“You have the courage of a swordsister, though you lack the skill and the blood.” Ennyen rested a hand on his hilt. “Not even I would challenge a caladrius fiend with nothing but a rock and a dagger.”
At his feet, Kyen stirred. His eyes sharpened into a glare when he saw Ennyen. He struggled to sit up, clutching his empty scabbard.
Ennyen caught the movement. His smile fell as he eyed him for a moment. He kicked Kyen in the face hard enough to fling him onto his back.
With a cry, Adeya started forward but Kyen’s hoarse “Don’t!” stopped her.
He writhed on the ground, groaning, holding his head. He struggled to lift himself with his good arm again.
Stooping, Ennyen seized him by the collar and heaved him up out of the cloaks. He threw Kyen back-first against the tree. Before Kyen could sag to the ground, Ennyen drew his blade, seized him by the arm, and stretched him up against the trunk. He cried out in pain as he hung in Ennyen’s grasp.
“Kyen!” Adeya stepped closer, but he shot her a hard look.
“Don’t,” he croaked. His empty scabbard dangled in his hand.
“You’d do well to listen, maiden,” said Ennyen. “I won’t kill him. Not yet. He’s wanted; him and his arcangel.”
Kyen met Ennyen’s gaze. His stormy gray eyes shone fierce and hard, and Ennyen met the look with some consideration. He dragged Kyen’s arm up further, drawing from him a whimper and forcing him onto his tiptoes.
“I have a feeling you’ll cause less trouble without a sword arm.” He shifted the point of his blade to the crook of Kyen’s outstretched elbow.
Kyen, his face stony, hung limp as a doll. His grip on the empty scabbard tightened.
Ennyen thrusted.
Adeya screamed and covered her eyes.
Kyen’s hand shot up as Ennyen’s sword stabbed down. The scabbard connected with Ennyen’s chin moments before the sword thrust landed. The blade skived the tree bark next to Kyen’s arm as a loud smack rang through the trees. Ennyen’s head snapped backwards and he staggered, losing his grip on Kyen.
Kyen slipped down the tree trunk and dropped to his hands and knees.
Regaining his balance, Ennyen wiped at the blood from his split lip. His dark eyes burned with fury as he looked at it.
“You spineless throwback!” He lifted his sword to cut Kyen down, but a sudden screaming stopped him.
Three figures cloaked in gray burst out of the trees behind Kyen. Yelling warcries and slinging longswords, they attacked as one. Steel flashed and clanged. Ennyen’s lightning-fast sword slipped by the intruders’ flurry, slicing across the breastplate of one and the shoulder pad of another. But the three drove him back anyway.
The caladrius fiend’s grin fell. With a mighty wingbeat, it rose from its branch. It dove towards the fray, but a fourth swordsman leapt from the forest to meet it. He drew a blade that gleamed silver-white as he slashed out. The fiend veered aside with a squawk. Swooping back into the air, it winged away with a chortle.
Ennyen whirled around and fled.
The tallest and shortest of the attackers stopped, but the third gave chase.
“Oda! Get back here!” snapped the swordsman with the white blade.
Oda skidded to a halt. He shook his fist after Ennyen’s retreating back and yelled, “MAGGOT!”
The three cloaked attackers turned on Kyen. Rising to his knees, he swayed and squinted at them for a moment then crumpled face-first into the ground.
“Don’t touch him!” Adeya ran to stand between them. She lifted her dagger, but the swordsman with the white blade lunged forward. He seized the dagger and with a deft twist, wrenched it free. Adeya squeaked to find her own dagger at her throat. She stepped back.
The other three attackers closed in, swords in hand.
“Don’t hurt him,” she said. “Please.”
“We didn’t come to hurt him.” The swordsman with the white blade threw back his hood. “We came to find him.”
Adeya’s eyes widened. She stared at the withered, old man before her. He wore a long white ponytail, and his mist gray eyes sized her up. She looked to the other three as they threw back their hoods. A bear of a man, all height and muscle with claw-like scars on his face, held up his sword. His companion, a sinewy man—the one who’d tried to chase Ennyen—shifted eagerly from foot to foot. The third, a petite woman fierce-eyed and handsome, wore a braid to her knees that bristled with iron spikes. All three turned gray eyes on her.
“You’re—”
“Gennen,” the old man interrupted, thumping his chest with a fist. “Inen.” —he motioned to the giant. “Odallyan.”—the man bouncing on his heels “Wynne.”—the woman surveyed Adeya; she didn’t look impressed.
“You’re—” Adeya tried again.
“Of Avanna,” Gennen finished for her. “You’d better get those off.” He nodded at the cuts on Wynne’s shoulder pad and Oda’s breastplate. Ennyen’s blade had left its dark poison behind, and it was spreading across their armor. The two began unbuckling the pieces and cast them off.
“He got your sword, too.” Oda pointed at Inen’s blade. The huge swordsman lifted it to see a vein of darkness that’d eaten almost half-way through the steel. His eyes narrowed, and with a grunt, he cast it on top of the other’s discarded items. Dark tentacles splayed out and curled around the pieces, drawing them in. The dark mass grew as it swallowed them, and began groping for more.
Gennen strode over. The old man lifted the white blade high and stabbed the center of the blob. It flailed for a moment before disintegrating into smoke.
Adeya stood, watching with wide-eyes, as he jerked the white blade out of the ground.
“You’d better get your spare, Inen,” he said.
With another grunt, Inen nodded and pulled off a second longsword that’d been strapped to his back.
Meanwhile, Wynne had walked over to Kyen. She nudged his body with her toe. “Ugh! I think he’s dead, Gennen.”
“No! He can’t be!” Adeya whirled and dropped to her knees next to his prone form. She turned him over and brushed away the pine needles sticking to his sweaty face. His chest struggled to rise and fall as he lay limp in her arms.
Gennen walked up beside her.
“He’s lost too much blood, and fever is taking hold. You have to help him! Please!” she cried.
Gennen surveyed Kyen for a moment then shrugged. “Just give him this. Block-headed boy...” Digging a pouch out of his pocket, he tossed it to her. He tucked Adeya’s dagger in his belt with a fluid movement then turned to snap out orders. “Inen, get a litter put together. Oda, keep an eye out for those fiends. Wynne, get our packs.”
“You go get the packs!” Wynne shoved Oda.
“Gennen told you to do it.” Oda jabbed his blade at her.
“I’m better at killing fiends than you. You do it!”
“No, you’re not!”
“Go get the packs, Wynne,” said Inen, cutting through their argument with his deep voice.
Wynne shot him a murderous glare, shoved Oda out of the way, and stomped into the trees.
Adeya, disbelief written on her face, stared after her for a moment before remembering the pouch in her hand. She opened it to find dried crimson flowers. Smelling it, she jerked her head away with a grimace. “Ugh! What is this?”
“Ihnasah flower,” said Gennen. “From the slopes of Avanna and a remnant of the Firstwold. It’ll cut just about anything that ails the body.”
“How do you use it?”
“Poultice it! Make a tea! Stuff it down his throat! I don’t care—Just get it inside of him!” Gennen stomped off after Inen. Together, they began to bring down branches for a litter.
Adeya hurried to pull a tin cup out of her pack, filled it from the water skin, and threw in a handful of flowers. She set it carefully in the hot coals.
Odallyan stood nearby. Rocking back and forth on his heels, he dawdled with his bare sword, flipping grips with a lazy flourish.
The tea grew steamy, and Adeya took it from the fire. She stirred it, blowing on it, when the sound of cracking branches drew her attention. A stone’s throw away, Inen stood at the base of a small dead pine, watching it topple over, oblivious to Gennen trimming a branch beneath it. Gennen noticed the growing shadow and leapt out of the way in time to avoid being crushed. He rounded on Inen, cussing him out. Inen took it with a quiet and sour expression, but Adeya blushed at the furious words ringing through the trees.
She returned her attention to the tea. She tasted it, gagged, and swallowed with a visible effort. “Ugh.” She shuddered—twice. Gathering Kyen up, she propped him up in her lap, and after a deep, steadying breath, she poured a little into his mouth.
He immediately choked and spit it out, sloshing her cup over them both. He opened his eyes. Still coughing weakly, he looked up at her with a frown, confused.
“You’ve got to drink it,” she said. “It will help you.” She held the cup to his mouth again, and this time he took it with a grimace. “I know it tastes terrible. I’m sorry,” she said as he struggled to get it down. Once he’d emptied the cup, he fell back limp, resting against her, his eyes closed again.
Adeya kept him in her arms as she watched Gennen and Inen lash their cloaks between two pole-like branches.
Wynne stomped out of the trees and threw three packs to the ground at Adeya’s feet.
“Be careful!” She clutched Kyen’s conscious form and shot Wynne a look of disapproval.
The swordswoman eyed her; she drew her sword and jabbed it at her. “Are you challenging me, mainlander?”
Adeya glared back.
“Peg it down, Wynne,” said Odallyan.
“But she’s giving me the dagger eye!”
“Wynne!” Gennen snapped. He and Inen carried over the stretcher.
With a growl, Wynne slammed her sword back in its sheath.
Gennen and Inen lowered the stretcher down. They grabbed Kyen’s limp form from Adeya, dragged him over and dropped him onto the litter as if he were a piece of baggage. She opened her mouth to protest but couldn’t get a word in.
“Wynne, you take the back,” said Gennen.
She cast a disgusted look down at Kyen’s prone form and crossed her arms. “I will not!”
“You will to,” said Gennen. “Inen, take the front.”
“I’m not carrying this spineless throwback for a bladebrother all the way back to the hold.”
“Wynne.” Gennen stared her down with a dangerous glint in his pale eyes.
“Fine!” She snapped. Bending, she snatched the poles and heaved them with a violence that jostled Kyen. Inen lifted his end with a steady strength.
“On your feet,” Gennen said to Adeya. “We’ve to get to the hold before the fiends be on us again and thick.”