Skull Crusher by Joel Jenkins

Author:Joel Jenkins [Jenkins, Joel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780615959733
Publisher: PulpWork Press
Published: 2014-04-14T06:00:00+00:00

“Two dozen soldiers are descending from the walls,” I reported to Greattrix, who I saw amidst the carnage, wrenching his sword blade from the cloven breastbone of a fallen enemy.

Roland and Balguth, as well, were spattered with blood. I numbered the Countess’s soldiers and found four standing upright. The fifth was binding a wound on his forearm, and the sixth was dead upon the floor with a sword wound to his head. It seemed that the initial assault upon the guardhouse had gone much better than I had anticipated.

“Where’s Nina?” demanded Greattrix.

I glanced through one of the narrow arrow slits that punctured the walls of the guardhouse, as if I were looking for Nina. “I thought that she fled back to the Countess’s citadel…”

At this point there came a pounding upon the door and we heard Nina’s voice calling from without. “Let me in, quick!”

“Who is it?” I replied, wondering if perhaps a slight delay might rid me of the interference of Nina forever.

“You know cursed well who this is, harlot! Now let me inside!”

It seemed to me that my animosity against Nina was not a one-sided affair. Reluctantly, I reached over and unlocked the portal. “No need for name calling. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t letting in the king’s troops.”

As soon as I had the door unlocked, Nina pushed through and a couple of arrows rattled against the iron bindings of the stout portal. One shaft struck just above her head at the door’s edge and quivered there. It snapped off as I slammed the portal shut and locked it again. In a moment there was a storm of leather-clad and mailed fists pounding against the door with shouts that we should open it immediately or suffer the king’s wrath.

Balguth responded by drawing back the prods of his great bow, stepping to the arrow slit, and firing through. At such close range he could hardly miss, and we heard a cry as the arrow plunged to its feathers through the side of one of the soldiers. Another of the soldiers responded to Balguth’s shot by thrusting a sword blade through the arrow slit, but Balguth backed out of range and fired another arrow—this one through the throat of the soldier that had attempted to skewer him.

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