Saiai Webnovels

Elef saw his last remaining companion fall backward, a hole on his chest. And realized he was the only one left.

They had tried to push the enemy back outside the gates, but they had failed and had been forced to pull back instead: there were too many of them. If only the traitors hadn’t been backing them up…

They had manged to temporarily stop them by putting two tetracycles sideways across the street. Behind that barricade they had split into groups of three: the first watcher leaned out and shot with his dolikos, while the second one reloaded his own and the third one prepared to switch places with the first, in a continuous rotation. It was a standard fighting formation that every soldier was taught. But the enemies were better markspeople, and far too soon some of the groups of three had become groups of two, breaking down their attack pattern.

Elef reloaded his dolikos, swearing under his breath. He knew the only reason they hadn’t charged yet was that the enemy was unsure how many opponents still lied behind the barricade. However, soon, once they saw that the shooting had stopped, they would start to get closer.

His eyes fell on the woman who had led him there. She’d been one of the last to die. Now she lied on her belly a few feet from him, her face out of view.

He immediately looked away and shook his head. He was still unharmed, fortunately. He summoned up his courage, telling himself that if he survived he would certainly become a legend. And even if he died, he wouldn’t fall before taking as many enemies with him as he could. Yes, just like his honored namesake.

After, what was there to fear in dying? It was just an instant, nothing more. He probably wouldn’t even realize it.

He heard someone running, from the other side of the barricade. One enemy was approaching. Elef looked at his dolikos and smiled: they would find him ready.

The enemy now had climbed on the tetracycle behind which he was crouching. Elef drew a single long breath, then let his training do the rest.

He rose, turned, aimed at the heart and pulled the trigger. The thermal plate that covered the dolikos’ force crystal opened, bringing it into contact with the air. A hearbeat later, the bullet popped out of the weapon’s long barrel, with a loud crack.

There was a gargled cry and a spurt of blood, then the enemy fell forward from the teracycle, on the ground beside Elef, letting go of the screlygron sword that he carried.

It was a man, bald and with light eyes. Eyes that now were fixated on him. Elef had blundered, he hadn’t hit the heart. The man was still alive, and was desperately but unsuccessfully trying to breathe. Blood trickled from his mouth, a little more with each raspy wheeze.

The boy was unable to look away. In those eyes he saw fear, a call for help, but most of all he saw pain.

He felt his legs were shaking.

Instants passed, one after the other, but still the man wouldn’t die, he kept wheezing, a sound that got more and more distressing.

Suddenly, his nostrils were assailed by the smell of blood, that up to that point he had managed to ignore. He started to feel sick.

Then he heard a crack, as a bullet hit him.

Elef fell down. The first thing he felt was something warm and wet flowing down his chest. The second one was pain. Excruciating pain, a pain greater than any he had ever felt before. He tried to feel his shoulder, where he figured out he had been hit, but even that small movement left him in agony.

He screamed, with all the voice he had. Even if it was of no use.

He tried to concentrate and calm his breath. As he did, his eyes turned back to the man lying beside him. He was still alive. His chest was a large red stain and his eyes now were clouded and glazed, and yet he kept weakly trying to breathe.

It this what it feels like, when you get shot? He couldn’t help but ask that to himself. It seemed to him that an eternity had passed since he had shot that man. All that time… did he feel this pain all throughout that time?

This wasn’t what they had taught him.

The enemies were getting closer, he heard their footsteps. He looked for his dolikos, but moving his head caused him another piercing wave of pain.

Then Elef knew, clearly and without a doubt.

He knew he was going to die there. Without taking any huge and memorable number of enemies with him, without making anything worthy of being remembered, without becoming a hero. He was going to die like a dog, in a pool of his own blood.

And inside of him, something snapped.

«I don’t want to die.» he heard himself speak those words, sobbing, unable to stop.

«I don’t wanna die! Help! Somebody help me! Please!»

Somebody answered.

«…Elef? Elef!»

The steps grew faster, as Elef realized they were coming from his side of the barricade, until they stopped in front of him. He didn’t need to move his neck to see Kalos, he had recognized the voice.

There were others with him. One of these others walked past him, stopping right behind the barricade, and said something to Kal. He noticed this thanks to those wits he had managed to keep. Unfortunately, he hadn’t kept enough to control himself.

«Please! Please! I don’t wanna die!» he kept whimpering.

He reached out with one arm, a stupid gesture but one he couldn’t help making. Furthermore he made it with his wounded arm. He didn’t have to wait long for the consequences to manifest themselves, and then Elef once more screamed in pain.

«If you still have the strength to scream like that, you’re not going to die.» said another familiar voice: it was Fyra. «Come on, you have to get away from here. I’ll give you a hand.»

Elef found the courage to raise his head. Fyra was offering him a hand, like she had done a few hours before. He turned on his back, cautiously and gritting his teeth, and took her outstretched hand with his uninjured arm. He felt his self-control returning.

Fyra dragged him away for a few feet, then he helped him get up. Once he was once again standing up, Elef noticed that Kalos had moved. He was close to the barricade now, speaking with…

What is HE doing here?

«Why can’t I stay here?» Kalos was asking.

«Because you know that old woman better than me. Leave the dolikos and the bullets to me and go take her. I’ll keep those soldiers occupied.» Artor answered.

«I can’t leave you here alone.»

«He won’t be alone.» said… was that Makar? «I’ll stay with him.»

«I’ll stay too.» said a girl that at first glance Elef didn’t recognize.

«Agatha, are you insane? I shouldn’t have even allowed you to come with us!»

«Will you stop treating me like a child? We were born the same day. If you can risk your life, I can too.»

«Curse it!» Kalos said, in exasperation. «Ark, say something to her! She always listened to you more than to me anyway.»

«Agatha, take this bag of bullets and sit here. Mak, you take this one and sit there. I’ll stay in the middle. Each time I pass you a dolikos, you reload it and then pass it back to me. We need a good rhythm. And the moment I say run, no matter what’s happening, you two run. Clear?»

«Ark!»

«I can take a dolikos and shoot too!»

«I told you the plan. Either you accept it or you go with your brother.»

Elef didn’t see the rest of the discussion, because his attention was drawn back to Fyra: «Can you walk on your own?»

He realized she was supporting him, with a hand around his waist.

He shook her off, with more violence than he intended to use, and grunted for the pain the movement had caused.

«Well, I’ll take that for a yes.» she said.

Elef was just about to apologize, when Kal came back to them, frowning. «Let’s go, quickly.» was the only thing he said, before heading for one of the houses.

Fyra followed him.

Elef looked back once more, toward the barricade. Artor, Makar and Agatha had put themselves in position. Artor held a dolikos, Makar was loading another.

As he stopped looking and left like the other two, he felt a muddled emotion well up inside him.

Was it embarrassment and shame for having been offered help by someone like Fyra? Partly.

Was it anger toward a coward like Artor? That, too. But why?

At last, he understood. Most of all, it was frustration with himself. Because he had panicked like a stupid little kid. Like a nobody. Just like a coward like Artor.

But he was no coward. That was impossible.

It’s been only an accident, he told himself, it won’t happen again.

Next time it will be different.

---

«What’s wrong?» Alek inquired.

The four soldiers in front of him were huddling together behind the corner of a house. Every now and then, the first in line angled his dolikos beyond the wall and let a bullet loose.

Up to that point, the assault had proceeded virtually unimpeded. The defenders had been caught by surprise, without having time to mount an organized resistance.

«The road’s blocked, they’re covering behind two cars!» one of the soldiers answered him, shouting to be heard above the sounds of battle all around them.

«Well, get around them! There’s a parallel street that way!» Alek replied in annoyance, pointing his arm behind his shoulders, to the north. Without the traitors’ assistance, this bunch of incompetent idiots would have never managed to threaten Elis.

«Don’t go around giving us orders, young man! You’re not our commander!» another one of the soldiers shouted at him, before a third one barked a silencing «Hey!»

«Who is your commander, then?» Alek asked, without batting an eye. Proud, as well as incompetent: wonderful combination, he thought. Unfortunately for them, it wasn’t his first time dealing with military people that resented the spathari.

The third soldier looked at him: «I am. If circumventing that barricade were so simple, we’d have done so. But on the street you pointed at, Spathar, there’s a second one, and it’s much better defended. There could be another parallel street, that way.» he pointed south, in the opposite direction «But in order to reach it we’d have to cross this street and get out of cover. And there’s a good marksperson behind those cars. I have no intention of ordering any of my subordinates to put themselves in such danger.»

«And no intention of putting yourself in it either, right?» Alek told him, with a cruel smile. The commander lowered his gaze, in shame.

«Count yourself lucky. I’ll do it for you. You take care of covering me.» he concluded, drawing his mikra and putting himself next to the corner of the wall. The soldier in the front was more than happy to exchange places.

Alek peeked out for a moment, to get an idea of the situation on the road. He saw the two tetracycles and caught a glimpse of a dolikos’ barrel, then he moved back behind the wall right before a bullet loudly bounced off of it.

He had seen enough. He took a deep breath, nodded to the four people behind him and then he dashed forward, out fo cover. Without stopping, he aimed his mikra around the area where he had seen the barrel come of of the barricade and pulled the trigger. His purpose wasn’t to hit the enemy, only to prevent him from shooting. The bullet bounced on one of the cars, but did what it was meant to do: the enemy kept laying low.

Behind him, Alek heard the soldiers start shooting as well. He kept running, reached the other corner and jumped behind the wall. Not only was he unscathed; the marksperson had been completely unable to shoot.

Alek proceeded down the road, temporarily moving away from the fighting, while the thermal plate on his mikra automatically closed, signaling him it was once again ready to be used.

In a short time, he found the parallel street he needed: a narrow alley that not even the midday sun would be able to light up. He took it.

He had kept in mind the approximate location of the barricade. All he needed to do now was take the first side road that would lead behind it. Even if the noise would cover his footsteps anyway, he made an effort to be as quiet as possible, resisting the urge to run and taking care not to step on the puddles that littered the road.

It was beginning to lightly rain. Alek felt the control band around his neck and the bracer on his right arm. If the rain made crystalarms unusable, he’d have to use screlygron.

The side road he found was an even darker and narrower alley, a mere strip of ground separating two houses. Once he reached its end, Alek cautiously leaned out. He was about twenty feet behind the two tetracycles. Among the corpses, he could clearly see three people close together: he counted two weapons.

He took out one bullet from the bag on his belt and reloaded his mikra. As he did so, he heard his tree targets talk to each other.

«It’s about to rain, Ark.» a male voice.

«Yes, I noticed. Soon the dolikoi will be useless.» another male voice.

«What do we do?» a female voice.

Alek walked out of the side road and drew closer, careful to not be spotted. Now he saw that the three people were two men and one girl. They weren’t wearing the guards’ uniform, and had their backs turned. He prepared his mikra.

«What I said before. You two run to Kal.»

«And you?»

«I have an idea to stop the soldiers here, you don’t have to worry about that.»

The girl was the one closer to him… but she was also the only one unarmed. Looking at the other two, they felt somewhat familiar, but more importantly the one on the right didn’t have his fingers on the trigger. At that point, the choice was obvious.

«Ark… do you really have an idea?»

«Of course I do.»

«Halt!» he said, in a firm voice, aiming his weapon at the man in the center. «Hands up!»

The two to the sides turned to him with a yelp, but the one in his sights reacted only with a slight stiffening of the shoulders.

«You turn as well, come on.» Alek told him.

The young man complied, slowly raising his arms, but without letting go of the dolikos.

Once they were face to face, Alek recognized him. And the young man seemed to recognize Alek in turn.

«You… you’re the one from the tavern, yesterday.» he said.

«No talking.» Alek replied «Drop the dolikos.»

The sky was lit by a sudden flash.

Alek saw with the corner of the eye that the other man, to his right, was moving.

«Mak, no. Remember what I told you.» said the one he was aiming the mikra at.

«I said no talking!» said Alek again, but the last word was drowned by a roar of thunder. A heartbeat later, what had up to that point been only light rain became a torrential downpour.

Alek swore wordlessly. Now the mikra was useless. But it didn’t’ matter: he still had the-

He didn’t have the time to finish that thought.

The very moment the rain had intensified, the young man in front of him had lunged at him, holding his long weapon like a club.

Alek managed to protect his head with one arm, but nevertheless the strike made him fall to his knees.

«Now!» He heard the young man shout.

Alek heard movement to his right and to his left, and realized the other two were running away, but he kept his focus on the armed young man, who didn’t seem to be about to run. This surprised him.

«Are you… making them escape?» he asked, as he stood back up. Had the young man tried to run as well, he would have slain all three, civilians or not. He had given them the chance of surrendering and they had thrown it away.

But the thought that this non-combatant was trying to keep him occupied in order to allow the others to get away struck him. And amused him.

«Do you think… you’re at my level? Haven’t you realized who I am? I am spathar.»

«I don’t care about who you are!» the man snarled back as he lunged at him again.

However, this time Alek was prepared.

He sent a quick impulse through his control band and made a fluid motion with his right arm.

The improvised club of his opponent split in two before it even reached Alek, leaving in the young man’s hands only a short remnant of the barrel.

Alek pointed at him the thin blade his bracer had turned into.

«Had I wanted to, I could have severed your head from your body as well. We spathari are among the most fearsome warriors in the entire Principate, you fool!»

The young man didn’t answer. He threw away what remained of the dolikos and raised his fists.

Alek, who had expected to scare him or at least discourage him, was speechless. He couldn’t understand whether the person in front of him was a complete idiot or a raging lunatic.

«Not only you still want to face me, but you want to do so without even a weapon?»

All the young man said was «I don’t need any.»

That was the last straw for Alek. The spathar burst out laughing. He could kill him with a single thrust and carry on the assault, but something prevented him to. It didn’t seem right. Idiot or lunatic that he was, this young man was the first civilian ever who didn’t cower in fear at the sight of his uniform or of his sword since the day he had joined the spathari corps. He reminded him of days long gone, of events that belonged to another life.

«You know what?» he said in the end, turning his blade back into a bracer, putting his mikra back in its holster and cracking his fingers. «Neither do I.»