The First Confessor: The Legend of Magda Searus

Chapter 85

The man in the robes was not half a dozen strides from her. Magda had seen him before. He worked in the lower regions of the Keep. She didn’t know the wizard’s name, but he knew hers. Most likely because when she had been with Baraccus he had stopped briefly to talk to the man a few times, as he had talked to a number of wizards. A lot of people knew her because she was Baraccus’s wife and they saw her with him, but she hadn’t known the names of all those people he spoke to.

“Let him go and your lives will be spared,” she said. “You are surrounded. Do as I say or you will all die. I’ll not warn you again.”

Worried, the soldiers peered around into the darkness.

There was a brief moment of silence, and then the grim-faced wizard spoke.

“I sense no one but you,” he said in a surly voice. “You are all alone out here. There is no one with you.”

In the lantern light she could see the soldiers grin.

Almost without thought, Magda slipped her hand inside her cloak, tightly wrapping her fingers around the hilt of the sword. The word Truth pressed into her palm. Through that connection, she could feel something stir and seem to come alive. It seemed to be coming neither from the sword nor from her, but came alive through that connection.

She felt the promise of something powerful and merciless in the connection.

Without warning, the wizard flicked his hand toward her. In the lantern light Magda could see the air waver.

The bolt of power just missed, flicking her hair as she dove aside and drew the sword.

The clear ring of its blade filled the night air with a haunting threat of violence.

With the blade freed, Magda felt a storm of power surge from the hilt and up through her. As it inundated her, it made her flesh tingle and took her breath.

Exquisite rage thundered through every fiber of her being.

The men all drew weapons.

The wizard, angry that he had missed, pulled his arms back to conjure yet more magic. He looked more annoyed than angry that she had not fallen to his first strike. She knew that this time he would not be so timid in what he called forth.

A roiling ball of fire ignited in his palm. The liquid flames rolled and burned with a sinister bluish light.

Indeed, he did not intend to take any more chances. He was intending to loose wizard’s fire against her.

Magda knew that she had to act fast or she would die. The sword reacted instantly to her intent, unleashing a surge of fury through her that charged her muscles.

Even as the wizard was cocking his arm back, Magda was already flying toward the man, closing the distance, trying to get to him before he was able to send the deadly fire toward her. As she ran, the blade swept around with lightning speed, whistling through the air.

Her glare was locked on the wizard’s murderous scowl. She was only dimly aware of the sword’s tremendous momentum. She knew only that it felt right. It felt good. She guided its track through her intent as the blade made its way inexorably toward where her eyes were fixed.

She wanted this man dead. She focused all her rage at everything that had happened into her need to end this traitor’s life.

It seemed to take forever to close the distance.

She could see the wizard frantically working with both hands to expand the wizard’s fire between his palms, to make it more deadly and ready to kill. She could see the indignation in his eyes that she would dare to come at him.

She intended far more than merely to come at him.

For both of them, it was a race to kill or be killed.

The blade won the race. With a loud crack it intercepted the side of the wizard’s skull.

Fragments of bone and gore filled the night. In the lantern’s light she could see the cloud of blood and brain matter explode away from where most of his head had been only an instant before. Only the base of his skull and his jaw remained. A trail of blood followed the arc of the blade.

The wizard hadn’t even had time to scream.

But Magda heard herself screaming, screaming with ferocity that was a match for the sword’s.

The killing strike thrilled her, filled her with wild joy. It was nothing short of a sense of magnificent completion.

As the blade came around, his headless body was still falling. Parts of his head still sailed away into the night. His arms were lifted out at his sides, the wizard’s fire smothered by his instant death and massive loss of blood.

Behind the wizard, the soldiers were momentarily frozen in shock at the sight. That shock broke all at once. With weapons raised, they screamed as they charged in toward her.

Magda sidestepped the first man to rush in. As she did, she came around, bringing the blade with her in a circle to split his skull from behind. The strike took off the top of his head. A clump of dark hair flew off into the darkness. His forward momentum drove him face-first into the hard ground.

Magda ducked under a mighty swing of another man’s sword. He wasn’t used to fighting someone as small and fast as Magda. His method was mighty blows, not swift, precise strikes. As Magda came up, she drove her sword straight through his heart.

She heard men roaring in rage as they came after her. She didn’t have time to think. She acted on instinct acquired in part from learning to use a knife to fight and in part out of the single-minded drive to kill them. She struck without hesitation or pause as they got close enough, using her smaller size to move faster than they did and to stay out of the way of their reach and weapons.

She didn’t try any clever moves, any fancy tricks. With every opening she saw, she simply went in for the kill.

She kept moving, ducking, rolling, and twisting to avoid their blades. Not being a soldier, she didn’t move the way they expected. There was no time for her to plan her moves. As they swung, she followed up with a strike of her own, allowing them no time for another try.

She pulled back as a man’s arm shot past her, his stabbing move narrowly missing making contact. Still in the grip of rage, Magda whipped the sword around with a scream of power, taking off the arm he had thrust out toward her. As the man fell to the ground screaming, she let the swing of the sword follow around, bringing it up behind her to run it through a man rushing in with his sword raised to chop her from behind. As he was collapsing to the side, she yanked the sword free and brought it around in a circle, gripped the hilt in both fists, and drove it straight down into the armless man writhing on the ground. She hammered it down so hard that the blade stuck in the ground.

Before she could yank it free, another man charged her, his sword flashing through the night air. She knew instinctively that she wouldn’t be able to get out of the way fast enough.

At the last instant, just before his blade made it to her, Merritt crashed into him from the side, knocking him off balance. The big soldier stumbled from the impact and fell to a knee. Before he could get up, Magda brought the sword down from above, splitting him all the way from the top of his head to the center of his chest.

The man toppled, hitting the ground with a wet thwack that spilled organs out the gaping split and across the ground.

The night was suddenly still. There were no more men coming at her.