Chapter Eighteen

Gunshots cracked the air, impossibly loud, one after another. One of the chimeras stumbled, hit; a chunk of thorny armor flew off another, leaving a bloody patch on its back. But all three kept coming. The soldiers cursed and dropped their muskets, their one shot spent, to draw pistols and swords.

Panic burst white-hot in my chest and tried to fight its way out as a scream; I wrestled it instead into a ragged shout.

“Exsolvo!”

The lead chimera launched off a fallen log at us in a flying leap, claws flashing, maw full of razor-sharp teeth gaping—and burst into blue flame.

Our defensive knot scattered as it landed in the road, thrashing and screaming, splashing balefire around it like hot oil. I jumped away, yelping, and nearly crashed into Zaira.

“Watch out, idiot,” Zaira snapped, lifting arms wreathed in pale, hungry flames.

I threw myself aside as twin lines of fire raced along the ground from Zaira to the two remaining chimeras, washing over them just as they were nearly upon us.

For a moment, only a thin ridge of bitter blue flame licked up from their sickly silver coats, and the chimeras howled and snapped at their own backs. But then they kindled all over, a thousand flowers of fire bursting into bloom on every inch of their bodies, and inhuman screams lifted into the air with the stench of burning fur.

“Pull back from the flames!” Braegan shouted, and we hurried some thirty feet down the trail. The chimeras lay still now, but the balefire leaped higher, fueled by their lives.

Zaira turned to me, holding out palms on which flames snapped and danced; they licked up from her hair, too, tasting the wind. Strain showed in her face.

“Seal it, quick,” she barked. “I’m in control now, but it won’t last.”

“Revincio,” I gasped, stumbling back from the flames as they leaned toward me.

All at once, the fires winked out, both on Zaira and up the trail.

She swayed. I held out my hand, but she shook her head, steadying herself on her own. “I’m all right. That much fire, I can handle.”

It was just as well. My own knees were trembling so badly, I wasn’t sure I could have held her up.

This was the limitation of balefire: so long as it kept consuming lives, it could rage indefinitely; but when it was done, it took a deep toll on the warlock. Zaira had come a long way in training, to be both conscious and in control now.

We couldn’t afford to lose her to exhaustion, any more than we could risk being consumed by her flames. My heart thundered in my chest, and panicky energy shot along my nerves like lightning, but I had to stay calm.

Braegan turned to me, eyes white-rimmed, even as the soldiers hurried to pick up their muskets and reload. “Your Highness? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I began, “But we should—” I made it no further.

Six more chimeras came for us, charging straight down the path.

The soldiers cursed and fired their pistols; the sharp scent of gunpowder mixed with charred meat in the air, and one of the chimeras fell back, yelping.

I drew my knife and backed away. “Zaira?” I asked.

“Do it.” She rolled up her sleeves.

“Exsol—”

Something struck me from the side, hard enough to drive the wind out of me. Suddenly I was rolling in the dirt with a seventh chimera on top of me.

I barely managed to fling an arm up between its teeth and my throat. Pain pierced my forearm, and three mad eyes stared at me from inches away. Claws tore at my coat.

I screamed in unabashed terror as I stabbed it again and again in the neck. My knife grated twice off thorny armor, but the third time hot blood spattered over my hand.

And then I was tumbling down off the edge of the trail, crashing through bushes and bouncing off tree roots, the thing still locked on to me and thrashing; its bloody teeth snapped near my face, and its claws raked my lower leg as we spilled down the hill together. I twisted my knife deeper into its neck as we fell, desperate to kill it, end it, make it stop.

We rolled out onto the next switchback below; I wound up on top. I drove my dagger into its third eye, but its hard, wiry body had gone still beneath my hands. It was already dead.

“Exsolvo,” I gasped, lurching to my feet. Pain lanced up my leg, but I ignored it, staring up the slope to the road above.

I spied a flurry of chaotic motion through the trees—shouting, cries of pain, swords flashing, scaly backs leaping—but I didn’t have a chance to figure out what was happening, or if everyone was well. A silvery wave flowed down the slope toward me, third eyes gleaming, razor-filled maws gaping.

Four of the six remaining chimeras had plunged down off the road after me.

Grace of Mercy. This was my death, coming for me with eyes full of gleaming alien hatred and covered in thorns.

I raised my knife, falling into the stance Ciardha had taught me despite the certainty I couldn’t fight four chimeras on my own. But a brilliant blue light flared through the trees.

A wave of balefire roared down the hill after them.

Flames devoured them, rearing up into the branches overhead and setting them alight. Near-white, starving fire flooded down toward me, engulfing everything in its path, a torrent of heat and radiance. The scent of death came in a hot wind before it.

“Revincio!” I shrieked.

The fire died at once. I blinked in the forest shadows. The yelling and clamor up the mountainside had diminished.

“Zaira!” I called, my voice raw and breaking. “Are you all right?”

“Lady Amalia!” That was Braegan, sounding panicked. “Thank the Graces! We’re coming down.”

I took a step toward his voice, unthinking. It brought me close to the edge of the road, and a tree branch swung down at me, as if a strong wind had stirred it. I jumped back, too saturated with fear even to shriek at this point. My leg and arm throbbed, and a few scratches and bruises made their presence known as well, but none of that mattered so long as I could still walk to get the Hells out of this forest as quickly as possible.

I started limping up the trail to meet Braegan and the others. The trees stirred around me, as if a wind blew through them. A gray shadow had fallen over everything, with no more glints of gold slanting through the leaves—the mountain peaks now blocked the sun. A haze of smoke hung in the air, from balefire and gunpowder both.

This was no place for me. Grace of Mercy, all I wanted was to be back in the Empire, where the landscape had the simple courtesy not to murder anyone.

Braegan came down the slope, sword in hand; Zaira leaned on him, head drooping, barely conscious. Five soldiers watched their backs, reloading their muskets.

“Where are the others?” I asked, dreading the answer.

Braegan shook his head, lips tight. My stomach dropped sickeningly.

In the distance, up the mountain, something howled.

“I know these now,” Braegan said, his voice hard and grim. “Whiphounds. The Lady of Thorns’ own hunting dogs. They’re about twenty to a pack, so we’ve got more coming.”

“More?” I clutched my flare locket; the claws at my neck rattled. “What about Bree?”

“I’m betting she made it to safety, because it sounds like they’re all coming after us,” Braegan said.

Zaira lifted her head. Exhaustion pulled at her face. “If I unleash again, I’m falling over. Or else killing all of you. Your choice. Graces forgive me, but I can’t hold it back anymore.”

The howl sounded again, much closer. More inhuman voices joined in, then broke into an eager baying, as if they’d caught the scent of prey. A chill like an ice shard pierced my spine.

“They’re between us and the border,” I realized. “And I’ll wager they’re smart enough to know we have to keep to the road.”

Braegan looked at me, a grim reckoning in his eyes. “They’re after you, Your Highness.”

I swallowed and nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

He exchanged glances with the remaining soldiers. A bushy-bearded Callamornish man said, “I’m in.”

“What?” I asked, uneasy.

“We’re not making it out past more of those things,” Braegan said. He pointed down the road. “I’ve read the scouting report for this area. We’re almost to a junction, near the bottom of the mountain. You want the right fork, which heads toward the village. It’s a bit deeper into Vaskandar, but the road crosses into Kazerath, the Wolf Lord’s domain. The hounds won’t follow you there; chimeras don’t cross into another Witch Lord’s domain without permission.” He began reloading his pistol, with the swift ease of practice. “You should be able to find another woodcutter’s trail up the mountains somewhere near the village, within Kazerath. All you need to do is stay ahead of the hounds until you cross out of the Lady of Thorns’ domain.”

“Oh, no. I know what comes next.” Zaira put her fists on her hips, anger stirring some energy up from within her. “I hate last stands and dramatic gestures. None of this ‘We’ll buy you time’ bilge. You come with us.”

“There’s no time to buy.” Braegan turned to face up the path, where the baying grew louder. “They’re coming. Get out of here.”

Through the gathering shadows, through the tangled branches of the trees, I spotted movement high on the trail.

Braegan raised his pistol in one hand and drew his sword with the other. “Run,” he urged us. “Get out of here, and boast to the rest of them for me that I died saving a Lochaver.”

“They’ll be jealous,” Bushy Beard laughed. Laughed, with a light in his eyes. “Now, run!”

Zaira swore and grabbed my hand.

We ran.

At first fear drove me with blinding urgency. The baying sounded behind us, ever closer, and thorn branches strained toward me from the woods; but if I stayed in the center of the path, they couldn’t seem to reach. Pain was something I set aside as irrelevant, a problem to deal with later, though I was aware on some level that my arm and leg were hurt, not working quite right, and complaining about it.

After a while, the sharp reports of gunfire came behind us. We faltered, but kept running.

I strained to hear more above my own labored breath and pounding footfalls. There might be distant shouting, and the scream of dying whiphounds; but I couldn’t tell over the clamor of my own body and the phantom sounds that fear wove in my imagination.

Then the baying started again. Anguish twisted sharply in my chest, like a harp string snapping.

“Hells take them,” Zaira panted. “Every one of them.”

I didn’t want this. I didn’t ask them to die for me.

Twilight shadows took hold under the trees and deepened around us, turning everything gray and unreal. We came to where the path split and took the right fork without slowing down. But the baying was so close now, it seemed as if the hounds must be right behind us.

Zaira glanced back over her shoulder and swore. “I can see them.”

The trail ran straight ahead; two standing stones flanked it in the distance, barely distinguishable from tree trunks in the dimming twilight. Boundary markers.

“I think,” I gasped, “that’s the border.”

“We’re not going to make it.” Zaira spoke with ease, while I could spare no breath from running. She had been holding back to my pace. “If you release me, I can burn them all, but then you’ll be dragging my unconscious body.”

The stone pillars were so close. But a glance over my shoulder showed me eerily gleaming eyes and bounding silvery backs hurtling toward us.

I stopped and spun to face them; Zaira turned with me, lifting her hands, ready.

“Close your eyes,” I warned.

I flipped open my flare locket. A blinding flash of light reddened my eyelids, and the whiphounds howled in pain and confusion. Without waiting, I sprinted for the stones, Zaira at my side.

“Good thinking,” she called.

Something ripped in my injured leg. Pain speared up it with every stride. But I kept running, faster than I’d ever run in my life, until the standing stones loomed before us and I flung myself past the invisible line between them.

The road continued on through the forest, unchanged. But behind us, the hounds recoiled as if they’d met a wall.

I stopped, panting, and bent double, shifting my weight to my good leg. The hounds paced and growled on the far side of the stones—four of them, sniffing and slavering, their eyes all fixed on me.

This was a nightmare. It had to be a nightmare. But the air was sharp and cold in my lungs, and my eyes watered convincingly, and the pain was too real.

I wasn’t going to wake up from this. Nothing I did could unwind what had happened. All those good soldiers were dead, and we were alone in Vaskandar.

“Let’s keep going,” Zaira said, her voice uneven. “I don’t trust those rocks to stop them for long.”

The boundary stones. A flicker of curiosity sparked through the murk of horror and guilt in my chest. I yearned to examine them, to trace the symbols I could make out in the fading light. But with the whiphounds pawing and pacing just beyond them, I didn’t dare push the limits of their protection.

Too much had been given to get us this far alive. I couldn’t throw it away because of a children’s rhyme.

We started walking. But every step hurt, and a haze seemed to have fallen on me with the coming of dusk. I kept hearing the shouts of the dead soldiers in my head, and seeing the thorns stained with blood. I stumbled, and then stumbled again; the third time, I fell to my knees.

“Grace of Mercy, you’re clumsy.” Zaira grabbed my arm to haul me to my feet.

The wrong arm. I flinched, breath hissing through my teeth. Zaira pulled her hand back, swearing.

“You’re wet. Hells, it’s blood, isn’t it?”

“It’s not bad.” I dragged myself to my feet.

Zaira went still. “Is that all yours?”

I looked down. I had one white stocking and one red one, hanging in tatters. The sight made it more real, and suddenly the pain stopped knocking politely at my door and came crashing through it all at once. I sat down, hard, in the dirt of the road.

“We should probably put something on that,” I said. My voice came out detached and calm, seeming far away, but a high, panicked note sounded in my head, like a shrill flute.

“That might not be a bad idea, yes.” Zaira knelt down beside me and peeled back what was left of my stocking. “Ugh. What a mess.”

“It can’t be too bad if I ran on it all this way.” But I couldn’t bring myself to look.

“I’ve seen worse,” Zaira said, her voice carefully neutral. “Let me see if I can stop the bleeding.”

She cleaned the claw wound with water from her flask, which stung enough to bring tears to my eyes, then drew her knife and tore strips off her skirt for bandages. I struggled to keep from slipping into a quagmire of hopeless misery, trying to focus on what we needed to do next. We had to keep going.

While Zaira wrapped my leg, I fished the first of my three small emergency elixir bottles out of my satchel—each a day’s supply—and downed half of it. The last thing I needed now was to get weak from poison on top of blood loss.

Behind all the pain, and the fear, and the exhaustion, waited a great dark mass, like the ocean itself pressing against a sea wall. So many people were dead, and we hadn’t even rescued Terika.

I had to know this, because it was important information. But I couldn’t let myself feel any of it, even a little, until we got to safety. So it waited, a deep ache spreading quietly through me, like the poison my elixir held at bay.

“Well, we’re neck deep in demon dung, aren’t we?” Zaira helped me remove my jacket so she could get a look at my arm in the fading light. I shivered in the icy chill that had gathered under the trees as the sunlight drained away.

The coat had offered me some protection, and the bite was less serious than the wound on my leg, which I’d worsened with all that running; it had nearly stopped bleeding on its own.

“We just need to find a footpath through the mountains before it gets dark,” I said wearily. “We can do this.”

Zaira’s hands paused on my arm. In the deepening twilight, her eyes were pools of shadow. “No, we can’t.”

The edge to her words pierced the numb fog in my brain. I took in the taut hollows of worry in Zaira’s face, and the sunset-stained sky that bled through the branches behind her.

“We’re not making it out of here tonight,” she said, her voice low and rough. “It’ll be dark as a demon’s armpit soon. All that blood loss is making you loopy if you think you can climb up a mountain on an unfamiliar trail in the pitch-blackness with a mangled leg.”

She had a point. I stared around at the darkening woods, the full depth of our peril pressing down on me. The roads might be safer during the day, but I had little confidence that limited protection would hold at night. And if the footpath wandered back across the border into Sevaeth, the forest itself might try to kill me.

But the forest didn’t hate Zaira. The chimeras wouldn’t hunt her. She was whole and healthy and nimble, and she could protect herself perfectly well. Especially if she wasn’t trying to lug me around.

“You’ll have to go without me, then,” I said slowly.

Zaira shook her head. “Don’t be stupid.”

“It’s not stupid. It’s sense.” I lifted a shaking hand to my temple; I felt a bit light-headed, but what we had to do was clear enough. “You’re right. There’s no way I can make it over the mountains with this leg. Any pass easy enough for me will be easy enough for horses, which means it’ll be full of Vaskandran troops and guarded by Vaskandran fortresses. But you can scramble up some game trail easily enough. There’s no reason for both of us to die if one of us can live.”

“No.”

“Zaira—”

“Shut up and listen to me.” Zaira shook my shoulder with sharp, bony fingers. “I survived all those years in the Tallows by not getting close to anyone. Well, thanks to your meddling, now I finally have a few friends—only a few, mind you—and by the Nine Hells, I am not leaving two of you to die in this pit tonight.”

I stared at her. Friends. And of course she waited until a time like this to say it.

A pale speck drifted down between us, and then another. One planted a tiny, cold kiss on the back of my hand.

Snow.

I shook my head as more soft white flecks of sky danced silently down the evening air. The cold of it bit deep into me, settling into my core, numbing my fingers and my cheeks and my aching heart.

“There’s another reason one of us needs to make it back tonight,” I said, my voice heavy with the awful truth I’d been trying not to think about.

“What?” Zaira demanded suspiciously.

“What do you think they’ll do,” I asked, “when Bree gets to Highpass and reports that they left us behind in Vaskandar?”

Zaira frowned. She didn’t understand, yet. I pressed on. “The best-case scenario,” I said, “is that they send a rescue party after us. But now the forest is all riled up, and they’ll probably all get killed.”

Zaira swallowed. “And what’s the worst-case scenario?”

“They get on the courier lamps and tell my mother,” I said.

“Sweet Hell of Death,” Zaira swore.

“Yes.”

Zaira crouched beside me, very still, for a long time. A dusting of snow began to gather on the outermost curls of her hair, where it was too far from her head to melt. I pulled my coat on again over my bandage, to try to stop my shivering, but somehow that only made it worse.

At last, Zaira stood, the hacked-up hem of her skirt swinging just below her knees. “We can’t sit here in the road all night. Come on.”

“Zaira …”

“Not another damned word about how valuable either of us is to the Empire. We’re not counters in some game; we’re people. You, too.” She reached out a hand to help me up. “Let’s head for the village. This close to the border, they must get traders passing through all the time. You can throw a bucket of that Cornaro gold at some brat to carry a message to Highpass, if you’re so worried about what they’ll do.”

I was too tired and hurt to argue any more. “All right.”

Zaira pulled me to my feet. Her jess hung on her wrist, catching the fading light. She followed my gaze, scowled, and pushed it up beneath her coat sleeve to hide it.

We hobbled off down the darkening road, deeper into the forests of Vaskandar.