Maze of Moonlight by Gael Baudino (top 20 books to read txt) 📗

Christopher everything. Without bothering to shove his way to steps or ladder, he leaped from the wall, caught the end of the rope that had held the cauldron, and used his momentum to carry him out over the street and down tot he ground. He was already running when his feet touched down, and when he exploded into the church, he found that Vanessa, Charity, Dom Gregorie, and several of the pregnant women, armed with heavy candlesticks and staves, were attempting to hold a dozen armed and mailed men away from the other women and children who had taken shelter within the thick walls.

Christopher understood. Taking advantage of the battle at the main gate, a group of free company men had obviously scaled the wall on the other side of the village with the intent of doing as much damage as they could.

A pool of blood and a scattering of soft corpses about the nave told of the men's success, but Vanessa and her companions were fighting on. Vanessa herself, with only a stick in her hand, was confronting a man easily three times her size. “Christopher!”

The baron did not wait. Leaping forward, he slashed the man's legs out form under him, then followed through with a chop to his face. The man's features were abruptly buried in blood, and as his companions turned to face this new threat, one fell beneath Gregorie's candlestick. Overweight, pop-eyed, and unspeakably angry, the priest waded towards another, and the soldier seemed torn for a moment between terror and laughter.

He went down a moment later beneath several of the pregnant women. Their faces white with rage and streaked with the blood of their sisters and their children, they toppled him to the floor with staves and held him down with their weight of their own bodies. Someone produced a hammer, and the man was battered into lifelessness in an instant.

The other men were counterattacking, but the women, unarmored and quick, scattered from them. Christopher struck again, killing one, and kicked another into the arms of the women. The hammer fell once more.

Gregorie attempted to repeat his success, but he was backhanded across the room. The priest stumbled, fell. One of the soldier pointed at Christopher, who was already closing on him. “That's ten thousand florins right there, mates. Seal the doors.”

The man was skilled, but—strike, parry, riposte, backslash—he dropped with a clatter that echoed off the high ceiling of the church. The interchange, though, had given the others a chance to surround Christopher, and when he felt a mailed fist grab his hair, he knew that a sword through his neck was imminent.

The hand in his hair wavered, and a high, determined cry told him that Vanessa had thrown herself on the back of his assailant and was beating on his helmeted head with her fists, looking for eye slits, openings, something . . .

Cursing, the soldier reached back for her, groping. Christopher got his hair loose, kicked the two attackers away, and turned around, slashing. But the man was already down, for an unexpected ally had joined the baron. Tall, slender, deadly, Mirya had appeared, and her sword was no longer sheathed.

“Elthia!”

She drove into the free company men, her movements as hypnotic as they were lethal. Sidestepping and weaving, she simultaneously blocked counterstrokes from two opponents, backflipped behind them, spun, and killed them both with the same strike, her sword slicing through leather and iron as though through dry leaves.

Berard's men gave up on the doors and closed on Christopher and the Elf. One grabbed Vanessa and dragged her away. He started to put his sword to her belly, but Charity appeared and smashed a pewter candle holder down onto his head. He reeled, dropped Vanessa. The girl seized the candlestick from her teacher and began beating his helmet into a piece of bent metal.

Christopher was attempting to fight his way to her side, but while one of his opponents went down, another planted a heavy boot in his stomach. He staggered back, caught his feet on the altar steps, and crashed into the statue of the Virgin that stood at the edge of the sanctuary.

He sat down hard on the stone floor, staring stupidly at the two soldiers who were approaching with lifted swords. But the life-sized statue, jarred loose from its pedestal, was toppling forward, and not only did it catch and block the swords, it also knocked one man senseless and fell across Christopher in such a way that it sheltered him from the other.

Christopher's wits returned in a moment, and he found himself looking into the face of the statue. It was of plain, unadorned wood, but the baron did not need paint or ornament to tell him that Her hair was dark, Her eyes gray, Her robes of blue and silver. . . .

He stared. He knew. “Elthia.”

A fleeting glimpse of Divinity. He tore his eyes form Her as his second opponent kicked the statue away and slashed. The vision fled, and Christopher struggled to block, but the man abruptly lurched backward as a shrieking caricature of a human being swung down from the ceiling beams and smacked into his face, biting and clawing.

He recovered in a moment, grabbed the valiant monkey in a mailed fist. Throwing it to the ground so hard that it split open like a ripe grape, he trampled it into a smear of blood and viscera; but its bestial sacrifice had given Christopher a chance to rise, set his feet, and deliver a blow that revenged it instantly.

A few feet away, Mirya's sword went through the ribs of one opponent, then another, then a third. She moved effortlessly, killed with surgical precision. Berard's men died, their blood pooling on the stone floor, joining with that of their comrades and the women and children they had slaughtered.

One left. He was rushing in from the main door where he had been standing guard, and he had almost reached the crossing of the church when it