“No!” Torm screamed and ran for his son.
Looking almost bored, Reed stepped aside, as if out of courtesy allowing the lord of Sheridan to reach his heir just as Bertram breathed in a death rattle so loud, I swore I could hear the last expanse of his broken lungs.
While Torm fell to the floor next to his son, Reed beckoned me to step around and away from them to join him.
Father Starling was being helped to his feet. Gerard and the guard had beaten out the flames on his face, but his cheek and ear were pink, dripping,and raw.
Still along the teeth of the tongue river, Evangeline fenced with the second guard, but now he was outnumbered, because as unskilled as she may have been, Ilsit was at his back thrusting her knife out every time he tried to elude Evangeline. The two women and the lip of the river caged him in.
Ilsit had turned her head briefly, laughing in shock at my burning hand before her approving eyes looked away again, back to the man she and Evangeline fought. And so she was distracted when Gerard abandoned Starling and charged at her, a foul word on his lips.
Reed and I both began to follow him, but the guard who had gone to help Starling bounded up and swung out a sword at Reed, who again made anXof his twin blades.
I still picked my way across the chamber after Gerard, ignoring Reed’s shout at me, calling out my friend’s name.
Ilsit turned her head to see her former husband headed for her, and she looked stricken. The guard she had been fighting quickly swung at Evangeline, forcing her to parry his blow. And while Evangeline straightened from that defense, he turned and slashed out at Ilsit, slicing her forearm open.
She doubled over in pain.
Gerard reached her, sheathing his sword and grasping at the front of her clothes. He lifted her up, shaking her, screaming curses. Her blood dripped onto the white stone floor, eerily glistening from the light of the cresset torches, only one of which was still held. The other two were rolling on the floor, casting hellish shadows on the inside of the fate’s skull.
The guard who had slashed at Ilsit whirled to meet Evangeline’s next blow from behind, but he was too slow. The lady warrior’s blade pierced through his neck, above the gray-and-red leather breastplate of his rank. He tripped backwards, his weapon making a clattering when it fell. Clutching at his neck, he tipped over into the tongue river.
His body’s entrance into the spittle was less of a splash and more of a slap, like feed being slopped into a trough.
“Put her down,” I said to Gerard as Evangeline and I advanced on him, her from the side and me from behind. He and Ilsit were far too close to the river.
“Keep her away from the river!” Starling was baying.
Behind me, Reed was fighting against both the guard that had been aiding Starling and now also an incensed, devastated Torm. I was aware of Starling’s livid approach in our direction, but I only saw Ilsit, limp and in pain, in Gerard’s grip. I had never seen her so weakened.
Then Gerard hauled her up slightly higher and dropped her into the river.
Evangeline ran for him and slashed at him, flaying open the sleeve of his uniform and the flesh beneath it.
I knelt along the bank and reached down to Ilsit with my left hand. She was gasping and floundering, trying to swim with a wounded arm.
“I need both your hands,” she cried, reaching and clasping desperately for me with slick, slimy palms, sliding back in when I could not lift her out.
“I can’t,” I wailed. “I can’t put my right hand in the river!”
Ilsit looked confounded and frightened.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the body of the dead guard sinking beneath the surface, face down, the ooze of blood from his neck lazy and slow, not mixing quickly with the spit.
I looked up to see Evangeline drive Gerard back and then, when he was slightly off balance from defending himself, she kicked at him, causing him to fall. She ran for the lip of the river, knelt down next to me and, her sword set aside, reached for Ilsit. Her strong body an anchor, she reeled Ilsit out.
I felt so useless, only able to offer my left hand on Ilsit’s soaked dress as the three of us struggled to stand.
Gerard had rallied and made for Evangeline again.
“Cut them down! Each one,” ordered Starling, drawing closer, looking monstrous with his disfigurement.
And because the lady warrior was paying attention only to the scared, wounded woman in her arms, because she had yet to fully let go of Ilsit, her reach for her own blade was too late.
The captain’s sword slid into her back with ease, and he pulled it out of her with a triumphant yank.
Evangeline wavered and then fell to her knees.
