"Heart of the Crown" Chapter 93

[seymoure]

Chapter 93

Dark Places and Darker Foes

Hawk’s arms were leaden and growing more so with every swing.

He had been using the chair arm as a mace against the three female vipers that had set upon him, but so far he had, for the most part, kept them at an arm’s distance.

He was noticing that as his strength ebbed, his attackers were all the more energized.

Then, for no reason, they stopped.

It was as if they were listening to words from another room, but strain as he might, there was nothing detectable to his ears.

The thoughtful listening changed upon the faces of the she-beasts.

The red-headed one looked at him, and her pointed teeth curled into something approaching a smile.

“You have fought well,” she said in a voice that would make you bar the doors and buy more weapons. “But it is all for naut. He has arrived, and what we could not do, he will.”

She hissed at her compatriots, and then they did something unnerving.

They laughed.

At least he thought it might be a laugh. It was like no sound he had ever been forced to listen to. More like a cat caught in a large machine of some kind.

It was at that moment he heard the burning.

Like a crackling fire that, under ordinary circumstances, would bring comfort, the sound came from someplace close by.

“He will burn you,” they said in chorus.

“He will char you,” the leader female said alone.

“The Torturer is here,” they said in unison. “And then we will feast.”

Then, in the room nearby, the room where the sound of fire came from, he heard the explosion.

If planets collided, that is what the sound would be, and it was followed by screaming.

Hawk looked at the women, but they were running in panic.

Within the span of a few seconds he was alone in the room.

He waited for something to come and finish him.

But he would not go without a magnificent fight.

Or as much of one as he had left in him.

© 2008 C. Wayne Owens
Chapter 94 is here.