The Nightborn by Isabel Cooper (howl and other poems TXT) 📗

dealt with them, Zelen’s sister showed a speck of good sense and darted back toward her room and her god. That was fine. Once they got Tanya out, Branwyn would come back with a pack of priests and deal with them all. The Verengir girl could run while the running was good, and it warmed Branwyn’s heart to know that her fear earlier had been as much reality as ruse.

“Come on,” she said to Tanya. The guard was getting up, his arm still dangling uselessly. Branwyn still didn’t feel any need to confront him again, not with the sorceress at his back and the whole place now resting, if she’d understood Yathana correctly, on a magical house of cards. “Let’s—no, dammit, go back!”

Footsteps, at least four sets, were running toward them from down the hall.

Tanya, who’d started forward, yelped and made a dive for the back hallway again. “What do we do?”

“Back down the way we came,” Branwyn said quietly. “You’ll find stairs.” The guard was moving toward her again from one side. From the other came another man with a sword, two other figures—one with a pitchfork, wonderful—and a fourth behind them that she couldn’t see clearly. The mage was doubtless up to no good in her room too. “There’s a broken window. Knock out the rest of the glass, then get to the tree outside.”

“What are you gonna do?”

Branwyn glanced to either side of her. She was metal. She was armed. There was a wall at her back.

“I think,” said Branwyn, “a bright girl like you can draw some conclusions.”

Chapter 38

“Halt!” one of the oncoming figures actually yelled. He was carrying a fireplace poker—they were becoming a constant in Branwyn’s fights, which she supposed was what happened when she went around battling cultists in cities—and doing so with no confidence whatsoever. Branwyn suspected that he was a footman who’d gotten dragged into the fight with no notion of what his employers were doing in this part of their house.

“You first,” she replied, and had no chance for more.

The real guard among them was on her, then. He looked uneasy, likely at her shining metal skin, the uncanny light, or both, but that didn’t stop him from charging and chopping at her knees with a hard blow. Branwyn hastily sidestepped. She’d had enough broken knees for one lifetime.

Moving to the side put her in jabbing range of the pitchfork, which the probably groom stuck straight through her tunic. It made a ting as it hit the metal skin against her ribs. The groom stared. Branwyn yanked the pitchfork away and threw it down the hallway at the guard with a broken arm. He ducked easily. At least it was a distraction.

She turned back, leapt over another slash of the guard’s sword, and kicked the groom neatly in the ribs on her way down. He fell back into a slump against the wall. Branwyn couldn’t tell whether he was bleeding from the mouth or not, but she didn’t try very hard. There was only so much effort that she could put into sparing her enemies, under the circumstances.

The footman with the poker moved up to occupy the vacant space in the hall. He’d learned his lesson, since he didn’t hesitate at all before trying to smash her skull in. It was admirable, in a way. Branwyn blocked the poker with Yathana.

Agony abruptly swept over her. Branwyn had known pain since the first days of her training, but this was breathtaking. Through watering eyes, she saw her skin ripple, saw the dull orange sparks dancing across the gleaming bronze, and knew the horrible magic that she was fighting.

Gizath’s power could have turned an unprotected victim inside out, or crushed their organs from the inside as their body betrayed them in the most fundamental way. Branwyn, reforged with the power of the gods, gritted her teeth and held on to Yathana’s hilt, keeping herself in one piece and her head intact.

The pain didn’t stop. She stepped forward through it, raked her nails across the footman’s cheek, and stuck Yathana into his side when he staggered backwards.

Someone grabbed her neck. Branwyn spun and struck upward, heard the guard’s jaw crack under the blow, and caught sight of the sorceress. She stood with one hand outstretched, her brow furrowed. Clearly she expected Branwyn to be a whimpering heap on the floor, if not dead.

It was some pleasure, even through the pain, to disappoint her. It was even better to see the puzzlement turn to outright alarm when Branwyn charged, forcing herself past sensation to a speed that the daughter of Verengir didn’t anticipate.

No spell had compelled the sorceress’s actions. Yathana pierced her gut, with Branwyn’s full, desperate strength behind her. The other woman’s face became a mask of torment, even as Branwyn’s pain ceased. For a moment it was as though the spell had doubled back on its caster. Then Branwyn’s backstroke took out her throat. It was reflex rather than mercy, but it served the same purpose.

“Hanyi!”

It wasn’t a familiar voice, but it was enough like Zelen’s to rattle her for a heartbeat. The same reflex that had sliced open Hanyi’s neck carried Branwyn back to her previous position in the hall, where she put herself in the way of the man with the poker before he could go after Tanya. The iron smashed down on her upraised arm, which hurt like hell. It was a known pain, though, not one that meant her body was trying to destroy its own organs, so she took it with almost a sense of gratitude.

“I’ll watch you die for days, you harlot,” said the person who had cried out.

Branwyn turned to bat his sword away with Yathana. From the platinum hair, the dark eyes, and the better quality of clothing and weapon than the others, she guessed that the man was Gedomir. From the quick way he recovered, she knew that he was good in a fight—better than his guards, perhaps, in these close quarters.