Page 386 of Of Empires and Dust

“Over there.” Isla pointed towards another alley across the way, some twenty feet to the right. It took Anya a moment, but she saw something shifting in the shadow, something too small to be an Urak. She checked up and down the street, nodded to Isla and Kam, then darted down the street to the alley.

When she reached the alley’s mouth, she found herself staring down at four youths who couldn’t have seen more than fifteen summers. She recognised one immediately. “Conal!” she snapped in a whisper. “What are you doing here? You should be in the hall.”

The young man knelt over a dead Lorian, a spear in his hand and a scrappy leather jerkin protecting his chest. Ever since Dahlen had taken Conal under his wing, the young man had only grown more and more eager to join the fighting.

“We wanted to help.” He gestured back at the other three. One girl and two boys. Anya recognised their faces from walking through the city but didn’t know their names. All three held spears in their fists, and one had a small wooden shield strapped to their arm.

“You’re going to get yourselves killed. You need to come with us. We’ll bring you back.”

“But he’s alive.” Conal gestured at the body over which he knelt.

Anya squinted, trying to see through the dim light. The man coughed and spluttered, groaning. She dropped down beside him and checked him for wounds. Blood flowed through a slit in the leather just below the ribs, warm and thick. He was alive, but there was more chance of him succumbing to the wound in the next hour than there was of living to see the sun rise.

“You shouldn’t be out here,” Anya snapped at Conal, shaking her head. “It’s not safe.”

“Nowhere is safe.”

Anya could hardly argue with that. She sighed. “We need to get this man back to the hall, and we need your help. Can you do that?”

Conal’s face grew serious. “Of course we can, Lady Anya.”

“Right. Help me lift him.” Anya dropped a hand under the Lorian’s armpit. Like most others, the young required little more than a sense of purpose to give them strength.

The Lorian grunted, lurching upwards and clasping his hand to his gut. “Leave me.”

“Not an option.” She dropped one knee into the mud and hefted the man upright. “The hall isn’t far. You’ll be… safer there. Some stitches and some Brimlock sap and you’ll be fine.”

Anya hated lying. She could see now he’d lost too much blood. His face pale as ice, his skin almost as cold. But Conal and the other youths had risked their lives to drag this man from the street. She needed them to see that saving lives meant something.

“Conal.” She gestured for the young lad to help.

He nodded and moved to wrap his left arm around the soldier when a scream erupted behind Anya, followed by a crash. Splinters spat at the back of her head, and Anya turned to see Isla swaying side to side, her jaw hanging loose, only clinging to her face by exposed muscle and strips of torn flesh on the right side. A massive black spear was embedded deep into the wooden wall beside her. She turned and stared at Anya, nothing but pure terror in her wide eyes.

A second spear burst through her chest, and she crashed forwards into the wall before collapsing into the mud with a splash.

Kam just stood there, awestruck. His lips moved as though he were attempting to speak, but no words left his mouth.

The youths all shrieked. All but Conal, who stared at Isla’s mutilated face without a sound.

“Kam!” Anya scrambled to her feet and reached out to grab Kam by the shoulders, only to watch as a black axe hacked down into the man’s clavicle, thesnapof bone accompanying the blood that spurted around the steel.

“Go.” The Lorian soldier was on his feet, one hand pressed to the wound in his gut, the other gripping the hilt of a sword. He grunted and coughed up blood, using the sword’s pommel to hook Anya’s shoulder and pull her back.

“You can barely stand.”

“It’s fine,” he said, wiping mud from his eye, only to smear it with blood. “I won’t have to stand for long.” He glanced back at Conal and the others as the axe was wrenched free from Kam’s body. “Take them and go.”

“You can’t?—”

“Go!” The Lorian threw himself forwards as Kam’s body dropped to the mud and two hulking Uraks took his place at the alley’s mouth.

“Run!” Anya pushed Conal towards the other end of the alley, but the boy dug his heels in and looked set to charge after the Lorian.

“I’m not going to run!” he snapped when Anya grabbed his shoulder.

“Fight, Conal. By all means, fight. But don’t be an idiot. Dahlen would never die for no reason. He uses his head. Live now, fight later. Go!”

The mention of Dahlen’s name caught Conal’s attention and the young lad looked from the Uraks to Anya, then turned and sprinted through the mud, following the other youths who had already set off like hounds unleashed.

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