Reign of Ash (Excerpt 1)

Excerpt 1 from 

Reign of Ash  

By Gail Z. Martin 

"Watch your back!" Blaine McFadden brought his sword down hard on his opponent's blade, deflecting a killing blow.  

Piran Rowse wheeled at the warning, muttering curses under his breath. Two dark-clad men were heading his way, swords at the ready. Piran ran toward them with a battle cry, a sword gripped in each hand, driving his attackers back with the sheer ferocity of his onslaught. 

A force of at least twenty-five men, all dressed in black, had attacked them. Who they belonged to, Blaine could only guess. Why they had come was clear. Blaine had no doubt the fighters had been sent to track and kill them. To kill him.  

Their battleground was the deserted barnyard of a ruined farm. Not far away, Dawe Killick caught his breath in the shelter of a tumbledown chicken coop that barely held his tall, rangy form. He dodged out to fire his crossbow, taking advantage of its reach to fell one of the dark-clad men.  

Kestel Falke had grabbed the sword of one of the fallen attackers and pulled a dagger from the bandolier beneath her cloak. She circled one of the dead man's comrades warily, holding him at bay. From the top floor of the rickety barn, Verran Danning, expert thief and sometime musician, lobbed anything he could find at the attackers, striking one of the dark-clad men in the head with a chunk of wood.  

Four of the eleven guards they had brought with them were down, and while the remaining guards were fighting valiantly, Blaine knew the odds weren't in their favor. After narrowly escaping death the night before, it seemed a mockery to die so needlessly come sunrise. 

Blaine's opponent came at him again, sword raised shoulder-high for a death strike. Blaine brought his own blade up inside the strike as he stepped aside, dodging the blow and managing to score a gash on his attacker's arm. At more than six feet tall with shoulders broadened from six years of hard labor in the Velant prison colony, Lord Blaine McFadden could hold his own in a fight. Despite the cold late-autumn temperatures, the heat of the fight had plastered Blaine's long, chestnut brown hair against his head. His sea-blue eyes glinted with anger, focused on the man he intended to kill. 

Blaine's body protested every jarring parry. Just the previous night, the wild magic he had sought to bind had nearly killed him, nearly killed all of them with its unharnessed power. They had lived through the assault, wearied and bloody, only to face a new danger. It had been sheer luck that the old tunnels had not collapsed around them, that they had been able to evade the dark-clad warriors, at least for a while. Not long enough.  

"Who sent you?" Blaine shouted as his attacker came at him again, raining down a series of two-handed blows that nearly drove Blaine to his knees. Blaine knew he couldn't take much more; none of them could. Not after the toll the magic had taken last night. Their attackers were fresh to the fight. He'd traveled half the world to die here, in the middle of nowhere, without even coming close to achieving his task. 

"Lord Pollard wants you dead," the black-clad man replied through gritted teeth. "Thought you'd have figured that out by now." 

"Tell Lord Pollard he can-" Blaine's words died in his throat as an arrow zipped past him, narrowly missing his shoulder, and thudded into the rotted wood of the barn behind him. 

"Incoming!" Dawe shouted, dragging a hand back through his straight, dark hair. Even so, he looked like a scarecrow, all angles and bones. "We've got new players." A hail of arrows fell, and several of the black-clad fighters went down, shot in the back. Kestel cried out as an arrow grazed her arm, but she kept on fighting, though blood colored the sleeve of her tunic.