Fate Undone: A Novella

Chapter III - Part III

Somewhere on the southwest corner of the city, where the fighting had been and gone, the end of a ladder knocked against the dark edge of a stable rampart. The end to this ladder shook lightly, as a weight climbed the rungs, followed by another and another.

Twenty men climbed up, each one adorned in black. Some of them carried daggers; some carried swords; two or three carried heavy axes strapped to their backs. For a still moment, those twenty men beheld the burning city, taking in the sight of the work that had been laid out before them. They stalked the walls next, over to Vassilios Manor's high hill where they waded through the grasses and climbed past trees and shrubs until meeting the stone wall they sought. High above them was an ornate window to the manor's second floor. It had a peaked mold and a carefully crafted tracery up top that spiraled and divided the pane into three narrow sections, each one bordered by a vertical bar of stone.

One of the twenty men stepped forth, unraveling a length of rope tied to the end of a tri-pronged hook.

In the second-story hallway, down an aisle and around a corner from where the front doors had been broken in—where soldiers shouted and where metal sang—the grapnel crashed through glass and tumbled across the blue carpet. The rope tugged, it slid back. It clinked against the wall, and soon began to crawl up, its flukes feeling the stonework for a loose groove or wide crack. Rattling from side to side, it slipped and bounced but caught on the vertical bar of the window's edge, and it held.

Twenty men climbed up, each one adorned in black.

Twenty men stalked the halls.

* * *

Eleni screamed out; her blade clattered at her feet. She raised her shield, catching the sword before it could bury itself in her shoulder, but still got knocked to the floor.

Nikos glanced behind him, saw his sister, and parried away from his foe. He brought the corner of his shield around, cracking it across the head of Eleni's attacker. He was not the only one to notice her pain. Abraam was there, too, after he picked off the man his son had left behind. Eleni rose to her feet. Her right arm was shaking; the sword had hit her right below the elbow. Even though a length of chainmail covered her, the blood could be seen, dripping free.

"This way," Abraam told Eleni. "Get your back to the wall."

Eleni reached for her sword but dropped it immediately, cringing. Nikos pulled at her good arm and straightened her up. If she really still wanted a sword, there were plenty to choose from. The floor was littered with bodies: bodies in red gambesons and black plates and bodies in yellow cloaks, wrapped around ringed layers of bare steel. Every corpse was not far from the weapon they had once wielded. And in many cases, there were corpses not far from the weapons that had delivered them unto death.

As Abraam and Nikos put themselves between Eleni and the entrance where the Eressians kept coming in, Abraam began to notice exhaustion in the movements of others, and not just his own comrades. Every sword, no matter whose hands they were in, grew heavier with each swing. Every breath, no matter whose lungs labored, grew all the more taxing to take. Weapons were locking together more often now; shields were being relied on too heavily. Both sides of this battle were tired, but there was no advantage to be taken from that. Pasithia was not as large a city as Eress. When it came down to sheer numbers, the latter prevailed every time.

They will snuff us out, thought Abraam. A red man came at him. Abraam angled his shield, deflecting a sword's edge, and he drove his own blade's point into the man's gut. How many more can there be? The man fell away with a rasp. Abraam looked to the entryway, past the stinking corpse of the minotaur, still burning on the floor. The flow of men continued, running boisterously through the threshold before quickly regarding their steps with caution as they picked their paths around the dead. There were no more arrows to meet them. Along the steps and atop the banister overlooking the room, the archers had left. They had abandoned their spots in favor of joining the melee, replacing the fallen swords.