If raping you will be like fighting you. All those lean muscles, that pent-up energy—”
Helene delivers a roundhouse that leaves Marcus on his back with blood pouring from his mouth. She stamps on his sword arm and presses her scimpoint to his throat.
“You filthy son of a whore,” she spits at him. “Just because you got one lucky swipe in the forest doesn’t mean I can’t still gut you with my eyes closed.”
But Marcus gives her a vicious smile, unfazed by the steel digging into his throat. “You’re mine, Aquilla. You belong to me, and we both know it. The Augurs told me. Save yourself the trouble and join me now.”
The blood drains from Helene’s face. There’s black, hopeless rage in her eyes, the type of anger you feel when your hands are tied and there’s a knife at your jugular.
Only Helene is the one holding the blade. What in the skies is wrong with her?
“Never.” The tone of her voice doesn’t match the strength of the scim in her fist, and, as if she knows it, her hand shakes. “Never, Marcus.”
A flicker in the shadows beyond the barracks catches my eyes. I’m halfway there when I see Zak’s pale hair and the flash of an arrow cutting through the air.
“Drop, Hel!”
She plunges to the ground, the arrow sailing harmlessly over her shoulder.
I know instantly that she was never in any danger, at least not from Zak. Not even a one-eyed Yearling with a gimp arm would miss a shot that easy.
The brief distraction is all Marcus needs. I expect him to attack Hel, but he rolls away and flees into the night, still grinning, Zak close behind.
“What the hell was that?” I bellow at Helene. “You could have cut him open and you choke? What was that rubbish he was spouting—”
“Now’s not the time.” Helene’s voice is tight. “We need to get out of the open. The Augurs are trying to kill us.”
“Tell me something I don’t know—”