This was it. This was the end.
The dogs whined, stood up, and sat down when ordered, panting and drooling. Andras brought them into the hollow beneath a large boulder, the most protected spot he could find, but the dogs had to be held in one big clump to keep them from bolting as the fire began a relentless march up the ravine toward them.
Skinny Lad was especially restless. The lurcher stood and pulled, and had to be forcibly dragged back by father and son. He growled and bared his teeth, and Andras, shocked by the aggression, pressed the dog’s muzzle to the dirt.
“There, boy. Sit still, now.” Andras kept his voice calm, his hold firm, but not aggressive. “We’re safer here—trust me. Relax and the danger will pass quickly. There, that’s a good dog.”
He didn’t believe it himself. He thought they had twenty minutes, maybe less, before the fire was on top of them. They would all die together, human and dog alike. But his words seemed to soothe the animals, Skinny Lad especially. He relaxed his grip as the lurcher stopped struggling.
Suddenly, Skinny Lad whipped his head around and bit Andras’s hand. Andras jerked back with a surprised cry. It wasn’t a savage bite, but hard enough that he lost his grip. The dog squirmed loose and bolted toward the side of the ravine. There, somehow, the animal found a pathway up the steep slope and began to ascend with paws churning and knocking down pebbles.
There was no escape in that direction; a tree was pure fire on the ledge right above the dog, should he somehow gain his escape from the ravine. As terrible as it seemed, the only slim, desperate hope remained crouching at the base of the boulder and hoping the wind shifted and the fire stopped short. He had to stop the fool thing before it was too late. Without thinking, he shouted at Ruven to stay with the other dogs and bolted after the lurcher.
After some initial success up the slope, Skinny Lad floundered, and his paws scrambled to gain purchase. Andras was able to use his hands to grab hold of rocks and hoist himself past the most challenging obstacles, and soon caught up to the dog. He reached out a hand to grab the animal by the scruff of his neck, but Skinny Lad gave a final effort and scrambled just out of reach to gain the height above the ravine. Andras, desperate now, and feeling the furnace of burning trees on his face, had no choice but to continue if he hoped to save the dog.
Up top, Skinny Lad stood several paces off, facing him. Mouth open, panting and drooling. His mouth closed in what looked like a pleading whine, though Andras couldn’t hear it over the roaring fire. The air was hot, suffocating.
But there, to his shock, was a path between the flaming trees to his left and an unburned stretch of forest to his right. Between them lay a bare stretch of rock, patched with grass and wildflowers, that had so far prevented the flames from leaping. By all the sleeping demigods, was this a pathway through the fire?
If so, he could return to the ravine for Ruven and the rest of the dogs and lead them up. It would be damned tricky to get the short-legged terriers up that hillside, but maybe he could shuttle them up one at a time. Time was running out. It was going to be close.
But first he had to get hold of Skinny Lad before the dog ran off and got himself killed. He made a lunge, but the fool creature danced out of reach and began to trot away along the bare patch of stone, apparently determined to set off alone and get himself killed. Andras gave a short whistle blast, a final attempt, really. To his surprise, Skinny Lad stopped, dropped to his haunches, and looked over his shoulder at the ratter.
Andras snapped his fingers. “Come here, right now!”
The dog refused to move. No doubt he would bolt off as soon as the man made toward him, but Andras knew he had to try. To his surprise, this time the dog waited, but when he tried to pull, Skinny Lad dropped to his belly and made himself as flat as he could. Andras cursed in frustration, then got hold of himself.
“Listen to me,” he pleaded. “We have ten, maybe fifteen minutes and then it’s too late. I need you to obey me. Do you hear me? If you keep up this game, we’re all dead. You’re dead, I’m dead. The boy is dead. Do you want that? No. So do what I say.”
In response to this, Skinny Lad turned his head back along the bare stone patch and gave a deep, desperate sounding whine. Andras followed his gaze. His eyes widened in shock.
There, where the stone ended and the forest began, sat a woman. She had her back to a pine tree, her eyes closed. A pair of swords lay crossed on a bed of pine needles several feet in front of her, just out of reach.
It was Narina. The bladedancer sohn.
Ropes were around her waist, tying her to the tree, and her hands and ankles were bound. He stared, unable to believe what he was seeing.
And then hope sprang into his breast. He couldn’t help but take several steps toward her. “Narina?”
She didn’t open her eyes. “I feel you, ratter. Go back to your son. He’s terrified.”
“Who tied you up here?”
Skinny Lad came with him, this time all cooperation. The dog must have felt the woman’s aura, or whatever it was, and come to her from the ravine. Good boy.
“No, don’t take another step forward. Dammit, go away. I mean it.”
He hesitated. “Is something wrong? Did something happen to you? You seem different. Were you. . .is it your sowen?”
Her expression hardened, and she turned her head. He approached, bent at her side, and worked at the knots.
Narina groaned. “Just leave me alone, will you?”
This time Andras didn’t listen. The knots on her hands were tied more clumsily than those at her feet and around her waist, and he started with those. She elbowed him away with a snarl. He glanced back at her weapons. They’d cut these ropes with a touch.
“Don’t touch those swords! They belonged to my father, and I will wish a curse upon your head should you lay hands on them.”
He forced himself to ignore her. He went back to the swords, hesitated at a new round of curses and denunciations from the bladedancer, then bent and picked up the black one. Something tingled in his hand, and everything around him suddenly looked sharper. He could see Narina’s face now, clear through the smoke, as it twisted in concentration.
Warring emotions played over her face. There was an ugly strain, murderous. The death in that particular expression wasn’t directed toward him, not specifically, but if she gave into it, she could kill him in an instant, as easily as crushing a beetle beneath her heel. But it was the other emotion, that remnant of her true personality, that allowed him to ignore his thumping heart and approach.
“An appropriate choice,” she said as she took in the sword held clumsily in his hand. Venom dripped from her voice. “Honoring the demons who will soon burn your heart out of your chest. Tell me, when you poisoned Brutus, did you feel a twinge of guilt? Or were you proud to be serving that bastard crowlord of yours?”
“I’m sorry for what I did. Please forgive me. We can help each other. I won’t betray you again.”
“I don’t believe you. A crowlord is your master—you will do whatever he commands.”
Andras looked down at the heavy brass ring he wore on his right middle finger. It carried the sigil of Lord Balint Stronghand, a crow with a war hammer in its talon. Balint had given it to him, together with all the honors and responsibilities that entailed.
He carefully set down Narina’s sword, took off the ring, and threw it as hard as he could. It disappeared into the smoke and fire. He picked up the sword and turned to see Narina staring at him.
“Please listen to me,” he said. “If you stay here, you’ll die.”
“Death was the idea all along. Why do you think I’m tied up like this?”
“You did it to yourself? You did, didn’t you? You’re afraid of the thing inside you. I don’t know what it is, or how it got there, but it doesn’t have to rule you.”
“What would you know about that?”
“I know it will make you kill people you love if you give in to it. The first of those is my son. Ruven
is in the ravine—you can feel him down there with the dogs. You said so yourself.” Skinny Lad, still sitting on his haunches behind, let out a long, pitiful whimper at this. “We only have a few minutes before it’s too late. But I know you can save him if you come now.”
Narina closed her eyes and tilted her head back. She groaned. “Don’t you see? It’s already too late. This curse has got hold of me, and I can’t turn it aside. If you cut me loose. . .” She let out a violent shiver. “I’m afraid of what will happen.”
“We have to try. Please let me do it.”
She looked away, and he took that as permission. Wielding the sword clumsily in hand, he expected to have to saw at the ropes, but the weapon was impossibly sharp. It cut through the ropes as if they were a single, silken thread, and would have sliced through to the woman herself before he could stop it, if the blade hadn’t turned aside of its own accord. It seemed to know its own.
Before he could move, barely enough time to blink in surprise, Narina reacted. She took the sword from him, severed the remaining ropes at her wrist and those binding her to the tree, and then was on her feet. It all happened in a blur. He stood rigid with shock and fear.
“Now you’ve done it,” she said.
Andras slowly straightened. “Kill me if you have to, but save my son. I beg you. The dogs, too. They’ve done nothing wrong. Lead them out of the fire, at least.”
She’d retaken some of the control that seemed to have fled while she sat tied up to the tree, but her tone remained grim. She went for the other weapon, and tucked them into the sheaths still strapped to her waist. He’d half-expected her to kill him, and now allowed himself to breathe.
“There will be no leading out of the fire, ratter. Can’t you see it’s too late for that?”
“But your auras. Your sowen, I mean. Can’t you clear a path?”
“Through this raging inferno? Not a chance. It’s demon-driven. The air is drier than a desert and roasting hot. There’s lava flowing to the north and south of us. Not all the sohns of the three temples working in harmony could clear a way through.”
Andras’s head dropped in despair.
Narina wasn’t finished. “But fortunately, there’s no need to go through the fire. You’ve found a refuge already, haven’t you? It needs a little assistance and it will hold.”
He could barely allow himself to hope. “Then you’ll save us?”
“Yes, I’ll save you, Andras. You, your son, the dogs—I don’t know what you’ve done to deserve such loyalty, but they all love you, and that’s worth something. And then,” she added, “I’ll return to the path of the Sword Saint, hunting down and killing friends, family, rivals. Because that’s what you’ve done for me. Freed me to kill.”
#
Narina was still embroiled in a bitter mix of emotions as she followed Andras and Skinny Lad into the ravine. There she found Ruven crouched miserably with the dogs, all of them coughing and whimpering. There were only two more trees to ignite down the ravine, and a few more surrounding them, and they’d be burned alive in the inferno.
Better to die here, she thought, than in the larger conflagration to come. Demons and demigods fought over the land, and it would either turn to ash or to ice—or both, in turn. Humans would die. Die by the sword, die by famine. Die of heat or cold. Die by the thousands and tens of thousands.
Very few would survive, and Narina could only despair at the thought of being one of them. What would she inherit as an agent of destruction? Only misery, much of it created by her own hand.
But then Ruven spotted her, sprang to his feet, and pushed through the dogs. He wrapped his hands around his father’s waist and buried his face in the man’s chest. When he looked to Narina, he pulled down a rag that had been tied around his sweaty, soot-stained face.
“You came back. You came to help us. I knew you would, I knew you wouldn’t leave us to die.”
Her heart ached at this expression of childlike faith. For a moment, the tight bands around her sowen eased, and she could feel strength flowing into her limbs, a sort of autonomy. The despair was still there, the throbbing certainty that she would turn against them all when the time came. But for now, she allowed herself a brief window of hope.
“Get as close to the boulder as you can,” she told them. “Those dogs know how to dig, don’t they? So what are they waiting for? Get them digging a trench, as deep into the sand as you can. It will be cooler there. Maybe even damp below the surface.”
Narina turned away from them. She bent and picked up a handful of sand as she walked toward the fire. She scrubbed the sand into her arms and hands as she walked, doing her best to clean away the ash. She did the same on her cheeks and forehead, and brushed it off when she was done. Her skin felt raw and sore after the sand bath, but cleaner.
All the while, she gathered her sowen and fought against the corruption twisting within as if it were an enemy on the battlefield. By the time she reached the last of the unburned trees and the edge of the fire crawling up the ravine, she’d rained blows on the rebellious element and forced it into a corner, where it remained seething, ready to attack as soon as she relaxed her vigil.
Her sowen under command, she stood and faced the roaring flames, prepared to hold position until either the fire retreated or she was overcome. The fire roared, raged, and struggled forward to seize more victims in the withering trees ahead of them. A breeze stirred at her back, and she flung it forward and pushed the fire away.
The wind, the firestorm, and the popping, exploding trees sounded like howling, snarling demons. And maybe there were demons in the flames, though she couldn’t feel for them without breaking her concentration. With or without them, the fire itself seemed alive with malicious intent.
Another tree went up in flames. Only two more remained and the battle would be lost. For a moment she thought she saw crows in the smoke, though this was surely her imagination, a hallucination caused by the intense heat and pressure, the rending of the natural auras of the land, and the twisted thread inside her own sowen.
Narina refused to surrender. The fire fought on, relentless in its pressure. Her face turned hot, her lips dried and cracked. Her eyes burned, dry and filled with ash. But the fire was only as strong as its fuel, and the burning trees began to surrender their heat as the wood was consumed. There was a final, howling rush, but Narina faced it, knowing she could hold it back.
“You won’t have them,” she said. “Not today.”
She summoned the last of her strength and hurled it toward the fire. The fire began to fall back, its fuel consumed and its advance halted.
For today, this one, small victory was hers.
-end-
THE STORY ISN’T OVER. . .
Book Three: Shadow Walker
Book Four: Bladedancer
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Crowlord (The Sword Saint Series Book 2) Page 21