Page 67 of Marked By the Dark Lord
“I’m not sure,” I growled, “but I think we’re about to find out.”
Four hulking figures in all black entered the room. Thick-shouldered and broad-chested, with skin the color of a midnight sun, identifying them was easy.
“Sidhe assassins,” I spat.
“Huh?” Mila mumbled.
“Faeries. Deadly ones. Stay behind me.”
Without a word, the four foes spread out in a shallow arc, keeping us pinned against the boxes. I grunted. Taking on four assassins was a tall order. I could do it. But could I do itandkeep Mila safe? Having to devote some of my attention to her would make things difficult.
I gathered my power as they attacked, moving in silent unison. Magic unfurled from between my gathered hands like a mushroom cloud, moving sideways toward the assassins. Thered wave caught two of them unprepared, tossing them back across the tent.
Immediately, I spun to my right, blades sliding up from my wrists. I blocked one attack down low with my left hand, then sliced hard with my right above, but the attacker was already moving out of range. My spin took me the rest of the way around, with the remaining attacker stabbing high with two metal daggers that dripped with what I assumed was poison.
My blades were completely out of position to stop the attack.IfI had continued turning like normal to plant both feet. Instead, however, I had shifted my weight as I turned, leaving my left foot planted hard. My right came up and connected solidly enough between his legs that Mila cringed audibly behind me.
However, the assassin was skilled, and he rolled back, away from my killing blow. By then, the first attacker had recovered and lunged in. He wielded a long blade with a slight curve at the top, a style I wasn’t familiar with.
“Who sent you?” I snarled, moving to keep Mila directly behind me. The assassin pinned me down, reducing my mobility and creating clear avenues of attack, giving me a higher chance to predict what they would do.
Trade-offs, all around.
The leading assassin pulled his lips back in a smile but, as was traditional with their sect, said nothing. They wouldn’t give up anything.
Fortunately for them, I didn’tneedthem to be particularly vocal to give away their allegiance. There was another way. A simpler way.
Just as silently as they came at me, I went on the attack, magic striking against Faerie steel, driving them back, keeping themseparated as the other two recovered from my initial magical attack and rejoined the fight.
I drove down low on one, then with a gesture, flung sand in his eye. A wall of red darts half a foot long came at me, but I turned them aside with a gust of wind, forcing two attackers to dart from the path or be impaled. The entire tent glowed red, the color of most magic in the world, a deadly hue.
The first to fall was the attacker on my far right. He came in hard on the heels of a failed attack from one of his fellows, trying to drive me back toward the boxes. I tossed a magic ball to my left, aimed at the middle of the three remaining assassins. It went off, a mostly harmless explosion designed to force them back.
The shockwave caught my attacker in the back. He stumbled forward, right onto my blades, which drove through his chest, only my forearms stopping his forward progress.
He looked at me without care, then died. His body disintegrated around my blades as thousands of tiny red marbles cascaded to the ground before swiftly dissipating into matching smoke.
“I should have known,” I spat, glaring at the three remaining Sidhe. “House Duloke sent you.”
“How do you know that?” Mila asked from behind me in the lull that followed the death.
“Red is the color of House Duloke. When a Fae dies outside of Faerie, they don’t really die. They’re simply banished from any other plane for ten years. Only within our realm can they truly die.”
“And when one of you dies, you die like that?” she asked.
“Yes.”
The other three came on. I drove two of them back with swift cuts of my blade, forcing them to dance backward or be opened from waist to shoulder. I spun, stabbing a blade at the third. He caught it between his two daggers, the tip a solid six inches from his face. He winked at me as if to say,You’re too short.
I grinned, and the blade lengthened another two feet in the blink of an eye, piercing through his winking eye and out the back of his head. Marbles fell to the sandy floor before fading in a swirl of red smoke, just like the first.
Before I could recover, the other two were on me in a flash. By clearing out others, I’d given them more room to work, and those two moved like they had trained for it. They drove me back until Mila was climbing onto the boxes to give me room.
Angry at the sudden change in fortune, I pushed outward with a wave of magic that I hardened. No explosion, no tricks. Just a solid wall that I poured copious amounts of energy into.
Sidhe steel stabbed deep into the wall on my right. I brought both blades down hard on the sword with the hooked end, snapping it free at the hilt. The wall came down, and I slammed my head into the assassin's brow, shattering his nose as he staggered back.
The other Fae had tried to sneak past, heading for Mila. I leaped at him, landing on his back, my blades fading as we rolled to the ground. I took several hard blows, and he ended up knocking me free with an elbow directly to the temple, which stunned me for a moment.
