Damsel Knight (20 page)

She feels her eyebrows start to singe, her skin on her cheeks burn into what would no doubt be a bright red, and above all that she hears the screams. High noises that are nothing but pain. They don’t sound human. The only thing remotely similar are the sounds the lost ones made when the witch Claudia doused them with light.

For the first time since she’d mounted the wall she remembers one thing that takes her breath away. The barbarians are people. And she and Neven just helped kill them.

“Good job,” Sir Julius says, slapping a palm on each of their shoulders as he passes them. “You were right. They must have built magic in the houses to help them burn.”

“Only the old parts,” Neven says quietly, the fires casting weird shapes on his tanned face. “It’s been a long time since they worried about armies. And only when it has contact with oil I’d bet, or it would have gone up long before. Or maybe there’s something in the oil barrels that acts as a -” Doubling over, he throws up the contents of his rations over his shoes.

Below the people keep screaming.

“See him back to the palace,” Sir Julius says to Bonnie. “It’s done. I’ll stay behind with enough men to finish this. Tell Angus to keep his inhumanly big hands off that oil.”

She chances a glance to her left and wishes she hadn’t. Even through the flames she can see them running away. The furthest group - almost at the dense bushes that march either side of the golden road - appear unharmed. But the group on their heels run in panicked directions trying to outrun the fire eating at their clothes and hair. Instead, their efforts fan the flames ever higher.

“They wear a dragon,” one man says from somewhere along the wall. “But they still don’t like fire.”

Another laughs.

“Come on.” Bonnie tugs on Neven’s arm. “Let’s check to see if Alice and your mother are alright.”

Pulling his arm from her grip, he pushes past her to the stone steps. “I can walk by myself.”

Taking in his drawn face, his angry eyes, Bonnie opens her mouth to say something. She closes it again as a sound passes over them. A series of short urgent blasts. The war horn.

But why sound it again? And why in that pattern?

“Grab the wounded!” Sir Julius shouts. “Everyone run for the palace! Quick damn you!”

Lifting a man with a gut wound, he leans him over a shoulder then darts past Neven to take the steps two at a time. Neven and Bonnie follow, having to hurry to stay ahead of the crowd.

It’s only at the bottom that it hits her. That sound meant an attack, which means while they were defending the front, another group of barbarians was crossing the wall someplace else. Chances are they made it to the slums, and if they did Sir Angus would be waiting to set the whole thing alight.

With fire on the outside and fire on the inside, the only way to survive is to cross the slums before they share the fate of the barbarians.

Chapter 22

They run.

“Faster!” Sir Julius yells, racing up the golden road in a loping gallop, half carrying an old man with blood sheeting down one leg.

The white mare is already out of sight, heading to the palace with the gut shot wound. Neven’s pony disappears from view as they watch, two boys strapped on its back that in a better world would not be old enough to take part in battle.

Neven and Bonnie drag a boy of seventeen between them. The same boy, she thinks who Sir Julius grabbed and told to join the battle before they reached the wall. She doesn’t know what exactly is wrong with him, but his silk shirt is stained with blood, and all he does is stare blankly out of a grey face, body limp as a doll with its stuffing torn out.

She counts her footfalls, eyes tracking those in front of her who race ahead with no burdens. Cowards.

The back of the boy’s legs skate along the smooth gold road. One, two, three, four, five.

She digs deep, finds an extra push and picks up her pace, trying to count faster than her racing heart. She hopes Neven can keep up. They try to keep to the middle of the road where the surface is cleaner and smoother. Unfortunately others have the same idea.

More and more dart past them. She doubts most have pieced together what’s happening, but the fear in the air is enough incentive. It’s a living thing, clawing at her throat, and buzzing through her skin. The only comfort she can find is that she’s not the only one scared.

Six, seven, eight, nine, ten. The road starts upward, slowing them down. She switches her grip from the boy’s arm to hook under his armpit. Neven does the same, catching her eye. ‘I’m with you’ that look says. ‘You don’t let go. I won’t let go.’

For a moment it crosses her mind to do just that: let go. Leave the boy to die. Not because she might die. Death has never seemed so real and terrifying than right now with the barbarian’s screams in her ears. But if she dies now, refusing to leave a wounded comrade behind, she dies a hero’s death. And there won’t be enough of her remains left to dispute that she didn’t deserve that honour.

She thinks of leaving the boy because Neven might die, and that can’t happen. She won’t let that happen. And then she keeps going because she knows if she drops the boy’s arm and runs, Neven won’t follow. He cries too often. His body is weak and weedy, but he’s loyal. He has honour.

So she plants one foot after the other, and counts as fast as she can. Hopefully he has strength too.

They reach the top of the dip, then continue past that, the golden road edging uphill less steeply now. Neven stumbles, wheezing. She keeps going, dragging the boy’s dead weight behind her, trusting him to catch up.

She hears Neven clamber after her, feels the strain on her arm lessen as he takes the boy’s other side. Together they walk one step after the other across the divide between the wooden slums and the stone buildings that mark the start of the richer homes. This boy with his silk shirt would’ve lived in one of them, or in one of the settlements outside the city walls.

They set him down on the golden road between the first two stone buildings. The men that built this city wanted the slums to burn. They wouldn’t want the whole city to burn, so the stone should be safe. Hopefully.

Neven collapses to the ground, spread eagled, chest heaving.

She lasts less than a second before she follows him, falling to her knees. Her lungs are on fire. She gasps in and out, as rapid as her counting had been, but catching her breath remains as elusive as scooping up water with open fingers.

The stragglers limp into safety behind them, most with their own burdens. They made it. They still have to get the wounded to the palace, but that seems a small detail. They aren’t going to be burned alive. They aren’t going to end up like the barbarians they killed.

Then she sees it.

It starts as a burst of flame in the distance. Insignificant compared with the size of the slums. Then it spreads, racing in all directions so quickly it makes her eyes ache trying to keep up.

Jerking her head back to the golden road, she pushes herself to her feet. Most of the last ones are close enough to make it, but there are two tiny figures stumbling together so slowly they barely seem to move at all. One is stooped and old, and the other is younger. A boy. A very familiar boy.

Ness.

Forcing herself not to look at the spreading flames, she runs back down the golden road. She trips in her haste, scraping her knees and the palm of her good hand. The sling around her neck snaps loose, her cold arm springing forward to break her fall next to her other arm. Pink skin against stark white. Her mouth snaps shut against any noise she might make. If Neven hears he might follow, and he’s not as fast a runner as she is.

The cold arm helps the other push her to her feet. Her legs pump away, fighting against the instinct to slow as she sprints down the steep part of the dip. The fire has a sound now. A whooshing noise that only seems to get louder, and closer.

The old man only seems to have cuts and bruises, panic in his wide blind eyes. She recognises him. The medic who saw to her arm in the cart.

Ness has-

Her brain stalls to a halt. Thankfully her body keeps going. Her feet skid to a stop at Ness’s side. Her head ducks under Ness’s arm, pushing the old man forward out of the way. The man may be willing, but he’s way past helping anyone. Even her voice works, though it sounds like it’s coming from someone else. “Go straight as fast as you can. Just follow the road.”

She follows her own advice.

Ness is taller than her, wider too. All that equals heavier. She pulls his arm tight over her shoulder, urges her dead arm to wrap around his middle firmly. He groans at that, leaning into her side and making her stumble. That’s good. Pressure will help.

There’s-

The old man weaves his way to the bottom of the steep incline, then falls to his hands and knees. Almost there, but not far enough. She can’t carry both. Her grip increases around Ness and she takes another step.

Heat hits her left side like a physical blow.

It takes every bit of skill she has to keep them both upright. Ness is gasping, but he’s still moving, still sliding forward one foot after the other. It’s too slow. She can feel her skin prickling, baking.

“Fire Ness. Fire. Come on.”

Ness’s head starts to move upward as if to look, then gives up part way and flops down to his chest again. Sweat flows in rivers down his face, dripping from his chin. “Can’t. You go.” His voice rasps like an old man’s.

“Kidding?” Bonnie drags him forward, wishing she’d thought to unhook her sword from her back before she came running down here. She can feel every ounce of that weapon weighing down on her. “Neven’d kill me.”

“Neven’s why.” He creeps forward, dragging footstep after dragging footstep. “Needs someone.”

A solid wall of heat hits them from the other side. The air ripples around them. She blinks furiously, the world too bright and stinging of smoke. She knows safety is right there in front of them, but she can’t see. Anger causes her blood to boil as hot as the flames either side of them. “Neven is right there! Right there Ness. If you don’t think he’s rushing into this if we don’t come out, you’re more stupid than you look.”

That gets him moving. One step. Two step.

There’re walking in an oven. Her skin itches. Her hair feels like it’s curling up and burning right there on her head. Worst of all is the air. Like swallowing fire. That’ll kill her before the rest she thinks. She’ll cook from the inside out. Her head swims.

Suddenly Ness is pushing at her, stumbling backward toward the side of the road. She grabs at him, but he keeps pulling backward with a strength he shouldn’t have. The idiot. Doesn’t he know what’s past the edge of that road? If he flails his way into those flames he could end up like the barbarians.

She kicks out at his legs, knocking him down. Not the best thing when he’s - gods, there’s so much blood. She falls to her hands and knees beside him, gripping his forearms with both hands. She hates him more than she ever did before. More even than when she was sitting on his chest punching him. What is he trying to do? Doesn’t he know how broken Neven would be if he didn’t make it?

Ness struggles against her grip, gasping. “Your hand Bonnie! Your hand!”

Her cold arm is still stark white, but it grips Ness just as tightly as her pink one. And his arm! It’s a mottled blue like he’s spent too long outside on a freezing winter night, instead of sitting here slowly cooking to death.

She drops his arm as suddenly as if he’d been the one hurting her. Her white hand moves as quickly as the other though she still can’t feel it. There’s a bright white hand-print right in the middle of the blue. She did something to him. She took something from him.

Ness looks at her a moment out of half lidded eyes. His copper skin is blanched, yet his cheeks and nose are beginning to burn. He exhales softly once, cold air that steams in the air, then those eyes drift shut and he falls forward. She catches him by the shoulders, careful to keep the tunic between her cold hand and his skin.

She takes a deep breath. The air still sears her lungs, but it tastes a little more breathable down here. All right. Crawling it is.

A swatch of wall bigger than the both of them trundles along their path, spraying bright sparks where it goes. Too close. A few sparks land on Ness’s clothing, and she swipes them off angrily. Something like that hits them, and they’re both dead.

Her head isn’t just swimming. It’s drowning. She can’t see anything but what’s inches away from her face, and even that takes a lot of blinking to make her eyes work. Jack had said once that the Romans, when there were enough of them to call them that, believed that people went to one of two places when they died. If they were good they went to heaven. If they were bad they went to a fiery hot place called hell.

It’d been winter at the time, and Bonnie with the comfort of her stone house and the abundant supplies of the city thought she knew true suffering, and it wasn’t heat. He’d looked at her gravely and told her she knew nothing. That suffering was having your skin burned from you layer by layer, while your insides cooked, and your eyes boiled. That was hell. This is hell.

“Boone!” The voice seems to come out of the rippling air. She knows that places of water are doorways to the world of the ancestors - the one they dwell in before they come back to live another life. Maybe fire is another doorway. It could be her father - her real father this time - calling to her. Warmth spreads through her chest, not because she finally gets to see him again and make him understand how sorry she is, but because he called her Boone. Not Bonnie, Boone. It was a stranger’s name at first, but now it fits her better than her old name ever did. She’s glad he understands that.

Then he shouts again, closer, and reality clicks back into place like a breath of cold air. Neven. He came for them. Of course he did.

She chokes out something that might’ve been his name, or might’ve been something completely different. It’s then she realises she’s lying flat on the road beside Ness, her cheek against the smooth surface which isn’t as smooth this close. When did she fall? She pushes herself up on her elbows, surprised when both her arms obey.

Neven crawls his way into view, blinking rapidly. There’s a piece of cloth tied around his mouth and nose. He passes another to Boone. She holds it over her mouth and nose, not sure why, but knowing that if Neven thought of it, it’s a good idea.

He grabs the makeshift sling still attached to Ness’s back from where he’d carried Alice, pulls it up out of the way, then rolls him over onto his back. He freezes.

Boone nudges him, forcing him to look away from the mess of blood that is Ness’s stomach. First they have to get out of here, then they can try and fix him - and hope she hadn’t made it worse. She takes his hand with her good one, and places it on the sling. He meant to do something with that. She’d seen that calculating look.

Neven grasps the sling, twists it a few times around Ness’s shoulders, then passes the other side of it to Boone. She takes it, and together they start to pull.

It’s slow going on their hands and knees. After a few shuffles, Neven hooks his side of the sling over his neck and under his arm so the strap sits across his chest. Dropping to his forearms, he keeps edging forward. Boone copies him. It’s a lot easier to breathe, and she thinks they make better time even though they’re crawling along like worms.

It’s when things start getting steep that the new position really pays off. She grits the cloth between her teeth, which doesn’t work as well, but she has nothing to tie it with. She doesn’t want to drop it in case she really does need it. She keeps her face close to the surface of the road and claws upwards with her hands and feet.

Her cold hand moves slower than the other, and its movements are more jarring, but it grips just as well. Her stomach turns whenever it scrapes along the road’s surface. For all she knows she could be scratching all her skin off. She won’t know until they make it out of this heat.

Almost there. She hopes the wind isn’t blowing into the city. She doesn’t think the fire will spread. They must have put some safeguards against that happening, but the smoke will spread and so will the burning debris. It will take longer to find the fresh air her throat so desperately craves.