Alex Archer - The Other Crowd (Rogue Angel Series #30)

THE ENGLISH COMMANDER TOOK JOANS SWORD AND RAISED IT HIGH.

The broadsword, plain and unadorned, gleamed in the firelight. He put the tip against the ground and his foot at the center of the blade. The broadsword shattered, fragments falling into the mud. The crowd surged forward, peasant and soldier, and snatched the shards from the trampled mud. The commander tossed the hilt deep into the crowd.

Smoke almost obscured Joan, but she continued praying till the end, until finally the flames climbed her body and she sagged against the restraints.

Joan of Arc died that fateful day in France, but her legend and sword are reborn.

Her forged steel battle sword clanked against an iron-plated chest cuirass. The shock of connection had ceased to clatter up her arms and vibrate in her molars. Over the course of the day, shed become physically numb to violence, to blood.

To her faith.

No, she still clung to faith, to blind trust and humble servitude. It was all she had.

A thunderous warriors cry from behind her prompted her to spin about. Slick mud made footing unsure. The soles of her laced leather boots had worn thin; she could gauge the rises and fall of earth with a mere flex of foot. She maintained balance.

With no time to deliver an overhand slash of her sword, she plunged it up into the charging soldiers gut. The blade slid under her enemys bloodied leather cuirass. She felt the soft acceptance as the sword tip sunk into flesh. The soul had been pierced. May God have mercy.

Blood purled down the flat of the blade. Her victims triumphant cry changed to a gurgling requiem. A mace glinting with the blood of her fellow soldiers fell from his limp grasp. For a moment he loomed before her in the rain, arms spread, yet hands limp. Mouth open and eyes horrifically wide. Poised between life and death.

As a child she had enjoyed playing in the rain. The world would never again be so carefree.

A heel to his thigh pushed his body off balance. He dropped backward. Mud droplets spattered his face and her leg greaves.

Death proved far too easy.

The violet sky briefly teased at the corner of her eye where mud did not blemish her vision. Too pretty for battle. It promised an end to the abominable weather. A rainbow was swirled in an oily slick before the castle wall.

Jeanne!

The familiar voice cut through the cacophony of warfare. Lieutenant Charlier. Just last night his wife had birthed a baby boy who was not breathing. The lieutenant mourned as a black cloud had entered his life. The child had not been baptized before burial, which Jeanne had protested until her throat ached. Now the lieutenant signaled and she followed him. He did not see the English infantryman swinging a deadly halberd behind him.

No! She rushed across the battlefield, slick with blood and mud.

A body lay between her and the lieutenant. In the moment Jeanne took to look down and leap over the sprawled enemy corpse, the tip of the armor-piercing halberd poked out from the lieutenants chest. His arms flung backward as his torso curved unnaturally forward.

She swung madly, utilizing no martial skill save a fierce determination honed over the past months. Lieutenant Charlier was dead before his palms hit the ground.

Jeannes sword soughed the air. Impending death held an utterly voiceless tone, yet it sweetened the air as a birds wings during flight. Her blade connected with the head of the Englishman who had gutted the lieutenant. Because he wore no helmet, the top of his skull was shaved off just above the eyes.

Gulping a surge of acrid bile, Jeanne thrust ferociously following the backswing, but the counterattack wasnt necessary. The man toppled at her feet, his dissected brain oozing out like fresh porridge.

Stumbling backward, metal slapped against metal. Caught by the shoulders, she slammed into an unmoving force. Unable to lift her sword, she struggled, but the man who held her against his armored chest was too strong.

The Maid of Orlans, he growled. Does your faith allow forgiveness for murder? You claim power with your sword, vile wench. It is not your power to own. Ive never killed a woman, but you are no female. You are a

Warm blood spattered her cheek. The man holding her suddenly fell away from her body. She didnt look down and back, because shed seen too much death. Another man charged at her with a sword to match hers.

The clank of opposing weapons stung her ears. The enemy was right. Who was she to claim power with a battle sword when violence only seemed to beget further violence? Was this truly the path she had intended? How could God command such destruction?

Following a guttural battle cry, a new opponent slashed his bloodied sword toward her. Scrambling to counterattack, her blade tip caught on the screw at her knee greave. She wouldnt be able to deflect the blow. The blade would cut through her skull

A TRILLING ALARM startled her upright on the bed. Slashing her arms out before her to deflect the blow, Annja Creed cried out, No!

When no armored soldier shouted back and she did not feel the agonizing slice of blade to skull, she realized she was sitting in her bed. No English solider stood before her. No mud, or shouts of vengeance, littered the scene. She could not even feel the sting of relentless rain.

The cell phone on her bedside dresser jingled.

She gasped.

The adrenaline rush of the dream did not dissipate. Breathing heavily, she clasped her chest. No wounds. No awkward armor to impede her movements. Not a slick of anothers man blood. But it had felt so real. As if she had stood amid the carnage to swing against the enemy.

It is not your power to own.

It was a strange statement she couldnt resist pondering. What power? Had he meant the bloody, yet spiritual, quest that had seen Joan of Arc through countless battles all in the name of faith for her uncrowned king?