“I’ll be back,” she said again, louder.
The return journey seemed shorter, though she paused a few times to mark the way by stacking stones or driving sticks into the ground. The rain fell with bitter cold, but the wind had at least stilled. She felt certain that none now watched her. Every minute, she held the cloth up and looked closely at it, straining to feel any slight pinch it might give her. Just as she reached the muddy hills that had been so bothersome to climb, the cloth tightened painfully around her finger. She cried out, then immediately broke into a run. She skidded down one hill and scrabbled up the next one, and down and up again with her heart thundering in her chest. Her finger was turning deep red. At the hilltops she scanned the surrounding hills. but saw nothing. She drew near enough to the building to see it, and saw that the door was hanging open.
Her lungs and legs burned, and she had no Waker to spur her on. She drew on every fiber of magical sense she had and cast out as far as she could. There was no glimmer of magic here in the hills or near the building. Her finger was throbbing mercilessly—she would have to cut the cloth off before long.
Then she passed it. By the second-to-last hill, there was a gossamer thread that touched her perception for the merest fraction of a moment. She would have missed it if she had not been pressing her senses to their limit. The thread was of Blood Magic, but it was not Wilhelmina’s. It was that same magic of Min-Yu. She felt no swoop of horror in her gut. She felt neither calm nor turmoil, just an all-eclipsing focus on the door, the need to get to the door that yawned open wide and black. She had left them in their tomb. She called their names. She shrieked their names. There was no reply.
She was suddenly at the doorway, leaving a sparking blue trail behind her, and she was inside the building. There was nobody inside. The floor was covered in shriveled leaves and vines. On the far side the window was smashed, and there was blood where the shards of glass lay. On her right, by the door, a crossbow bolt had sunk into the timbers. At her feet was a small, dark pool of blood, smeared at the edges where the bleeder had been dragged out into the rain, leaving no track or trace for her to follow.
They were gone.
****
A shadow crossed the window.
Amelia had left minutes ago, but she had struck out north, away from the building, not toward the window. Choson waved at the others urgently, and they pressed themselves against the windowed wall, in the corners and crevices where they would not be seen. The shadow came again to the window, closer this time, and darkened the room. They dared not look. Choson waited with suspended breath and a thudding heart so loud he was sure it would betray him, even through the wall. He could see the outline of his companions and the flash of their eyes as they looked over at him. All was still for a time as the rain beat down on the building. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the shadow left. They did not move. With the shadow gone from the window, Choson could see that Gillis had turned pale and was gasping shallow breaths like a rabbit hiding in its burrow.
“They have left,” Roos whispered.
“We are likely being watched,” Choson said. “Lie still.”
Roos nodded.
A droplet struck Choson’s armor just under his chin and made a tiny noise. He looked above at the ceiling, thinking there was some leak, and as he did a number of drops ran down his face and to his chin. He was sweating. An immense, chilling pain in his shoulder flared and throbbed, but somehow it did not bother him.
“Strange,” Choson said. His tongue felt heavy and sluggish in his mouth. “My shoulder … there is cold pain there.”
“It may be,” Gillis said between pants, “a slaver’s tracking spell.”
“Strange.”
The damp, clammy feeling came to his hands and feet then, and the air in the room grew thicker with each breath he drew. Soon he was slumped against the wall with heat radiating through his body and up to his neck, trapped inside by his armor. He felt he ought to take it off. He pulled at the straps idly, but could not grip them firmly for a time. Perhaps he would rest. The appearance of the shadow had been troubling, and now he was exhausted. Roos was pulling at his furs; he was hot too. Beads of sweat perched on Gillis’ bald head and cascaded down when he moved. Their eyes were all half-closed and their limbs stretched out across the green stone floor.
The color of the floor caught Choson’s attention. It was not green when we came in, he thought blearily. This place is strange indeed.
He watched as a thin vine-like shoot sprouted from the cracks in the stone and felt at the bottom of Roos’ boot, like a blind worm tapping for a place to burrow. Tap, tap, tap. Several more shoots rose out of the ground and snaked along Roos’ legs; he brushed them away lazily. Choson knitted his brows and stared hard at them. The shadow crossed the window once more, and Choson looked up, then back down at the sprouting vines. They were growing thicker now. What did they want? They were embracing Roos all along his body. Some crept around Roos’ neck in loose loops, and as Choson watched they tightened their grip until Roos’ beard was flattened against his throat. Choson had some visitors of his own, tapping and searching along his plate and holding on to him. He took one of the vines in his hand and tried to set its course some other way—he thought it might make marks on his armor—but it snaked around his hand and wrenched it to the floor. All the vines tightened at once, and he could not move his legs. His shoulder felt as though it had been plunged in ice.
He jerked his other hand free of the vines’ grip and snatched his knife, then cut at the vines holding him in bunches. They moved slowly, but were strong. Roos’ face was deep red from the vines that slowly, lovingly garroted him. Gillis’ mouth and nose were crowded with them. Choson cut himself free and burst upright. He staggered across the writhing floor to Roos’ side and cut him free, first untangling his neck. When Roos did not stir, Choson struck him around the face, shouting at him to wake. Roos blinked and tore at the vines holding him with his bare hands. Choson handed him his knife and leapt over to Gillis’ side. He drew his sword and, measuring his swing, cut the main twisting knot that crowded Gillis’ face and neck. The vines shrank away and withered, and Choson ripped Gillis release from the rest. Roos was free and came to help Choson lift Gillis to his feet. Gillis’ head lolled back, but he murmured in between rasping breaths. Just as Choson thrummed with the exultation that he had been able to save them from the sudden danger, the shadow came to the window and stayed. There, framed by the glass and pouring sheets of rain, the cloaked figure outside shifted. It held something in both hands.
A crossbow. Min-Yu has found us, Choson thought.
Roos held his sword ready. “Behind me! Get to the door!”
Choson took Gillis’ weight and dragged him into Roos’ shadow. The window shattered, and the room filled with intense blue light. Roos’ sword sang as it struck a quarrel that thwacked into the wall by the door.
“To the door! Stay behind!”
Choson and Gillis stumbled as the vines clawed at them. The whole way to the door, Roos faced the window, fearless, with his sword ready. They were at the threshold when Choson wrenched his boot from the grip of a vine the width of his thumb, and the movement made Gillis stumble. Roos’ sword sang again, and Choson saw the quarrel sink into Gillis’ chest, just below the collarbone. He cried out hoarsely and fell against the door jamb, just as Choson reached out and seized him under the arms.
“I will take him, you take the sword,” Roos said, and thrust the weapon into Choson’s hands.
Roos took up Gillis in his arms like a father holding a child.
“Keep the darts from striking me,” Roos said in a rush. “I will carry him. Is it Min-Yu?”
“They came with the flash of blue, it must be,” Choson said. “Go!”
In the rain, they could not see their attacker. Roos thundered down to the crease in the hills, and Choson followed with the enchanted sword held aloft. They kept close to one another, bent low, never coming to the hilltops. The mud slid under their feet. With
Gillis’ weight and his own, Roos was often falling to his knees and scrambling on again, but he never dropped Gillis. Choson backpedaled much of the time, keeping one hand on Roos’ broad back and the other with the heavy sword outstretched. He knew the bolt might come screaming out of the rain from anywhere around them, so thick was the rain, and he would not chance his friend being struck in the back. The rain never stopped. The hills went on. Gillis was dying.
They came to a long, flat expanse of mud between two steep hills, and they rushed along it with fresh speed. The ground was a patchwork of wide puddles, in places slick and treacherous. Choson’s lungs burned. The flat corridor between the hills seemed to go on forever. This cannot be the end, Choson thought. Let Amelia appear and save us. Let her come in a thundering flash, her sword in hand. This cannot be our death.
Roos rounded a blind corner, then stopped suddenly and roared. A dozen rain-veiled figures holding glinting spears blocked the way. Roos lay Gillis on the ground, and drew Choson’s sword from its scabbard. It looked small in his hands as he stood protectively over Gillis’ prone form.
“Roos, take your own sword!”
“No,” Roos growled. “You watch for the bolts. I will beat back these devils.”
The spearmen advanced. Choson studied the hills and the flat ground behind him, willing himself to penetrate the curtains of iron-grey rain. The spearmen came running and shouting now, and Roos roared at them. The sword jerked in Choson’s hand, of its own will, and struck a bolt he had not seen. He turned to the bolt’s origin, upward and to the left, and saw finally the cloaked figure with the crossbow. She hunched over the device and began to load a new quarrel. The spearmen were upon Roos, holding him at the end of a dozen spear-points, but he did not move. Choson dashed to Roos’ side and lashed out with the sword. He met a spear, and it splintered at the force of his blow. Roos bellowed and swung forward, batting aside their weapons and forcing the spearmen back.
Choson’s arms were wrenched again as the sword flew around to strike the coming bolt, with a peal like a smith’s hammer on steel. Her hood had fallen away as she ran, and her gold necklaces glinted even at this distance. There was no mistaking that it was Min-Yu. She was drawing closer, almost at a run, nearing the base of the hill. Some of the spears grazed Roos’ arms and drew blood that the rain washed into nothing. Still he would not back away from Gillis, but the spearmen dared not approach the bellowing giant with his flailing sword. Choson batted their spears away from Roos when he could, but again Min-Yu aimed a bolt at them, so he leapt over to ready himself to block.
She did not fire it, but approached Choson slowly while Roos cried out in pain and fury. Choson wrenched his eyes away from her to glance at Roos every few moments. They had not gotten him yet, they were only scratching him. Soon, though, the slavers would have all of them and they would be face down in the much. Min-Yu was close now, but outside the reach of Choson’s blade.
“You were unwise to seek me out,” Min-Yu said.
“You must pay for what you have done!” Choson yelled.
“I want nothing more than freedom from Verandert and his bootlickers. You should have left me be.”
Roos struck out at his attackers with more force than ever. Broken spears littered the ground around him, and some spearmen now had swords in hand. They circled him in search of an opening, but Roos’ wild energy kept them at bay. Choson knew the energy would not last. His wounds would bleed, and he would tire. Choson stared at Min-Yu and felt a surge of the long-built malice of years spent on the road in pursuit of her. His gut burned with hate for her haughty face, her gold necklaces, her arrogant stance with one hip cocked.
“If you desire freedom, why not hide? Why come after us?” Choson yelled.
“I am no fool. I know that one is a pet of Verandert,” Min-Yu said, pointing at Gillis. “And now Verandert is near. I have sensed it. And with the girl, you seek to unravel my illusion. I did not win my freedom to have it cut short by you.”
“You are wrong. He is no ally of Verandert,” Choson said, his gut boiling. She was lying. She would say anything.
She sneered at him, then barked an order in Gweidorian, “Kill the Captain.”
She put her crossbow on the ground and drew a dagger. Some spearmen left Roos and charged at Choson. The enchanted sword met every blow sent to him, but the wrenching of his arms and their relentless assault pressed him back. He was separated from Roos and Gillis. Choson swung mightily and caught one enemy in the ribs, who fell dead, but the others re-doubled their attack. Min-Yu prowled around the circle of soldiers, her eyes fixed on Gillis. He was stirring feebly and trying to crawl away from the battle.
“Roos!” Choson bellowed. “Roos!”
Choson struck another attacker across their throat, and cut yet another’s arm so that it hung on by tendons. He tried to press onward to reach Min-Yu, but the enchanted blade pulled him back to block another blow. There’s no getting away from them when the sword pulls me, he thought.
Roos looked around and saw Min-Yu as she readied herself to pounce on Gillis. Roos thrust his whole weight at the spearmen in his way, sending them tumbling, but taking a jagged wound on his chest. The giant roared and fell across Gillis, shielding him. Min-Yu descended on Roos and plunged her dagger down on him, again, and again, and again.
“Roos!” Choson cried. “Roos! No!”
She flayed the skin from Roos’ ribs and his blood cascaded down into the mud; her eyes were as dispassionate as a butcher. Choson threw the enchanted sword at his remaining attackers, where it clung to their weapons, then he sprinted toward her. He snatched up his own sword that had fallen from Roos’ hands from the mud, raised it high, closed the remaining feet between him and Min-Yu, and brought it down onto her head. At the last moment, Min-Yu looked up at him in surprise. The sword split her between her eyes and down to her nose, and she fell crumpled with the blade still in her. Choson fell across Roos and rolled him onto his back. The great beard was matted with blood, and the giant’s large face was still and cold.
Choson fell to his knees beside his fallen friend, not caring that spears were aimed at him, their wielders advancing and ready to kill him.
There came a brilliant blue flash, and then another, and another. Each one froze the raindrops in place for a moment, a thousand tiny sapphires. Amelia, sword and dagger in hand, pirouetted and leapt at the spearmen, and each flash left another one dead. Choson watched numbly as she sliced their throats with great blue flashes and then great scarlet bursts. Each one fell in a heap once Amelia passed by them. Their weapons were nothing to her. Almost as suddenly as she came, the slavers were dead to the last man, and there was no movement but the steady rain.
Roos had perished, yet the idea was somehow insensible. He was too large and had moved with too much energy for that life to have gone. How could his great bellow-like lungs now be still?
“What have they done to him?” Amelia said in quiet shock. Choson looked up at her. Blood dripped from her sword. The rain slowed to a trickling, and for a time he did not know what to say.
“Min-Yu said Verandert is near,” Choson said. “She sensed him.”
“She’s right.”
“We cannot mourn Roos,” Choson said. His own words wounded him. “Verandert will find us.”
“We keep moving then. I will get Gillis on his feet.”
She took Roos’ blood into her vial, muttered her incantations, and poured it into Gillis’ wound until his flesh spat out the quarrel. Choson felt a surge of anger at Gillis. How dare he take any more from Roos? Choson pushed the thoughts away, but the anger lingered. Gillis’ pale skin regained some color, and then his eyes fluttered open. Amelia dragged him to sit up, and waved at Choson to help get him to his feet. Gillis seemed unable to talk, and he looked pale and sickly, needing to drape both arms around the others to stay upright.
As they took Gillis away from the scene of the battle, where they left Roos to lie uncovered in the rain, Choson thought bitterly that
Gillis’ life had better be worth the price.
Chapter 18
The shambling march to Wilhelmina’s refuge were the bitterest minutes of Gillis’ life. As the rain gusted away and left blinding sun beating down on wet mud, they trudged on with quivering nerves. Gillis slowed them. They supported him the whole way, though he did not ask for it. Roos had carried him after he was struck down by that bolt, though he had never asked for it. Roos had cast himself over Gillis, given his life, not knowing the man he shielded had plotted against them from the first. The facts shifted in Gillis’ mind, but he could not assimilate them. They were ethereal, hateful—they were not sensible. His numb, weightless feet were not real. They carried him on to a place they would never reach. He could not suffer to think of the hours past, nor could he suffer to imagine the hours hence. Choson and Amelia would die. Verandert was close. One did anything—anything—to play the part. The sunlight pierced his eyes from a clearing sky above and shimmering ground below, yet he stared with wide eyes, unseeing.
The foolish Wittewolder had died in vain. That blessed fool. Gillis was the wretch who should have died. And yet, what difference did it make? They were all to die at Verandert’s hand. He could not control his thoughts. It was the loss of blood, it was the shock of nearly dying. Roos had been doomed no matter what Gillis did; it was not his fault the fool had chosen to die to save him. He kept nodding and sagging forward, on the edge of collapsing altogether and losing consciousness. Each time he faltered Choson and Amelia shook him, held him up, reassured him. His fevered mind began to hear things, see things that were not there. Beldas screaming and Amelia laughing and Duvelt hanging limp from the rope all seemed to rise up out of the shimmering ground and crowd around him. As ever, he sought to cling to the words of Ardent Momaenta and tried to run over them in his mind, but he could not remember. In the killing of four innocent men to save one guilty, the greater good—but no, that was not it.
The Tyranny of Shadows Page 21