“Wait a minute,” Marene said, her palm raised towards Isabel as the other three took a step back. Aldric did the same. He glanced back towards the city walls. It was too far to run and his horse had been taken by his men. It was best to try and shuffle into obscurity and hope no-one noticed him.

  The tension in the air was palpable, though none of the four Wardens seemed afraid. On the contrary, they seemed…prepared.

  “You’re the Murderhobo’s servant, correct?”

  Isabel said nothing.

  “Who are you people?” Marene asked. “You suddenly show up here and make such a mess.”

  “Are we going to talk or are we going to fight?” Isabel said, pulling on the cuffs of her gloves, as she scanned the fields left and right. “There’s quite a lot of cleaning to do so I’d rather just get on with it.”

  “Look,” Marene replied, hands on the hilts of her swords. “I’m trying to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. We just need the king there.”

  Isabel unstrapped her axe, dropping the blade to the ground ahead of her as she placed her hands over the pommel and rested her chin on them.

  “Is that all? You kill the king and then what? You walk away peacefully?”

  “Well, of course, we’d take Aldren as ours.”

  “And why would I let you to do that?”

  “Why not? What’s in it for you? Walk away and let us take care of our affairs. Or you could even join us. Why would you put your life on the line for them?”

  “What makes you think I’m putting my life on the line?” Isabel asked, an eyebrow raised, the corner of her mouth quirking up. Aldric noticed the shuffling of the other three Wardens, almost as if they were positioning themselves. Isabel couldn’t have failed to notice, but she remained almost languidly unbothered.

  “I know you beat the Shadow’s Delta squad, but Shadows aren’t Wardens,” Marene said.

  “I killed most of your Charlie squad as well, actually.” Isabel stared off into the distance towards the southwest. “I hope Lyla managed to finish them off.”

  “Lyla? Short girl? Black eyes? Slim jaw? Pale?”

  Isabel glanced towards her and slowly nodded.

  Marene smiled, a strange look on her face. The kind of look that a starving man would have when they found some food.

  “You won’t leave, then?” Marene asked.

  “I won’t.”

  “You’re really that arrogant as to believe you can beat all of us?” Alek said.

  “Is it arrogant if it’s true?” Isabel replied. Aldric hid a smile behind his hand. Isabel had always been polite but he wondered if she knew how much like Elliott she sounded right now. Although there was the slightest hint of irritation in her voice.

  “CALL THEM!” It was Alek – the one with the bald head and the scars on his cheek – who shouted out as Marene lunged to Isabel’s left, swords pulled back, ready to strike. Alek threw two knives towards Isabel’s face as he lunged to her right, another two knives appearing in his hands. The other woman, taller than even Isabel, with a neck as thick as Aldric’s thighs leapt forwards, arms raised above her head.

  Isabel moved, kicking the blade of her axe up and knocking the knives away before throwing her weapon towards the red-robed man. He was standing several metres back, his eyes widening as the axe sped towards him. Suddenly, colourful flares burst into halos hundreds of metres above their heads as the red-robed man put his arms out, palms facing them. The axe hit an invisible wall – a shield the man had put up but the axe was pushing it and him back, his boots tearing into the ground, kicking up clods of soil and grass.

  Isabel hadn’t remained in place, jumping up to meet the brute of a woman who looked like she was going to pound Isabel into the ground with her bare fists. Marene’s blades cut through the empty spot that Isabel had been as Alek made to flick his wrists and then pulled back when his target was no longer there.

  Isabel grabbed the thick-neck woman’s wrists. Her eyes widened in surprise. She probably hadn’t expected to be attacked. Isabel should have been on the defensive in their eyes. The maid used her momentum and the woman’s arms to pull herself forwards and knee the brute in her face, sending her flying backwards.

  From the corner of his eye, Aldric saw Alek flick knives in his direction instead. He’d never been in an actual fight before. He’d trained since young under some of the best as was befitting of a prince but training with partners who feared to hurt you was wholly different to needing those skills to survive. He tried to recall what he had been taught. How to access the energy that flowed within his body, divert it to his arms for the speed he needed to parry both knives. He felt warmth develop in his shoulders, his bic—

  Isabel’s axe appeared in front of his face, the sound of metal clashing as the knives slammed harmlessly off the curved edge of the axe-blade. Aldric pressed his lips together. Those knives would have lodged themselves in his head if it wasn’t for Isabel. His eyes flickered in her direction.

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  She was plummeting towards the ground, arms by her side, legs together. The brute lay on her back on the ground below as Isabel fell on her, both feet stomping on the brute’s head, driving it under the turf as soil and grass kicked up around them. Isabel turned and ran towards the red-robed man as the brute tried to lift her head out of the small crater.

  “SHE HAS MANA!” red-robe screamed.

  Marene kissed her teeth as she dashed after Isabel, arms stretched behind her.

  The axe flew towards Alek, who threw his measly knives at it as if that was going to help. Alek flung himself out of the way as the axe cleaved through the air he had just been standing in. Aldric stayed low to the ground, trying to stay out of the way, his eyes on Alek, watching as the man bounced and somersaulted out of the way with the axe in pursuit. He was inching his way towards Isabel.

  Red-robe conjured spears and metal boulders in the air around him, directing them towards Isabel. She danced around them, strafing left and right, jumping between boulders with her arms reaching through the air.

  Then he realised what she was doing. Collecting the spears. Plucking them out of the air like she was playing a game, using the boulders as platforms.

  She pushed off from the final boulder, turned mid-air with tens of spears in each hand, then threw them towards Marene. The red-skirted woman slid to a stop, swords crossed ahead of her as she seemed to harden her skin, the spears pinging off her body. But they’d done their job. Bought Isabel the seconds she needed.

  She landed in front of red-robe and sent an uppercut towards the man’s chest with such force, the air snapped like a storm was coming.

  The man’s body did snap.

  Isabel’s arm went right through his chest, pushing his spine out the other side. His eyes began to roll back but Isabel didn’t pause, turning and throwing him across the field like she had the spears. The red-robed man’s body flew towards Alek, who had gotten within a dozen metres of Isabel. The last thing he had been expecting was her using his companion as a projectile. Alek saw it too late, the body slamming into him and sending him hurtling towards the ground. The axe flew into the air above the downed man and careered towards him, the curved edge facing down.

  Alek heaved the corpse from on top of him, but it was too late. He had no chance against the speed at which the axe advanced towards him. It thudded into the back of the dead man first, carving through his body. Alek put his hands up against the blade, keeping it from pushing down onto him.

  The brute had got up, blood pouring from the back of her head, her right eye swollen like a purple melon. From his vantage low to the ground, Aldric saw thin lines of light appear above the ground several metres beyond Isabel. She glanced back almost imperceptibly. She saw them too.

  She sped forwards towards the brute, who had taken a fighting stance, ready to box. Isabel stopped a couple of metres ahead of the woman, then shimmered, suddenly appearing in the air to the woman’s right, above her damaged eye. Isabel threw a left cross downwards, right into the brute’s temple, sending her face first into the ground.

  Isabel landed softly on her feet, black waist-length hair flowing behind her as she jumped on top of the brute, turned her over and sent a flurry of brutal punches into the woman’s face. Aldric was more than ten metres away but even from here, he could hear the sickening crunching of the woman’s facial bones and the squelching of her skin as Isabel pummelled her face into a pancake.

  Immediately, she leapt from the dead woman towards her axe.

  Marene was rooted to the spot, her eyes fixed on Isabel. Aldric could see fear and awe and something perhaps resembling reverence as the Warden watched Isabel systematically rip apart three of Bizayn’s strongest soldiers.

  The thin lines along the ground began to rise and widen into rectangular white screens ten feet tall, then began to shimmer into images.

  Isabel landed on top of Alek, her eyes on the gateways as she held the axe head and pressed down. Alek struggled, his face turning to Isabel, uncertainty in his eyes.

  “How…is it…possible?” he said, his voice strained.

  Isabel never took her eyes off the gateways. “As my master always says. It’s simply a matter of conviction.”

  She pushed down. The blade tore through Alek’s hands as he screamed. Then his scream cut off as the axe-blade forced its way through the man’s head.

  The four gateways had shimmered into images of other sections around Carsonne and through each of them, figures emerged. They were dressed in a variety of armour, leather and even one woman who wore next to nothing. Some held weapons in their hands – warriors and rangers. Some were clearly mages.

  Sixteen in total.

  Isabel hefted her axe to her shoulder and glanced towards where the Wardens gathered.

  “Who are you?” Marene asked, still standing where she had been, making no attempt to attack. Her swords had been sheathed.

  “I’m just a woman who hates injustice,” Isabel replied.

  “And Lyla is with you?”

  Isabel gave her a curious glance. “She was. I can only hope she’s alright.”

  “But she joined with you?”

  “Yes. We took her in.”

  Marene moved closer to Isabel, aware the other Wardens were coming closer, their eyes taking in the corpses of the other three.

  “Will you allow me to join you then?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I’m a friend of Lyla’s. Well, I was,” Marene said, looking down at the floor. “I wish to see her again. We shared a dream as children. That one day, we would help take down the Empire. One day we would stop other children from suffering our fate.”

  Then Marene looked up at Isabel and smiled. “And it seems she found the people who can help us.”

  “You would betray us, Marene?” It was a man who spoke, standing in the middle of the other sixteen wardens. He was big and muscular with a chiselled jaw and a big beard. He held a warhammer on his shoulder as big as Isabel’s axe.

  “Kalen,” Marene answered. “I was never with Bizayn. What was done to us was wrong.” She looked around the line of wardens. “You know that. Because we’ve all done it to others. Created orphans. Stolen children from their families. To make more like us.”

  Kalen laughed, a deep booming sound from the depths of his throat.

  “Does it matter? Is there something you’re missing from the life of poverty you would have had? Or is it that you hate being alive?” He shifted the warhammer from his shoulder, his right hand gripping it just above the pommel as he bounced the haft in his left palm. “Either way, now that you’ve exposed yourself, I will be happy to give you your wish.”

  Though Kalen sounded convinced in himself and his cause, Aldric saw that one or two of the others weren’t so sure, glancing nervously among themselves.

  Isabel saw it too. “If any of you agree and want to put an end to the Bizayn Empire, walk off to the side.” She glanced over her shoulder, towards the city. Aldric looked back. A black speck shot out towards the sky.

  “You have about five seconds before everybody is about to have a very bad day,” Isabel said.

  All of the mages behind Kalen looked up to the sky. To that black speck.

  “Impossible,” one of them said.

  “What is it?” Kalen asked, as he too glanced up to see what they were looking at.

  “That man is drawing on enough mana that every mage on this planet would be able to feel it. It’s like he wants everyone to know he is here.”

  Kalen’s eyes flicked to Isabel.

  “And I don’t need him to kill all of you,” she smiled back.