Page 5 of Swords of Soul and Shadow
He’d never killed anyone before. He’d thought about it when his father flew into one of his rages, but he’d never acted on that instinct.
Thump-thump.
He didn’t know how close the soldiers were. He could only hear his heart. He leaned forward and around the corner of the cottage.
The soldiers were closer now, but the boy couldn’t understand what they said. The school mistress didn’t teach Cerleze. Why learn the language of the enemy? That thinking was probably the reason why the village had been destroyed in the first place.
Where were the troops from Achilles? Sure, Ravenhelm hadn’t warranted much of a military presence, and no one sane wanted a station out in some byway mountain village, but there’d always been a few soldiers who rotated in and out every few months to keep the peace. Those with the Fogs tended to get rowdy, and of course, the Cerls had always been a looming but unlikely threat.
Where were those soldiers now? Had they perished? Or had they run at the first sign of trouble?
The boy fitted one of the bolts into the crossbow with fumbling fingers. He managed to slide it into the groove at last, pulling it back, swallowing the grunt of effort that tried to escape.
He needed those horses. A mule and the boy’s faulty footsteps would be too slow. The horses looked mountain-hardy and surefooted…they’d made it here in the first place, hadn’t they?
He looked to the Cerls next.
He’d been hunting before, but those had been animals, and he’d needed to eat. It was one of the only good memories he had of his father before the Fogs had coated them in pain. But killing squirrels and the occasional deer wasn’t anything like slaying a person.
Michael’s pale face and blood-soaked shirt flashed in his mind.
The Cerls hadn’t hesitated before hurting Michael. The boy couldn’t hesitate either. Not when he was the only one left to save his brother.
The clop of horse hooves and the bray of nervous whinnies came closer. The boy sucked in a few more breaths. His finger hovered over the trigger.
If he distracted the left soldier with a bolt through the one on the right’s chest, he’d have time to load another and shoot the final soldier. He could do it. Hewoulddo it.
For Michael.
He counted down in his head.Three…
Indecipherable words exchanged between the soldiers.
Two…
They would die. The boy would kill them.
One…
The boy leapt out, swinging the crossbow out and aiming. The soldiers startled, the horses spooking at the boy’s sudden appearance.
The man on the right yelled something to the other. He wore a pristine blue coat, colorful badges decorating the right breast. The boy focused on one of those badges and let the crossbow bolt loose.
The recoil nearly made the boy lose his footing, but the bolt hit home, nailing the soldier in the chest. Blood spurted, stainingthose pretty badges; the soldier’s hand flew to the puncture as he gasped, falling forward onto his horse.
Someone shouted behind him, but the boy was too busy scrambling to load another bolt. The other soldier was faster, taller, younger than the first—yet his presence was commanding. His night-dark hair was only slightly disheveled, a glittering earring in one ear. He grabbed his own crossbow and leveled it at the boy. Without thinking, the boy leapt sideways, collapsing onto the dirt road, skidding shoulder-first through a puddle of drying blood from one of his schoolmates, only recognizable by the star-shaped birthmark on the back of his hand. A shooting star, now that blood had smeared a trail behind it.
He didn’t feel any pain. But he heard thethunkof the bolt landing true.
“Brother?”
No.
The bolt had missed him by a hair’s breadth. But it hadn’tmissedentirely.
The first wounded soldier slid off his mount and onto the body-littered street below. The boy scrambled for his loose crossbow, but he couldn’t reach it in time.
Instead, his eyes met Michael’s—then fell, finding where blood leaked from beneath the Cerl’s bolt, lodged deep in Michael’s chest.
