The grind of metal on stone snapped Pilgrim’s gaze to the gate to see the iron barrier ascending with an irksome slowness. Book crouched at its base, casting wary glances at the undying pilgrims as they started forward. They were hesitant at first, taking a few tottering steps, but as the bars rose ever higher their compulsion to have their prayers answered took hold and they began to run.
Pilgrim drew the sword, the handle vibrating in his hand. Hearing a desperate groaning, he turned to see Book scrambling under the slowly ascending gate, teeth gritted as he attempted to force his bulk through the gap.
“Go,” Pilgrim told Priest. “Best if he’s not allowed to proceed alone. We’ll follow.”
The cleric nodded and lowered himself to the ground, crawling under the gate with markedly more ease than Book. “You next,” Pilgrim said to Seeker. The crowd of denied supplicants were only thirty paces off now, and closing fast.
“Not without Chena,” she stated, loosing her arrow into the oncoming crowd. He saw one body fall, speared through the neck, but couldn’t tell if it lay still amongst the confusion of the onrushing throng. Chena stood close to her mistress, hackles raised and yapping in challenge.
“I’ll guard her,” he said. “Go.”
It was as he jerked his head at the gate that he heard the snick of a spring and the scrape of steel on wood. Turning, he saw Book rising to a crouch, his thumb pressed to a knot in the wood of his staff. A foot-long length of sharpened steel emerged in a flash from the base of the staff, stabbing into Priest’s bare chest as he got to his knees. The cleric convulsed as the blade pierced him, jutting through to his spine. Pilgrim saw Book grimace with unaccustomed distaste as he twisted the blade to make sure before drawing it free, allowing Priest to collapse lifeless to the ground.
“By virtue of suffering endured,” Book said, crouching to press his hand to the gushing wound in Priest’s back before rushing to the gate and smearing it onto the bars, “and blood freely given!”
Pilgrim lunged as the barrier crashed down with a sound like a tolling bell. He thrust the sword through the bars but Book, moving with a swiftness he hadn’t displayed at any point in their journey, jerked aside before the point found his chest.
“You think I don’t know who you are?!” the Risen priest spat, brandishing his bloody staff-blade as he backed away. “Whatever vile sorcery you employed to endure all these years didn’t fool me! You think I would allow any chance the Mad God would hear your prayer, Ravager?”
He turned and ran across the bridge, shouting hate-filled invective. “Stay and die at the hands of heretics! A deserved end for the worst of tyrants!”