Fate Undone: A Novella

Chapter III - Part II

Vassilios Manor was a colossal place. It was just three stories tall, yet it seemed far larger.

Its domed roof was wide and blue, rising above a brightly-colored frieze of numerous life-sized figures, representing the orders of people found throughout Pasithia. Beneath the images were balconies on the highest level where the king and queen resided. Ionic columns held it all up, spread evenly across the front of the manor and around its north and south wings. It overlooked the tragic city from the southeast corner on a high hill covered with shadowy growth: columnar cypress trees, flowering olive bushes, and poppies and lilies that thrived in the dense grasses. Through that growth were the great curving steps, two hundred sixty-four in total, leading up to the front doors. Twenty-one wide landings evenly divided the way up, each one home to pairs of iron basins guttering with fire.

From the bottom, spread up to the fifth landing, rows of archers were drawing their bows and loosing their arrows, felling Eressians that flooded across the shallow amphitheater below. The bottom quarter of the manor's staircase was filled with the constant twanging of bows. At the base, where soldiers clashed, arrows punched through flesh, thwacked against wooden shields, and ricocheted off the stones.

With a round shield in one hand and a sword in the other, Abraam put himself in the thick of it, between the manor's first steps and the columns bordering the amphitheater. By his side were his comrades—over two hundred of the finest Royal Guards, adorned in rippling cloaks and hard steel—and his fierce children, Nikos and Eleni. As similar as the twins were in personality, they fought in very different ways. Nikos was well-suited for the fray, able to anticipate one foe as he fought another. Eleni fell behind in this aspect, though she excelled at every one-on-one confrontation she ever faced. She struck fast, not hard, relying instead on the brashness of her foes, the weaknesses of their armor, and any expressed flesh to give her the upper hand. Due to the twins' differences, as well as the similarities of the mind, they were never far from one another in any fight. They complimented each other—raised one another up.

As Abraam stood his ground, trading steel over one spot of tiny territory that he mentally declared his, he played Nikos and Eleni's questions in his head over and over: Why are they doing this? How did they get this far unnoticed? But no matter how many times Abraam asked himself, not a single answer came to him amidst the crowd.

There was fighting in every direction, filled with the chipping of wooden shields, the shrill scrape of steel swords, and the sharp popping of maul or mace against armor. The only places of stillness were above: the hill where the manor sat, the lean cluster of buildings burning across from it, and the broken aqueduct stretched wide overhead, its watery wound bleeding in its own way. The more Abraam thought about it all, the more he suspected he would never see a way out of it. He was no stranger to battle, but seeing it escalate so rapidly within his own city was surreal.

The Eressians funneled in from the northwest en masse, seemingly replacing every downed invader with two more. No matter how chaotic it was in the middle of the writhing bodies—beside those that spit curses as they killed and the others that died with guttural chokes—the city grew quiet after the beast roared.

"NORTH SIDE!" cried an archer from the steps. "NORTH SIDE!"

A volley of arrows took flight as Abraam saw the monster, past the heads and stirring blades of Eressians and Pasithians alike. It lumbered out from a northern street, on the opposite end of the amphitheater, half-dragged and half-taunted along by two red soldiers in front. They tugged at long chains connected to the hairy giant's neck. Behind it, four spearmen prodded at the thing's backside. It was almost human, except for its ungodly height, long face, hooved feet, and enormously broad shoulders. The long horns that once grew on its head had been sawed off and replaced with iron caps. When the arrows came down, one struck the monster's chain-bearer in the neck as the beast itself grunted and flinched under the hail of missiles. Then it grew angry. It grabbed the dead man's chain and whipped it, striking three Pasithians at once that got too close, right before it turned on its own herders.