Page 90 of Blood of Wolves

Light from a carried torch glinted off gold as the Sels came boiling up the curving stairs from below.

All their wondering, and waiting, and preparing. All the fretting, and hand-wringing; the unbelieved assurances from Revna, and Bjorn, and Rune, with fear glinting in their eyes. All of that, and the moment she’d feared most had finally arrived.

It seemed anticlimactic, in its own way.

Her insides turned to jelly, and she thought she might be sick, but there was no time for that.

The soldiers lowered their spears, braced the butts in the cracks between the stones, and met the first charge of the enemy.

~*~

The world was upside down. Rune fell, and it seemed like forever, but then he landed flat on his back with a sick jolt, bright spots of pain under his shoulder and hip lighting him up so bright his vision went white.

Only, no…that was the sky. The bright sun overhead blinding him. Smoke across his field of vision as he blinked, and tried to rectify what had happened. He smelled dust, was choking on it, he realized, as he dragged in a breath and launched into a coughing fit that jacked him upright.

He caught himself against smooth, worn wood, and whatever he was sitting on shifted dangerously beneath him. Dust swirled in front of his eyes, a fine haze of it hanging in the air. So thick it obscured his surroundings, and it was a long few moments before he realized where he was.

A shattered table on a familiar, richly-patterned rug. A mantelpiece of polished, dark wood, the tapestry above it hanging down from its moorings, half-blocking a fireplace boiling with pale ash and dust, where falling debris had snuffed a fire.

The royal apartments. Ages-old stone had broken like a child’s building blocks, and he’d fallen straight through into the common room that had served as nursery, playroom, and drawing room his whole life.

“Gods,” he murmured, and coughed again.

It was the sort of devastation too big to be comprehended in any sort of sensible way. He was in shock, could acknowledge that fact, but couldn’t find anything like grief or worry for his home, as the dust began to settle, and he realized he sat on a pile of splintered stone, that the wood he gripped was a ceiling beam crashed down to the floor.

Chaos ruled up on the ramparts – but the sounds of panic filtered down to him in a muted, indistinct blur of shouts and screams.

Much closer, someone groaned.

Rune patted his arms and legs down, searching for injuries. He felt tender, bruised all over from the fall, and knew he’d be even sorer in a few hours, but none of the pain was jagged or urgent, so he very carefully picked his way down from the rubble pile.

A soldier lay face-down on the rug, his helmet dented in the back. He groaned again, when Rune reached him, and searched for a pulse at his throat. His skin was clammy; he didn’t stir. Rune rolled him over, carefully, and saw the streamers of blood that tracked across his face, and spilled from his lips.

“Can you hear me?” Rune gave his shoulder a gentle shake. “Hello?”

No response.

Was this the man who’d saved him? Who’d pulled him back in time? Rune didn’t even know his name. He should have. A good prince would know all of his subjects by name.

He struggled to his feet, swaying before he got his bearings. “Shit,” he murmured, surveying the destroyed room. There was no way to climb back out through the hole he’d plummeted from. But the door, he saw, when he turned, was still free.

He checked that his sword was still at his hip, his bow and quiver at his back, miraculously intact. Then he picked his way toward the door.

~*~

A sound like thunder rolled overhead. Dust sifted down from the ceiling in clumps.

Tessa held her sword in two sweaty, shaking hands, gritted her teeth, and braced her feet on the flags. Estrid stood on one side of her, similarly ready, if a little more eager, teeth bared, eyes glittering. And on Tessa’s other side, Hilda had produced two knives from somewhere, and held them before her, round face set at unusual, harsh angles.

Ahead of them, the soldiers roared as one, and charged, gleaming points of their spears lowered to throat-level.

One found a gap in armor. There was a punchy, wet sound, and a gurgle of pain behind a golden helmet; one Sel buckled at the knees and fell, tripping his comrades.

Tessa gasped. She’d never seen a man die before – hadn’t even been in attendance the day Erik beheaded the man who’d tried to kill Rune.

But there was no time to dwell on the spurt of blood, because another Sel used the flat of his sword to knock a spear aside, and then parry the strike of an Aeretollean blade. He moved fast as a thought, bulled in close, armor deflecting a second blow, and sunk a slim knife in an Aeretollean underarm, in a place protected by neither mail nor pauldron. The soldier staggered back with a shout; he didn’t fall, but it was enough of a gap for the Sel to push through the first line of defense.

The cressets caught the gleam of pale eyes through the slit in his helmet visor, framed by the bright purple paint they used across their temples and noses. His awful gaze locked on her, and for one terrible second, she thought she would drop her sword.

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