Gallant(61)
She writhes and tries to breathe, tries to think as time slows down, the world slows down, reduced to light and shadow, to the blade on Matthew’s skin and the moonlight beyond the wall. She slams her head back into the soldier, hoping to hit his head, but he is too big, she is too small, and instead, her skull bangs against his armored shoulder.
Pain bursts behind her eyes. Pain, followed by a thought.
The armor.
It seemed so random, the way it was shared between the soldiers. A helmet here, a chest plate there, a gauntlet, a pauldron. But it’s not random at all.
Everything the master conjures, he forms around a bone.
Her father had his molar. The wisp-thin soldier had a rib.
The armor shields the borrowed pieces.
And without them—
Olivia writhes with all her strength, kicks her legs back into the soldier’s body, forcing just enough distance between them that she can free a hand, reach for the blade at the soldier’s hip.
She draws the weapon, drives it blindly back into the soldier’s side, and though it doesn’t seem to hurt him, it is enough of a surprise that he loosens his grip.
Olivia scrambles free, taking the blade with her, but doesn’t run.
Instead she turns back and brings the sword down on the armor, metal on metal ringing like a bell.
The short soldier looks up, the blade still kissing Matthew’s neck, but the broad one only flashes a bored smile at Olivia. Until she strikes again, this time hitting the leather that binds the metal to his shoulder. It breaks. The pauldron slips and falls away, and so does the soldier’s smirk as there, in the silver light, she sees the white curve of a collarbone.
The soldier rears back, but Olivia is already swinging, bringing the sword down a third time, carving deep into his shoulder. The collarbone comes free. Fury crosses his face, brief as a passing shadow, but he is already falling, body collapsing back into dust as the bone hits the grass.
She rounds to find the last soldier staring, wide-eyed, a feral anger etched across her face as she lifts her sword and drives it down toward Matthew’s chest. But she wasn’t the only one watching. Matthew catches her sword hand, gripping the gauntlet with the last of his strength. He tries to rip the armor off, but the soldier tears free and dances back out of reach, a shadow blending into the dark, and then Olivia is there, pulling her cousin up, away from the shadow and toward the open door. Ten steps, five, one, and then they’re through.
Through, into warmth, into soft earth and the smell of rain and the airy night.
Through, into Gallant.
She stumbles to her hands and knees, the gloves crumbling from her fingers, leaving only a streak of ash on barren ground, the magic lost beyond the wall. But the master of the house looks more alive than ever. He makes his way up the garden, fingers trailing over flowers, and rot spreads along the petals and the stems, consuming everything like fire, leaving a ruined black tide in his wake.
In the moments since he stepped through the door, ivy has spilled out, woody vines that force the gate open like a mouth. There is no way to lock the door, not without closing it first. Two spades lie on the ground nearby and Matthew presses one into her hands.
“Start breaking it free,” he says as he hefts the other spade and surges up the slope toward Death.
Olivia hacks at ivy, and when that doesn’t work, she pulls at it with her bare hands, feels the thorny bark tear open the skin on her palms. Steals a look back over her shoulder, up the slope to the garden as Matthew reaches the grim shadow and swings the spade at his back. But the tool never touches him. It grazes the air around his cloak, and the iron rusts, and the wood rots, and all of its crumbles.
Matthew stumbles back as the monster turns, his eyes a glowing white.
“You are nothing,” he says, in a voice like frost.
“I am a Prior,” answers Matthew, standing his ground. He has no weapon, nothing in his hands but blood. It stains his palm as he lifts one hand, like the statue in the fountain. “We bound you once, and we will bind you again.”
A laugh like thunder rolls through the night.
Olivia keeps hacking at the ivy, even though it’s not working, and the door is jammed open, and even if Matthew finds a way to force the monster back, her heart pounds in her chest, warning that there is no hope, no hope, no running from death, no hiding from death, no conquering death. But she doesn’t stop. She will not stop.
“Olivia!” shouts Matthew, voice ringing in the dark, and she is trying, she is trying. The ivy finally begins to snap and give.
“Olivia!” he calls again, boots pounding over ground as a massive wooden tendril breaks and the door groans free and she looks up in time to see the wolfish soldier inches from her face, in time to see her blade singing through the air.
She doesn’t close her eyes.
She is proud of that. She doesn’t close her eyes as the sword comes down. It strikes her hard, and she falls, hitting the ground. Waits for pain she doesn’t feel. Wonders why she isn’t dead, until she looks up at the open door and sees Matthew.
Matthew, standing in her place. Matthew, who pushed her out of the way the instant before the sword cut down.
Matthew, who leans in the doorway, the blade driven through, the point jutting like a thorn from his back.
Olivia screams.
There is no sound to it, but it is there, ringing through her chest, her bones, it is all she can hear as she pushes to her feet and rushes toward the door, toward him.