He lifts a finger and slips sideways to allow a passing couple to run around us down the road. Many people are heading down the road, in fact, in the direction we’re going. “You called us tools.”
My shoulders lift. “A tool is neither wicked nor just. It simply exists to be used. Like us. I don’t get bent about being useful for our silverblood.”
“Yes, I understand your dry explanation, Vall. Surely Sephania sees things through a more romantic lens than us being mere equipment for her operation. Besides, you didn’t answer the question.”
“About Skartovius and Lukain acting like children around each other? Aye, I noticed it, cub.”
He tosses his hands, frustrated. “You could have just said that, save us all the—what in the Damned is this?”
Our conversation dies as we turn the road which will lead us to Vanison’s first hideout underground. Down the bumpy street, commoners are dragging two men out of a house, still dressed in their sleepwear. The men are middle-aged, kicking and frothing at the crowd, which swells around us.
Garroway and I stay near the back of the audience to inspect, because we have to get through them to go where we need to go. Shouting fills the air.
“Traitors! Perverts!” cries a woman, wagging a cudgel. “Shame on the destroyers of the Truehearts!”
“And they’reBronzes!” shouts a young man. “Employed to protect us!”
“They trade away our daughters to the filth in Olhav. String them up!”
Garroway pouts at me, clicking his tongue. “This doesn’t look good, my big brute.”
I grunt. We continue watching. Even as the group of a dozen men and women coil nooses around the men’s necks. Even as they’re dragged over to barrels and hooked to the edge of a high gable. Even as the barrels are kicked out from under their feet and they twist in the air, spasming, choking, dying.
It’s a brutal hanging under the chill moonlight. A public execution brought on by the very citizens of this city, who tire of their outcries being ignored.
Just then, down the street, horses whinny and come into view, with brass-plated Bronzes streaming into the fray on horseback.
Boots pound the muddy road behind us. Garroway and I step aside to avoid getting splashed, as a contingent of silver-cloaked footmen stream onto the road on the opposite side of the street from the approaching Bronzes.
I must admit the Silverknights seem much more uniform and unified than they did last I saw them when they were a ragtagoperation only just finding resurgence. It seems the citizens are on the side of the Silvers, and the Bronzes are trying to hold everyone else accountable for the crimes against their soldiers.
Garroway sighs. “This doesn’t look goodat all, my big brute.”
I can’t disagree. A public execution is one thing. A brawl between the Bronzes and Silvers, right here in the open? Sephania will not like what’s become of her homeland—what barbarism has beset them.
Swords are drawn. The citizens who hanged the two men from the house scream to get away from the center of the road where the two steely rows begin to converge. Metal rattles and rasps from the heavy armor of the Silverknights and the Bronzes coming to meet each other on the wide road They’re preparing to fight under the backdrop of two men hanging from a roof, no longer kicking, blowing in the breeze.
A Bronze commander points his drawn blade at the hanging bodies, seething at the Silvers. “No trial was given, no justice served for our comrades!”
A Silverknight leader answers in kind, haughtily lifting his chin and lowering the mask of his helmet. “The citizens of this city decide the outcome. The time of the Bronzemen is over, traitors.”
A second-in-command of the Bronze commander levels an axe toward the Silverknights, pointing past them. “You call us traitors, yet you hide paleskins in your midst?”
I blink, realizing he’s leveling the axe past the Silvers.
Atus.
“Shit,” I mutter.
Garroway hisses as all eyes on the field turn to us. “No, no, certainly not good at all.” He draws his daggers.
I palm my axe slung over my back. This was not what we had in mind, and damn our curiosity for outing us. We should havecontinued toward Vanison when we had the chance, and now we’ve opened ourselves up toboththe metallurgic forces.
There’s nothing like a common foe to turn enemies into allies.
“They have vampires in their ranks!” screams a Bronze.
The Silverknight commander’s jaw drops at the sight of us, me especially, and now he’s on the back foot, defending his men. “We don’t know these fiends! Soldiers, attack the bloodsuckers!”