NOVEL NEXT Chapter 45: Yaruga!
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The Next Day
"Listen to me, child," Queen Calanthe said, her voice filled with a desperate urgency as she knelt down on one knee in front of her terrified, sobbing granddaughter.
"Sir Lazlo will take you to the river. You must cross it, and get to the other side. You must find the Witcher, Geralt of Rivia. He will take care of you. Do you understand me, Ciri?"
Harry, once again a silent, unseen observer in the chaos of the falling castle, hated these kinds of scenes. Watching families get torn apart, watching these final, heartbreaking goodbyes, was always the worst part of any war.
And it was especially hard when you knew the family, which Harry, by this point, most definitely did.
"I don't want to, Grandmama! I want to stay with you!" Ciri cried, clinging tightly to her grandmother, her small face streaked with tears and soot.
Calanthe wrapped her arms around Ciri, holding her fiercely, for what she knew, and Harry knew, was going to be the very last time.
"I'll always be with you, Ciri," Calanthe whispered, her voice thick with unshed tears. "Inside you. In your heart. I love you more than anything in this world, always remember that… Lazlo," she commanded, her voice suddenly regaining its regal authority, "take her from here. Don't stop for anything until you've crossed the Yaruga. Protect her with your very life."
A young knight, waiting in full armor a few feet from them, his face grim and determined, nodded his head sharply. He walked over and, with a heavy heart, picked up the struggling, crying Ciri and literally began to drag her away from her grandmother.
"It has been an honor, my Queen," the young knight, Sir Lazlo, said, his voice filled with emotion as he bowed his head one last time.
"I will protect her to my dying breath." Then, he turned and ran out of the throne room, with Ciri still screaming in protest, her small voice echoing through the chaos.
"NO, GRANDMAMA! PLEASE, DON'T MAKE ME GO! GRANDMAMA!" Ciri shrieked as the man took her out one of the hidden side doors of the castle.
Calanthe watched them leave, hot tears finally pooling in her fierce eyes and streaming down her face. A rarity, as any who knew her well could tell you.
"My Lady? What shall we do now?" another knight, his face covered in soot and blood, asked from behind her.
Calanthe wiped her tears away with a furious, defiant gesture, her grief momentarily replaced by a cold, hard resolve.
She turned around, her expression one of grim determination. The throne room was now flooding with what remained of her loyal knights and nobles.
"Barricade all the doors," Calanthe answered, her voice ringing with authority. "Cintra shall never bow to Nilfgaard. If they want this throne, then they will have to take it from our cold, dead hands."
The knight's face hardened, but he nodded, a new fire lit in his eyes. Harry had seen enough. He sat, crouched silently in the high, shadowy rafters of the great hall, a silent witness to the end of an era.
With a quiet, almost imperceptible pop, he apparated away, reappearing in a dark, secluded alleyway where a sturdy, black horse was tied and hidden, waiting for him.
He hopped onto the horse's back and waited, his senses on high alert, amidst the now burning, screaming city.
He tried his best to ignore the terrible sounds of pain and terror that he could now clearly hear all around him, the screams of the innocent and the dying.
After a few tense minutes, he saw it. A black horse, galloping at full speed, with a man in full armor holding a small, struggling person in front of him.
It was the flash of ashen-white hair, even in the smoky, dim light, that gave away the final hint of who was on that horse.
They sped by his hiding spot, but Harry continued to wait, as they were not who he was waiting for.
He didn't have to wait long, either. It was maybe twenty more seconds before a storm of horses thundered past, all of them ridden by men in full, menacing black armor, and all of them going in the exact same direction as Ciri and her protector.
When the last horse of the pursuing party went by, Harry kicked his own horse into action, spurring it forward and chasing after the black-armored men.
Apparating wouldn't be able to keep up with a constant, moving chase like this, and he couldn't simply wait ahead of them because he was unsure of the exact path they would take.
More importantly, he didn't want to risk letting Ciri see him. So, he rode, and he rode hard, his powerful horse eating up the ground, closing the distance.
It didn't take them long to exit the burning city and start approaching the wide, muddy banks of the Yaruga river.
Sadly, it seemed that Sir Lazlo's luck had just run out. It looked as if one of the pursuing Nilfgaardians had a crossbow with them and had managed to get off a lucky shot, striking the poor knight's horse in the head, causing it to go down with a sickening cry, dead before it hit the ground.
Lazlo, with his last, heroic act, wrapped his own armored body around Ciri as they fell, shielding her from the worst of the impact.
Harry slowed his horse to a stop, pulling into the cover of a small, dense forest, and thanked whoever might be listening that he at least had some cover to stay hidden. He watched briefly as the scene unfolded.
Lazlo stood up from the ground, clearly injured, his movements slow and pained. He gently, but firmly, shoved Ciri in the direction of the river.
"Go, Princess!" he yelled, his voice ragged. "Run, and don't you dare look back! I will stall them for as long as I can!" The Nilfgaardians were getting off their own horses now, pulling out their long, sharp swords.
"Lazlo…" Ciri said, her voice filled with tears, her small body frozen with fear.
"I SAID GO! RUN AND DON'T LOOK BACK!"
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