Beneath the Forsaken City - C. E. Laureano Page 0,6

he was too slow.

That single moment, that last breath, stretched into an eternity as he waited for the strike of the blade, that instant of pain followed by blackness. Faces, names, regrets all flashed through his mind.

Riordan. Eoghan. Liam. Aine. If he died, he failed them all.

Forgive me, Comdiu.

He sensed the breeze as the sword cleaved the air toward his neck, flinched before the bite of steel that would end it all. It never came. His eyes snapped open and looked straight into a pair of watery blue ones that appeared as shocked as he felt.

“Blessed Askr,” the warrior cried, looking down at the sword in his straining hands.

The moment stretched as they both stared at the Sofarende’s blade, fixed in place as if the air had turned to mortar. Before Conor could regain his wits enough to strike, the warrior knocked the sword from his numb fingers. A booted foot crashed first into his chest and then into his head. Conor struggled to hang on to consciousness while blood poured into his eyes, but the light was like the slipping of the tide, receding by inches until only dark remained.

“You should have killed him.”

“We can’t kill him. Haldor will want to question him.”

“He killed two of our own. Do you want to tell Haldor why we let him live after that?”

The sharp argument just at the edge of Conor’s hearing was the first indication that he wasn’t dead, though at the moment, he very much wished to be. If he had thought he felt bad waking up on the shore, it was nothing compared with the pain he felt now. He lay still, waiting for the pain and nausea to pass, and then pried his eyes open. Blurry images shifted and overlapped, angling over each other like the facets of a prism.

“Enough. He’s awake. Get him up.”

It took Conor a few moments to recognize the addition of a third voice, even longer to comprehend they were speaking Norin. If he still understood another language, he couldn’t be too badly injured, could he?

Hands pulled him up from where he lay on the hard ground and sat him on something even harder, a bench perhaps. He could smell burning pitch, the close odor of sweat, and the metallic tang of his own blood. No air currents. He must be indoors. He wrenched his eyes open again and made out the blurry shapes of men around him. Just that small action taxed him so much that his eyes drooped closed again and his head lolled forward on his chest.

A fist yanked his head up by the hair, and a hand slapped him hard across the face. The low throb in Conor’s skull escalated to the pounding of skin drums.

“Ask him his name,” the commanding speaker said.

An accented voice asked in the common tongue, “What’s your name?”

Conor opened his swollen eyes long enough to take in the new speaker’s rough-spun tunic and clean-shaven head. A slave. Through his split, swollen lips, he rasped, “Conor.”

“Your clan name?”

Conor considered, his thoughts coming slowly through the pain. “I have none.”

“He’s lying,” the Sofarende murmured in his own language. “He’s no commoner. Prompt him.”

A fist collided with Conor’s cheekbone, bringing another explosion of pain. Something told him he shouldn’t identify himself as a Mac Nir. He gasped out his answer. “No clan name. Fíréin.”

Silence settled over the room. Quietly, the slave said, “The Brotherhood of the Faithful. Warrior priests. Like your Wolfskins, just better educated.”

“Who sent him?” the Sofarende asked.

Fading in and out of consciousness, Conor mumbled an answer before the question could be translated. “No one sent me. Shipwrecked.”

The slave interpreted his answer, and snorts of derision rang out around him.

Conor sensed someone bend down, his face right in front of his. The Sofarende’s tone was low and dangerous. “You speak our language?”

“Aye,” Conor whispered.

“Who sent you? Olaf? Ingvarr?”

He gurgled a laugh, pain and despair making him reckless. “If you think I’m a spy, reports of your intelligence are greatly overrated.”

The blow did not come in the form of a fist to his face this time but rather some sort of object to his ribs. A cry sprang from his lips, and he panted through the waves of agony. He reached for the trick he’d learned long ago to distance his mind from his body until the pain slackened its grip. When he had himself mostly under control, he forced open his heavy eyelids.

The warrior leaned close to him. “You stopped my blade. How did you