He felt a hand on his arm and spun, sword raised, only to find Emeline standing there in the midst of the fight.
“We need to get to Violet!” she yelled over the clash of blades and the crackle of magic being used in combat. Around Sebastian, Stonehome’s warriors used powers that made them dozens of times more dangerous than any individual soldier: some of them moved faster than any normal person could have managed, some threw things with impossible strength, while one summoned flames on the clothes of his opponents.
Even with all those abilities from their magic though, even when they could coordinate as fast as a thought and sense every enemy coming at them, there was still only so much that they could do in the face of the sheer numbers coming at them. Sebastian saw a warrior fall, dragged down as the crush of people around him meant that he had nowhere left to dodge. He tried to rush forward to help, but Emeline’s hand was on his arm again.
“There’s nothing that you can do here, Sebastian,” she said. “The defenders don’t need you, but your daughter does.”
Sebastian swallowed. There was no choice to make, not with his daughter in danger. He had to get her to safety.
“Where is she?” he demanded.
“Cora will have headed for our house,” Emeline said. “Hurry, before the whole place is overrun.”
They ran for the small cottage, hurrying past the violence as they went. Sebastian saw a pair of soldiers attacking one of the refugees, and cut one down with his sword, but he didn’t stop. There was no time now to do anything but run. If they didn’t get to Violet soon, it would be too late.
He saw a quartet of soldiers gathered around the open door to the cottage, and roared a challenge as he ran forward. One of the men there turned towards him as Sebastian cut across his throat with the sword he held. Another froze in place with his sword raised, and Sebastian thrust his blade through the man’s chest, releasing it as it stuck there and throwing himself at the third. Sebastian bore him to the ground, dragging a dagger from its sheath for use at such close quarters and stabbing while he clung to the man’s wrist with the other hand. When the soldier went limp, he looked up to see the last of them looming above him, sword raised.
Asha slammed into him from the side, blades sliding into his flesh almost too fast to follow.
“It seems that you were right,” she said. “We need to get Princess Violet out of here.”
Sebastian stared at her as he stood. He wasn’t sure whether Asha was exactly who he would have picked to have by his side in this moment.
“Then you’re an idiot,” she said in answer to his thoughts. “I fight as well as anyone else here, and I will protect her with my life. Her survival is all that matters now.”
Sebastian suspected that she was serious about that, and in any case, there was no time in which to argue. Back on the walls, he could see Vincente trying to marshal a defense, but the men and women there were losing ground step by step.
They burst into the cottage and found another dead soldier on the floor, Cora standing over him with Violet cradled in a sling and a sword in her hand.
“Well done,” Asha said to her, seeming impressed with her almost for the first time.
“We need to get out of here,” she said, not seeming to care about the dead man at her feet. Violet was surprisingly quiet, chewing on a rag dipped in milk.
“How though?” Sebastian wondered aloud as he looked out of the cottage’s window, trying to find a break in the fighting that they could run through. If they could get to horses, they could make a break out onto the moorland, but there were soldiers on every side, and Sebastian could see crows gathering above, no doubt looking for any sign of Violet.
Worse, Sebastian saw the moment when the Master of Crows stepped up onto the walls. Stonehome’s warriors ran at him, and he cut through even them, twisting and turning, sending his crows into their faces, slicing out with his dueling blade. There were men all around him, and he always seemed to know which way to turn. Worse, with the amount of death in the air, his strength was terrifying. A man stepped into his path and was cut clean in half by a chopping blow. Another found himself kicked away, ribcage shattered.
Vincente was there then, and the Master of Crows ducked in time to let the soldiers behind him feel the barking call of his blunderbuss. Vincente’s long butcher’s blade was not as agile as the Master of Crows’ rapier, but he kept it moving, kept him at bay. Asha looked as though she wanted to run forward to him, but instead, Sebastian saw her eyes alight on the stone circle there.
“If we can get to there, I can give us a way out.”
“Asha,” Emeline said. “That won’t work. The spell Endi cast-”
“I’m not planning to stand in the circle,” she said. “We need the heartstone at its core. Just help me do this! I’ll not let Vincente die in vain.”
She ran from the cottage, sprinting from the circle and cutting down enemies as she ran. Emeline ran with her, and Sebastian cursed silently.
“Come on,” he said to Cora. “If Asha has a way out, we have to take it.”
They ran out after Asha and Emeline, heading for the circle. Almost as soon as they emerged, the crows above started to caw, and Sebastian only had to glance round to see the Master of Crows’ eyes on them. The lapse of attention cost the New Army’s general a cut from Vincente’s blade, but it closed almost as soon as he made it, thanks to the power running through him. The two kept fighting, but how much longer could their duel last when there were soldiers closing in on every side?
The answer to that was only a matter of seconds. The Master of Crows left an opening, and Vincente struck again, but his heavier blade stuck in the other man’s flesh, and the Master of Crows smiled cruelly before striking out again and again, stabbing with both his sword and a long dagger.
“Run for the circle!” Sebastian yelled for Cora, and thankfully, amazingly, she obeyed while he turned, levelling his own sword and waiting for the Master of Crows to come for him. The other man loped forward, coat flapping in the wind like wings, his blades out like taloned hands. Sebastian knew that he couldn’t survive more than seconds against something like this, but even seconds would do something to let his child escape.
The Master of Crows closed in on him, Sebastian raised his sword… and then the mist descended.
It fell over the village in a thick wave that Sebastian knew only too well. In it, there was no telling one direction from another, no guessing which direction a foe might lie in. He took a step to the side, avoiding the Master of Crows’ first rush, and then they were both lost to one another, vanished in the mist.
Sebastian hunted through it blindly, not sure if he was looking for his enemy, or for his child or something else. He thought that he saw shadows in the mist, but none came towards him. None found their way through to him.
A hand closed over his arm and Sebastian spun, ready to kill.
“It’s me,” Emeline said. “It’s me, Sebastian. This way!”
She led the way through the mist to a spot where Cora and Asha already set aside two horses. Cora held Violet, while Asha seemed to be holding something clenched in her fist; something that glowed. She briefly opened her hand to reveal a perfectly spherical stone, carved with sigil after sigil, each one flickering across the surface.