Sophia led the knights as they followed Targ into the lower city. She swept her sword out before her, chasing back the night. The Grief and briny reek worsened as they neared the shallowed bay.
Seth felt stronger, safer in the company of the other knights, but he could not stop thinking about the Bishop’s revelation. The three of them chosen for this mission were broken, flawed.
He hadn’t been alone, all that time—yet they were not anything like him or what he aspired to be.
Seth knew he wasn’t to question—but why them, why had the Hierarch set them to such an important task?
He marched beside the Bishop. Lathan flanked her other side. This must be what it felt like to be part of a cadre, a team.
Thank you, Father. For this. For the Bishop. For them.
It had to be a sign. Hyperion could not think Seth too broken, not if the Bishop had included him. Geldar believed in him. Geldar had saved him. Perhaps he could still become the knight they believed he might be.
Targ had a scent, but she led them in circles across the old docks and between the broken ships.
“Why does she dither?” Sophia asked over her shoulder.
“The scent in the box was too weak,” Lathan said.
Seth was thoroughly lost, but he did not sink into the despair of the night before. He wasn’t alone now. The Bishop marched with such confidence that he suspected the Grief might retreat from her.
Lathan strode, tall and confident. He had narrow shoulders, less broad than Seth’s. Perhaps the topic of the hounds would give them the chance to speak more.
“Focus, Seth,” the Bishop said.
He felt his face warm. She’d caught him staring.
Sophia scoffed.
She straightened when Targ let out a long, rumbling growl. Sparks lit along her fur.
“She’s got something,” Lathan said. “No, Targ—wait!”
The hound bolted ahead. Bursting into flame, she took off, darting between the stacked and broken ships.
Seth blinked. Targ hadn’t obeyed. Was Lathan imperfect, like Seth and Sophia? Or was that the nature of the bond, that if the hound chose the knight, the knight did not command?
“After her!” Sophia said.
“No,” the Bishop said.
“Why not?” Sophia demanded, the light from her sword flaring with her conviction.
“Because we are not alone here,” the Bishop said.
A dozen shadows separated from the hulls. They moved toward the knights, so quiet that Seth thought they might be shades. As they neared, he saw them by the light of the swords. They were dirty and roughly dressed, but alive.
The fire stirred in Seth’s belly. It always lay there, coiled, waiting for something, usually his fear, to stoke it. The mob encircled the knights.
“Knights of Hyperion,” one said. “Last time you came around, we lost everything, the whales, the fish.”
“We’re looking for a man. He’s lost here,” the Bishop called. “We want no fight.”
“Well maybe you’ve found one anyway,” the man spat. “Maybe a fight is all we have left to give you.”
He stepped into the light of Sophia’s burning sword. He was younger than Seth had expected, probably no more than twenty-five, but hard years had weathered him to roped muscle and rough skin. He wore beaten leathers and a frayed red scarf about his neck. He wielded a long, jagged bit of iron like a club. Many of the gang carried similar weapons, bits of broken ships and blunt, rusted metal.
They were a mix of ages, men and women. Some were weathered, some fresh-faced, but all wore the scarves and looked ready for a fight.
The knights were outnumbered. Seth could not see Targ. She’d run too far ahead and he’d lost sight of her in the Grief.
“I will pray for you,” the Bishop warned without a trace of meekness. She kept her glare leveled at the leader.
Lathan and Sophia stepped toward the Bishop, forming a circle around her. Seth copied them, joining their formation.
“We don’t wish you harm,” the Bishop said. “But we will defend ourselves if you force us to.”
The ragged man sneered. He opened his mouth to say something, probably a curse, but Sophia pointed her sword at him. Fire engulfed him. A brief scream was all he managed.
Seth hadn’t thought anything could shock the Bishop, but she gaped at Sophia’s gleeful expression. Seth’s stomach churned as much from her grin as the reek of burning flesh.
The man fell, charred and dead to the mired dock.
Howling with rage, the gang came at them, emerging from the Grief with real numbers, their weapons raised.
“To me,” the Bishop commanded. The knights lifted their shields.
Seth copied Lathan’s stance.
The monks had trained him. They had drilled him day and night. He could use a sword and shield, but he’d never fought in a cadre, never trained to the exact tactics of standing beside other knights.
The first club, a metal pipe, hammered against Seth’s shield, harder than he’d expected. Staggered, Seth cursed himself for worrying about his experience, for not keeping his focus on the enemy, on the Grief and what it hid.
The fire rose inside him. It wanted out, to burn them all. It would be so easy to unchain it. Hyperion would leave only the knights standing, but the Bishop did not command them to attack.
Seth forced the flames down and felt it singe him from the inside. The gang hammered at the knights. Sweating, the bones of his arm ringing with the blows, Seth held firm.
“Defend only!” the Bishop yelled. “Stay with me.”
Seth struggled to batter back the strikes with his shield and sweep aside the clubs with the flat of his blade.
“Murderers!” someone shouted. “Butchers!”
The words landed almost as hard as their blows.
The crowd pushed the knights back, away from Targ and their quarry.
“Retreat!” the Bishop shouted, her voice breaking over the din. “Now!”
A wall of crimson fire fell, dividing the knights from the crowd. It silenced their attackers and pushed them back. Unburned by the flames, Sophia turned, her face twisted with wrath.
Her hair had come loose from its tie. A cut on her scalp had marked her face with a trickle of blood, adding to her wrathful expression.
Seth shouted, trying to warn her as eyes opened in the Grief. “Sophia, you’re bleed—”
“Enough!” she shouted over the hammering. “We must press forward.”
“We retreat,” the Bishop commanded. “We are not here to spill blood.”
“They spilled it first,” Sophia spat. Seth did not know how she could not see the truth. She’d been the first to strike. “And I will do what Hyperion wills, even if you cowards will not.”
Seth looked to the Bishop, expecting her to command Sophia again, to order someone to stop her, but she only narrowed her eyes as Sophia lifted her shield and leaped through the flames.
“So be it,” the Bishop lifted her mace. The flames contracted, encircling her, Seth, and Lathan. Through them, Seth watched Sophia charge.
The gang descended. Sophia sliced out, again and again, hacking into them and ignoring the blows she took. She bashed them with her shield, throwing them off balance.
It looked as though her faith and sheer force of will would keep her afloat in the tide of violence. Then Seth saw the eyes of the dead, pale and green, like the eyes of wild animals, shining in the smoke.
The Grief surged, swirling out of the shadows.
The shades grew more solid as they ripped the blood from the wounded. Sophia called forth a jet of fire, sending it from her sword, but it went wide, lighting one of the upturned ships. The old wood burned quickly, brightly red. The hungry dead were not deterred.
They rose around her, shrouding her in fog. She went down with a scream that Seth knew he’d always remember. The burning ship provided light enough for him to see the blood ripped from her in a cloud. Several of the gang died the same way. The injuries Sophia had inflicted dragged them down with her.
“Are you cut?” the Bishop asked, her voice steely.
“No,” Lathan said.
Seth could not answer. The smell of burning flesh and blood overwhelmed him. The Bishop’s fire lit the dark in flashes, illuminating the charred boats and bodies around them. Somewhere nearby a child wailed.
“Seth!” the Bishop’s shout was like a slap. “Are you bleeding?”
“No,” he said, gulping air and almost choking on the char. “What—what do we do?”
“We wait. Then we take her back to the temple. She was a Knight of Hyperion. She will be burned in his fire. May he forgive her sins.”
It was clear from her tone that the Bishop would not.