This wasn’t going according to plan, but that was the way life went out here. You start with one idea and then something happens that totally fucks everything up.
Eamon, Buck and Clark had formed a group and were fighting the beasts as a unit, relying on each other to watch the other’s back against the devious things. It looked surprisingly effective as they killed one beast after another.
Shea turned her head, looking around the clearing. There had to be something that might make a difference. She reviewed what she knew of the beasts. They were pack animals and might or might not be afraid of fire. Not that it mattered, because she had no way to make fire.
Shapes moved in the trees beyond the clearing. Darting in and out of shadows with only the occasional reflection of light glinting off their eyes. She’d thought this was the entire pack.
She’d been wrong.
As the humans fought the beasts in front of them, the rest waited until their prey had spent its strength and thought victory was close at hand.
“Back, back. Reform the lines,” Shea screamed.
It was a lost cause. Shea knew that even as the words left her mouth. The fury of battle had left the men disorganized and slow to react. Even as some tried to fight their way to place their backs against the cave mouth, the remaining revenants surged forward, cutting them off while their pack brothers streamed from the trees.
Shea felt her breath still in her lungs as the revenants formed a black wave against the ground. There must be nearly a hundred. It was going to be a massacre.
Men streamed past her to form hasty lines. Eamon appeared at her side, his eyes wild with adrenaline, and his teeth bared in a macabre smile. Buck let out a loud war holler right beside her and raised a weapon coated nearly black from the beasts’ blood.
“Tough fuckers, aren’t they?” Buck yelled.
Eamon’s eyes glinted as he leaned slightly forward, anticipating the impact from the revenants sprinting towards them.
“Don’t mind him, boy,” Buck said, without taking his eyes from the beasts. “When he gets in battle mode he gets fixated and doesn’t talk.”
Shea hadn’t been concerned much about Eamon’s silence but rather about their current problem.
“They’ll write stories of this battle.”
Shea’s eyebrows flew up. “Only if someone survives to tell it.”
Buck chuckled even as he swung his sword down in a two handed chop severing the head of a leaping revenant.
After that, they were too busy to talk as they hacked and sliced at any body that came near. Clark joined their little group and, together, they rotated constantly, protecting each other’s backs.
Shea lost count of how many revenants had attacked and been turned back. Her arms felt like lead weights and each time she lifted her sword it got harder and harder to lift it again.
She fell into a rhythm, lift, slash, lift. Again and again. Until she reached a lull in the fighting. She looked up and realized she was all alone. The others were several feet away.
Between her and them a revenant lifted his head from his latest prey. Blood dripped from his face as he stared at her. He was huge, bigger than any other revenant in the pack and had scars all over his sides and legs, an ugly looking slice on his muzzle and another next to his eye where his enemy had missed.
The monster lowered his head, his lips pulling back in a crazy grin as if to say come and get me. He leapt over his snack. Nearly two hundred pounds of pure muscle barreled into her.
She protected her body with one arm, feeling the pressure of his fangs against the cloth and leather, and stabbed into his side with her other hand. Blood coated her hand as she pulled it away and stabbed again. It had little effect on the beast as he snapped his head side to side nearly tearing her arm from the socket.
She screamed at the pain and sunk the blade in again. A hand caught hers and guided the blade below the ribs then helped her plunge it in deeper, finding the heart and giving the blade a twist.
The light faded from the revenants eyes as his body softened on top of hers.
Hands grabbed the revenant and lifted it off her.
Shea blinked dumbly at the dead beast. Barely able to process that she wasn’t dead. That somehow she was still breathing. Her arm throbbed. It was good to be alive, to feel pain.
Blood and gore coated her from head to toe. It was in her hair, on her face, ground into her clothes. She looked like someone had slaughtered a dozen pigs right on top of her.
“On your feet, warrior,” a voice above her barked.
She looked up into a set of fierce, whisky-colored eyes.
Fallon.
Her mouth opened and closed several times as his frown deepened. She belatedly realized that they were still in the midst of the fight and popped to her feet. It was difficult since her arm didn’t want to support her.
The battle had turned as men streamed from the trees on stallions that seemed to take great delight in trampling any revenant unlucky enough to be in their path. Shea watched as a man leaned almost casually down from the side of his mount, and with a flick of his wrist, buried an ax in a creature’s head.
Shea’s party had pulled back to the cave to watch the strangers work.
Finding herself out of immediate danger, Shea found her gaze returning to Fallon. What was he doing here?
He frowned as his men cleaned up the remaining revenants.
Shea found herself studying him. She had never thought to see him again.
Tiny lines feathered out from his eyes. His mouth was a flat line as he surveyed the battle. He was so absorbed in his surroundings it was tempting to think he’d forgotten all about her standing there at his side. That was a trap. It was evident by the way he held himself alert that, despite appearances, on some level he knew she was still there, and he was ready to react in any way should she move against him.
Somehow, though, she had thought his reaction to meeting her again would be slightly different. Slightly more. Not this barely acknowledged existence.
Fallon bared his teeth and strode forward, leaving her standing and staring after him in consternation. Then it dawned on her that he didn’t recognize her.
She didn’t know if it was her attempt to look like a boy, the gore caked all over her face and clothes, or just her general insignificance as a rank and file soldier, but he hadn’t looked twice at her.
A laugh broke from her and was quickly stifled. The glee bubbled up and escaped until she was laughing so hard that she was nearly crying.
“Shane,” Eamon roared, “We don’t have time for you to have a break down. Get your ass back on the line.”
Her laughter died abruptly, and she looked over her shoulder to see Eamon glowering at her from his place in front of the ragged line that had formed at the mouth of the cave. Her eyes went from the haggard looking men to Fallon’s warriors.
Though the tide had turned in the Trateri’s favor, the fight wasn’t over. Shea was standing unprotected close to the tree line, easy pickings for any stray revenant. Even as she delayed, a clump of riders with revenants snapping at all sides shifted towards her.
“Move, Shane!”
She didn’t hesitate again and hauled ass back to the dubious safety of Eamon and the others. They waited and watched as Fallon rallied his men and drove the revenants towards the warriors waiting by the cave.
Eamon gave a war cry and tore forward, the rest of the men following as they hacked their way through the beasts while Fallon’s men on the other side did the same. Caught up in the wave, Shea followed, trying to stay close to Clark as they once again engaged the revenants.