Divided (#1 Divided Destiny) (20 page)

He didn’t need reminding what they were fighting for, but his eyes greedily took in the scene all the same. That wasn’t his wife, or his daughter, but just for a moment, he needed to pretend. He missed them so much.

The three marines walked through the outer edge of the village. They were the recipients of curious glances, but no one challenged them. Given the war that was being waged barely a mile into the distance, Leo had thought that they would have been more cautious. However, he supposed they didn’t wear the colors or display the crest of either of the fighting factions. That was likely important in this world. They weren’t carrying recognizable weapons, either; therefore, simple logic told these people that they weren’t a threat. It was a naivety that concerned him; he knew his world had lost that ability to trust a long time ago.

The sound of swords clashing and the cries of wounded men and triumphant victors carried on the breeze. Leo sniffed. He could almost smell the gunpowder, but that smell was in memory and not in fact. It was the usual smell of battle, not the smell of the battle nearby. There were no guns here, and swords only carried the fetid smell of the guts they had spilled.

“Halt. What can we do for thee, strangers?” A portly man stopped them. He was dressed in dark robes, of slightly better quality than the muted gray homespun garments that predominantly surrounded him.

“We’re looking for Knight Mathis. Any idea where we could find him?” Leo asked. The man exchanged a glance with another villager. “He gave us some good advice; we want to thank him and maybe ask for some more directions,” Leo added.

The man’s guarded expression cleared. “He is staying in the village, but he has headed for the front. He will return by evening.”

“I don’t particularly want to get caught in that battle again. One sword-wielding knight was enough for me,” Nick joked.

Leo scowled. It was only mid-afternoon; it would be hours until twilight, and he wasn’t in the mood to wait for Mathis to return. However, they could rest here briefly. Their rations had dwindled to almost nothing, but maybe they could trade for more from the villagers. If Mathis was staying here, then there might be something recognizable as an inn. Perhaps they could barter for a hot meal.

“Is Knight Mathis staying in the inn?” Leo checked.

The man nodded. “Yes, just there.” He pointed to the building just behind them.

“Thank you,” Leo told him. He shrugged at the others and led the way to the inn.

Leo pushed the battered wooden door. It creaked open, and then the smell assaulted him. It was a confined space with very little ventilation, and it was disgusting. He reminded himself that they didn’t bathe all that often in medieval times, so the tang of sweat was to be expected. However, the overwhelming stench of manure was not, until Leo’s eyes adjusted to the gloom and he could make out the other patrons. They were farmers; their boots were liberally splattered. Perhaps that also explained the straw on the floor.

“Good morning,” Leo offered warmly.

There was an open table just to the left of the door. Leo took a seat, and Don and Nick claimed two of the others. A waitress with a low-cut bodice and long, curly blonde hair in ringlets down her back hurried over to their table.

“Well, what brings three strong men such as you to our little village?” she flirted. “Not that nasty business on the border, I hope.”

“No ma’am, we’re just passing through,” Leo told her. “We’re from another kingdom. We don’t have any of your currency, but I was hoping we could perhaps trade for a meal.”

He gave her a winning smile. He had asked Mathis about their money system during their initial journey to Termont. It was an important thing to know when living in a foreign country. Apparently, when it came to currency, they used gold and silver coins, but a lot of the peasant villages still primarily worked off the barter system. They only resorted to coins for goods they couldn’t produce themselves. Trading for a meal shouldn’t be a problem.

The waitress looked unsure for a moment before she turned a megawatt smile on them. “I’m sure we can work something out. I’ll be right back.”

A few minutes passed; the patrons stared at them, which was rather uncomfortable. It was even more uncomfortable when Leo saw movement, and watched vermin scuttle around the floor. While it was possible that the locals had gained a tolerance for disease due to exposure, he thought it was more likely that they somehow shielded their cooking.

If the locals were eating it, then it was probably reasonably safe, and they were almost out of safe options. With the rations they’d brought with them almost gone, they had to eat local food or hunt and scavenge for their own, and both of those options contained risks. In fact, it was almost safer to eat with the locals; they at least would know for definite what of the local fauna was safe to consume. They might get ill from the first exposure due to the foreign bacteria, but they should be fine after that.

However, before Leo could even ask what the special of the day was, the inn door burst open. An out-of-breath villager all but fell to the ground. “Quick, quick, we must flee,” he gasped.

The three marines jumped to their feet. Leo pushed past the man brusquely in his haste. They hadn’t been in the inn for five minutes, but he could already tell the sounds of battle were closer. The shouts were more distinct, and he could hear the steady footfall of approaching horses.

A knight on horseback burst into the village. His identity obscured by his helm, Leo hoped that his allegiance could be guaranteed, as he was in Kaslea colors. If they had been on Earth, he wouldn’t have trusted it. He’d used the tactic of dressing as the enemy to escape detection far too often not to expect that same tactic to be employed to fool him. The knight dismounted and clicked up his visor—it was Mathis.

“Mathis,” Leo shouted. “What’s the situation?”

“Staff Sergeant Frasier and comrades. I wasn’t expecting to see you here, but your presence is most welcome. The battling forces of Sintiya and Gatlan draw closer; they will be upon us any minute. I must get these people to safety,” Mathis declared.

“We’ll help,” Leo offered. “But we won’t fight. We’re not picking any sides here.”

“I understand.” Mathis bowed his head. “You are men of honor.” He moved over to the well, the center of the village, and started to address the villagers who were appearing from everywhere, emptying out from their homes as they heard the commotion.

“Non-lethal force only,” Leo ordered, before giving a wry smile. “After all, we don’t want to run out of bullets.”

“Copy that,” Don acknowledged.

“Yeah, let’s get these people out of here before the battle arrives,” Nick agreed, thinking of that mother and child he had seen when they had arrived. A battle was no place for them.

“Too late,” Leo groaned.

He could just see the outskirts of the village; several knights on horseback were riding up at full gallop. He wasn’t sure what side they were on, but that didn’t matter. What did matter was what was coming from the left. He could see another group of knights on horseback, wearing different colors. Red-and-gold versus purple-and-silver. The village was directly in the middle, that was where they would clash.

“Alright, people, let’s move,” Don yelled. “Run, that way.” He pointed to the other end of the village, the same side they had arrived from. “Go, go, move it.”

“Let’s make sure these buildings are clear. You know how civilians hide,” Leo suggested.

Leo sprinted over to the nearest hut and kicked the door in. He strode in and looked around, making sure to swiftly duck and check under the table. The place was empty; that was good. He moved on to the next. On the other side of the street, Nick was doing the same. Don was still yelling at everyone in the street to move, and a few of them were frozen in terror. Don grabbed them and pulled them forward, pushing their shoulders until they started to run on their own.

Nick kicked in another door. The last two huts had been empty, and at first glance this one appeared the same. He then heard a frightened whimper. He ducked down. Two children with tear-streaked faces and wide eyes were hiding under the table.

“Hey, it’s alright, it’s okay,” Nick said quickly. “I’m here to help you, but you can’t stay here. You need to run, okay? So take my hand and we’ll get out of here.”

It was a little boy and girl, likely brother and sister. The girl was possibly eight, the boy a couple of years younger. He clung to his older sister and sniffed, his lower lip trembling in terror. The little girl swallowed hard, and for a long, painful moment, Nick thought that they would stay there, and he couldn’t imagine that him bodily pulling them out would help matters. However, she had likely been told many times she was responsible for her brother—he could almost see the determination in her jaw. She took Nick’s outstretched hand and crept out from under the table. Her brother followed her, and then they were both standing in front of him.

“Alright, let’s go,” Nick told them.

He stepped around them and went first to make sure the coast was clear. The last place he wanted them to run out into was the middle of a battle. However, these were wooden huts, and wood burned. It would be far more frightening, and far more deadly, to let them hide, and then they’d be faced with burning to death, choking on smoke and dying of suffocation or running out into the battle that would be going full measure by then. No, the time to flee was now. It was the safest thing.

Outside, he crouched down so that he was on their level and pointed into the distance. There was a stream of other villagers running; they couldn’t miss where to go.

“Follow everyone else, go on and run. They’ll take care of you,” Nick promised. That was a universal constant—children were protected. He couldn’t believe otherwise.

Nick watched them go for a long moment, one he could ill afford, but he needed to make sure that they would make it. He heard hooves falling behind him; he turned and then yelped, quickly jumping to the side to avoid a collision with the knight on the horse. The promised battle had finally arrived.

It was madness. Just the rampaging horses in the confined space was bad enough. The knights were slashing at one another, the horses whinnying in terror as the steel missed and slashed their flanks, sending blood spraying around the market. Nick stepped back, pressing himself against a wooden hut until he saw where best to run to. He had crossed a knight by accident before; he had no intention of making the same mistake.

On the other side of the square, Leo’s actions mirrored Nick’s. He really didn’t want to be in the middle of this. Then he spotted a screaming woman, doubled over in fear, dashing in between the wooden huts, trying to run, trying to get out of the village but penned in by the erratic movement of the horses.

Leo saw Don. He too had spotted the woman, and he sprinted over to her, weaving in between the horses. Leo winced as he ducked under a sword strike that would have decapitated him if he’d been a second slower. A knight approached, sword outstretched; it was raised to hit the woman. Don tackled her to the ground and the knight kept on riding. Leo shook his head. Why had the knight done that? What did he possibly gain from hacking an innocent young woman to death?

Bloodlust. He was here to kill, and kill they would. One knight fell off his horse; another knight dismounted, and then they were dueling. One horse galloped off through the village, riderless, its eyes wide; it might well run till its heart exploded. Another horse reared up again, and again, trapped in the center.

Leo took a chance and ran over. He put his boot in the stirrup and heaved himself up. He settled on the horse’s back. It reared up again, but he gripped the reins tightly and directed it over to where Don was shielding the woman with his own body.

“Here,” Leo yelled.

He reached a hand down. Don saw what he was planning and all but threw the woman onto the back of the horse. She grabbed Leo’s hand on instinct and settled behind him. The horse hadn’t even come to a complete stop. Leo spurred it on, eager to get the woman and the panicked horse out of the middle of the battle. They reached the outskirts of the village and Leo paused the horse. He slipped to the ground.

“Circle round, meet up with the others,” Leo ordered, sprinting back in the direction of the fighting.

Back in the battle, Nick had yet to move. It was almost surreal. Knights in armor having a swordfight…it was something to be watched on television; it wasn’t real life. He was watching the swinging swords and he couldn’t see how there was to be a victor. Even when the knight was successful, and landed a hit on his opponent, it hit the metal of the armor and did no damage.

Then one of the battling knights slipped; he landed hard in the mud of the village courtyard. Whether injured or just exhausted, he lay there unmoving, no longer fighting. He could have just been looking for a weakness to exploit; no downed opponent could be trusted to remain that way.

Nick watched, certain the opposing knight was going to raise the sword, plunge the tip down, pierce the chestplate, and skewer his opponent in the chest. He didn’t. The sword would never have penetrated the armor. A lance might have with the thrust of a galloping horse behind it, but not a sword.

Instead, the knight knelt in the mud, holding his sword at a strange angle. Nick realized a second too late what the knight was going to do. He plunged the sword in under the armpit, using it like a dagger through the flexible part that the armor didn’t cover.

The knight’s hands then went to his fallen opponent’s helmet. He removed it and raised the sword again. Bile filled Nick’s throat. A huge artery ran through the armpit, and the fallen knight would bleed out in minutes—he was effectively already dead. They were trained to take people out, but they didn’t finish off wounded men, and they didn’t mutilate corpses. More than one soldier had been brought up on charges for that.

No, he couldn’t permit this. Automatically, his hands raised his assault rifle. Nick fired a short burst into the air and everyone stopped.

Battlefields were noisy places, a constant bombardment on the senses. A silent battlefield was much worse; it was eerie and unnatural. Leo came sprinting up, the only movement in the tableau in front of Nick. Leo skidded to a stop in front of Nick, sliding a little on the churned-up mud, which had once been a nice village green.