CHAPTER 11

A tall figure, a half-giant of a man, with broad shoulders and dark eyes, approached them from a covered guard post at the very edge of the parapet. He looked down on the two guards next to Vex, set his warhammer by his side, and folded his broad arms. He had bands of ink crossing his gray skin, peeking out from under his mail shirt, and extending toward both his hands and his face. He wore a leather band around his neck that held a silver pendant with the profile of a dragon etched on it. Unlike most other half-giants she’d seen on her travels, he had short-cropped black hair. “What’s this? What do you want?”

“My brother,” Vex said. She fought to keep shock and fear from bleeding into her voice. She pushed through her terror. She’d deal with the bloody ring later. “My brother is still out there.”

“She’s mindful of seeing the Shademaster, Wick,” one of the guards said. “Says we missed someone when we brought in the travelers.”

Wick shook his head. “You won’t be able to get to the Shademaster until the barrier is set.”

“I have to get out of here,” she said.

She tried to step around him. He shifted and blocked her path.

“You won’t be able to, I’m sorry.” He turned to the two guards. “Get back to your posts.”

Vex took stock of the situation on the palisades. The energy around the battlements was tense, with guards peering out into the night for fear of an attack. Shadows rolled across plains surrounding the town, and the wind rustled around them, blowing clouds of dust and ash down from the hills. It seemed to Vex as though every one of such clouds could hide another group of ash walkers, and the guards certainly reacted that way.

Vex peered at the road that stretched out from the town to see if she saw anything—or anyone—move. The urge to climb over the palisades was dangerously appealing, but the shimmer in the air restrained her. She wasn’t sure if she could break the barrier Shademaster Derowen was throwing up—or if she could get past this giant of a man, Wick, who was frowning down at her. He seemed unmovable.

A cry went up on the southeastern corner of the palisades when the clouds overhead shifted and a dozen or so ash walkers became visible in the sudden moonlight.

Nearer to Vex, a young archer sent a useless arrow flying into the night when a bat crested over the palisades and startled him. Despite the tension, the archers around the shooter laughed and ribbed him. As soon as the corpses drew closer to the palisades, they all shifted their focus to the fight once more.

Vex saw the cursed dead down below, and the image of Vax lying facedown on the ground flashed before her eyes. She needed to get out of here, but it looked like the ash walker attacks wouldn’t let up.

She reached for her bow, and Wick stopped her again. “No weapons around the Shademaster,” he said simply.

“I can’t just stand here. I have to do something. So let me help,” she hissed, her voice rough with a potent mix of helplessness and determination.

Wick shrugged. He towered over her with head and shoulders, but his smile was kind. “You can help by not distracting her.”

“I’m not about to shoot her,” she insisted.

“Good. I would hate to have to fight you when we just got you to safety,” he said reasonably. “The Shademaster is peculiar about her guards when she’s creating the barrier, and with all due respect, you’re a stranger.”

“Fuck, I don’t know if you missed it, but my brother is still out there,” Vex snapped, raising her voice against this rock of a man who made even Trinket look small. “I want to kill those bastards so I can go out and find him.”

Wick raised his finger to his lips, before his shoulders sagged in resignation when a small voice from near the guard post piped up, “Kill those bastards?” A yawn, and then, “Wick? Wa’s going on?”

Wick raised his eyebrows at Vex, then turned around to a tiny girl who was curled up inside the guard post, underneath a pile of blankets. She had the same bushy brown hair as Derowen, and it tumbled down around her, framing a round face with large, emerald eyes and a determined expression. Two pointed ears peeked out from under her hair. She held a wooden sword clutched in one hand, cradling it like a doll, and with her other she rubbed at her face. “Are the ash walkers gone?”

Wick walked over and knelt down next to the girl, fluffing up the blankets around her against the chilled night air, and smoothing down her hair with one massive hand. “You shouldn’t be awake, little mite. Best bring you home if you are.”

The girl glared, though the effect of it was slightly undercut by another yawn. “You promised I could stay here.”

“And you promised to hide under the blankets and sleep, didn’t you?” He slightly turned to Vex, who was openly staring at the half-giant and the little half-elf girl. “She gets night terrors, and her mother wants to keep her close.”

The words were spoken with a gentleness that cut straight through Vex. She’d felt the ground shift beneath her feet at his easy, unguarded affection. She winced, but she nodded.

The little girl followed Wick’s line of sight, and she stared at Vex with sleepy resolve. “Why is your brother still out there?” she asked before her mouth dropped open and she pushed a number of the blankets away. “Is that a bear?”

Wick immediately piled the blankets on top of her again. “Aswin, you know what we agreed on …”

Aswin discarded blankets at the same rate that Wick added them, as if there weren’t a siege of shambling dead going on mere yards away, and Vex tried valiantly to gather her thoughts. She could shout at Wick without an inch of regret, but this little girl shouldn’t be here. What were they doing keeping her so close to danger?

She cleared her throat, and both Wick and Aswin stopped what they were doing. “Yes, it’s a bear. My name is Vex. His name is Trinket and he’s my best friend.” When she said it, she expected a counter from Vax—something like he thought he was her best friend—and her breath caught. She swallowed and continued, with half a glance toward Wick, “He’ll come say hi, if you want, but you should really try to sleep.”

Wick didn’t look thrilled at the prospect, but Aswin nodded enthusiastically, though with a hint of trepidation, and she let Wick pile more blankets on top of the first. She reached out a small hand to Trinket and when the bear ambled forward and sniffed it, she giggled loudly, while a way down the palisades another cry went up.

“Trinket?” Vex said softly. Trinket looked back at her. “Protect her, all right? She needs to sleep.”

Wick got to his feet, and Trinket dutifully lay down next to Aswin, who immediately reached out to him and patted his nose.

Vex grabbed her bow again, and she raised her chin when Wick stepped closer. “The Shademaster wants her daughter close, and it looks like you care about that little girl.” The words hurt to speak. “I want my brother close. Do not stop me from fighting for the people I care about.”

“There’s no way for you to get out of town tonight,” Wick said. “You know that, right?”

She did know that, because every single person she’d talked to had told her as much. She still refused to believe it. “Then let me at least make myself useful.” She needed something to do, she needed to be busy, or else she would lose her mind with worry.

Wick’s frown was conflicted. He seemed at war within himself, but eventually he nodded. “Fine. Do what you must, but stay away from the Shademaster. The sooner we fight off these ash walkers, and the sooner I can get Aswin back to her home, the better.”

She didn’t need another word. She gestured at Trinket to stay with the little girl and ran to where the latest cry had come from, about forty or so yards to the west from the gatehouse. Archers were firing arrows that crested over the battlements and rained upon the ash walkers below. Some of the corpses were hit often enough that it looked like they exploded into clouds of ash, while others flung themselves against the wooden poles, arms outstretched at impossible angles while they tried to crawl their way up, gray flakes and bone dust billowing high like the wind was pushing them higher. One of the creatures pulled itself up, and underneath the layer of soot she saw gaping holes in its arms, where the bones moved and shifted around. Up on the palisades, a guardswoman used a spear to try to fend the dead creature off.

Running, Vex grabbed two arrows from her quiver. She held one between her teeth while she pulled the other one back, aimed, and released. The arrow flew straight through the ash walker, passing through its chest and out on the other side, a trail of gray dust following its path. She sent the second arrow after the first without hesitation.

The archers around her acknowledged her presence only insofar as they stepped aside to give Vex her own space near the battlements. She nodded at them and found a good location, shooting at will as the others did. She let her arrows fly and hoped they’d take away her pain and her worry and the sudden unbearable loneliness.

The walkers were an easy target when they were visible, but in the shadows of the night they were almost impossible to track. The ash provided a layer of protection, concealing them. They fought and withdrew, there and gone again, until another cry went up, and they continued to try to crawl their way up the palisades like spiders, arms and legs akimbo.

If Vex could find her way down to the outside of the palisades now, she knew she would be overpowered before she could draw her bow. So she kept her position up on high, sending arrows toward the creatures until her arms trembled and her quiver was feeling light and the gnawing worry inside her hadn’t abated a single bit.

One of the teens who ran messages back and forth between the town and the palisades appeared with a waterskin at her side, and a fresh batch of arrows. She drank deeply and gratefully before returning to shooting.

The night sky brightened around her, like a distant flash of thunder or the sudden flickering of a lamp, and Vex blinked hard, trying to find the source, when one of the archers next to her—a tall human gentleman with a long coat that flapped in the wind, tightly curled brown hair, and sharp eyes—placed a hand on her arm. “Barrier’s up,” he croaked, nodding in the direction of the Shademaster. “They won’t come through now.”

The air around the palisades rippled. Vex stared at it. The barrier looked strong enough to keep the ash walkers out. It looked strong enough to keep her in, too.

The creatures that flung themselves at the palisades below stopped trying, caught, it seemed, between the instinct to come closer and the force that stopped them. In their indecision, the ash walkers that remained behind were easily outnumbered, with the archers on the walls picking them off one by one. Finally, the last of them retreated, and a sigh of relief rolled over the palisades.

Vex turned in the direction of the parapet, where Shademaster Derowen lowered her arm and stumbled backward. Wick immediately stepped in to support her, and a few steps behind him Aswin clambered to her feet, tossing blankets left and right, half-stumbling over Trinket, and she shot toward her mother like an arrow of joy. She flung her arms around her and refused to let go.

Vex lowered her bow and placed the arrow back in the all-but-empty quiver at her hip. The exhaustion of the whole cursed night caught up with her, and Aswin’s presence rattled her. “I can’t believe she brings her daughter here.”

The archer shook his head, and something unreadable flashed across his face. “She thinks it’s safe, and they wouldn’t want to be separated, especially when the ash monsters attack. Town’s been breached too many times. But that little girl is a bright spot in this shitty place. Her presence makes everyone fight harder.”

Vex tugged at the fletching of the arrow and the feather snapped off the shaft. “So what’s the barrier?” she asked. “Does it have something to do with her ring?”

“You noticed that, did you?” The man leaned his well-crafted longbow against the palisades. He flagged down one of the messengers with waterskins, swirled his mouth with water, and spat it out across the wall. “Helps her keep the ash walkers out and the town safe.” He dumped the remaining water over his head. “Stick around here long enough and you’ll learn Shademaster Derowen is a hero to all.”

Vex shook her head when the man picked up his bow and, whistling a jaunty tune, started making his way down. Yeah, she already knew that. The Shademaster was a hero, and her brother had been hired to steal an heirloom. It just so happened to be the one that kept an entire town safe.

A simple heist? This was already anything but simple. Someone at the Clasp must’ve been aware of the importance of the ring. If that was the case, why would they want to steal it? What would they gain from denying a town the protection it so clearly needed?

She looked over her shoulder to ask Vax before she realized she couldn’t, and she breathed in hard through her teeth when the sight of the empty palisades hit her like one of her own arrows.

At the parapet, Shademaster Derowen hoisted Aswin up on her hip, despite the exhaustion carved on her face, and she exchanged a few words with Wick—and a curiously quirked eyebrow in Trinket’s direction—before she made her way in Vex’s direction.

Vex kept her shoulders straight, and her broken heartbeat picked up. Something inside her clenched at the approach of the Shademaster who, with her daughter held tightly in her arms, stopped near every archer to inquire about any injuries and thank them for their bravery. If she could just give Vex a way out …

When at last she stood in front of Vex, Shademaster Derowen’s warm blue-flecked eyes were sympathetic. “Wick tells me you’re looking for your brother. I regret that I can’t be of aid to you. I have a brother too, and I hope you’ll believe me when I tell you I understand your distress. If you’ll permit me and in gratitude for your help here tonight—” She tucked Aswin’s hair behind her ear in an unconsciously protective gesture. “—let me offer you lodging for the night at the Shade Hall, and tomorrow the Shadewatch and I will ride out with you. If he’s wounded or hiding somewhere, we will find him.”

“Trinket can stay too,” Aswin piped up, peeking out over her mother’s shoulder to look at the bear, before she unleashed the full, devastating effect of her emerald eyes on Vex. “Please, Vex?”

Vex grew cold. She looked from Aswin to Derowen and back. She glanced at the ring. She needed to find a way out, but she knew it was a fool’s hope with those ash walkers still outside. Riding out with the Shademaster first thing in the morning was the best possible course of action right now. The only course of action.

All she had to do was stay here for another couple of hours, until the sun rose and they could find their way back to the encampment. But a couple of hours might as well be a lifetime. Every time she closed her eyes she saw Vax lying on the ground, hair splayed out around him, surrounded by the risen dead. Every time she closed her eyes, a different disastrous scenario played out. It made her want to scream.

She needed to find a way out and fuck the consequences.

“Please,” Shademaster Derowen repeated. “We’ll do what we can do to help you.”

At that, Aswin slid out of her mother’s arms and bounded over to Vex, grabbing her hand. “The Shadewatch can find your brother. They always find me when I’m hiding.”

So Vex did the only thing she could. She nodded. She and Trinket would stay with Shademaster Derowen and Aswin tonight. Without her brother. Without steady ground underneath her feet. With the leader of Jorenn and her half-elven daughter, beloved by everyone.