Page 18 of Lies Within the Darkest Tower

I heaved against its enormous weight but wasn’t strong enough to move it.

Come on. Get up. Get up!

The other monsters drew close, screeching and snarling.

My breath grew shallow and ragged with terror.

Fight back!I screamed at myself and swung my sword.

But my arm was at the wrong angle to get in a good strike, certainly not anything that would get the monster off me, let alone kill it.

Shit!

Shit shit shit.

I bashed at it with the sword, barely doing any damage.

I was not going to die in the Gray.

I. Would. Not.

My free hand bumped the hilt of my dagger, and my thoughts lurched to something the armsmaster before Pylos had said while teaching me and Sawyer. Shorter blades were better in close combat. And this was as close as combat could get.

I yanked the dagger free and jammed it up into the monster’s neck. Black blood, just as cold as the saliva, spurted over my face and chest.

The monster howled, staggered off me, and collapsed.

I didn’t know if it was dead and I didn’t have time to check.

I heaved to my knees, holding out both the sword and the dagger. I had almost no training fighting with a weapon in each hand, but I didn’t want to drop — and likely lose — either weapon and didn’t have time to sheath one of them. I barely had time to get to my knees before two other monsters lunged at me.

Time stuttered, slowing into a horrific frieze. I wasn’t going to be able to fight off two monsters. I’d barely been able to fight off one. But I wasn’t going to be able to get to my feet before they struck, and even if by a miracle I did, I still wasn’t going to be able to run away.

I dove toward the one on my right, aiming my sword for its throat. If I was going to go down, I was going to take at least one of them with me or die trying.

The monster twisted and my blade skimmed its side, slicing off a few spikes, and I heaved out of its way. But I was surrounded and any direction I went took me closer to another monster.

I tumbled toward a slightly smaller, mostly gray, monster.

It snarled and the muscles in its back legs bunched, readying to leap at me, just as an enormous black horse galloped out of the mist.

The rider leaned in his saddle and swung a sword longer and wider than mine and decapitated the monster in one powerful stroke.

I tried to rise and run to him, but the monster I’d missed, swiped at me, its claws catching in my jerkin, and wrenched me back to the ground. My head hit the bricked road and for a moment darkness overwhelmed the mist and screeching monsters.

Then another rider broke out of the mist, killing another monster with one swing, and the first rider grabbed the front of my sword belt, hauled me up, and slung me across the neck ofhis horse as if I were a sac of grain, sending more pain shooting through my chest.

“Fucking moron,” the rider snarled, as the second rider turned and galloped back the way they’d come.

The first rider followed, one hand on my back pinning me to his horse, stomach-down, the other still holding his sword.

The two remaining monsters screeched and at least a dozen more cried back in response. More were coming. Their screeches drew closer, and I caught glimpses of them through the mist, racing along side the horses. Large ones and smaller ones, some all black, some mottled, and some ghostly white.

“Open the gate,” the rider in front yelled.

My bruised chest hurt, my body screamed in pain from being bounced against the horse while it galloped, and I couldn’t catch my breath. The rider holding me didn’t seem to care, and once we’d raced through a partially open gate into a wide bailey lit with torches, he shoved me off his horse.

I landed on my butt, the impact rattling up my spine and making my teeth snap together.

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