The horses shuddered but didn’t bolt, and the soldiers clustered quickly, drawing the horses down, creating a formation with their backs facing inward and their lances bristling outward. The soldiers on the outer edges knelt, the next row crouched, the inner rows stood, and the soldiers in the center held their lances at near vertical, protecting the formation from directly overhead, making a sphere of sharp edges around both man and beast with Sasha pushed to the center and told to crouch and cover her head.
They watched the birdmen swarm and circle, waiting for an opening.
Kjell saw it before it began, the horror of bloodlust, of hunger and desperation. The Volgar had no sense of self-preservation. Or maybe they had lost all instinct in their desire to eat. They started falling from the sky, several birdmen sacrificed themselves upon the upraised spears. The impact impaled them but also dislodged the lances, creating an opening for the beasts behind them and breaking the formation. One birdman hit the ground and immediately lost a wing on Kjell’s sword. Another bird plunged, then another, their wings folded to increase their speed.
“Scatter!” Kjell roared, commanding his men to change the formation. His men immediately widened the circle and released the horses, slapping their rumps to make them run, creating chaos and distraction.
“Brace!” Kjell ordered, and his men dropped to their knees, still back to back, their lances butted against the ground. Kjell remained standing, giving himself greater mobility, awaiting the next bird’s arrival, his sword black with blood, his stance wide. One birdman drew up mid-dive, distracted by the galloping horses, and the Volgar in his wake catapulted past him. The Guard let them fall, expanding their circle and contracting it, keeping Sasha in the center, protecting her even as the birds pounced.
One minute Kjell was brandishing his sword, separating a birdman’s body from his head, the next he was on his back, looking at the sky. Sasha pressed him into the grass, her eyes pupilless in her face, her skin leached of color, her hair tumbling around them.
Then she was lifted straight up off the ground, dangling over him from the talons of a birdman, her eyes still strangely blank, her arms reaching for him as she was propelled upward.
The birdman stuttered mid-flight, as if the weight of the woman proved too much for him in his weakened state. The other Volgar began lifting off, eager to share the birdman’s catch and escape the weapons that had already decimated more than half of their flock.
“Sasha!” Kjell was on his feet hurling his lance before he could think about missing, before he could even consider the blood that was growing in an ever-widening stain on her pale dress.
The point of his spear sank into the birdman’s throat, reverberating with the force of impact, and Sasha swung her arms and tossed her head, kicking to free herself. The birdman sank, choking on the green-black blood that poured from his mouth, but he refused to release his prize. The other Volgar swarmed around him, talons extended, hearts visibly pounding in their emaciated chests, eager to take her from him. Another lance pierced the captor’s left wing—Jerick’s aim was true—and the mortally wounded birdman, hovering about ten feet above the earth, released Sasha too late to save himself. Sasha didn’t stay down, but shot to her feet, racing toward Kjell, arms pumping, hair streaming, and Kjell brought down two birdmen before he could push her back to the ground with a furious order to “stay the hell down!” His men closed around her again, swords out, faces lifted toward the sky, waiting for the next rush.
There wasn’t one.
Three birdmen lived to fly away, their shredded wings and bony bodies disappearing beyond the cliffs from whence they came.
“God damn you, woman!” Kjell moaned, sinking to his knees beside Sasha. She pushed herself up gingerly, her face tight with pain, one armed wrapped around her middle, her hand pressed to her side, trying to cover the blood that soaked her dress.
“You aren’t wearing your breastplate,” she said softly, her eyes forgiving him even as she scolded. “You didn’t protect your heart, so I had to.”
“The horses are scattered, Captain. But we need to walk. We can’t stay here. The Volgar carcasses will draw other predators,” Gibbous urged. The Jandarian savannah was known for its lions, and though the men had not seen any sign of the packs since crossing from Enoch, they didn’t want to attract their attention. Volgar bled the wrong color and they stank like hyenas, but somehow Kjell thought the lions might not care.
But Sasha’s blood was red, and she was bleeding a great deal. Kjell scooped her into his arms, and his men fell in behind him, loping across the dry grass to the cluster of trees where Kjell had kissed Sasha an eternity before.
“I have to heal her, or the lions will follow her scent, no matter how far we go,” he barked, calling a halt to their progress. He didn’t think about how much blood Sasha had already lost or that his shirt was soaked through where he held her tightly against him. “Stop just beyond the trees. Half of you stay with me, the others fan out. We need to find the horses,” Kjell ordered. He shot out orders—a blade to cut away the back of her dress, a flask to make her drink—and then demanded his men give him enough space and privacy to make her well.
Long grooves scored her back, so deep he could see the white of bone beneath the bubbling blood. He pressed his palms to the wounds and willed them closed. Her blood warmed his hands and stained his fingers, but the wounds did not mend. He turned her on her side, pressing a hand between her breasts and finding her heartbeat. She watched him with calm acceptance and faith-filled eyes, but her face was so pale he couldn’t see the gold in her skin.
“Sasha—sing with me,” he pled, the first waves of doubt making him desperate. Her song was all around him, crystal clear, a chiming he now recognized, a peal of bells that had healed injuries far more grievous than the ones he now struggled to close. Yet he couldn’t close them.
“Come with me and I will try to love you,” she whispered, smiling gently, her eyes growing heavy.
“That’s right,” he nodded. He closed his eyes, letting the pealing pulse beneath his skin, but the gashes down her back mocked him, becoming garish grins that laughed at his failure.
He buried his face in her neck and wrapped her in his arms, magnifying the clangor of her healing song until he shook with it. His head was a gong, his heart the beat that kept it ringing. And ringing. And ringing.
“Kjell,” someone said.
“Captain,” he heard again, and the knell in his skull became an echo. His muscles were locked and he couldn’t open his eyes.
He could feel Jerick above him and sensed that time had passed while he rang the alarm. The sky was dark, and small pit fires ringed the encampment, keeping the creatures at bay. Kjell concentrated on loosening his fingers one at a time, peeling them from Sasha’s skin, releasing her so he could roll away. He fell to his back with a groan, the blood rushing back into his limbs, his body coming awake.
“We need you. There’s something wrong with Peter. He’s throwing up blood,” Jerick said.
“Sasha?” Kjell moaned.
“She sleeps, Captain. You’ve healed her wounds. She’s fine.” Jerick sounded confused, irritated even.
“I need to see them.”
“Who, Captain?”
“Her wounds. I need to see her back,” he hissed, gritting his teeth against the pins and needles in his arms, the burning in his back, and the stabbing in his calves and feet. Jerick turned the sleeping Sasha toward him, coaxing her onto her belly and moving the tattered edges of her dress away from her injuries.