A Burning Sea by Theodore Brun (snow like ashes series TXT) 📗

away into the mud. Erlan punched with his shield, and the headless body tipped over and fell like a broken doll against a rock.

He heard a yell behind him and stole a glance back to see Alexios wheeling his horse to meet another lancer driving in from the left. Erlan sawed on his reins and yanked his filly’s head round, then kicked her on up the slope. This was a bloody mess. But there was no use others dying now.

Alexios was at a standstill – an easy target for a skilled lancer at the charge – but at the last second his horse lurched right; Alexios deflected the spear-tip off his shield then lunged with his sword, taking his attacker in the belly. The Arab slowed and slumped away. Already Alexios had turned his horse and was yelling at Erlan to do the same but he hadn’t seen another horsemen appear out of a gully behind him. Erlan shouted a warning that came too late. Alexios turned just as the lance-tip found its mark. His body arched in pain as Erlan reached him, flinging his shield into the Arab’s face. The rim sliced like an axe into the bridge of his nose and the man went over. The lance was drooping out of Alexios’s body. The captain threw down his shield to tear the tip free. With a yowl of pain, he got it out and dropped it to the ground.

‘Can you ride?’

‘Go. . .’ he said, his voice a gasp. ‘I’ll follow.’

There were more horseman appearing from the left, spurring on into the skirmish. Einar and the other guards had reached the bottom of the slope and were climbing up the other side towards a shallow ridge lined with trees. Aska was still with Erlan. ‘Time to run, boy,’ he called in Norse and snatched Alexios’s reins. His heart was hammering at his breastbone as he dragged the beast after him. His own reins were flapping loose; he had to trust the little filly to keep her footing but together the pair of them were slow. He looked back. Two, then three other riders emerged from other gullies. They were gaining, no doubt of that. Alexios’s face was a pale grimace.

The horses slowed for the climb where the going was loose. Rocks shattered under hoof and the mailed horsemen continued to close, sensing a kill.

Then Erlan’s heart fell. Because above him, five, six, seven more horsemen were spilling from the ridgeline, howling like wolves and brandishing long curved blades, their black braids flying behind them. He checked the gap to their pursuers but the Arab lancers were now pulling up and turning away.

He didn’t know what was happening – he couldn’t see Einar or the others up ahead – but there was no escaping this new threat. ‘Erlan,’ called Alexios, his voice cracking. ‘Hold up.’

With little choice, he did as Alexios said. They came to a halt as the new riders closed on them. ‘Here.’ Alexios reached into the neck of his tunic. ‘Take this.’ He held out the parchment.

‘I thought—’

‘Take it,’ the Byzantine snarled. ‘Get it to the emperor. Keep it safe.’

‘But—’ Erlan took the parchment, wild-eyed. ‘Who are these others?’

‘We’re in your hands now, Northman,’ Alexios grimaced as the first of the riders circled round them whooping at the sky. And then, slowly, he toppled over into the dirt.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Drip, drip, drip. . .

Lilla had lost count of how many days they had held her now. But that drip, drip, drip had never ceased. On it went, day or night, although she could tell the passing of neither. Drip, drip, drip – loud as screaming, each one a needlepoint in her ear.

She screwed her eyes shut and opened them again. The same darkness, black as death. Shadow deep as the ocean.

Sight was gone. But her other senses had become sharp as blades. The taste of the air, dank and stale; the reek of something foul, creeping in through a small grate in the door which she had glimpsed when they brought her here. Her wrists rubbed raw with her shackles, sending sharp throbbing pulses to her brain; her naked toes numb with the cold, but smeared with the filth that slicked the damp stones of her cell.

No one had come for her.

In the beginning she was outraged – to be treated like a criminal, arrested and marched through the palace with servants and nobles alike staring at her like some common thief. But the sentinels were deaf to her demands. And as they walked her down into hidden depths under the palace deeper than she could ever have imagined, her demands became first pleas, then entreaties. Looking back, she was ashamed how she had demeaned herself, when it was obvious that the sentinels answered to a higher authority than her, and cared not a fig what she wanted. They told her nothing – not even the charge under which she was held. Only that she would be held indefinitely. . . with no assurance even that one day someone would come with an explanation.

Darkness. Her whole world was darkness. The future, the present, the past.

At times, she wondered whether she was even conscious, or else trapped in some nightmare of past suffering. She remembered only too well the darkness of Niflagard, the cold, the stirring echoes that haunted her with untold horrors waiting just beyond her ken. . . But, she told herself, the Nefelung were monstrous, their lord a devil of Hel. Here, she had thought, she was amongst civilized men. Or at least men.

But no. All the while that she had dwelled in the airy halls above, below lurked foul darkness. And she had a sickening, soaring vision: that this Great City, this beating heart of all the world, was diseased, was rotting from its roots. That within even the very best of the world of men, dark wickedness lay hidden.

Sometimes the shadows were shattered by the shrieks of human voices,