Plague Maiden: The Serpent Knight Saga - Book V. by Kevin Wright

Author:Kevin Wright [Wright, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2024-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 28.

…the western night sky aglow as Prince Raachwald’s keep at Dunmire was razed. I admit it brought me no small modicum of…

—Journal of the Stolen

Lord Eustace Hochmund

An arrow whistled, shanked, thudded, and Growl whined like a stuck bitch, which is precisely what she in that moment was. I dropped to the deck, yanking Aneta down as another pair of arrows zipped past, invisible in the burgeoning dark.

“C’mon,” I grunted. “Follow me.”

Aneta’s eyes blazed glassy wide, her cheek pressed against rotten wood.

Growl was on her side, chest heaving, legs twitching all wrong and bothered by the arrow sticking up and out of her like a sundial’s gnomon. She was panting, drooling, whimpering hard as Ape scooped her up in his arms and high-tailed it for the stairs, his pack in tow.

Squinting up, I could just make out a dark shadow bobbing against the wall. A boat, anchored to the rock. The fuckers’d been hammering rings along the wall, working their way incrementally upriver against the swell. More boats bobbed behind.

“Krait!” Ape roared. “Shake a fucking leg!”

I pushed up, dragged Aneta after, dropping as another arrow zipped past, kissing the back of my neck. “Keep low!” I yelled as we scuttle-crawled crab-wise toward the switchbacked stairs. “Faster!”

Ape loosed the mastiffs as Aneta reached the stairs to the thunk of grappling hooks dropping across the dock-works, men hauling on ropes, coming on, heaving their boats hard against the current. Bark and Slobber and King bolted up, Ape howling at their heels.

Aneta scrambled after, me climbing so close behind she nigh on piggy-backed me up. Arrows thunked into wood above, below, beyond. Aneta screamed as an arrow stung her arm.

“Go! Go! Go!” I shoved her onward. “Keep moving!”

The stairs shuddered and moaned beneath us, quaking outright as the soldiers gave chase. Supports creaked and snapped. Earth cascaded in streams from the cliff face, rocks bouncing, dirt blinding.

The street lay silent, not a soul plying the night as I surmounted the last flight. Bark and King and Slobber didn’t seem to notice for once, each one of them squealing softly as they nosed and nudged their dead sibling. Ape set her gently aside and laid a hand over her eyes.

Strange-Land and the Bravo had Aneta splayed face down across the cobblestone and at knife-point.

“Get off her, you fucks,” I roared. “Men coming. Invaders. The Witch-Saint’s.”

The mismatched pair glared dead-eyed my way, only firming their resolve, til Ape threw in his two lead cents, toppling the scale.

“Philistines?” Strange-Land asked.

“Yeah,” I barked. “Bring your sling?”

“Nay, but I brought this.” Strange-land hefted his crucifix-club and nodded. “By the father, the son, and the holy crow. Blessings and beatings and fell benedictions!”

Ape rose, turned, a look in his eye bereft of quarter, right, or reason.

Daring a surreptitious peek over the cliff side, I gripped my warhammer, still heavy in my hand. “Bastards’re getting close.”

I arched back as an arrow zipped skyward past, tickling my chin. The Bravo smoothed his hair back, adjusted his helm, drew sword and dagger.

“Hide,” I hissed at Aneta, clambering numbly to her feet.

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