Tomaz sheathed his sword and slung it onto his back. He reached out a huge hand and pulled the Prince to his feet. The Prince clutched at a rock outcropping on the side of the ravine, still trying to pull air into his lungs.
“That was close,” the girl said. She had retrieved her daggers and stood surveying the scene around them. Suddenly she tensed. “Tomaz, I only count twenty-two. One’s missing.”
As if on cue, a man dressed in black burst from concealment and raced off. Tomaz shot one glance at the girl, who nodded quickly, and he took off after the man.
“Well, looks like that’s it.”
The Prince shook his head desperately, trying with all his might to force breath back into his lungs. Little black dots were floating across his vision, but he managed to stay standing. Frantically, his eyes darting over the girl’s shoulder, he searched the forest, trying to see through the shadows cast by the trees, turning left, right, even looking behind him.
“Did they hit you on the head?” she asked, obviously questioning his sanity. “We got all of them, you can calm down now.”
“No,” he gasped, unable to say more, his lungs still trying desperately to take in air. Spots of light danced before his eyes, but he blinked them away and tried to breathe deep. He only succeeded in inducing a huge coughing fit, his lungs burning as if he had pulled in a breath of fire instead of air. Desperately, he started trying to mime the message, flailing his arms about.
“You’re fine now, your Majesty,” she said, misinterpreting the message as anger. “Not that I expected thanks.”
He took one last deep pull of air and finally, blessedly, his lungs expanded.
“Two,” he croaked. “Always two!”
A soft twang followed by a whistling sound reached his ears, and he dropped to the ground without hesitation. There was a cry, and he looked up to see the arrow had flown past him and impaled the girl in the shoulder. Before he could react, the sound of running feet came from behind him, and he turned to see another Death Watchman, this one much bigger and wielding an enormous black war ax.
“Shadows and light!” he cursed with the little air he’d managed to take in. It was all he could do to dive out of the way of an overhand strike that would have cleaved him in two as the huge creature bull-rushed him. He rose to his feet and backed away quickly, but the Death Watchman followed him without missing a beat. Whoever it had been in life had been an enormous hulk of a man, nearly aslarge as Tomaz, and the Prince was struck with sudden fear at the thought that this might have been a Guardian.
The Watchman swung into the series of movements that the Prince recognized as the opening of the Gunne Axe Form, and his fears were confirmed. Frantically, he looked around himself—a weapon, he needed a weapon! Anything to defend himself, even one of the girl’s daggers—there!
It was a short sword, clutched in the lifeless hands of one of the human Watchmen, and with lightning speed he grabbed it and fell into the second Szobody Sword Form, deflecting the Watchman’s swing and retreating quickly. He tried an overhand strike, but it was easily deflected as the Watchman twirled his axe in a move called Spinning the Silk. Despite the strength and speed he’d gained from the dead soldier, the Prince was forced back again by the creature, and he began to accumulate a series of burning wounds from the Watchman’s enormous weapon. His shoulder stung and ached where a cut had sliced deep into the muscle, and blood flowed freely from his side where the axe had scraped across his ribs.
At the last second, the Prince ducked a blow that should have taken his head off, but which instead buried the Watchman’s axe in a strange, gnarled tree growing on the side of the ravine. The Prince seized his chance and attacked, striking out with a quick thrust to the Watchman’s arm, hoping to incapacitate it. The Watchman responded so quickly that the Prince didn’t even know what had happened until he was flying through the air. He landed nearly twenty feet away, dazed, at the foot of a pile of rocks. He tried to come to his feet, looking around desperately for his sword, but he fell back as his head throbbed sickeningly and his legs gave out beneath him.
He looked around, hoping desperately that the girl was nearby and that she might intervene, but she had disappeared. She had cut her losses and abandoned him.
The Watchman ripped its axe from the tree, pulling with it a chunk of wood so large that the tree leaned drunkenly to the side, and then in slow motion teetered and crashed to the ground.
The Prince tried again to stand, but this time his leg crumpled beneath him, and he let out a cry of pain. He frantically tried again, but his ankle shook so violently that even with his added strength it wouldn’t let him rise. And then the Watchman was there, standing over him.
He looked up into the enormous skeletal mask, skin stretched too tightly across a once-human face, glowing green eyes staring from the pitted eye sockets and boring a hole into him with their insistent, fiery gaze.
“The Prince of Ravens,” it said in a voice like the crypt. Its vocal cords had long since dried out, and it was in a rasping whisper that it spoke. It stood towering over him, the axe clutched tightly in its right hand, savoring the moment and the Prince’s helplessness. The Prince tried to rise once more, but in vain. He began to pull himself up the pile of rocks, dragging his useless foot behind him, before the Watchman reached out, grabbed him, and hoisted him into the air, turning him so that they were was face-to-face.
“I will be greatly rewarded for bringing the Empress back your head. She is so concerned for your… safety.”
The Prince’s mouth went dry. He tried to speak but could think of nothing to say.
This… it was all impossible.
“Or perhaps another part of your body?”
The Watchman smiled, its rotted lips pulling back to expose dry, gumless teeth held together by sorcery alone. It swished the great axe through the air, razor sharp black blade catching and refracting the sickly burning light of the creature’s eyes in twisting patterns.
“My orders were admittedly unspecific…”
The Prince finally found his voice.
“Who gave you your orders?” he croaked. “Which of the Children?”
The Watchman gave a bone-chilling laugh that rasped and coughed. “I don’t have to answer any of your questions anymore.”
The Prince, with a force of will that he would never have thought he possessed, thrust his face forward and let his voice roll out in a crack of sound.
