Page 39 of Artemysia
I trust Ivy to guard my rear. She takes down the first Syf with vicious confidence, and we destroy Syf after Syf, swords clanging, tangy metallic Syf blood spewing. I take a second to wipe my eyes clean of the dark spray covering my face from the last one I slashed.
More Syf surround us, seemingly out of nowhere. We’re boxed in.
Ivy falls to one knee beside me and swings low, taking out their legs. I use my height to hack at their heads, but one knocks me back into Ivy, and I stumble.
“Push them back. Use me for footing,” I holler. She presses a heel against my calf and leaps off me while I spin around to back her up with my blade. With a double kick, she hurtles through the air, thrusting her broadsword in an arc that drives them back. She lets loose a wild screech.
We parry the swords that swing at us, but there is a momentary pause as a wild roar and the stomping of hooves turns all our heads.
Throg charges on his elk, and Riev sprints to us on foot, breakingup the ring of Syf around Ivy and me. They’re hounded by other Syf chasing them, and we regroup. I’m familiar with Throg’s fighting style. He’s reliable and sturdy—methodical in his strategy. What he lacks in speed, he makes up for in planning his next move, as I taught him. I can trust him to cover my blind spots.
Riev is the killing machine he claimed to be. He fights like he was born with blades in each hand, dealing death swiftly with awe-inspiring movement. His cloak whirls around him in an uninterrupted swirl of gray and black, billowing after him like a second shadow. He drives the Syf back, handling himself with a precision I’ve never seen before. It’s as if he doesn’t think at all and has fallen into a fever madness of massacre.
The Syf go down like wheat stalks at the mercy of a scythe.
Slicing the air with two strokes, he takes out four Syf in the time it takes most to eliminate one. The look on his face is inhuman and frightening, except that he’s on our side, thankfully. He kills so many, there’s almost nothing left for the rest of us to do.
There’s one last injured Syf left alive.
He swings a hand axe weakly at my throat, but misses. I plunge a dagger in his chest to hold him still as I behead him.
I’m about to heave a sigh of relief, but a Syf next to Ivy catches my eye. He isn’t fully decapitated. He spasms once, sprawled on the ground. In the blink of an eye, he draws a curved blade from his belt and launches it at Ivy. At the same time, it catches Throg’s attention, too.
I can already see what will happen.
But I’m fast. Without thought, purely instinct, I dive for the trajectory of the dagger to knock it away with my sword. At the same time, Throg lunges forward and yanks Ivy to his side, exposing himself to the blade. The spin of the curved blade is slightly erratic, and I miss within inches. I’ve already twisted into a spin to rebalance myself.
Instead of the dagger hitting Throg in the chest through his heart, it plunges through my leather armor into my back with a sickening thud. At least that’s what I hear. The thud could also have been my knees hitting the ground.
“No, Captain!” Throg hollers with Ivy tucked safely under his arm. I look at him with pleading eyes, because the words are stuck in mythroat.Help me.
The pain blinds me. Flashes of white light overwhelm my vision. I’ve been knifed before, but this has hit deep. I fall onto my hands and knees, trying not to panic because my world is narrowing to the crimson pooling below me.
Gasping in a ragged inhale, I have no idea if the knife has hit my spine and I’m dying or if I’m reacting to the agony of steel jammed between my shoulder blades. Hot blood pours down my back, my arms.
I barely register Riev’s look of horror as he races to me.
Opening my mouth to utter my final words that never come out, I collapse face-first into the dirt.
“I’m not the hero of any story.” - Riev
“Military outpost. On the other side of town. I’ll take Delphine.” Filled with horror, I take charge of Ivy and Throg, who kneel beside Delphine, attempting to staunch the flow of blood. “You two, collect her elk and make sure there are no more Syf. Rendezvous at the outpost. Leave the dagger in so she doesn’t bleed out.”
Shit, shit, shit. Delphine threw herself in the way to save Ivy and Throg. Saved both at the same time. I’ve never seen someone so fucking selfless—and stupid.
Why does she keep sacrificing herself?
First during my nightmare, and now this.
Nothing she does is what I expect.
The outpost will have advanced medical supplies. The Syf knife needs to stay in place until I get there so I can stop the bleeding after I pull it out. Our first-aid kitwon’t be adequate if the wound is deep enough to have hit something I need to repair first. I can’t tell at this point, because she’s passed out. I won’t risk infection.
Delphine regains consciousness on the ride, and I attempt to relay what’s happened to her.
“Dagger in your back, at least the length of a finger. You’ve lost a shitload of blood.”
I am not good at reassuring people.
