Things were surprisingly calm now as Priscilla and Coal ducked through an abandoned alley and out onto the open streets of Eitrivatnen. Dark smoke could be seen rising into the sky from where the trireme still burned at the docks, billowing up over the rooftops of the harbor warehouses and blotting out the sun. Far away, the battle could be heard raging on, but for now, Priscilla gave no thought to whether or not Herleif and his Vikings had made it past the barracks yet.
She had her own mission to focus on now, and unlike the Jarl, she did not have an army to help back her up. All she had was one grumpy Conqueror.
"We need to get out of sight," Coal hissed as he ran down the long, empty street after Priscilla. The place looked abandoned, with no sign of a peasant or soldier in sight. Everyone had probably taken refuge prior to the attack, or worse, burned by the Pyre long ago for some drummed-up act of heresy.
Priscilla ran quickly, leading on despite Coal's protests.
"This is the quickest way, and we must hurry. Herleif is sure to have noticed our absence by now," she panted through her helmet. "If I were you, I would save your breath and start thinking up a good excuse for when we regroup with the Northmen."
Whether Coal took her words to heart or not was unclear, but regardless, the two traveled in silence past the closed doors of warehouses and cluttered apartments, running by stalls that had been cleared of all their wares and valuables before the Vikings had a chance of getting their hands on them.
In a way, Priscilla was surprised that the Divine Pyre had not just burned the entire harbor to the ground and let the Vikings waste their time shifting through the ashes. It certainly seemed their style, but she supposed that even fanatics needed a place to live.
Further up the street, the sound of quick footsteps could be heard echoing off the stone walls. Priscilla skidded to a halt and ducked behind a market stall, with Coal quickly dropping down next to her. Steadying her breath, Priscilla glanced around the corner of the stall, spotting a column of Pyre foot soldiers running quickly across the lane towards the lake. They all carried shields and spears, and a Conqueror in a fine gambeson studded with metal plates and helmet fashioned like a skull ran beside them.
"He has better armor than me," Coal complained over her shoulder. "This stuff Beaufort gave me isn't even half as good."
His armor, though strong, was most definitely worn by someone else before him. Or a few people even. He had a tattered tabard, rough pants with knee guards that gave little protection, and an old set of pauldrons with metal plates coating his arms to his bare hands. At least his capped helmet seemed to be in good condition, hiding his face so completely that Priscilla wasn't actually sure she would be able to pick Coal out of a crowd without it.
"Would you like to go ask if you can swap outfits, or would you rather let them pass by?" Priscilla asked.
Coal didn't answer, so they remained where they were and waited until the foot soldiers were out of sight and the path was clear. Without a word, Priscilla sprang out of cover and took off down the street again. Taking a right down the way the Pyre Conqueror and soldiers had come from, she glanced up and spotted a large domed building rising above the rest.
"There, that is where he is supposed to be."
They ran on, across streets, and through alleyways until they had reached the large building. Priscilla hugged the wall carefully, keeping a sharp eye out for anyone who might be standing guard, and soon spotted two figures at the building's entrance. A Lawbringer and a Warden, both looking off towards the direction of the battle that could be heard over the surrounding rooftops.
"Come on. We can take them while their backs are turned," Coal said, inching past her toward the Pyre Knights. Before he got too far, though, she grabbed him by his arm, pointing over to a forgotten cart that was perfect for reaching the lower level of windows along the building's sides.
She tapped her head at him, and Coal yanked his arm out of her grip as they ran to the cart.
It was easy to work open the wooden shutter that covered the window with her dagger, and with practiced ease, she slipped inside and crouched low until she was sure the room was empty. She landed in what looked like a storage room full of piled crates and tools for building upkeep, and she was thankful that whoever had filled it had decided to leave the window unblocked. Coal fumbled his way in after her but managed to stay silent enough that she didn't feel the need to scold him like a child.
Stepping out of the room, she found herself in a long hallway that stretched in either direction, most likely circling through the entire building. The walls were lined with doors that showed no numbers or had any distinctive mark that would set one out from the rest.
"Shit. Which one?" Coal asked when he came up behind her, turning to look one way down the hall and then the other. "He could be in any one of these rooms."
"Patience," Priscilla urged. "Keep a calm head, and think of a way to solve our problem other than just bashing down doors with your shield." Turning to the right, she took a few steps and then stopped. She turned back again, headed down the left side of the hall, and nodded. "Smell that? That sting in the air?"
Coal tilted his head up and gave a couple of loud sniffs. "Yeah. Smells just like out on the dock, just before that ship caught fire and blew up."
"Exactly. And it is stronger in this direction. He is this way."
There was no one else in sight as they made their way down the hall, and with each step, the acrid smell was growing stronger. Priscilla counted ten doors on either side before she bid Coal to stop and pointed down to the bottom of the eleventh door to her right. A flickering light was coming through the space beneath the door, something the rest were clearly absent of.
Coal gripped his shield tight and was about to drop the head of his flail when she stopped him.
"Aren't we going in?" he asked in a hushed whisper just after Priscilla put up a finger against her helmet for him to be quiet.
"I am," she said, pulling a cloth and a small vial of yellow venom from a pouch on her belt. She pulled the little cork from the bottle's top, draped the cloth over it, and turned the bottle up to let it soak. With that, she capped the bottle and put it away, and proceeded to draw out her dagger and wipe the blade down with the wet cloth until the metal shined with a slick sheen of venom. "You are staying here to guard the door. If anyone arrives and tries to get in, stop them."
Coal looked her up and down as if he was offended to come all this way just to stand guard. "What are you going to do? Won't he know that you're not with the Pyre as soon as he looks at you?" he asked, gesturing at her legion colors.
Priscilla put the cloth away and angled her dagger blade up behind her wrist, hiding the pommel in the grip of her hand. "No. I think this man sees only what he wants to see. He is proud, too proud for his own good. And that is why he has to die." Then, before Coal could protest further, she opened the door and slipped inside alone.
The room was lit by a dozen candles set upon the walls, giving the space a cozy feel except for the sharp smell in the air that stung her nose. It was a large room, but the amount of clutter and equipment packed on tables and shelves made it seem closed in. Priscilla saw stacks and stacks of noted paper and books all across the floor and stuck to the walls, and the ceiling was lined with dry herbs and flowers that hung upside down like withered bats. On the far side of the room were two open windows to try and air out the smell and a long table topped with vials and beakers of all different shapes and sizes. Most were full of bubbling liquid that flowed from one beaker to another with little flames lit beneath, almost like a dazzling little show to put on for anyone who didn't know what they were looking at.
There was a noise off to her left, and Priscilla looked to see a lone man dressed in ornate dark robes and a small breastplate of black metal. He was busy packing equipment into a crate stuffed with straw, unaware that she had entered the room. The side of the crate was marked by lettering she did not understand but knew it belonged to the people of the Wu Lin.
"Li Qiang?" she asked quietly, naming the man listed in her correspondence with Beaufort as her latest target and causing the Wu Lin man to snap up and whirl around to face her.
He was younger than she had thought he would be, with dark, intelligent eyes and a neatly trimmed beard and mustache around his lips. His head was topped by a small round hat that rose up in the back like some kind of ornamentation, no doubt to show some form of rank among his own people.
Li Qiang's eyes narrowed as he looked at Priscilla, and his hand went to the table to hover over the hilt of a long single-edged blade, the kind of sword given to all Wu Lin warriors trained as Zhanhu.
"Who are you?" he asked, his voice sharp with a foreign accent, and had the sense that he felt comfortable giving commands to others.
"My commanders have bid me to come and fetch you, my Lord," Priscilla answered with a curt bow of her head, choosing not to give her name. "The Vikings are pushing deeper into the city. We must make our escape."
The Zhanhu didn't move from where he was standing, and his hand remained over the pommel of his sword. Priscilla waited for him to do something, to notice her colors and realize that she was not a member of the Divine Pyre, but that moment never came.
"Have your leaders failed so completely in the defense of the harbor that they already flee in the face of a few contemptuous barbarians?" he spat, "Where are my guards?"
Priscilla imagined he was used to low-ranking soldiers crumbling under his wrath, but she stood her ground against his rising anger. "They are still at their post keeping watch, and I have my orders, Lord. We must go."
Li Qiang stared at her for a moment longer, and she could tell from the look in his eyes that he wanted to take her remark as an insult to his authority. He might hail from a foreign land, but within this personal sanctuary, he would wield what power he could with absolute control and surely loathed the idea of anyone coming in and usurping that power away from him. But at that moment, a great clamor arose from outside the windows that took his attention, and a savage howling could be heard from not far off. Li Qiang let out a hiss of aggravation but abandoned his sword and returned to packing the crate full of equipment.
"Very well. But do not touch anything! Much of this equipment is unique and created only in my homeland. Here among you less enlightened lot it is all priceless."
In a way, Priscilla couldn't help but think that Li Qiang was just boasting now, but while he was distracted by his work, she casually walked over to the piles of notes strewn about and looked them over. Picking one up, she was dismayed to find it all written in Wu Lin script and had no idea what the notes said. Even if it had been what she was looking for, she would have no way of knowing for sure.
"What about these?" she asked him, "I can help. Surely you would not mind me packing some paper away?"
"Do not touch!" Li Qiang spat again, spinning around to glare angrily at Priscilla. "I do not know which of your commanders sent you, but I made it very clear when I arrived that this area was meant to be mine, for my work alone. Your hands are unworthy to touch it! I have spent my whole life on this endeavor, and I will not see it ruined now."
Priscilla dropped the note she had been holding and crossed the room to the Zhanhu. He stiffened before her, not expecting her to stand against him so easily.
"Listen. Do you hear that?" she asked, letting him take note of the sounds of the battle raging outside in the harbor. "That is the sound of a Viking horde coming to desecrate everything you have worked for with their unworthy, filthy, vile hands. Yourself included. So if I were you, I would care a little less about your esteemed work, and tell me how I can help so we can get out of here before they arrive. Clear?"
Her fingers tightened around the grip of her dagger, still hidden against her arm, and it was hard not to drive the blade into the Zhanhu's stomach right then and there. But killing Li Qiang wasn't the only part of her mission. She still needed his notes, his formula for the fire that the Pyre had used out on the lake. If she did not secure them first, there was no telling where they would end up or if they could be deciphered by anyone else.
Li Qiang remained still as stone as they stared at each other. The room was filled only with the hellish sound from outside the window, but he soon raised his hand and pointed to a table of small chests nearby.
"Put those into a larger crate that you can carry. I will need them to continue what was started here. The rest can be left for the barbarians." The way he looked at Priscilla was as hard and full of disdain as ever, but the tone in his voice had softened at least a bit. As she had expected, all it had taken to rob the man of his bravado was to come at him with some of her own.
Slowly backing away, Priscilla turned and was careful to keep her dagger hidden from view. She stepped over to the table with the crates, bringing one closer.
Taking a moment to glance over her shoulder, she saw that Li Qiang had gone back to packing his equipment, so she carefully opened the lid to examine what was inside. More notes, but not all were written in just Wu Lin characters this time. They had been translated so that the commanders of the Divine Pyre could understand them and set their own alchemists and engineers to produce enough of the Zhanhu's fire to outfit all of their ships.
"This is the formula for the weapon used on the lake?" she asked, flipping through the notes and seeing that the rest were translated.
Li Qiang turned to look at her, but for once, he didn't seem concerned that she was going through his things.
"You were there? You saw the battle?" he asked quickly, a hint of excitement creeping up in his voice. "How did it go? The Vikings made landfall, but surely they took many casualties in the effort. Lost many ships?" He spoke as if searching for facts to support what he already knew. In his mind, there was no way that his creation could fail at its deathly task.
"Yes, I saw it," Priscilla answered grimly, as the terrible memory was still fresh in her mind. "It was truly a wonder to behold. Powerful and frightening. I would say that it was superior numbers that allowed the heathens to reach the harbor, but surely even their gods suffered in pain as their warriors and ships burned upon the lake."
Li Qiang let out a hearty laugh and gave a quick clap of his hands, turning towards his equipment and opening his arms out wide. "What joyous news! May the Emperor and his sniveling dog, Sun Da, wither and fade from history at my success! I told the Emperor that I would make him a weapon to lay waste to his enemies and conquer the world, but he would not listen. That snake, Sun Da, whispered in his ear, and bid him to cast me out because he was afraid of what I could accomplish. Oh, how it tore at my soul to come crawling to these wretched mountain worshipers, but it has been worth it in the end. My fire will cleanse the world, and the Wu Lin will suffer for ever thinking that I was anything less than a genius!"
"So these notes are in fact the formula then?" Priscilla asked again.
"What?" Li Qiang snapped, confused that anyone would be anything less than struck dumb before his great genius. "Of course they are, you ignorant fool! Have you heard nothing I just said?"
Priscilla smiled, though it was hidden behind her helmet. "I think I have heard everything I needed to know."
Snapping the lid of the chest shut, she turned and threw herself at Li Qiang. He let out a yelp as she slammed him back against the table, sending his priceless equipment crashing to the floor as she brought her dagger up and stabbed it into his side. Once, twice, three times, she drove the poisoned blade into him, between the dark plates of his armor and sending hot blood spraying across her hand and the floor as Li Qiang screamed in pain. She shoved him against the table again as she backed away, letting him drop to the floor in a panic.
Li Qiang clutched at his bloody side as he sat among his broken instruments, gasping to fill his lungs after all the air had been forced out of him. "You... you filthy... cretin..." he stammered, reaching up to grab the table's edge and try to pull himself up to his feet. He stumbled, hissing in pain as he fell again. "How dare you! Have you... no honor?"
"Honor is for fools. I find quick blades work better to get me what I want," Priscilla answered calmly as she turned back to the notes.
Just as the Zhanhu had suggested, she began placing the chests into a larger crate to carry them out of the room. That was when a shout from outside caught her attention, and she looked towards the door and heard the sound of clashing metal echo from out in the hall. They had been discovered, it seemed, but Coal would have to hold out until she had everything packed and ready to go. She would have to be quick, and turned back to the table to put the last few crates away so she could make her escape.
Then, the long edge of a Zhanhu's blade cleaved down onto a chest just as she was about to pick it up, causing her to yelp in surprise as she jumped away. Whirling around, she saw Li Qiang back on his feet, sword in hand. His face was pale and covered in sweat as the poison began to take its toll, but for now, he was still very much alive.
"You will find... that I am much harder to kill... than that," he seethed through clenched teeth.
Priscilla began to back up to give herself room as Li Qiang pointed his elegant sword at her. She drew her sword free of its scabbard, taking up a low guard with her dagger raised above her head.
"Are you sure you would not rather spend your last moments in peace?" she asked, looking at how Li Qiang was still clutching his wounded side even as he held up his sword. "I am afraid you are not long for this world, my dear pilgrim, and that sword of yours is going to take two hands to wield if you wish to fight."
A grimace flashed across Li Qiang's face, one of pain or perhaps anger, and then slowly, he brought his shaking hand away from his bleeding side to grasp tightly at the lower half of his sword grip. "I refuse to lay down and die... like an old dog for those who do not know their place before me. I... am Li Qiang, of the Zhanhu!"
"Have it your way then," Priscilla said and rushed at him again. Striking with her sword from the right, she quickly feinted and gave a flourish to distract him as she struck from above with her dagger.
For all the pain that Li Qiang was in, he still had enough clarity to recognize the misdirection and block the dagger as it stabbed at his head. He countered with his own swing, dodging her strike and slicing his sword through the air toward her. At the last second, she ducked under the blade, stabbing her dagger at his knee, but he spun his long sword around in an arc to deflect her blade from landing. Now, she was caught in a bad position, crouched low near the ground and unable to be as nimble on her feet.
Li Qiang saw this and flicked his sword around before striking the pommel into her face to send her dropping back onto the floor.
"Die, you fool!" he hissed, raising his sword above his head to bring it slicing down onto her.
Priscilla rolled out of the way just as the sword crashed into the floor. She had escaped death but was still vulnerable as long as she remained off her feet. Luckily, her saving grace came as Li Qiang raised his sword for another strike but overextended himself as the wound to his side caused him to gasp in pain and drop his stance. She scrambled back, rolled onto her feet, and pressed the attack. Her foe was wounded but had proven that as long as he was alive, he was still a threat.
Li Qiang stumbled backward, doing what he could to dodge Priscilla's sword and dagger, but there was only so far he could go before he bumped into the long table behind him. He screamed in rage and took a wild swing at Priscilla with none of the skill he had shown before. His strength was failing him, his stamina spent, and Priscilla easily dodged his blade, stepping in once she was clear of any danger to stab her sword into his thigh. The sharp metal cut cleanly through flesh and muscle to pierce out the other side of his leg, drawing forth a scream from Li Qiang as he dropped, no longer able to stand. As hard as he tried to stay upright, he slumped back against the table before finally landing on the floor.
Priscilla withdrew her weapon, letting it drip crimson as she stood and kicked Li Qiang's weapon away from his hand. It clattered across the floor out of reach. Li Qiang watched it go, his fingers still twitching from where he had just gripped the pommel in his hand. Even in his weakened state, Priscilla could still see the fire blazing in his eyes, the hate, an unflinching denial that this was, in fact, the end for him. He slowly turned his gaze up to her, face pale and twitching from the poison coursing through his veins. A trickle of blood rolled down from his nose until it slipped into his mustache and over his lips.
"W-why...?" he gasped, unable to understand why his dreams of fame and glory were being cut short in some unimportant room and at the hands of a faceless assassin.
"Like I said, I have my orders," Priscilla answered, standing above Li Qiang now and waiting to see the light leave his eyes.
She could still hear the fighting outside the hall door, but she would not turn her back on the Zhanhu again until she knew for certain that he was dead. It would have been easy to end it with another cut across his throat or driving her dagger into his skull, but after all his boasting, she was happy just to watch and listen to him choke on his own blood.
"Did you not know, in all of your infinite wisdom? When great men try to burn as brightly as the sun, there are always others who will seek to snuff him out," she said.
Li Qiang gave a harsh cough, splattering bloody spittle over his chin. He took a wheezing breath and tried to push himself up from the floor, only to fall back again. From the look of pain on his face, it was like he was wracked more by humiliation than actual pain. He slumped back against the table, panting as he draped an arm across himself to clutch at his wounded side.
"Your treachery... may have robbed me... of my rightful glory, assassin," he said, making his last words bite with his dying breath, staring at his killer with fiery hatred for as long as he could, "but know... that my work will never rest in the hands... of an unworthy... worm!"
All too late, Priscilla realized that he wasn't pressing his hand to his side but was instead reaching bloody fingers into a pouch hanging from his belt. With his last ounce of strength, Li Qiang hurled something nearly thin and small at a candle that hung over the table where the notes for the formula sat scattered about. She saw what looked to be a black needle soar through the air and into the flickering flame with incredible accuracy, and then everything became a blinding flash as the needle sparked and then exploded before her eyes.
For a brief moment, she was reminded of watching the colorful fireworks flash and burst over the grand towers of Beaufort as a child. Back when her mother and father would take her to the spring festivals, and she would hold their hands as they all watched the delightful and dazzling lights burst and flicker like glittering jewels in the night sky.
It had been years since she had thought of such things, and it made her stomach twist now to think that it was only in the face of death that she would look back fondly on simpler times. Now, there was nothing dazzling or delightful about the soft candlelight becoming a raging inferno through Wu Lin sorcery.
Jumping backward, she watched as fire flew outward from the candle fixture on the wall, splashing against tables, notes, and boxes like water upon rocks. Everything the fire touched instantly ignited until half the room was burning bright like a pyre, smoke billowing towards the open windows, and all while the needle in the candle still sparked with deadly power.
"No!" Priscilla shouted, having to shield her eyes from the hot blaze, but she knew she had to do something to save the formula before it was lost.
The loose paper stacked around the table instantly blackened and burned to ash, but with any luck, the wooden chests would at least protect the formula long enough to give her a chance to save it. The fire spread quickly, and it burned hot enough to make her eyes water beneath her helmet anytime she glanced at the bright flames. Summoning her courage, she took a breath to protect her lungs from the heat and then dashed forward into the fire, making a mad grab for the crate that she had been packing, and pulled it off the table to drop on the stone floor. It was already well engulfed by flames by now, and she hastily pulled her torn piece of tabard from around the neck and patted it over the chest to smother the fire.
To her dismay, though, much of what was inside already looked to be charred and blackened, the pages of parchment and bound scrolls already brittle and crinkled from the intense heat. The precious translations had become faded or altogether illegible, but as Priscilla dug through the pages, she found some toward the bottom that were in better condition.
She pulled them out of the smoking crate, and when she knew they would not crumble under her touch, she folded them up and stuck them into a pouch on her belt. Then she took hold of her dagger again and rounded on Li Qiang, fully intent on making his last moments as painful as possible for the trouble he had caused.
"You arrogant bastard!" she snarled, but then realized that her insult was meaningless as she looked over Li Qiang's unmoving body. The Zhanhu had repaid her treachery with one last trick of his own, one last weapon of his creation, and then had slipped from this world with no more boasts to give.
His eyes remained open but lifeless, and she knew that he was dead.
Muttering another curse, Priscilla looked over toward the spreading fire and wondered if she should try to grab anything else that might be worth something to her superiors, but another violent spark from the hellish candle made her think twice about it. Instead, she gripped her sword and dagger and made a dash for the door, knowing that Coal was still in the middle of dealing with their uninvited guests.
She burst out the door and back into the hallway, spotting a flail on the floor absent its wielder. Looking up, her heart dropped into her stomach as she saw Coal across the hall fighting against a black-armored Warden who was grappling him from behind and had the deadly blade of his longsword tight across Coal's throat, threatening to take his head. Coal was struggling to get the Warden off of him, but managed to look over and see that she had returned from her business in the room.
"Priscilla... look out!" he grunted, forcing the words out as the Warden's sword pressed against his neck.
Priscilla stiffened and quickly dropped into a defensive stance, but a flash of movement to her right soon alerted her to the source of his warning. Turning, she expected to see the Lawbringer from earlier coming at her with poleaxe in hand but instead saw only the image of a golden phoenix wreathed in flame, the very symbol of the Divine Pyre, rushing at her face.
The decorated shield hit her like a ship smashing against a rocky shore with the weight of the person behind it, and Priscilla was knocked off her feet and fell hard on her shoulder as she crashed to the ground. Her dagger clattered away from her hand, leaving her with just her narrow sword, which she tried to bring up against whoever attacked her. Before she could, though, a heavy leather boot stomped down upon her wrist, pinning it to the ground as she howled in pain, and she looked up to see the skull-faced Conqueror they had seen earlier on the street.
He stood above her, giving a wicked laugh that was a hollow echo beneath his skull-like helm, but to her surprise, neither his diamond-shaped shield nor the metal ball of his flail came crashing down to cave in her head just yet. Instead, he lifted his boot and kicked it hard into her ribs, making her wheeze as the breath was driven from her lungs, and then slammed his foot back down onto her chest to keep her pinned.
That was when she heard the wicked voice of another figure coming closer, with the heavy clanking of armor echoing down the hall.
"Hold her steady now. Wouldn't want to miss and chop off your leg, eh?" laughed a black-armored Lawbringer, coming into view over Priscilla and looking down at her with a curious tilt of his metal head like she was a sick dog that needed to be put out of its misery.
One look at the sharp poleaxe in the Lawbringer's hand was all it took for Priscilla to begin fighting again. Winded as she was from the kick to her ribs, though, she was too weak to do anything with her sword that the Conqueror wouldn't see coming and block with his shield, and so she did whatever she could to writhe and wrestle against the man's weight, trying to dislodge his boot. But the Conqueror just looked down at her and laughed again, lifting his boot only to slam it back down and make her cry out in pain.
"She's a squirmer, alright," he said, the evil smile he wore clear in the sound of his voice, "just like all Peacekeepers. Small, nimble, and easy to break!" His foot slammed down on her again and again until Priscilla thought that her heart would burst within her rib cage before the Lawbringer's axe ever met her neck.
"Alright. Alright! Enough of your fun. Now get out of the way before I take your foot with her head," the Lawbringer chastised, pushing the mad Conqueror back so he could kill Priscilla himself. Taking his poleaxe in both hands, he braced his feet and lowered the curved blade across her throat, making a show of aiming his cut.
Coal screamed hatefully against the blade at his throat, jabbing his elbow back into the Warden's ribs to try and get free, but his captor weathered through the blows and kept him held.
"Bastards! Yellow livered shit-eaters!" he howled, going so far as to grab the sword's sharp edge at his neck and try to pull it away. Dark blood began to pool between his fingers, but still, he didn't stop struggling or hurling curses at his foes. "Two of you to kill one woman? You're all cowards! Face me like fucking men, and I'll show you why your fathers should have just spilled you into the dirt!"
"Oh no, you're going to stay right here and watch," laughed the Warden in Coal's ear, pulling his sword tighter against his throat to silence him. "Her turn first, and then yours. Just like all you filthy heretics deserve. We're going to kill you all, you hear me?"
The eagerness in his voice spoke to his delight in the suffering of others, and he twisted Coal around so that he would have no choice but to watch as the Lawbringer took Priscilla's head, "You've already lost, and the world is now ours to burn!"
How such a man could have worked his way up to the noble position of Warden was a sad mystery, but he was exactly the type to be attracted to the radical and violent ways of the Divine Pyre as they spread their wickedness across the land.
Priscilla never stopped fighting, never stopped clawing at the Conqueror's boot, or kicking out her legs to throw off his weight. But even with all that effort, it never stopped the Lawbringer from raising his axe into the air or her eyes from squeezing shut as she thought this might be her end. This wasn't how she wanted it to happen.
Not here. Not for this traitorous cause.
She knew it was unfair, given that she had just done the same thing to Li Qiang, whose lifeless body now burned in some unmarked storage room instead of enjoying the adoration of his peers. It was hardly fair, but it was the truth. Not that she would ever admit it openly before the end, though. She couldn't give these Pyre bastards the satisfaction.
"May the fiery pits of Hell cleanse your soul forevermore, heretic, and may the world be better for it," the Lawbringer announced, ushering forth the moment of her doom.
His poleaxe gave a slight sway in the air as he held it above his head, and he put all of his strength into the swing as he brought it rushing down for Priscilla's neck. Then suddenly, there was the great stomping of feet coming off from down the hall, and Priscilla saw the Lawbringer pull up his poleaxe short and that metal helmet turning to look at something she couldn't see.
"Óðinn!" Gunnar shouted with all the breath in his lungs as he came rushing at the Lawbringer, calling out for the one-eyed god to witness him as he lowered his shoulders and charged like a raging bull. He slammed into the Lawbringer and took him off his feet, sending the Knight rolling over his shoulder. The Lawbringer tumbled ass over head and landed with a great crash of clanking armor upon his back.
The suddenness of Gunnar's arrival was such a surprise that the Conqueror standing on top of Priscilla lost his footing as he reeled back, giving the small, nimble, and very angry Peacekeeper the ability to slip free and kick his other leg out from under him. The Conqueror fell backward, but Priscilla was too winded to press the attack. Instead, she retreated, rolling onto one knee and making a grab for her fallen dagger before rising to her feet.
Gunnar stopped his charge and pivoted on one foot, bringing his axe up overhead and swinging it down into the Lawbringer's chest before he could get up again. The shining axe blade chopped into the Lawbringer's breastplate, denting the armor and causing the man to wheeze in pain. That gave Gunnar enough time to correct his next strike and brought his axe down onto the Knight's head, cleaving apart metal to split the skull beneath. The Lawbringer yelled out with a sharp cry of pain that quickly turned into a wet gurgle, but Gunnar laughed in mockery at the man's torment and ripped his axe free in a spray of blood and brain.
The sight of his companions being dispatched so quickly distracted the Warden long enough for Coal to pull the longsword away from his neck and smack his head back into the man's helmet. There was a muffled grunt, and Coal felt the Warden's grip on the sword loosen. That was all he needed to steal the weapon away, then shoved the Warden back with his shoulder and spun around to spear the point of the longsword through the man's gut. Hot blood spilled out over his hands as he drove the blade deep, and Coal growled in anger as he watched the Warden double over and die upon his own sword.
He would have liked to make it last, to see the Pyre dog suffer, twisting the blade to make him scream or to let him bleed out slowly while holding his guts in. It was more than the Warden deserved, knowing what the Divine Pyre had done to northern Ashfeld in the absence of law and order.
It would have been justice, but Coal knew all too well that sometimes the punishment out did the crime. So, instead, he angled the blade upward inside the Warden, spearing his vital organs to help speed his way to whatever damnation awaited him in the next life. He tossed the Warden away with a sound of disgust, letting him fall already forgotten as he turned his attention to the other Conqueror getting back up onto his feet.
Coal ran at the Pyre Conqueror even though his flail was still near the door. His shield would protect him, but if he hoped to take on a warrior of his own order, he would need that weapon to win. He saw the man give a shake of his skull helmet to clear his head, and then their eyes met in a moment of clarity where each realized only one of them would be walking away alive.
Coal charged on, and as the Pyre Knight let loose his own flail to strike, Coal ducked under the metal ball and chain, hearing it rush past him as he hit the ground and rolled over to his dropped weapon. His fingers curled around the wooden handle, and as he got up, he saw the swing from his enemy coming at him again with deadly force. He hunkered down behind his heater shield, and when he felt the blow of metal on wood rattle through his arm, he knocked the weapon away and counterattacked with all his strength.
Roaring like a god of war, he swung the heavy ball of his flail downward with a powerful overhand swing. The Pyre Conqueror had been left open and vulnerable by the knock of Coal's shield, and as he tried to steady himself again, the spiked head of the flail sung down and caught his head with bone-crunching force.
Coal felt the impact of metal against bone reverberate up his arm and kept swinging. In a flurry of movement, he brought his flail back and forth across his enemy's head, chest, and shoulders until the skull-shaped helmet scarcely resembled a human head at all.
The Pyre Conqueror's face was left a mangled wreck of metal and glistening blood by Coal's flail, but still, he was not done. Coal might think that he owed Beaufort very little after the years they had condemned him to a cell, but he was not the type of man to sit idle and watch as the one person who was supposed to have his back was beaten and nearly killed right before his eyes.
Whipping his flail around over his head, he caught the Conqueror in the side of the face and sent him reeling like a spinning top. The Pyre Conqueror whirled drunkenly on his feet, spinning backward from the impact straight into Gunnar's waiting axe.
The great blade slammed straight into the Conqueror's stomach, taking the Knight right off his feet from the force of the blow alone, but Gunnar kept his momentum going strong, picking the Knight up and spinning him around on the blade of his axe until he suddenly stopped with a jerk and sent the bloodied man flying off down the hall like a discarded doll. Gunnar roared with laughter to see him go, watching until the man crashed to the stone floor and went still.
"Ah ha! What a fight! Too bad there was no one here to see it!" Gunnar shouted, stomping a foot in frustration despite the gleeful smile spread across his lips. "How is a man supposed to be put into songs and legends if the only ones to witness him are a pair of half-witted Knights too weak to save themselves? This is no way to fight a war."
Coal flashed the Raider an angry glare, having no time for his boasting or inflated ego, but doubtless, Gunnar did not see the look from beneath his helmet.
"Are you alright?" Coal asked, looking at Priscilla now. He was panting hard, shoulders heaving as the battle rage still clung to him, but his voice was heavy with concern.
Priscilla didn't answer him at first. She rubbed at her bruised chest and collarbone, feeling like it would be ages before she could breathe properly again.
"I am fine," she said quietly, swallowing hard as she tried to shake off the feeling of the Lawbringer's axe against her throat and willed herself to bury the memory away. She was alive, and the Pyre Knights were all dead. There was no point in thinking about what could have been. Instead, she forced herself to focus on what was important, sheathing her blades and touching the pouch at her hip that contained Li Qiang's formula. "All good. We should get moving before more arrive. Someone might have heard all of that."
"You wish to go?" Gunnar asked in a mocking tone, cocking his head like he hadn't heard Priscilla correctly. "But I have only just arrived. You two seemed so eager to run off by yourselves that I thought you must be on some great adventure, and I did not want to be left behind." He planted the end of his long axe against the ground and leaned against it as he looked between the smaller Conqueror and Peacekeeper. "So please, be so kind as to tell me what in Hel's wicked name you two fools are doing here, away from the rest of the fighting? In case you have forgotten, you're supposed to be guiding my brother to the center of the city!"
Priscilla did not bother to look at Gunnar as he spoke. Her gaze was on the black-armored Lawbringer, who lay dead in a pool of dark blood, but Coal bristled under Gunnar's accusations and spoke for her. "It's none of your concern, Viking. If we had wanted to include you in our business, we would have asked."
Gunnar dropped his head and gave it a shake before looking at the pair of Knights again. Standing up straight, he raised his axe behind his head and let the long haft rest across his shoulders. "And does the fire have anything to do with this business that you are hiding? Something you would rather Herleif and the other Jarls did not see?"
He nodded his head towards one of the doors in the hall, bringing Coal's attention to the black smoke curling from the crack above the floor. "I saw the plume of smoke coming from one of the windows outside. You are lucky I did, or our dear Peacekeeper here would be even smaller by a head."
Coal quietly cursed himself for playing into Gunnar's games and giving away more than he should. It was such a little slip, but still, the barbarian had pieced more together about what he and Priscilla were doing than they wanted.
"If you're expecting us to thank you, you would have better luck asking the Divine Pyre to surrender peacefully," he growled.
That cocky grin appeared on Gunnar's lips again, and his eyes narrowed beneath his helmet. "I expect answers, my friend. Now, you can either tell me here, or you can answer to the Jarls once the harbor is taken. I can already guess as to what Ivar the Red will ask once he learns of this. He will ask Erik, why waste time trying to sort through lies when we can just carve the eagle into your backs and be done with the matter quickly instead?"
"We were here for him," Priscilla snapped, breaking her silence and pointing down at the dead Lawbringer she had been staring at for so long.
Gunnar went silent at her sudden outburst, looking at her now with surprised interest. Coal took a step back from the limp body as if there was now something uncanny about it that he wasn't aware of.
"And who is he?" Gunnar asked, not sounding totally convinced by this news. "The King of Ashfeld perhaps? Or perhaps he was the god Loki, come in disguise to play tricks on us and make a mess of your schemes? Looks like just another cultist to me."
Priscilla looked at Gunnar for a long moment, then her shoulders slumped like she was somehow admitting defeat. "Every cultist was once someone else, before the Pyre came. This one was my brother," she said quietly, her fits curling into tight balls at her side.
This revelation caused the air to slip from Gunnar's sails for a moment. The grin he wore quickly vanished, and suddenly he didn't seem to stand so tall and imposing. "Your brother?" he answered back, that answer being one of the last things he had been expecting.
Coal remained quiet and unflinching next to the Peacekeeper's side. If Priscilla had a tale to weave to get them out of this, then he would keep his mouth shut and leave her to her craft.
"Yes. My elder brother, Gerard," Priscilla said, looking back down at the Lawbringer who was supposedly her kin. "Not that I see it being any of your business, but he joined with the Divine Pyre once the cult began to spread throughout the north. I do not know why he joined, or how they were able to sink their wickedness into his mind and ruin everything that was good in him, but he was lost to my family before we could even try to save him."
Her head snapped back up to look at Gunnar, and her whole body went stiff as if she meant to take him down with her icy gaze alone. "And we did, Raider, we did try to save him! Or at least my mother and father did. I was away on assignment when it happened, but I received the news not long after. He killed them. Our parents. They were only trying to help him, to get him to see sense, and he butchered them like vermin! Like criminals meant for the Brotherhood's block!"
She was shaking now, and even Coal had to admit that her performance was impressive. Given all that had happened with the Divine Pyre's rise to power, it was hard to imagine that her story didn't have some ring of truth to it. After all, such things happened to many families across the north, and Priscilla might have taken the story from any one of them to fool Gunnar. To call her a liar would be to laugh at the misfortune and suffering of thousands of innocent people and families, and Coal doubted that even a bloodthirsty Viking could be that cruel. Or at least he hoped so, for the sake of their mission.
Priscilla was not done selling her story yet, and she took a step closer to Gunnar, craning her neck up at him as she bit at him with steel in her voice.
"I was told that later he displayed their heads in the village square, where the Pyre was dealing with all of those they found unworthy of their faith. Do you know what it was that he said when he put their heads on pikes and left my mother and father rotting in the sun?" Her voice trembled as she spoke, actually trembled, as if she were shedding real tears now beneath her helmet. "He said, 'Let the souls of these heretics burn in holy fire, and let the world be better for it'. That is what my brother said, cursing our parents with joy in his heart. I swore then that I would find him one day. I swore that I would find him and kill him for what he had done."
Gunnar held his gaze on Priscilla throughout her story and did not say a word until she was done. His mouth was pressed into a hard line beneath his beard, his eyes little more than slits as he tried to find any hole or weakness in her tale. Dropping his axe from his shoulders, he slowly stroked the braid of his beard in ponderous thought, the corners of his lips twitching before he spoke.
"I heard him call you a heretic as I approached. He seemed to care little to have his sister's neck beneath his axe."
"We are all heretics in their eyes." Priscilla hissed at him, "There is no middle ground with these fanatics, no thought or care for the ways of others. You are either with them, or you are an enemy to be put down. You can not reason with them, not out of love, or a family's bond, or friendship. They are nothing but damned souls worshiping their God forsaken mountain like nothing in their lives ever mattered. They deserve nothing but a swift blade before their madness spreads any further."
This was all true and was part of the reason that they were all here fighting for the harbor in the first place. Or at least that could be said for what remained of the Lion Flame Legion. For the warriors of Valkenheim, they were here for plunder and riches and the chance to spill some blood in the name of their savage gods.
Coal wondered if he and Priscilla could say they belonged to either group, as the ones they would answer to when this was all over were neither. Their masters had greater plans at work, guiding them to do their will by the unseen collars fixed around their necks.
"But what of the fire?" Gunnar asked, trying to work out the connection between the burning room and the fight in the hall. "How did that get started?"
Priscilla knew better than to follow along with Gunnar's line of questions and deflected with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Look, I am sorry that we left, but I had business here to deal with before we look to Mount Ignis and the Walled City. I vowed to kill my brother for his crimes, and there was nothing that was going to stop me. Not you, not your brother, and sure as shit not some threat of having my back split open for your savage amusement. I waited long enough for my revenge, and honestly, I would not give two licks of a pig's ass as to what you and your brother think of it."
Gunnar blinked in surprise but wouldn't be deterred so easily by a foul quip from some southern sneak thief. "How did the fire start?" he growled, pointing to the smoke still wafting into the hall. "What was in that room?"
"It's her family's things. Or what was left of them," Coal interjected, feeling like he should say something to support Priscilla so they appeared to have acted together. "Everything that Gerard had stolen from her. We found the room before the fight broke out. She wanted to get rid of it, and so we did." He shrugged and bowed his head a bit as if feeling a sense of reverence about such a noble decision.
In truth, he had no idea what had happened to start the fire burning inside the room, but he trusted that Gunnar wasn't about to go walking in to investigate for himself. The hall was beginning to get hot from the fire behind the door, so the body of the target within had most likely burned beyond recognition by now and was no longer of any consequence to them. "We need to get moving, before the fire burns down the door and we have a new problem on our hands."
Gunnar glowered at Coal, clearly wanting to argue the point more, but knew that he would gain no ground by himself against them. They would each hold firm to their story, and there was nothing he could do to prove them wrong. He turned his stony gaze back on Priscilla, who had never turned away from him since their argument had begun. The corners of his lips twitched again, and for the briefest moment, he seemed to squirm with the awkwardness of a youth witnessing death for the first time.
"To kill a brother must be no easy thing," he relented. His eyes seemed to lose a bit of their coldness, and perhaps he was thinking of his own brother as he spoke, though the sentiment did not last. "But if you are finished living in the past, then perhaps you would care to help us win the battle today. Or have you forgotten your purpose here among my brother's crew?"
"Nothing would please me more, Gunnar," Priscilla said quickly, her voice a mix of velvet and steel. She turned on the spot and stepped over the dead Lawbringer without giving it another look, leaving Coal and Gunnar silently staring after her as she walked off down the hall.
After a moment of silence between them, Gunnar looked to Coal and asked, "Do you have family lurking somewhere around here too?"
"No. All dead." Coal said with a shake of his head, then promptly turned to hurry off after Priscilla.
Gunnar nodded, giving one last look around at the bodies of the dead Pyre Knights and at the door that was beginning to burn from the flames on the other side.
"Thank the gods," he muttered to himself and ran after them to rejoin the battle raging off in the distance.