Oliver ran across the courtyard of the castle of Otranto, sword in hand, the sergeant shouting at his men. The order to kill him echoed off the inner walls of the courtyard and off the castle keep. The scar-nosed guard wasn’t going to catch him on foot. Even the sergeant concerned Oliver only a little. The only two things he feared in that moment were sorcery and arrows. Either could kill him on the spot.
An arrow whisked in front of his face, close enough to make him falter a moment. It struck the ground with a dull thud. Several others followed rapidly, thunking into the dirt around him. If not for the fact that most of the archers had withdrawn from the wall, he would have died right then.
“Kill him!” came the cry from behind him, back by the main doors of the castle. But this time it was not the sergeant screaming for his blood. It was Hy’Bor, the Atlantean advisor to King Hunyadi.
Oliver hurtled toward the gates of the outer wall. He gripped the sword tightly, but it danced uselessly in his hand. If he stood and fought, he had no chance of survival. Serpents of ice coiled around his heart as he understood what a mistake he had made.
He would die here, and in some prison within the Sandman’s castle, Collette would be mutilated and murdered by a monster. If death was imminent, he wished he could at least have seen his sister again, held her close, let her know how much she meant to him.
Anger burned in him, at himself, and at all the people who wanted him dead simply because they were afraid of the world beyond the one they knew. Where was he supposed to run? To the gates? There were guards on the other side. He was not getting out of here alive.
“Fuck it,” Oliver snarled.
He spun, raising the Sword of Hunyadi. The sergeant and the scar-nosed soldier ran at him. Others were coming, climbing down ladders from the battlements and bursting from doors across the courtyard.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something red flash in the late afternoon sun. He heard a scream and glanced over to see one of the archers fall over the edge of the battlement and crash to the ground below. The second of them had an arrow nocked, about to be let loose, but he turned as the fox leaped at him in a blur of copper-red fur. Her jaws snapped shut on the meat of his forearm and the archer cried out in pain and tried to shake her off.
In an eyeblink, Kitsune transformed. Where the fox had been there now stood the woman. Her cloak whipped around her as she moved, the hood hiding her features. The archer tried to fight her off, but Kitsune snapped out a hand and gripped his throat, then hurled him down into the courtyard with the other. As he fell, she ripped his bow from his hands.
The last of the archers still on the battlements had turned on her now. Eyes fearfully wide, he loosed an arrow. It flew at Kitsune but she dodged easily.
With a cry of fury, she slashed the claws of her left hand across his face. The man screamed and staggered back. She tore the quiver of arrows from his back and then pushed him over the front wall of the castle. He cried out as he fell, tumbling out of sight.
All of this happened in seconds.
With no more arrows flying, Oliver had a moment to simply stand and wait for the king’s guard to reach him. The sword felt heavy in his grip but he gritted his teeth and raised it higher. Beyond the sergeant and the one with the scar, he saw Hy’Bor approaching. The Atlantean sorcerer carried himself with far too much arrogant dignity to run, so instead he strode imperiously, shimmering with a strange glow that disrupted the air so that he seemed to be stepping between moments, crossing twice the distance in half the time.
“Come on, then!” Oliver shouted, and he held the grip and pommel of the sword with both hands. The wind blew and he caught the scent of flowers somewhere not far off. The incongruity chilled him.
“Take the assassin’s head!” the sergeant yelled, brandishing his own sword now.
“I’m no assassin,” Oliver said.
No one was listening. The sergeant came at him, sword raised. His attack was clumsy and easily parried. Oliver spun inside the man’s reach and shot an elbow to the sergeant’s head, knocking him backward.
With a scream of rage, the sergeant swung again, with more focus and skill this time. Oliver blocked, the blades ringing crisply in the air. The scar-nosed soldier was only steps away. Years of fencing lessons swirled in Oliver’s head. He had a talent for it, but had never fought more than one opponent at a time.
Oliver feinted, and when the sergeant went to block, he slapped the flat of the blade down on the man’s wrist, breaking the bone. The sergeant cursed and dropped his sword.
“Bastard!” shouted the scar-nosed soldier. He came at Oliver with little finesse but with the size and fury of a bull.
His attack was easy to sidestep. Oliver grabbed his arm and used his momentum and weight against him, turning and shoving the man so that he stumbled and crashed to the ground. With speed that belied his size, he leaped to his feet again, enraged.
When an arrow took him in the shoulder, he spun around and fell to his knees, grabbing at the shaft that jutted from his flesh.
Another whistled through the air above Oliver’s head and he spun just in time to see it strike home in the chest of the Atlantean. The weird, warped shimmer of air around Hy’Bor ceased instantly. The sorcerer stared down at the arrow protruding from his chest and staggered off. He fell on his side in the courtyard, crumpling to the ground. The impact sent up a puff of dirt. But one of his hands waved in the air and then began to distort the space around it. Weakened he might be, but Hy’Bor still lived.
“Take him!” the sergeant shouted again. “Kill them both!”
“Would you just shut the hell up?” Oliver snapped.
The soldiers began to surround him and he kept his guard up, turning around in a circle, watching to see which of them would make the first move. There were three, then five, then he lost count. Had the order not been to kill him, he would have surrendered then and there. But surrender meant death, and he would rather die fighting.
An arrow struck a soldier from behind with such force that its tip poked out through his abdomen. The man started to fall and a second caught him, holding him up.
“Oliver!” Kitsune called, and fully half of the soldiers turned to face her as she raced across the courtyard with the swiftness of her breed.
“Borderkind!” shouted one of the king’s guard.
Kitsune drew back the bowstring, an arrow at the ready. “Stand down. The first one to touch him, or come near me, gets an arrow through the eye.”
It seemed to Oliver that the world held its breath.
Then Hy’Bor began to chant in a language unlike anything Oliver had ever heard. Fear flashed in the eyes of every one of the soldiers around him and they all drew back a step.
The Atlantean was rising. It was difficult to look at him; his body seemed out of synch with reality, as though parts of him had been stripped out and hidden away.
“Kit,” Oliver began, warily.
Before Kitsune could reply, there came the shriek of stress on wood and metal and the main gates of the castle swung inward with great force. Framed in the massive gates, with the golden afternoon light streaming in behind them, were half a dozen of the fishermen Oliver had seen while riding toward the castle. They carried fishing poles and several lugged strings of hooked fish, the catch of the day. All of them were dressed in rugged clothing that had seen better days but there was an air about them that dispelled any suggestion of simple country folk.
The man in front had black hair and a neatly trimmed beard, both shot through with silver. His face was pitted with pockmarks, and though he was only a bit larger than Oliver, physically, he moved with such confidence and power that it seemed his mere presence might knock them all to the ground.
“Hy’Bor! What transpires here?” the fisherman shouted.