The Outcast (Summoner #4)(99)

Then, as if some order had been given, the mass of rebels charged.

“Sacharissa, with me,” Arcturus called, firing his crossbow into the approaching mass and watching the bolt disappear into the crowd. Then he threw the weapon aside and tugged free his axe.

“Come on!”

They were four warriors and four demons, a single line against a mass of snarling men and women. But Arcturus didn’t have time to be scared, only step into his place and scream defiance as they met in a clash of metal.

The front-runners came first, a scattered handful ten feet in front of the others. A screaming man ran at Arcturus with a broom handle. Arcturus did not think, only fell to one knee as it swung over his head and then sliced deep into the man’s waist. The man choked and fell, the handle falling from his hands. Sacharissa finished him with a lunge from her teeth, her ribs flaring with pain at the sudden movement.

Then another, a bearded monster of a man armed with a spear, who slowed down, his spear held in front of him. But another rebel slammed into him from behind, and Arcturus chopped down once, then parried as a third man slashed a cleaver at his head, cutting a sliver of wood from Arcturus’s axe handle before Sacharissa opened the rebel’s stomach with a slash of claws.

“Come and die,” Harold yelled beside him, his sword red with blood. “Come and die!”

The Nandi roared, and the nearest rebels slowed, while those behind shoved them forward to be slaughtered. A great swipe from the bear-demon’s claws sent two men flying, and then it pulled another from the crowd and savaged him with its jaws.

“Die,” Sergeant Caulder yelled. He and Rotter held the edges, while Gelert and Reynard flanked them. The two men were like dancers, lunging and dodging back and forth, while men fell and writhed beneath the onslaught of their blades.

A terrified man was pushed onto Arcturus’s blade as he hacked down, and blood sprayed the air. He had just killed a man, and he felt sick and angry and scared. Yet all he could do was swing again and again, his axe thickening with blood, the rebels pushing back and screaming as the momentum of the mass shifted them ever closer.

“Prince Harold!” Percival called. “Your way is clear.”

“Hellfire,” Prince Harold cursed, hurling his sword into the crowd. Then he and the Nandi were gone. Arcturus had no time to turn, no time to see how close they were. Only step to the side to fill the gap that the prince had left.

Ulfr flanked him now. The broad-shouldered dwarf was red with blood, his own axe making brutal work as men darted close to try their luck. A knife scraped across the dwarf’s chain mail, and the axe bit deep, sending another rebel screaming off this mortal plane.

But they were spread thin now, and the crowd lurched forward. Arcturus felt the scrape of a blade along his breastplate, cutting a shallow wound in his side before Sacharissa clawed the culprit’s legs out from under him. Arcturus finished him with a swift chop, and his arm sang with pain as a length of wood broke itself on the vambrace on his wrist.

“Back,” Sergeant Caulder called. “Back, damn you.”

A crossbow bolt whistled past Arcturus and into the crowd, taking a rebel in the neck. Arcturus snatched a glimpse over his shoulder. The third rank of the shield wall had turned, and were giving them covering fire.

Arcturus did not need to hear it twice. He stumbled over the bodies of dead rebels left in the shield wall’s wake, sprinting for the safety of the line.

A cleaver whirled over his shoulder, and a flash of pain from Sacharissa made him gasp. He spun, only to see the Canid limping after him, a spear through her back leg. The rebels surged.

“No!” Arcturus screamed.

He charged, swinging his axe in a wide arc over the Canid’s head, sending rebels tumbling away under his onslaught. He stepped over her, and then he was on his back, a broom handle clattering beneath his feet. A man yelled and raised a metal pipe, only to twist away as a bolt skewered his shoulder.

Arcturus rolled aside, felt a flash of pain as a knife slashed his calf, and another broke on his breastplate. He was surrounded.

The world pulsed. Wind, curling around him like rapids around a boulder, tore through the mass of rebels and sent them flying back.

A shadow fell across Arcturus and he tried to block the oncoming blow with his hand, but instead he felt himself lifted to his feet.

“Hurry,” Elizabeth said, her Peryton tossing its antlers. “That was the last of my mana.”

Her eyes were wild as she gripped Arcturus by the hood of his cloak and tugged him behind her onto the back of Hubertus.

“Sacha,” Arcturus cried, but the Canid was already nearly at the shield wall, dragged there by Gelert and Reynard.

Then the world was falling away. And he was flying.





CHAPTER

59

ARCTURUS COULDN’T SPEAK, ONLY watch as the world swirled and tilted beneath him. He could see Sergeant Caulder and the troops pouring through a tear in the shield spell’s side, while various bodyguards stood by to reinforce them. And within the shield, on the platform, Harold knelt in front of his father.

“What’s happening?” Elizabeth yelled, the wind nearly snatching away her words.

Far below them, crowds pressed against the dome, battering it with their fists and feet. The anger had reached a fever pitch, and he could see the rebel agitators at the back, shoving people forward, screaming and handing weapons out.