Emma struggled against her restraints, and found that they were, in fact, more than sufficient to hold down the tiniest girl she’d ever met. She struggled more, anyway. There wasn’t anything logical to it, nothing of cleverness or strategy or thought. She was just about to die, and the bonds around her wrists and ankles were what kept her from escaping.
So she struggled. Like a bunny in a beartrap, desperate, fearful, mindless and feral. There was nothing but death and the urge to avoid it.
She would’ve chewed off her own hands and feet, if she could. But they were bound well beyond the reach of her teeth.
Not that it would’ve done her any good, anyway. Running off with bloody stumps for feet was no plan at all, and Emma wouldn’t have escaped even if she freed herself without injury. She was surrounded on all sides, maybe a score or more big and burly soldiers, berserkers among them and the fucking old man to go along with it all.
Emma had tried a few cleverer plans already. Hardened energy constructs conjured inside the locks of her shackles—hadn’t worked, the energy had broken before the iron. Applying pressure to snap them—again a failure. They were clearly thickened beyond the magic she could bring to bear. At one point, she’d just gone insane and tried pelting bystanders with projectiles. She’d missed, because it was just that sort of day.
Slowly, it dawned on Emma—really dawned on her—that she was going to die. Not in the abstract, distant sense. And not in the fearful, monster-in-her-mind sense she’d spent the last day dwelling on. A simple, cold realisation that her life here was over.
But it’s not real.
Did she still believe that? She wished she did. She wished, with everything she had, that she still felt that fearlessness.
Someone moved in Emma’s peripheral vision, and she practically convulsed in panic upon realising it was the older bastard who’d taken custody of her and the other prisoners.
“Wait.” She cried out—pleaded, really, being honest with herself—”Just wait, you don’t have to do this. You shouldn’t, I can be more useful to you alive. Much more, my magic—ask your men if they’ve ever seen anything like it. I’ve just started scratching the surface of what I can do. Even I don’t know what my limits are! Leave me alive and you’ll see how far they go, you’ll be amazed!”
The bastard just looked at her, and actually had the audacity to seem sad. As if he somehow regretted what he was doing, as if it was somehow necessary. As if there were some reason for it beyond him giving an order and his idiot followers obeying.
“I am sorry, girl.” He sighed. “But your fate has already been ordained by the Gods. I am not the one deciding this, I only wield the knife.”
At the mention of it, Emma’s eyes flickered to the blade and she felt another spasm of fear seize her chest. It really was a big knife. Strange, given that it was only a few inches long, but it seemed to her like it was the biggest knife in the world. Her mouth dried, eyes wetted, limbs started convulsing for freedom all over again.
“I don’t want to die.” She croaked.
Emma had always imagined she’d die well, bravely. With dignity at least. She’d known even then that she was just kidding herself. She’d never had much guts to begin with, and it was no real surprise to see what little courage she’d weaseled her way through life with now abandoning her as the blade came closer and the sad-looking priest shook his head from side to side.
“Be quiet.” He soothed. “This will all end soon.”
But that was just it, she didn’t want it to end.
“Fuck you!” Emma snarled, tears running down her cheeks and snot trickling over her lips. She licked them both, felt the salt and the tang and the warmth and the wetness. Felt the stone at her back, the wind on her skin, the pounding in her heart and the lightheadedness suddenly infesting her. She felt it all, and urged the world to give her more. More feeling, more life.
This can’t be it. This can’t have been all I got. I…I’ll wake up somewhere else. A hospital bed.
Somehow, that made her even more afraid.
“Fuck you!” Emma repeated, and this time she actually felt her fear receding. “You think you can kill me? I’d like to see you try, dumbass!”
She had no idea why she’d said that. What was she expecting to happen, the knife breaking against her skin? Capital-G-God to reach down and snatch it away right before she got her heart cut open? Maybe the old priest would drop dead from a sudden aneurysm. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
What she had not been anticipating was startled cries, and the sound of heavy footfalls as several hundred screaming vikings started charging at the scene with axes, spears and swords out. She just sat there, staring and blinking in dumb incomprehension for a few moments before that big blob of electrified meat between her ears finished working and let her know what was going on.
The Sculds didn’t carry anything that easily identified one group as different from another, not that Emma had seen. But she’d always had a decent memory, and scanning the crowd now closing in she carefully picked out the most distinct among them. The berserkers, or the better-armoured Grais and Jarls. Sure enough she soon recognised Vari the Idiot as well as a few of his more prominent ball-washers from her days in captivity.
Emma allowed herself, dumbass that she was, to wonder if she was being rescued for all of two seconds. Then she heard their rallying cry.
“THIS TRAITOR MEANS TO STEAL FROM THE HIGH-PRIESTS!”
Not a rescue, then. They just wanted her to die somewhere else. Lovely.
Emma wasn’t even treated to seeing them kill each other, the way she was bound to the table left her view restricted. All she got were the sounds of it. Horribly close, sharp. Death dancing around her and giggling as she flinched. She endured it as best she could, spending hours within the span of a few minutes, so grating on her nerves had it become. Then she jumped as something appeared beside her, weapon raised and face turned towards her.
“Stay still.” The voice ordered. A feminine voice, what? Emma stared, took too long to realise it was Aexilica standing beside her, then a moment longer to understand what was about to happen. She stayed still just as the woman’s weapon—a stolen axe—came down upon one of Emma’s shackles and it surrendered instantly.
One limb was free, and it took all of her willpower not to keep blasting magic at the other three. Aexilica, fortunately, took care of those fast. Almost fast enough, in fact.
“They’re escaping!”
Emma didn’t look at the source of the voice before attacking, the turning of her head and the splaying of her hand came at once. A volley of energy flechettes cut through the air and smashed into the speaker’s body, throwing him onto his back and spitting up a mist of blood where ringmail links failed to cover delicate tissue. He was, unfortunately, not the only one to have noticed. Soon enough a great horde of bastards were charging at them.
“Do you have an escape route in mind?” Emma snapped.
“There’s a river nearby.” A new voice cut in, and it took her a moment to realise she was hearing Larry speak. “About a quarter-mile that way.” He tried to gesture by nodding in the direction, barely managed it. Emma glanced at Aexilica, saw she had no alternatives, and steeled herself to follow the advice of a severed head yet again.
Just as the charging Sculds came to within a few paces.
Emma felt all the frustration which had been mounting for the last few days escape her at once, and her magic shot out like grapeshot from an old cannon. An energy lance, the fastest one Emma had formed so far. Barely took her a second. It hit the men and turned them into a large number of pieces which used to be men, filled the air with a harsh scent. Burning meat. Barbeque. Emma didn’t feel sick anymore, that was probably the sort of thing she should’ve been concerned about. If this was real.
I’m not seriously still telling myself it’s not, am I?
Well why not? Better to be crazy than here.
Aexilica’s sword was out by the time the rest reached them, flashing and dancing and plucking great chords of blood from opened veins to trail through the air and spatter in the dirt.
Emma helped her. With her amulet confiscated, she couldn’t trust in the natural, effortless shield which had engulfed her body before and kept it safe. Emma was just a fragile, tiny woman. But Aexilica kept the enemy from exploiting that, holding them beyond weapon’s reach of Emma and buying her the time to use her magic without fear of reprisal.
Another energy lance hit as far from Aexilica as she could make it without missing the enemy entirely, and another row of men came apart. Aexilica’s armour was singed, even as far from the impact as it was, and she was sent one step to the side. Righted herself, swung once more and turned to run.
Emma ran too.
Compared to Aexilica, what Emma was doing could hardly be called running. Her legs were close to a foot shorter than Aexilica, her strides more like a metre, and despite her having a solid five or six pace head-start, it took single-digit seconds before the larger woman had caught up and started pulling ahead of her.
It didn’t help that Emma wasn’t nearly as durable, and there were axes being thrown at their backs. She conjured a shield over her back, focused on holding it in place. Skin-tight, thin. Light enough to carry easily, thick enough, she hoped, to stop a bit of metal moving a few metres-per-second faster than she was. Probably. Maybe. She found out a few moments later as it cracked open, and bounced something heavily to the ground. Emma was metres ahead by the time the projectile landed.
Ahead she saw their destination, swore at the sight. A river. Larry had said. That much was true. He’d failed to mention the big fucking cliff it was sitting at the bottom of. Emma glared over at the head, saw him bouncing up and down where he was strapped about Aexilica’s waist. Saw his grin, felt it burn her down to the gut.
Gravity or iron, which am I more afraid of?
It seemed like a difficult question, right up until the next flying axe bounced off the back of Emma’s armoured head and made everything a lot easier to decide on. She redoubled her sprint, reached the edge of the cliff…
And leapt off it.
The wind greeted Emma eagerly, running its cold fingers along her face, snagging her hair, her clothes, drying her eyes. She felt it like a wall before her, growing more solid with every metre more she dropped.
But never solid enough. By the time she stopped accelerating, she’d be moving fast enough to die five times over. There were rocks in the river, if she hit one of those she was dead. So Emma imagined she wouldn’t.
Slow. I need to slow.
Emma knew how to do that, at least. Or she thought she did. Her mind went out and formed a parachute of energy, which promptly tore from her grip and left her spinning haphazardly. She panicked. Her panic came fast enough that Emma had just enough time to cocoon herself fully in hardened energy, with just barely enough give not to smash her against the insides on impact.
And then she impacted.