Winter Glass (Spindle Fire #2)(62)
27
Gilbert
The castle yards are a swamp of mud that clings to the boots and weighs down soldiers already burdened under layers of steel and chain mail.
There is no need for cavalry, not in such close quarters. Malfleur’s men have arrived at the walls, as Gilbert knew they would, on foot. As they thundered ever closer, archers have been picking apart their numbers. A wagon of supplies caught fire and spread among the opposition, stalling a large portion of the troops while the Delucian side scrambled to position and light the cannons. But the Vultures are fast. Even now, a faction have scaled the southernmost wall, and the sounds of high-pitched screaming, of metal meeting metal and flesh splitting, have grown only louder as the skirmish spreads.
Gilbert follows a small cohort in the direction of the breech, Prince William’s battle cry ringing in his ears. We do not go down without a fight. The castle village is a maze of people running ammunition and supplies in zigzags, dodging flaming arrows, and sliding in the thick mud. This is not a war of men, but a war of minds. Already, aid workers are dragging the injured to safety, while fresh fighters launch out to meet their fate at the wall.
And Gilbert is one of these.
We fight not just for our land and our homes but for the freedom of our hearts and the liberty of our children.
The ground rattles with the release of another cannon—the blast resounding in Gilbert’s ears, a black cloud of powder choking him, trapped and lingering in the humid air.
We fight because we believe in something better than this. Because the essence of good is to resist evil, or to die, over and over and over again, in the trying.
Gilbert coughs and stutters in the smoke and rain, wiping a smear of sweat from his eyes, trying to pick clear a path toward the violence. A wailing woman crashes into him, falling backward into the rain-soaked grass beside the forge. He helps her up and keeps running.
We die so that we may live.
He continues to dodge the onslaught of people moving in conflicting directions—those fleeing to safety, those flying toward the many-limbed mass of fighters on the ground, those racing to help support the men behind the barricades, the rain blurring all of it together. The palace has changed: there are more carts of weapons than trunks of silk, more soldiers than entertainers, no feast tables to crawl beneath but stores of precious rations stacked high inside the keep alongside a frantic gaggle of women and children.
Order governs among the trained soldiers, but only for a time. Untrained fighters join the fray, and everything becomes a weapon. Gilbert watches in mute horror as a red-faced baker, with a rolling pin in hand, races at a Vulture who has breached the wall. As the man swings, the Vulture—nearly a foot taller and, in his black mask, like the image of some unearthly demon—parries easily and, without a blink, takes off the baker’s head with his broadsword. Blood sprays in all directions, like a firework.
Now that Gilbert is closer, he can see that part of the outer wall has actually crumbled and more Vultures are flowing over it like black tar. But before he can ponder the disaster, he is in it—bodies bashing into him, friend and foe alike. Shield lifted, he pushes through the combat to find a stance, easily taking down a Vulture with a kick to the knee and driving his blade at an angle just above the boot. One advantage to having been a Vulture is knowing all the strengths and weaknesses of their armor.
He swings backward into another Vulture and delivers an elbow to the neck, vulnerable just at the base of the mask, then uses his left-handed dagger to stab the man in the shoulder. A wasted move, as the soldier grimaces but launches himself on top of Gilbert.
Gil fights back, dirty, with his bare hands, which has always been his preferred style. He finds his way on top of the Vulture and rips off the man’s mask. His startled face splatters with fresh pellets of rain as Gil’s fist meets cheekbone, nose, the bloody mass that was once an eye—over and over, hunched and sweating and drenched, deaf to the noise and movement around him, blind to everything but disgust at what he once was, and sees now in this man. A puppet. A mask. A soulless vessel for anger, for revenge.
He strikes the man for every time he delighted in Aurora’s imprisonment. He strikes him again for every time he coveted the praise of Malfleur. And then, though the man has stopped breathing, he pulls the knife from the man’s shoulder, with effort, and plunges it straight into the heart. That time was just for him, for the pain of everything he cannot even think, let alone say. For everything he has lost—and for everything he has not lost.
This is not his first kill. But it’s his first as Gilbert, not a Vulture. And it leaves him aching all over, his ears ringing.
Someone grabs him by the arm and rips him off the dead, blood-soaked Vulture.
He turns, sword at the ready, full of righteous self-defense, only to realize that the person who lifted him up is none other than the prince of Aubin.
Defiance courses in Gil’s veins, and all the hairs on his neck rise. This is the man who won Isbe’s hand. Didn’t he just lose the battle in La Faim? Didn’t his cannon design backfire? If Deluce falls to Malfleur, it is Prince William who will be to blame, at least in the eyes of history.
But William is still holding him by the collar, and when their eyes meet, Gil sees something desperate and burning in them. William looks every bit the prince, with his impressive height and build, the proud cheekbones and thrust jaw, the gleaming dark skin and even blacker eyes. What is he doing here, on the ground? The prince should be keeping watch, somewhere safe. That is what royalty do, while it is the common folk who give all they have—their own bodies, their own sweat—to the fight. And a foreign prince, at that. He could be sitting on a cushy throne in Aubin if he wanted, far from the violence—but he is here, in the castle village, helping to stave off the most brutal and deadly attack in decades.