The Xixian soldiers reached the two fighters and fell upon them. Qinnitan was certain the newcomers were doomed, but a moment later the autarch’s soldiers fell back, two of them tumbled aside like broken, bleeding toys. The tall one’s helmet had come off; his hair was nearly as bright a red as the stain spreading across the silvery sea.
Qinnitan knew him at once, although she had never seen him in the flesh before, and a little strength came back to her. She could not die yet, and couldn’t surrender to despair, either. Somehow she must stay alive at least a little longer.
Barrick had come for her.
The prince had hardly spoken as the boat drifted across the strange sea, and had moved only to lean over the side and give the boat an occasional paddle. Now, as the craft scraped over the stones near the shore, Barrick sat up and pulled his helmet on.
When the boat finally grounded he said only one word to Vansen—“Follow”—and then vaulted over the side and into the shallows. By the time the prince had waded to the shore, shiny liquid streaming down his legs until he might have been Perin himself walking through the clouds, dozens of Xixian soldiers were already hastening over the rocky beach toward them.
The first wave reached them just as Vansen caught up to the prince, but before Vansen could do more than lift his ward-ax to defend himself, Barrick had somehow caught several of the attackers and had thrown them all backward at once, as easily as a father wrestling with his children. Someone grabbed at Barrick’s helmet and pulled it off, but instead of the sight of his unprotected head giving the enemy confidence they all flinched back from his fixed eyes and broad grin. The prince danced through them, sword flashing like glints of true sunlight; almost every time it withdrew, a Xixian soldier fell heavily to the ground and did not rise.
By the gods, what has happened to that boy? Vansen wondered. What kind of magician has he become?
But Ferras Vansen himself had no such magic, nor time to wonder at the transformation of the angry, crippled youth he had known: it was all he could do to defend himself from the Xixians who had instantly sized him up as the less dangerous of the two foes. To his shame, Vansen quickly realized that his best chance of remaining alive was to stay close to Barrick, so he bent himself to protecting the prince’s back.
It truly did not seem as though Barrick Eddon needed much protecting. After the initial fury of his attack, the prince’s pale face took on a distracted, almost exalted look, like the kind Vansen had seen on paintings of the great oracles in spoken congress with Heaven. But Barrick’s actions were in the here and now. Every economical movement seemed to serve a purpose, and no blow was stronger than it needed to be. The prince could block a thrust on one side and still be balanced enough to turn the blade over and dispatch a man who had moved a step too near on the other.
Now Barrick began to fight his way up the beach toward the autarch, who stood a few hundred paces away atop some kind of viewing platform, but every thrust, every block, every body that Barrick kicked to the side also carried him farther into the jaws of the Xixian army.
Time, which for Ferras Vansen was already out of joint, now seemed to slow almost to a halt. Whether they fought their way up the beach for moments or hours, he honestly could not have said—earning each step forward seemed to take a lifetime. The faces of Xixian soldiers streamed past him like the waters of a river.
A rifle cracked nearby; Vansen could feel the hot wake of the ball. Somebody else managed to get a thrust past his defense and agony flared in his already wounded thigh. As he struggled to regain his balance, a heavy Xandian mace crashed against his shield so hard that one of the straps broke. Vansen threw it aside so it wouldn’t drag him down, then employed the broad haft of his ward-ax in place of the lost shield. He was no longer even trying to strike back at the enemy, but instead did his best to turn the closest and most dangerous strikes away from Barrick.
A shout came from the rear of the attacking soldiers. Others picked it up and repeated it, but Vansen couldn’t understand the harsh Xixian tongue. Another mace struck his arm, and he almost dropped his ax. By the time he could lift it again, he had become separated from Prince Barrick by several steps, and half a dozen Xixian soldiers quickly forced their way into the gap. Vansen stumbled as they came at him. Someone grabbed his arm, then two men leaped onto his back. He managed to elbow one of them in the face hard enough to feel something break, but his ax was gone and others quickly pulled him down.
Farewell, Princess Briony, he thought as the last strength fled from his limbs and he was finally overwhelmed. I gave everything for your brother… I pray I am forgiven…
But to Vansen’s astonishment, no final blow came, no quietus from a spear in the gut or slit throat. Instead, when he was disarmed, his captors dragged him to his feet, used rope to tie his arms roughly behind his back, then began to drag him up the slope toward the autarch’s platform.
Perhaps the southern madman needs more blood for his spells…
Barrick was still on his feet. Vansen could see the knot of soldiers surrounding him, and for long moments it looked as though the prince might actually fight all the way to the autarch, but the prince’s forward progress slowed and then finally stopped, only a dozen steps from where the autarch waited. The struggle went on for a little while, even so—men continued to stumble back weeping with pain, clutching ruined faces or the stumps of missing limbs—but at last the Xixians beat their enemy to the ground. Barrick’s red head rose above them as the southerners lifted his unmoving form up onto their shoulders, handling him almost tenderly. He was carried to the platform and thrown onto the raw wooden floor, senseless and bloodied. Then Vansen was tossed unceremoniously onto the platform beside him.
“And what have we here?” asked a voice from high above him—a calm but somehow terrifying voice that spoke Vansen’s own tongue nearly without accent. “I recognize you.”
Ferras Vansen struggled until he could roll onto his back and look up at the unnaturally tall, brown-skinned youth in golden armor. This must be the autarch himself, he realized, but who would ever have guessed the monster to be so young?
The southern king’s gaze flicked to Vansen and he frowned slightly. “Not you, northern dog. You are mud. But your companion—why, this must be one of the Eddon princes. Kendrick? No, he is dead, of course. But, ah, with that hair… of course. It is Barrick.”
The prince might have heard his name, for he groaned. The autarch laughed. “Look, Olin—your son has come to watch you give yourself to the gods.” He turned to a fat priest in a huge headdress. “It is time, now. The door is open. We must bring the god through to enter his chosen vessel.”
King Olin? King Olin was here? Vansen did his best to lift his head and look around, and for a moment saw the back of what must be the king’s head, but he was bent over and breathing hard, almost gasping, like a woman laboring through a painful delivery.
A boot on Vansen’s back shoved him back down onto his face.
“Oh, no, Captain Marukh, let the peasant watch, too,” said the autarch cheerfully to the guard captain. “Olin is his king, after all… and soon I will be his god!”