Nothing could have prepared Raya for the wall—rather, what came after it. She had fought bandits in the ashes of Ellakar and survived the ring of archers at Axar’s estate. Not even the more recent assault on one of the Massed Alley prisons had given her any forewarning.
With Avri leading the other ambush group, Raya led her own group along the garden wall of the targeted Pranan’s Hill fort. The huge stone bricks that composed the main three-storey jail were a dozen feet ahead, but Raya led her group to a pause. Ailo slowly drew his sword, earning glances from the passersby. As each of the dozen freed men and women with Raya armed themselves, the glances became murmurs, and the street began to clear. Then, when they were ready, Raya called, “Now!” and then they clambered up the wall.
Raya dropped over the other side of the wooden fence—not onto a soil garden plot or a cobblestone pathway, but into a trench of thigh-deep water. Her healed ankle rolled on a fist-sized rock, invisible in all the muck, and she fell forward on one hand. Her shortsword thumped against the grass as others sloshed into the moat.
Even before the call went up, an arrow took the man who had landed next to Raya. He gasped and splashed forward into the water. Raya thought his name had been Terat.
“We’re under attack!” screeched the guard who had loosed the arrow. Another guard—aa short man with a thick beard—dashed forward with a spear. Hallist, trying to regain his footing ten paces to Raya’s right, knocked the first thrust aside with his quarterstaff. The second stab went into his abdomen and he slammed back against the wooden fence, shaking it.
Metal rang out crystal clear, as fighting broke out along the line. The peal of sword-on-sword shook Raya’s sight away from the spear that had pinned Hallist, and back to the guards that were charging her. She tried to take a step backward as a spear angled toward her, but collided with the man who had landed behind her. The pike point dragged across her shoulder and she cried out—but the pain brought focus and she pierced the man’s arm with the point of her own blade. He cried out, losing the spear shaft; then, in fury, the man grabbed Raya’s shoulder and shoved her back again. Her next sword jab pierced the man’s gut and he fell into the red-water moat.
A screech occluded Raya’s ears and a trance slid into her mind. She had never killed a man like this. Her arrows may have found their marks before, but she had killed this man with his face only a foot from hers. She had done it without thinking. His life’s blood warmed the water around her knees.
There was a definition to the shrieking now, interrupting the incessant siren. It was a word. It was her name. Ailo, forced to one knee by a sword blade angled against his own was wailing, “Raya! Raya!”
She wasn’t Raya anymore. In that fight to survive, she had shed all that. She waded forward and sliced Ailo’s attacker across the back of the neck. The fight had sprawled out of the moat now and into garden. The girl who had been Raya trampled through mossy flowerbeds as she fought the guards. The ex-slaves and her friends were at her side, falling as often as they won their little victories.
Clipped by a dagger in the back of the hand and grazed by the archer on the back of her thigh, the girl who had been Raya did not cross that yard without her share of blood lost. She saw one of Avri’s group fall to a man wielding a bastard sword and a knife. She shrieked and rushed at him, hacking without practice at his side. He parried with his dagger and elbowed her cut hand. She nearly lost grip on her sword. He took a stab at her with his; she stumbled over a dead body and rolled on her tailbone. Ailo slammed into the man, his sword a flurry of motion—each clang matched by a parry or a jab. Though Ailo grazed the guard, eventually he was knocked back a pace by a hefty kick. As the guard teetered off balance, Raya dragged her short sword across his shoulder. The man reacted as though he had been surprised by a poke. He twitched to the side and drew a red line along Raya’s forearm. While her sword clattered across the mosaic path beneath their feet, Ailo’s sword emerged from the man’s chest. Panting, Ailo tossed Raya’s weapon back to her.
But they were done. She held her short blade at the ready, turning around and gasping for breath. The men and women around her were doused in blood, but they were not wearing chainmail and metal helms.
“Are you good?” a man asked. It was Axar, holding up Raya’s arm to look at the damage.
She looked at him dully. She was probably in shock or worse. “We’re not done yet,” she said faintly. As Axar stumbled across the carnage-strewn yard, Raya looked at the bodies of the dead. There were far more shirtless bodies than there were armoured ones. This cost us… she thought. The moat, hidden behind small berry bushes and mounds of dirt, was a muddy red colour, littered with her supporters.
While Avri quickly marched through the destruction executing each wounded guard she found with repeated strikes to the head from her club, Benn and a few others were checking the wounded. They helped Hallist off the fence—the old man still lived, though his pale face and blood-soaked shirt were not a good sign.
“They want to surrender!” called one of Raya’s supporters, from the barred door of the prison tower. Four or five had already picked up guard spears and held them at the ready. Dondar’s group was prepared to attack on the other side. He would be leading his men and women against the front gate on the street.
Raya limped forward. Her sword was so brightly smeared—she shivered, despite the sweat and blood that drenched her. “What?” she asked.
“They say there are four of them left in there. And they want to surrender,” the man repeated. He put his ear close to the door again. “They say they are laying down their swords.”
“Open it,” Raya said. Ailo lifted his arming sword first, and Axar followed suit. The magician was a skilled combatant, Raya had realized, even without his magic.
It took four men a few shoulder-rams to bust open the door. They shouted for Dondar’s men to follow suit. Raya’s side opened first, followed a moment later by a caving gate that offered her a view of the sunny, empty street through the first floor of the tower. The four yielded guards rested on their knees, with their hands on their heads. As Ailo and Avri rushed ahead of Raya’s group, the guards whimpered and one hunched forward onto all fours, bracing himself. Avri grabbed him first, but Raya stopped her with a wave.
For a moment, Raya’s gang of bedraggled freedom-fighters stood silently in front of their prisoners. Then Raya spoke up: “What can you four tell us about this jail?”
The four looked at one another. The oldest was in his late thirties, but two were likely younger than Raya herself. “It was the property of King Turim. We all worked for him, until he and the other Mage Kings were killed or vanished. No one knows what happened to him.”
“Why are you still here then?” Avri asked, pulling one’s hair back until it started to tear loose.
The guard winced and gasped out a few words, “What else would we do?”
The older guard tried to explain better. He looked at Raya with his hands held out toward her. “We have worked here all our lives—we were raised in service to the King. Where would we go? Which side would we take? We thought we were safe behind our walls.”
“You weren’t,” Dondar chuckled.
“Let’s kill them and be done with it,” Avri said, pulling up her dagger to the weeping of the man she held.
“No,” Raya ordered. “They know nothing, and they’ve turned themselves over to us. Let them go.” A murmur went through her group, so she added, “We want peace and freedom for our people, but if we only show them bloodshed, what incentive is there for peaceful surrender? Let these four go and they will tell others. We only want the commoners and slaves to be freed.”
“Let them go,” Dondar affirmed, and a few—more positive—whispers agreed. Avri scowled and shoved the head she held forward. The guards grovelled thanks as they reclaimed their feet and hurriedly ran from the premises.
“Let’s start freeing them,” Raya called. Keys were found amongst the four guards’ surrendered effects and a few others picked up metal bars or even cooking pans from the living quarters. Soon, the clang of locks and the cheers of freedom were echoing down the stairwells of the jail.
Benn finally came to Raya with a report. By this point, most of her group had dispersed to aid in the freedom work. “Hallist needs Axar. He might make it, but he’s not in a good way,” her friend whispered.
“I’ll get him,” Avri said, as she walked by. She hurried down a flight of stairs into Turim’s basement cells.
Raya looked at Benn. His forehead was smeared with dark grease and sweat. “What’s the damage?” she asked.
He grimaced. “We lost eighteen,” he said. They had only begun the attack with thirty-five, including Raya and all her friends. But then he held up a notebook he had found in the first-storey guard quarters. “But there were forty people interred here. That’s way more than we expected.”
“Forty?” Raya gasped. She looked around. The tower was only a dozen paces from side to side. The freed men and women, thin, bruised, and broken, were starting to trickle into the room, or out into the street.
At last, Axar and Avri appeared, rushing up the steps from the basement. The mage went straight through, in search of their wounded ex-slave friend. Ailo came down from upstairs, with a dozen new faces following him. “We’re not going to have enough space at the Blue Evening,” he said, grinning. “Most of them want to help us.”
Raya nodded. She couldn’t smile, because, in her mind, she was still fighting for her life. In her eyes, she could only see the first guard she had killed. He had blinked at her sword poked inside of him and his grip on her shoulder had slipped away. She shook her head. “We’ll see if any homes near the inn can take on some new guests—if anyone is sympathetic.”
Avri patted the sword on her hip and added, “… or even if they’re not.”
“We’ll be friendly first,” Raya instructed. Her friend gave her a nod and then walked out into the street to stretch her arms wide overhead. She looked so free out there, and so delighted by the day.
Raya stood in the shadows a while longer and tried forcing her bloody blade back into its short scabbard.