The Forgotten Crown (2019) Book 1 of The Broken Crown Series

45. Heaven and Earth

Lyfe sang through the air, cleaving and hacking in a numbing series. Sirena had kept to the walls with her retinue of archers. Half of the deadly crew rained down upon the horde still outside the walls, the other half picking off those who had crossed the breach. Sirena defended her archers, picking off the few stragglers who made it past the lethal arrows. A loud screech behind warned of imminent danger. Whirling about she caught her would be attacker in the throat. Another grey tunic stood beyond the fallen soldier and so she advanced.

"Stop! Stop there or I'll kill him! Sure as you're breathin' I'll kill him!" the soldiers' desperate words came out quivery and breathless. His pupils were miniscule, the orbs filled almost entirely by the whites of his eyes. The boy he held close to his body as a shield could have been no more than fourteen. Even with the blade to his neck the boy looked confident.

Sirena felt her stomach clench when she realized why he was so confident. His confidence was in her. She could almost read the words swirling around in his brain. How could this pathetic man at his shoulder hope to defeat her when so many fell before her like chattel. Didn't this poor boy know? She was the cause of this destruction, she already had the blood of one sister on her hands.

Heart hammering, she slid forward an inch. "Stop!" he screamed, spittle flying from his lips. The blade pressed harder into the boy's neck, drawing blood. He winced, his confidence wavering slightly.

"Easy!" she lowered her sword slowly to the ground. The man did not seem to notice it sat upon her foot. "Easy" she spoke soothingly, her hands lifted in the air. "Please, let him go, he's just a boy."

"Aye, and I've a boy too. What's he gonna do when I don't come home?"

"If you let him go, you can go home to your boy" she whispered urgently "Please just let him go. You will come to no harm by my hand."

The man looked around desperately as if in search of a trap. Slowly he eased the knife on the boy's neck. "You swear?" She nodded reassuringly. The man lowered the blade, releasing his hold on his young captive. Impatient, the boy squirmed from his grasp, racing towards his heroine. A crawling rash of goose flesh broke upon the back of her neck, then the very air exploded.

Fire and stone gripped them in its fist, hurling them brutally through space. Sirena slammed into the rocky detritus of the wall, tumbling head over heels. Gasping and stunned, she lay for a moment staring at the dusty swirling air above her. Curling up as if she would vomit she attempted to pull air into her lungs soundlessly. Her breath finally came and she coughed raggedly.

Choking, she struggled upright and felt her blood run cold. Not five paces away the boy lay still, his dark eyes wide open, unblinking, unseeing. Bea... Scrabbling across the ruined battlements, she tenderly slid his broken body into her lap. He looked up at her, the ghost of his earlier confidence still etched upon his face. His brown eyes mirrored her sister's in death. A sob threatened that she could not contain. Rocking back and forth, she whimpered. So senseless, so horrifically senseless... This poor child lay in her lap, never to see his mother again. It could have easily been Syrus. Sirena realized with a terrible ache, that this war would be fought on the backs of too many children. The too old, the too young and the too desperate.

A deep seated anger rose in her gut, a fury unlike any she had felt before. More broken bodies littered the walls around her as she continued to stroke the boy's blood stained face. A few archers endured, pulling what little remained of their quivers and bows from beneath their silent comrades. She let the last of her tears mingle with his blood before gently closing his eyes and tucking his body beneath a shield and retrieving her sword.

The fury in her built to an impossible rage, a physical force that caused her to shake. The courtyard was a mass of struggling bodies, a pit of death. Sirena's every muscle and nerve ending was stretched taut. Chest heaving and vision red, her eyes alit on the massively grotesque general in the midst of the fray, sweeping his enemies into broken piles like he was doing no more than swatting flies. Her body tightened to the point of physical pain, her shaking interfering with her vision. Carrock, the master armsman fell under the giant's sweeping club and did not stir. A growl escaped her clenched lips and she flew down the battlements feeling as if the stones were surely being obliterated beneath her feet.