The miner’s arm was jerked out of Arun’s hands as the dreadwing lifted Xalph off the wall, trailing Owin behind him like a bonus prize. But the weight was too much, and rather than fall to its death, it released Xalph. I hardly had time to think, but I knew instinctively what I had to do.
“Whatever you do,” I shouted to Erik and Estrid, “don’t let go.”
And then I threw myself off the wall.
I caught Xalph under the arms. He was still holding Owin, and together, tethered by the ropes at my belt attached to my siblings, we swung back against the cliff. I shielded him with my body, taking the brunt of the blow, but there was nothing I could do for Owin, who hit it just as hard as I did.
Erik and Estrid struggled.
I had to right myself, had to pull it together as soon as possible. They couldn’t hold us forever.
“Frida,” Xalph said, my name a groan instead of a yell.
I looked down at him and saw that he had Owin with two hands, but he was still slipping.
“Erik! Quick!”
“Frida.” There was something in Erik’s voice that made me look up. When I did, he pointed at something.
A fray in the rope.
“It won’t hold.”
Panicked, I looked at Xalph, then at Owin. “Can you climb to the ledge?” I asked Owin.
The miner had also seen the rope, and I saw him measure the distance to the ledge with his eyes. There was no way and he knew it.
“Keep him safe. He belongs to all of us.”
“Owin, no!” Xalph shouted.
But Owin had already freed himself, slipping his hand out of Xalph’s grip. He fell silently.
Xalph screamed.
I had no time to be hurt or scared or angry. I swung Xalph, who was light now, up to Estrid, and then took Erik’s offered hand as he helped me right myself. I dug my hand-axes into the rock with maybe a little too much force, surprised to feel a tear on the side of my nose.
“I’m sorry,” Erik said.
I hurriedly wiped my face on my shirt. “It’s fine.”
Owin had given his hand for Xalph, and then his life. For Xalph, who was nobody to him. Not his son, not his brother. But he’d loved him that fiercely anyway—enough to die for him. I knew then that Erik would do the same, no matter how foolhardy or irrational or scared I was. Erik would lay down his life for me. It didn’t matter who my mother was or was not. But I hoped he would never have to.
Xalph and I were the last to reach the ledge.
Arun held Xalph tight to him before pulling me over and unexpectedly doing the same. His chest was firm and large, and it felt safe. Like the dreadwing or the memories of Owin’s face in his final moment couldn’t reach me here.
I fought back tears, wiping my eyes on his dirty shirt before pulling away. “What was that for?”
Only Estrid watched us, her eyebrows squeezed together.
“You know what,” Arun said. “Thank you.”
I didn’t deserve his gratitude. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save him. Or Savarah,” I added, thinking of both their bodies broken and lifeless on the forest floor.
“Who?”
The other men were already working their way up the mountain again, eager to reach the top, to leave the tragedy behind.
“Savarah,” I repeated. “Tsarra’s friend. Her ‘trusted advisor.’”
Arun shrugged, hoisting Xalph up the wall. Estrid had taken off her belt and given it to Xalph, belting him to Erik, who went next. “I don’t know any Savarah.”
A few yards away, Beru was helping Aria up, and his eyes caught mine. He looked startled as if the name maybe meant something to him, but he didn’t say anything. Something felt . . . off. But I didn’t have time to linger on it. Now wasn’t the time to discuss social connections anyway.
“Shall we go?” Arun gestured to the wall.
“Go ahead,” I said, distracted as I hooked up my own belt.
“Ladies first.”
I cut my eyes at him, trying to see if he was joking.
He looked back with a straight face, his eyes dark beneath their heavy brows. I wondered what he saw when he looked at me. What he felt.
I pushed those thoughts away and took my place on the wall, burying the ax in to support my weight. We were moving faster now, the excitement of the group palpable, and when I tilted my head back to look up, I knew why.
The top of the world was finally in sight.
Freedom and the future I longed for were very nearly in my reach.
Chapter 18
I didn’t know what exactly I’d expected to find on top of the plateau, but it wasn’t guards dressed in Luthair’s black uniform, swords and bows at the ready. Or a wooden pike fence, several feet tall without an ally in sight.
Arun and I had walked the perimeter, keeping to the trees that circled the clearing where he said his airship was docked. Guards were stationed every few feet. There was no break in the fence and no gate except for the one in front of us now, and guards swarmed around it. I had no doubt in my mind that they knew we were coming.
Arun and I both ducked out of sight, our backs against a fallen tree trunk several feet wide. I didn’t want to think about what might have knocked it over, and whether or not any of the seemingly benign trees were really monsters waiting to come to life.
“I suppose this is my surprise.” Arun wiped a hand down his face.
I smiled meekly at him and patted his hand. “He wouldn’t be Luthair if he didn’t make us miserable one last time.” It was optimistic to think this was the last time, but he didn’t correct me.
We dropped back to where the rest of the group was hunched in a small cave near the edge of the plateau.
Bertol comforted Xalph and some of the other men from his group.
Aria and Beru stood a few feet from them with Erik and Estrid, none of them having known Owin.
Arun and I squeezed in with them, keeping our voices low.
“It’s not good,” I confirmed.
“Of course it’s not.” Estrid put an arm around my shoulder to lessen the blow of her disappointment.
“But not impossible.”
“We have the numbers,” Beru said, gesturing to the group of miners.
Arun shook his head. “They aren’t fighters. They’re old or out of shape or injured. It’s just us.” He pointed to the six of us. “Which is more than Luthair was counting on, I’m sure of it.”
He was right. Luthair would expect Arun and a bunch of exhausted prisoners. Not Arun with three D’ahvol and two mystery warriors. But it still wasn’t enough, not against a whole squadron. We needed something else . . . we needed . . .
“Remember the blazetaur?” I asked suddenly, interrupting Arun who had been running down the numbers and the layout of the fence.
Erik and Estrid both nodded while the other three looked on blankly.
“What exactly are you thinking?” Erik asked.
I smiled. “Distraction.”
Estrid breathed heavily through her nose and glanced around at the others. “She means bait.”
We waited until the sun was low enough to cast long, dark shadows across the ground, and made our move.
Aria had been the obvious choice to be the bait in question. A beautiful stranger would lower the guards’ alert level quicker than anything else I could think of. And it made sense to head straight for the front gate. While other areas of the fence were less heavily guarded, it would take too long to get everyone over the fence. We would just have to fight and hope that Aria would provide us with enough of a head start that we would stand a chance.
Though they tried to follow my instructions and make as little noise as possible, the group of escapees sounded—to me at least—as loud as a blazetaur barreling through the forest, trampling everything in its path. I was relieved when the fence came into view and they could stop moving, all of them taking cover behind the fallen tree, the dark and the shadows making it easier to hide them.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Beru asked Aria, his hands on her shoulders.
But Aria was no withering female needing him to hold her up. She shook him off. “Yes. I’d do anything to get off this island.”
I understood her sentiment.
Aria and I went to the edge of the trees and looked at the fence. They’d lit torches along the fence perimeter, creating a circle of light. There were four guards outside the guardhouse by the gate.
“Those are your guys.”
Aria didn’t say anything but threw her shoulders back, took a deep breath, and plunged forward, stumbling out of the tree line. I almost reached for her, convinced by her act before I remembered that it was all part of the game. I just didn’t know she’d be so good at it.
“Help! Thank Onen! Please help!”
“Who’s there?” A guard swung his bow in her direction.
She was undeterred. She stopped a few yards away and fell to her knees. “Please, come quick. My sister—”
He and his companions lowered their weapons, and one even knelt before Aria, a hand on her shoulder.
“Girl? What is it?”
“My sister,” Aria wailed, waving a hand at the trees. At me. I ducked behind a tree trunk as the guards’ eyes scanned the tree line. “She’s— A monster— Oh!”
“What’s going on out there?” A man’s voice came from the guardhouse, a figure emerging in the square light from the open door.
“It’s a girl,” said one of the guards.
Aria wailed loudly as if to prove it.
“She says there’s someone in the woods.”
“Well, go check it out,” ordered the man from the guardhouse. The four men peered into the darkness. Then they gathered their weapons and stepped around Aria.
She pushed herself to her feet and followed.
“Where is she?” one of the guards asked. “Your sister.” There were at least five of them following her and one lurking outside of the guardhouse, watching with interest.
I followed, quiet as a mouse through the underbrush. It was the hunt, the anticipation, the rush of adrenaline—this was what I loved. Next would come the fight, and I loved that too.
“Just over there,” Aria pointed vaguely in the direction of a tree stump nearby, just outside of the circle of light.
It was there that Estrid lay in wait. It had taken some convincing to get her to play the injured sister, but when she learned that she wouldn’t miss out on any of the action, she’d accepted her role.
And she was disturbingly good at it. She lay with her long limbs splayed haphazardly around her, her hair half-covering her face. What they couldn’t see were the small knives cupped in her palms. They couldn’t see me or Arun or Beru or Erik, all lying in wait. They couldn’t see that this was the end of this life for them.
One bent over Estrid, not touching her. “Where is she hurt?”
Another man came close, both of them bending to inspect her.
Aria did not have to make up a response, because it was then that Estrid’s arms lashed out, her hands sliding across the men’s throats.
At first, they didn’t realize what had happened.
The rest of us attacked, each of us taking out one of the guards as silently and as quickly as possible. The man closest to me was short and carried a galestone pistol at his hip that he hadn’t even drawn. That was how green Luthair’s men were. I stepped out of the shadows, wrapped a hand around his mouth, and drew the very edge of the ax blade across his throat, making the cut deep enough that he could not scream and alert the others.
He turned, his hands wrapped around his throat, his eyes meeting mine.
I wondered only briefly who he was and who would miss him when he did not come home. He dropped to his knees, blood seeping between his fingers. There was a sound when a man died, a gentle exhalation as if of relief as his spirit passed from this world to the next. I heard it then as his face went slack and he collapsed to the ground.
Looking around, I saw that the others had also been successful in felling their marks, though Erik stood to the side without any blood on his hands. He had his arms crossed over his chest and was glaring at Estrid as she picked herself up off the ground, shoving a body away from her as she did.
“You had to do them both?” He scowled. “You make me look like a weakling.”
But Estrid just smiled. “I didn’t know how many there were. And besides, you weren’t the one lying there with their horrid breath in your face.”
Erik was still grumbling as he began to strip the bigger of the two men of his uniform. Not far from him, Arun was doing the same but paused, kneeling to pick up a longbow that had fallen from the guard’s shoulders, weighing it in his hand and smiling.
Beru watched him, then looked at the corpse at his feet. The guard’s eyes were open, staring at the sky. “I don’t know about this. It seems disrespectful of the dead.”
“Well,” I said, grunting as I pulled my own guard’s arms out of his tunic and vest. “They were disrespectful of my life, so . . .”
“Hear, hear.” Estrid was already dressing, covering her normal earth-tone leathers with the black linen of the guard’s uniform.
When we were all dressed—even Beru—it was hard to tell us apart, especially once we pulled the hoods up to cover our hair. Arun was mostly excited about the bow. He kept reaching over his shoulder and touching its upper limb and smiling. I thought I knew how he felt when Missus had strapped on my weapons belts earlier that day and returned my ax to me. I had no use for my guard’s galestone pistol so I left it lying on the ground.
“Do you know how to use that thing?” I asked, dropping back to walk beside him as we made our way back to the fence.
He cut his eyes at me. I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, acutely aware of its roundness in his presence. Some D’ahvol had more pointed ears because of our elven lineage, but not me—my ears were completely human.
“In the Phina family, when the children come of age, they are sent to the forest and not allowed to return until they’ve carved a bow and fashioned three arrows complete with the fletching of a raptor owl’s feathers.”
“How long were you gone?” I asked.
He smiled wide, showing off the dimples on either cheek. “I don’t know if I ever truly returned. In a way, I am still gone.”
The six of us emerged out of the tree line, blinking into the circle of light made by the watchmen’s torches. A figure cast in silhouette still stood in the door to the guardhouse.
“Well?” he shouted across the small clearing. “Did you find her? Where are they?”
“We could not save them,” Erik answered, his voice low to hide his Ahvoli accent.
He let us approach without a hint of suspicion, holding the door open for us to enter. As he passed, Erik leaned close to him as if to tell him a secret, and next thing I knew, the guard was toppling forward, his mouth open in shock. Erik caught him and lowered him silently to the ground. Then we filed inside the guardhouse and dispatched the rest of the men there. They’d been on break, gathered around a card table, and that was where they died their dishonorable deaths.
When none of Luthair’s men at the gate were left standing, we began to usher in the rest of the group. They ran past us quickly and quietly, disappearing into the shadows beyond the gate. According to Arun, the airship was not far away, maybe a quarter mile, docked near a cluster of three boulders. That was their destination. Xalph was bringing up the rear with Bertol.
“That’s the last of us,” Xalph confirmed.
“Hey!”
We all turned and saw a man standing there.
I squinted at him, thinking his features familiar.
It was the guard who had delivered me to Luthair after the fight on the Gem. “What’s going on here?”
I felt Arun come up behind me. “Refugees,” he said, which was stupid because Luthair would never allow refugees onto his land.
The guard knew it too. He turned
and ran at the same time he began yelling. “Breach! They’re here! The elf is here!”
Arun lifted his bow, notching an arrow before I could blink and aiming it at the man’s back. He was so close that I heard the twang of the string as he let it go. The arrow flew straight and true, piercing the guard through his back and silencing him. But it was already too late. I saw the warning fires going up along the top of the fence as the guards lit them to summon the others. Any minute now, we would be overrun with Luthair’s men.
“Go,” I urged Xalph and Bertol, who were the only non-fighting men left. “Get to the ship and hide. Wait for Arun.”
“And you,” Xalph said.
I nodded. “All of us.” I certainly didn’t have any plans to be left behind.
My siblings joined me as we faced the open gate, Beru and Aria to our right, Arun behind us, his bow held aloft.
“It was a good plan,” Erik said, the only one of us to speak. “While it lasted.”
It wasn’t another minute before the first guards rounded the corner.
Arun let more arrows fly. He dropped three men before they realized what was happening and took cover behind the fence and inside the guardhouse.
“Cowards!” Estrid shouted, brandishing her sword as an invitation to anyone who wanted to parry.
A guard hung his head out the window of the guardhouse and aimed a galestone pistol at us, getting off only one wild shot before Arun buried an arrow in his throat. There was the sound of another shot from inside the house as if the pistol had discharged accidentally. Then we saw the flames, orange fingers spreading quickly through the house.
“If any of them have any galestone—” Erik started, but I already knew what he was going to say.
“Run.” I shoved Arun to the side and we fell, rolling in a tangle of limbs to take cover behind a tree just as the house exploded.
The heat from the fire consumed us, and I worried for a second that we weren’t far enough away, but then it subsided, and I could breathe again.
“Onen save me,” Arun said a little breathlessly from where he had fallen beneath me.
We didn’t have time to catch our breath, though. The remaining guards, the ones who hadn’t been in the guardhouse—which was a raging inferno now, black smoke billowing into the sky and tall orange flames acting as a beacon for any monster searching for a late night snack—came rushing around the corner, taking advantage of our distraction and momentary panic. But our crew met them without any hesitation, Estrid and Erik grinning from ear to ear. Even Beru joined the fray, his face grim but his fighting moves flawless.
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