An ax slammed into the other side of the door, a piece of its crescent blade breaking through. The stench of death and shit filtered through the gap as the sound of stomping boots stopped on the other side.
Batal held a firm hand across Kaminari’s mouth. His eyes burned red, tears sliding down his cheeks. Her light chain mail dug into the wound on his bare chest, but he wrapped his arms around her, his olive skin contrasting against her silver hair, and pressed his lips to her ear.
“You must push with all you have, my love,” he whispered.
Drago threw a thick wooden table against the door then grunted while pushing a towering shelf across the stone floor until it slammed into the table. He followed that with stools, crates, sacks of vegetables, and anything else he could find. He reached into a crate at his feet, pulled out a bottle of clear spirits, ripped the cork out with his teeth, and guzzled half its contents in a single motion.
“They’re coming, Batal,” he said as he wiped his mouth. “The Horde is here. Their stench is everywhere, so they’re searching for another entrance.” His deep baritone never rose above a whisper.
Amira knelt between Kaminari’s legs, adjusting the armor to make way for the new arrival. “I can see the head.” She pushed outward on her knees. “A shoulder—”
“For the GODS!” Drago hollered as feces-tipped arrowheads pierced the front door, splitting a shelf inches from his face. He reached behind his back, unsheathed a stained blade, and pushed against the barricade. “I cannot hold them back much longer.”
“You are Senshi,” Batal whispered to Kaminari. “The greatest I have ever known. I will not leave you here. Push or we all die.”
“Batal!” Drago screamed from the door. Foul hands reached around the barricade. Fingers missing, pus, blood-and-shit covered, the hands grabbed and pulled at anything within reach. Drago sliced off one, then another. A scrape sounded each time the barricade inched across the stone floor. “Hurry! I will not die cowering in a fucking tavern!”
Kaminari bit down onto Batal’s fingers. Muscles rippled across her exposed stomach, the chain mail sliding further down her sides.
“She’s out,” Amira said as she cleared the baby girl’s mouth and massaged the infant’s back. A sputtering cry sounded. “This is going to hurt. Batal, hold Kaminari tight.” She then set the baby down, cut the cord, and reached into Kaminari. “It’s detached—”
Batal stepped out from behind Kaminari, sword drawn before he fully reached his feet, and cut through the “man” squeezing between the opening door and the barricade. A scream from behind him cut through the Horde’s grunts as they battered at the door.
“Placenta’s out. It’s whole.” Amira applied a bandage fashioned from a torn tablecloth between Kaminari's legs and helped the pale woman to her feet. “It’s OK,” she told Batal. “We were prepared for this possibility. I will carry her from here.” His mother reached down and placed the crying baby in an armored pouch, then gently slung it over her shoulders and grabbed her bow and quiver.
Kaminari, pale and drenched in sweat, swayed while pulling her armor around her chest and attaching it once again. “I am ready.” Her striking green eyes locked on Amira’s. “If I fall, her name is Chiyo Akiro Spartan.” She took a deep breath, slipped a bow and quiver onto her back, and attached her short sword, her tantō on to her side and left her broadsword.
Drago and Batal grunted, still pushing against the furniture barricade while swinging their swords, creating two wet piles of hands, arms, and other parts at their feet.
“The back door is clear,” Amira whispered. “Now is the time.”
Drago turned to Batal, another arrowhead bursting through the wood in front of his face. “We hold here for as long as we can then use the walls and tight paths to fight our way out and to the Aeolus. South pier should be open.”
Batal nodded. “Jenna will be there. She’s never let us down.” He hacked off another arm. “Go, Kaminari. Take Mother and Chiyo—” An iron spearpoint erupted through the splintering wood next to Batal’s groin.
“I won’t leave you!” Kaminari growled.
“Protect Mother and Chiyo. We will see you at the Aeolus.” The barricade moved another inch, and Batal kicked his heal into the floor. “I love you. Now save our child.”
Amira and Kaminari then disappeared into the shadows.
The door shook violently. Batal and Drago fell back a step from the barricade then threw their bodies against the moving mass of furniture and crates. Armored heads appeared, wiggling through the growing opening. They are only men, Batal thought. Evil, stinking, filthy brutes, but men all the same. He brought down his sword with a quick powerful motion. A shit-encrusted helmet clanked off the stone, the head inside rolling out.
Again, the barricade shook, forcing Drago to his knees. But then he was up again, throwing himself against the barrier, but it continued to move.
“Alleyway!” Batal grunted. “Bottleneck at the iron gate.”
Drago nodded, then mouthed “Three, two—"
The crates, shelf, table, and door exploded. Batal’s chest hit his knees, his body half bent and light as a feather as stones set in the floor passed beneath him. How carefully each is placed, he thought. Drago tumbled next to him, twisting, yelling at the shadow that stood on the other side of the room, filling the doorway. Both men skidded on the stone floor, stopping near the back door of the tavern. Batal staggered to his feet, stumbled forward, and grabbed his sword off the floor. His bow was gone. An arrow hummed by his left ear and clanked against the stone wall behind him.
Across the room, the shadow ducked, turned, and entered what was left of the doorway.
Batal froze. “What the fuck—?”
Another figure blew through the door behind them. “Get Down!” screamed Kaminari.
Batal hit the cool stone. Arrows zipped overhead.
A roar consumed the tavern, and the shadow fell back.
“Run!” Kaminari was exiting out the back of the tavern behind a staggering Drago.
The shadow was coming toward them and others had joined it. Batal rolled up off the stone and sprinted toward the door. Sun lit his face as he crashed into the wall of the alleyway, turned, and headed toward the iron gate. Crossbow bolts shattered on the wall behind him. Drago ran and limped ahead of Kaminari, who ran sideways, her bow focused in Batal’s direction. Blood trailed down the inside of her thighs. She stopped to lean into her pull.
“Left!” she shouted.
Batal moved left, arm grating against the stone wall as her arrow zipped past his eye and something thudded on the path behind him.
“Right!”
Batal cut right and pushed off the stone wall, gaining speed. Two arrows flashed by, only a second apart. Another roar sounded from behind, the wailing fading as he ran. Kaminari dropped to a knee, bow falling from her shaking hand. Batal slowed his charge, dipped, and slammed her midsection with his left shoulder as he grabbed the bow with his right hand.
Both screamed in pain, but Batal ran with her over his shoulder, heart pounding. Twenty meters ahead, Drago reached the iron gate set into the mammoth south wall of Skye Stone. The Guardians and their powerful deerhounds were gone.
Holding his arm close to his side, Drago kicked the small gate open and pushed through, holding it open from the outside. “Run! Run, Batal!”
An arrow tore through Batal’s side and broke against the wall. He and Kaminari fell through the gate and tumbled onto the gravel. Waves lapped at the foundation of the towering stone fortress. Drago slammed the gate shut and wedged a stout, bleached log gifted by the high tide into the stone surrounding the door. Shafts hammered the other side.
“It won’t hold for long.” Drago lifted an unconscious Kaminari off the ground and slung her over his shoulder. “Don’t look back, Batal. Just get your ass up. The end of the spit’s within sight. Where’s the Aeolus?”
Batal straightened and grabbed the flapping flesh at his side, then looked at his bloody hand and reached down for Kaminari’s bow. “It’ll be there! Go!”
The iron gate’s hinges screeched, the plating stretching outward. A deep bellow boomed from the other side. Another thunderous impact and the gate rattled, a second protrusion appearing below the first.
“There!” Batal yelled, pointing at the towering mast of the Aeolus that had appeared from behind the breakwater. “Jenna has come!” He unslung the quiver dangling from Kaminari’s back. “We’ll need time. Just get her to the boat.”
Drago strained forward along the narrow stone spit. “Make them count!”
“I will.” Batal turned, dropped to one knee, and nocked an arrow. Voices sounded from behind him, but he focused on the iron gate that was rattling like a loose tooth.
“Steady, my son. On your left,” Amira said from behind him.
The gate’s upper hinge flew into air.
“Mother, where's Chiyo?” Batal drew back the bow.
“Drago can carry them both, I cannot.”
“Please get to the Aeolus. We both don’t need to die.”
Amira’s small feet twisted into the ground behind him and she released a controlled breath. From over his left shoulder, an arrowhead and the curving wood of a drawn bow appeared.
“Do not worry about your mother,” she replied. “She has the best shield a Guardian could ask for. A bit bloody, and lacking his armor, but a nice shield all the same.” Grit entered her voice. “We’re all getting on that boat.”
Metal on metal echoed as the iron gate flew through the air like a leaf and tore into the gravel only meters in front of Batal and Amira. Two rotted forms moved out of the shadows of Skye-Stone.
Amira’s bow drew back further. “Wait, Batal. Hold for what leads them.”
Batal tried to pull in a breath, his lungs burning, hands shaking. Blood, he thought. I am losing too much. But steady yourself, all depends on this moment. He exhaled slowly and drew back his bow until the base of the arrowhead touched wood.
A massive hand emerged from the shadowy hole and grabbed the stone doorway. Another hand grasped the other side. Grunting sounded and the arched stone surrounding where the iron gate had once stood birthed the biggest man Batal had ever seen.
“It cannot be,” Amira whispered. “The Horde King lives.”
Amira and Batal loosed their first and second arrows before the beast stood fully upright. An inhuman roar followed. It must have been three meters tall and the width of two men and carried a crossbow as big as Batal. He nocked another arrow and released. The beast grabbed one of the Horde and held up the squealing man as a shield, then charged toward their position.
“Go, Mother. The king’s armor is too thick!” The pair of them turned and ran down the spit, with Batal staying between Amira and the Horde as they poured out of the gateway, following their king.
Spears, arrows, and stones rained around Amira and Batal. The Aeolus was at the end of the spit, and Drago looked to be loading Kaminari and Chiyo onboard. The narrow stone path made a hard right twenty meters away, and then it was another thirty meters to the Aeolus. But his mother was slowing. She dropped her bow and kept running. Behind them, the smaller of the Horde gained ground as their King loped behind them.
We won’t make it, Batal thought. The turn will make us easier targets for the Horde. They headed right, the Aeolus already drifting off the spit on the receding tide, ready to flee. A tall, armored figure holding a longbow appeared on the end of the spit, red stubble glowing on top of her head. Arrows flew in rapid succession.
“Jenna!” Batal turned and loosed a shot as he ran. His target dropped and some of the Horde stumbled over the body and fell, but more kept running. As spears raked around them, Amira reached the end of the spit. Jenna grabbed her and threw her toward the Aeolus. Drago caught his sister’s hand, clinging to her while she hung against the side. Jenna loosed what remained in her quiver, downing the closest of the chasing Horde. She then turned, took two powerful strides, and launched onto the boat.
Batal shot his last arrow at the Horde King to little effect and then jumped from the edge of the spit, crashing over the ship’s gunwale and sprawling onto the deck in a heap.
“Pull in Amira!” Jenna yelled to a battered and exhausted Drago. “There’s no wind inside the break, just the current!”
Drago was half stretched over the side, holding onto Amira’s arm with both hands as her legs skimmed the water’s surface. Batal got to his feet, swaying with the boat’s movements, and staggered toward Drago. The Aeolus, the dual-hulled catamaran, was pulling away on the tide, but her distance from the end of the spit was only twenty meters.
Movement from the spit caught Batal’s eye. The Horde King stood with his giant crossbow aimed in his direction. Even from the growing distance the king’s eyes remained locked on Batal, black bottomless spheres that covered half his face. He’s not human, he can’t be.
“I’m losing her! Help me, Batal!” Drago yelled.
Batal knelt next to his uncle, but kept his eyes on the spit. The Horde King shook his head, a sharp toothy smile taking up the rest of his face as he adjusted his aim, tracking the Aeolus with a bolt the size of an oak branch aimed at Batal.
Batal leaned over to grab his mother’s arm.
The Horde King’s crossbow moved from Batal, angled up to adjust for the growing distance, and then he loosed the weapon’s thick bolt.
Amira fell slack, the force of the bolt ripping her out of Drago’s grip, pinning her lifeless form to the hull while the Aeolus picked up speed. She then slid off and disappeared beneath the sea.
“No!” Batal screamed. “No!”
Batal crumpled to the deck. Hundreds of arrows from the Horde filled the air only to slip harmlessly into the waters behind them. The rocky spit had become a writhing mass of filthy arms and legs. From a distance, it looked like a colony of ants. Then the Horde was gone, and so was Skye Stone.
Jenna tied off the wheel so she could help Drago and Batal to their feet. “I’m sorry.” She then put her arms around them, and they all three wept.
Finally, Batal stepped back. “Kaminari and Chiyo?”
“Safe and sound below deck,” Drago replied, tears flowing. “Both exhausted and weak, but sleeping soundly. Chiyo is a perfect Spartan. Lesion free.”
Batal moved toward the stern and the hatch to the cabin below. “It’s not your fault, Uncle Drago.”
Drago collapsed against a storage locker, brought his hands to his face, and cried for his sister.
“You saved us, Jenna. You could’ve sailed to safety,” Batal said. “If such a thing exists.”
“No.” Jenna stepped over to the wheel and sat at the helm. “I couldn't.”
Batal opened the hatch and sat on the steps. “Danu! Danu!” he cried.
A heavily bandaged deerhound limped out of the cabin and came to sit on Batal’s lap, where she licked his face, yipping and happy.
“Mother is gone.” Batal wrapped his arms around Danu. “We’ve lost it all, girl. We’ve lost Mother and Skye Stone to the Horde.” He kissed her muzzle and turned toward Jenna on the wheel. “The Great Unknown. That is where we find a safe harbor, train an army, build a fleet, and take back Skye Stone from the fucking Horde.”
Batal then rose and went over to the cleat that held the line for the red sail.
“For Amira! For Skye Stone!” Jenna yelled.
Batal released the line and the vast red-waxed cloth unrolled from the top of the mast and caught the wind. The sail with the noble face of the Scottish deerhound pulled them southeast toward the Great Unknown.