Bravely(51)

Again and again, Fergus and Merida arrived to a corridor just too late to either pass through it or stop the destruction. Doors dissolved into glowing embers inches from their fingers. Roof beams splintered and collapsed just behind them.

“This place is a blasted maze!” shouted Fergus. “Girl, why are you stopping?”

“The nursery!” Merida shouted back, sliding from the Midge.

What she thought was the nursery door was blocked by a pile of broken stone. She tested her strength against a few of the smaller pieces to no avail. There was no sound from within. Or if there was, it was drowned out by the other sounds of destruction. This was awful.

“Merida!” Fergus shouted.

His tone didn’t say why to act, but it did say how to: Merida rolled and ducked away.

Just in time.

A wall heaved to bits behind her. Embers rose in the air. The air was alight. Suddenly the corridor they stood in was foreign and unrecognizable. The sky was open wide above them. Were they outside? Was the roof gone?

Humor scrambled past Merida, riderless; the Midge took off after him. Merida spun until she caught sight of Sirist. To her relief, Hamish was still hunched over on the massive warhorse. Her father stood a ways off.

“Where’s Rory?” Merida shouted.

“Dead,” Fergus shouted back, strained. He had a nasty burn on his arm where the sleeve of his tunic and his cloak had been burned right off in his efforts to help. “He came off and just stood there as it all came down. He just stood there!”

“Dad, please come on!” Hamish called out, frightened. His face blanched and glistened with tears. He was surrounded with his worst fears. They all were.

They might die here, Merida thought.

Suddenly it seemed very terrible that she hadn’t made up with her mother before they left.

And then the ground collapsed around Fergus.

“Dad!” howled Merida and Hamish in unison.

Because of the fire and rubble, it was hard to tell exactly what was happening. It seemed like the walkway was simply vanishing. There was a father and ground beneath him and then, abruptly, these things were no longer true.

Despair was opening in Merida like the chasm in the floor.

Without hesitation, Hamish kicked Sirist into motion. The huge chestnut horse reached the edge of the collapse in one, two, three massive strides. Hamish urged him right up to the edge where it was crumbling still.

Merida’s breath hadn’t even had time to leave her chest.

Fergus’s huge hand lunged from the chasm. It seized Sirist’s leather breastplate.

“Back,” Hamish shouted to the warhorse, his voice quavering, “back up, back up!”

He was little, so he threw his entire weight against the reins until Sirist began to obey, dragging Fergus from the hole.

The ground kept collapsing, but Sirist kept backing, and then Hamish kicked, kicked, until Sirist twisted and leapt clear. Fergus was dragged several more yards, his flesh leg sort of hopping on the stone, his wooden leg skipping after it, and then he managed to pull himself onto the horse behind Hamish. Fergus turned long enough to meet his daughter’s eyes, to make sure she was coming.

She was.

There was a gap in the destruction ahead; Merida could see Humor, Brionn, and the Midge through it. She scrambled to it and finally emerged with her family through the ruined tower archway to stand on firm cobblestone street.

They faced Kinlochy proper.

The entire town was ablaze. Every roof that could burn, every wall that could burn. Smoke hid the sky.

Fergus suddenly hugged Hamish, fiercely. “You’ve saved me, boy.”

But it was no time to celebrate. Feradach’s work here wasn’t done. It wouldn’t be done until this place was completely razed. The Midge refused to be caught; Merida grabbed Humor instead. Coughing smoke from her lungs, she said, “We’re sure Rory’s dead?”

“They’re all dead,” Fergus said grimly.

As the fire continued to blaze, they galloped back down the unrecognizable cobblestone paths. A few minutes later, Fergus and Hamish plunged through the gate they’d entered earlier that evening, followed by the Midge and Brionn.

The moment Merida leapt after them, she felt as if the air was different. Cooler. Less marked by embers. An ordinary summer night instead of the hell inside Kinlochy’s walls.

Then she heard something that made her draw up short.

She looked over her shoulder. Terribly, she realized the sound she heard was screaming. Just inside the castle wall, one of the most impressive of the stone buildings had partially collapsed, and fire was beginning to rip through it. The gaps in the collapsed rubble were just wide enough for desperate arms to stick out here or there. There would be no digging them out; the wall had crumbled into massive, cow-sized chunks of stone. And unknown to the victims inside, the gate’s massive watch tower burned viciously just above, too, and it swayed, ready to fall on the rest of the rubble and finish them.

The ruin would be complete. Total. Unavoidable.

She didn’t know what she could do. It felt wrong to just go, knowing they were still alive in this minute.

“Merida, there’s nothing for it!” Fergus shouted from farther down the road. “Come away, girl. Shield your heart since that’s all that you can do!”

Inside the castle wall, Merida saw a figure standing, watching, just yards away from the inferno. Feradach. Unharmed, unburned. I am not a thing you can fight.