GENESIS - THE BEGINNING. Book 1

CHAPTER 20 ... Death

"Got you," he said as her sword dropped from her grasp.

She lowered her shield and let it fall between them and it went unnoticed as it rolled to one side coming to rest against a corpse.

"What kept you?" she whispered as a trickle of blood poured from the corner of her mouth.

She stepped forward locking the man's wrist so that he could not withdraw his sword. The man frowned, not understanding her meaning. Her left arm snaked around his neck and she pulled him closer. The frown turned to surprise and then to pain and shock as she forced a long, thin blade under his ribs.

He tried to step away, but thrashed in her grip. She held him tight and close and smiled as the fear and pain registered on his face. He jerked his head away at the visible blood-coated teeth that looked like fangs.

She held onto him with strength she had not known she possessed until the man's struggles diminished and the spark of life left fear-filled eyes.

Tenderly, and for the first time in her life, she kissed a man willingly, and laid him on top of a corpse that had defecated in its death throes. She did not notice the smell as she fell forward onto her face.

***

A long incoherent scream of anger and loss echoed across the battlefield.

Tobor watched as the woman she was commanded to protect, the woman who had tried to kill herself, the woman that became a friend, keeled over with a short-bladed sword sticking from out of her back.

The scream went on and on and she realised it was coming from her own throat.

Smashing her shield violently into the face of an attacker, pulverizing nose, mashing lips and thrusting uprooted teeth backwards. She thrust her sword into the shocked face and grabbed the man's falling sword. Discarding her shield, she became a whirlwind of death. Twin swords cut, slashed, and blocked. Her assailants were forced backwards, tripping over bodies, slipping on pools of blood and died.

Step, parry and kill. Step, parry and kill.

Her blond ponytail dyed red with clotted blood had come undone in the fray. Blood and gore coated her visage. Glaring eyes. Bellowing harsh breath. Bloody swords held apart. She stared at the carnage about her. A movement caught her eye. She stepped over to a man clutching a hand that was missing forefinger and thumb. Death descended upon him as a blade punched through his naked throat. The death rattle went unnoticed as Tobor sought out the living and dispatched them with grim efficiency.

Katya bent down and turned her friend's body over. She gripped the sword and pulled it out. The sucking wet sound filled her with nausea but she swallowed it back down. Tears streamed over her dirty, blood spattered face as she stared at the smiling, angelic face.

In life Adelia had never been good-looking but in death she was beautiful.

A groan. A shield moved slightly as dirty, blood-smeared fingers sought the edges. Suffocating pressure, unable to move until ...

"Megan..." A cry of pain. A cry of hope.

Her sweaty, bruised left arm slid out of the shield's constraints and flopped numbly onto the ground.

"Megan." Wyatt lifted her body into his arms and his cry was heart wrenching. He hugged the blinking girl to his breast. "Never again. I swear to you. Never again will I stand by and do nothing." Tears of sorrow and joy ran down his face and splashed onto her cheeks.

"Wyatt?" she whispered. Her eyes struggled to stay open. "It hurts Wyatt. My legs. They hurt." She gasped.

His heart skipped a beat. Both her legs were broken half way up to her knees. Lowering her to the ground, he inspecting the breaks. No splintering and almost in the same places. He glanced at the shield then back at her legs. The markings under the swelling were almost identical. His eyes took note of the bodies strewn about and realised that in the frenzy of combat what had saved her was the shield. Her legs on the other hand stuck out from under the shield's rim. Legs, flesh and bone that had to give way when heavy sword wielding men stomped with all their weight onto it.

He smiled with relief at her worried gaze. "Nothing to worry about love."

"Nothing to worry about?" her voice climbing an octave. "They're broken and you say nothing to worry about?" A tinge of the old fiery spirit entered her eyes which she closed as a sudden wave of pain made her gasp.

"Uh-huh. You're going to be out of action for a while until your legs mend. Enough time for you to rest and recuperate your strength."

"They aren't going to leave scars are they?"

"They're broken, not ripped off," he quipped lightly, bringing much needed levity. "That on the other hand, will definitely leave scarring."

"Idiot," she said.

A trembling smile tried to break through the grimace of growing pain.

hA~