Today’s workout was boxing, which I had no experience with, and he got in some good hits, though I got the sense he was going easy on me. He should have been able to knock me out straight away, but he avoided my head, for which I was grateful. It was a good workout, I’d give it that; by the time we finished, I was drenched in sweat and my arms were trembling with effort.
Perhaps a dozen other Vipers were training as well, some with knives or swords or in hand-to-hand combat. I didn’t recognise any of them, and none of them spoke. The silence was eerie, punctuated only by the clash of practice swords and the occasional grunt. There was none of that light-hearted banter I was used to from training with Allegra or even at the gym.
I eyed my sparring partner thoughtfully. Was it Ash’s presence that made them all so quiet? I caught the occasional glance thrown his way, and everyone gave us a wide berth.
I took a shower in the communal bathrooms afterwards. Thank God they had modern plumbing here. A fae-style bath simply wouldn’t have cut it. I set the shower to full cold when I got in and dunked my sweating head gratefully into the icy blast. A full five minutes passed before I felt cool enough to turn the heat up.
I’d assumed that that would be the extent of the physical activity for the evening, but Ash had a surprise for me when I reappeared dressed in clean black clothes. He met me in the foyer of the training building where the wooden practice weapons lined the walls.
“You have a challenge tonight.” He led the way down the corridor, and this time, he stopped at the iron-bound door I’d noticed the night he’d locked me up in here. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door, summoning faelight as he did so. The light bloomed and spread across the ceiling, revealing a room lined with weapons that were far more lethal than the wooden ones outside.
The sharp blades of swords glinted from racks on one wall. A whole arsenal of knives and throwing stars bristled on another. The far wall held staves, cudgels, maces, and all manner of other weaponry, some of which I had never seen before. I looked around in amazement. There were no guns, of course, but there were still enough weapons here to outfit a small army. Or a large force of assassins.
“Choose your weapon.”
Surprised, I glanced at him. “You’re letting me have a real weapon? What kind of challenge is this?”
“You will be expected to make your way through the woods and retrieve a box from the shrine in the centre.”
A shrine to the Lady? I was surprised the Vipers even had one. Maybe they used it for target practice. “That doesn’t sound so hard. What do I need the weapon for?”
“There will be some obstacles.”
“Okay. Obstacles like bushes that I have to cut my way through?” I eyed a pair of machetes thoughtfully. “Or something I need to climb over?”
“Two hunters will be in the woods.”
“Hunting what?” When he raised an eyebrow, I groaned. “Hunting me?”
This challenge was sounding more unappealing by the minute.
He didn’t reply, only bared his teeth in that fierce grimace that passed for a smile with him. I turned back to the walls of weapons. Which one would help me the most if I was being hunted? Or if someone were lying in wait for me?
I eyed the row of staves longingly. The staff was one of my best weapons, and I felt pretty confident that no hunter would get the best of me if I had one. But there was the fact that this was all to take place in the woods to consider. How closely did the trees grow together? How thick was the underbrush? I might not have room to swing a staff properly.
“Can I have more than one weapon?”
He shook his head. “Only one. Choose wisely.”
Wow, thanks, Sensei. Some help he was. Still, it wasn’t as if these hunters were actually going to try to kill me, was it?
I hesitated in front of the racks of knives, but in the end, I picked a short bow and a quiver full of arrows. They’d be no use in hand-to-hand fighting, but if it came to hand-to-hand combat with two hunters at once, I was pretty much screwed. Better to keep a little distance.
I hefted the bow in my hand, getting a feel for its weight and balance. “You’re really going to let me shoot other Vipers?” What if I killed someone? I mean, I wouldn’t be shedding any tears, but you’d think Lord Celebrach wouldn’t be too impressed.
“If an untrained apprentice manages to kill a full Viper, then that person had no business being a Viper in the first place.” Again, he flashed that unsettling grin. “I doubt our hunters will be in any danger from you.”
We’d see about that. I felt a perverse desire to kill both of them, just to prove that I could. And maybe I would. Two less Vipers in the world wasn’t exactly a bad thing. And if I wouldn’t get into trouble for killing them, so much the better.
Out in the woods, I felt less sure of myself.
Ash led me just inside the tree line and stopped. “The shrine is north of us and slightly east, in the centre of the woods. It’s small,” he warned. “Don’t expect a large building. It’s easy to overlook.”
I shifted the bow to my other hand and wiped a sweaty palm on my pants. “So I just have to get this box and meet you back here?”
“That’s all.”
I took a deep breath. “Wish me luck.”
“Vipers don’t rely on luck,” he said reprovingly.
“Killjoy,” I muttered as I set off into the forest.
“If you’re not back here by sunrise you are deemed to have failed,” he called after me.
Man, he was just a little ray of sunshine, wasn’t he? I didn’t look back.
There was a hint of a trail at first, but that quickly petered out. Not for the first time, I regretted that the Vipers didn’t run on a diurnal schedule. My night vision was good, but not a lot of moonlight made it past the thick canopy of branches overhead. I’d spent hours in the midnight woods growing up, but the trees on Lord Thistle’s estate had grown further apart than these and, of course, I hadn’t been afraid to summon faelight. I’d be a fool to do that here; it would make me a sitting duck for whoever was watching for me.
So far, I’d seen no sign of the hunters, though I was on high alert, scanning the shadows and moving as silently as I could. That probably wasn’t as silently as a trained assassin, which wasn’t a comforting thought. But I pressed on, an arrow loosely nocked in my bow, ready for anything. It was a small bow—and just as well, considering how tangled the undergrowth was in places. Hard as I tried, it was impossible to be completely quiet as I shoved my way through bushes and tangles of branches.
How big were these woods, anyway? The view from the upper stories of the main building had suggested they only covered a handful of acres, but perhaps that had been misleading. It had been past midnight when I’d entered, and now it was closer to two, judging by the position of the moon—I’d left my watch in the change room—and I had the sinking feeling that I still had a long way to go to reach the shrine.
I couldn’t even be sure that I hadn’t gotten turned around. I could be heading back the way I’d come or in the completely opposite direction from the one I should be travelling in. If only one of Raven’s birds were here to show me the way, as they’d done that time that he and Allegra were lost in the Wilds. But the chances of any birds from the outside world making it past the sith’s wards in one piece were slim to none. Clearly, the only reason that I’d survived my trespassing was because of Ishitil and his stupid recruitment practices.
I paused at the foot of a large pine. It was so big there was a small clear space all around it where its branches had blocked the light, choking out any saplings that had tried to grow beneath it. Pines were easy to climb, and maybe an aerial view would help. I put the arrow back into my quiver, slung the bow awkwardly over one shoulder, and began to climb.
I had a bad moment when the bow got tangled in an overhanging branch and I was pulled off balance. My foot slipped, and I had visions of plummeting to the forest floor, my challenge over and my dreams of
bringing the Vipers down as dead as my splattered corpse. I took a moment, clinging to the sticky trunk and breathing heavily to calm myself before I finished the climb. When I’d gone as high as I dared, I settled myself on a branch and parted the needles before my face, looking out across the treetops.
It was a depressing view. No buildings broke the trees in any direction. Ash had said the shrine was only small, but I’d still hoped for some sign. There was a break in the trees not far from me that suggested a creek or path of some sort. My money was on a creek, since the Vipers were unlikely to make it easy for their apprentices by building paths in the middle of the forest.
As far as I could tell in the dark, the creek cut all the way across the forest, neatly bisecting it. Was that one of the obstacles that Ash had mentioned? But how hard could it be to wade across a creek? I wouldn’t even care if I had to swim it, though keeping my bowstring dry would be a problem. But I could probably throw the bow across first.
I sat there a long time, perhaps ten or fifteen minutes, trying to come up with some smart way to short-circuit this whole challenge. What if I left the forest the way I’d come and circled around to re-enter from the other side? The hunters wouldn’t be expecting that.
If I were one of the hunters, I’d save myself a lot of trouble and just set up an ambush at the shrine. These guys were pros—presumably at least one of them would do that, meaning that there was no point in trying to be too tricky. I just had to find the shrine and then assess the lay of the land.
I began my descent, thinking grumpy thoughts about assassins and their stupid challenges. What was the point of it, anyway? To see how quietly I could move in the woods? It wasn’t as if that many of an assassin’s targets would be hanging out in the woods, after all. Fae loved their woodland settings, but most of them lived in actual houses.
Was it just an excuse to shoot me full of arrows and get rid of me? That was probably too paranoid. After all, Ash could have killed me instead of taking me as an apprentice. Why bother with the charade of the apprenticeship if they only meant to kill me a couple of days later? Yet I’d been feeling a prickle of alarm ever since he’d mentioned the hunters. Their weapons would likely be just as real as mine. Would they use them against me? I bet Nuah, for one, would leap at the chance. Surely they were only meant to make my life difficult, not end it.
And what of their magic? If a Spring fae was hunting me, I was completely screwed. They’d be able to turn the whole forest against me—I could be lashed by branches, dragged underground by roots or strangled by vines. Nuah’s trick with the dead pine branch would be child’s play in comparison.
If I’d had some damn Spring magic of my own, I could have used such tricks against them. I had adored my mother, but my father had proved himself to be a complete bastard. And his genetic materials were as big a waste of space as he was himself. But there was no point dwelling on it now—I’d had years to get used to finding other ways around my limitations. Time to focus on what I was doing, or risk a significantly shorter future.
I stopped when I was nearly down to the ground again. I could see back the way I’d come a little distance—and, speak of the devil, there was Nuah, moving silent as a ghost through the trees towards me.
19
My fingers clenched on the bow and I had to force them to relax. She hadn’t seen me descending. She was looking ahead, scanning the path that I had followed through the bushes, but she wasn’t looking up.
This was my chance. I could shoot her and she would never know what had hit her.
Slowly, I moved the bow to my left hand and reached over my shoulder for an arrow. I didn’t want the movement to attract her attention, but there was enough foliage between us that I was fairly sure she wouldn’t notice. When I had the arrow nocked, I sighted along it, the arrowhead never wavering.
I aimed at her heart; I could drop her dead right now. And yet … I didn’t. I had shot those two assassins in Willow’s sith without a moment’s hesitation, but that had been self-defence. They had invaded our home, intent on killing us, and I knew it was kill or be killed. In the heat of the moment, I’d had no qualms about taking their lives.
Even in Celebrach’s study when I’d tried to shoot both him and Ash, I’d had no trouble pulling the trigger. I’d thought my choices were shoot or die. Those kinds of options tended to clarify my thinking marvellously.
But now … Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t like Nuah one bit, and was perfectly prepared to believe that the world would be a better place without her in it. But picking her off in cold blood from the safety of my perch, with her unaware that I was even there, and when I wasn’t even sure that she meant me serious harm ... It was surprisingly hard to let that arrow go.
Don’t be such a bloody idiot, I told myself. She had Autumn magic, and she’d already proved her willingness to use it against me. She was carrying a bow, and who knew what other weaponry was concealed beneath her clothes. That bow wasn’t for decoration; she’d come into the woods hunting, and her prey was me. I’d be a fool to let this chance to even up the odds against me go to waste. But this was only a challenge—surely the hunters weren’t actually allowed to kill me? But they were still assassins.
I let the arrow fly.
She was so close it should have found its mark in her heart, but it struck her in the fleshy part of the shoulder. She fell, crashing back into the bushes out of sight.
Heart thumping, I grabbed another arrow and nocked it, but she didn’t reappear. Damn. What now? Had she heard the twang of the bowstring being released, or had my hesitation thrown my aim off?
I waited, but there was no sound from the bushes where she’d fallen, no rustling, no shivering of leaves. Was it a trap? My teeth worried at my lip as I hesitated.
I rammed the arrow back into its quiver and scurried down the tree as fast as I could, keeping the bulk of the trunk between me and her. I moved so quickly I couldn’t help making noise, but no arrows or throwing stars or knives greeted me, no blasts of withering Autumn magic, and I reached the ground unscathed.
I should hurry over there and finish her off, but my stomach rebelled at the thought. Yes, I had killed before, but I was no hardened killer. The thought of taking out a wounded woman at close quarters revolted me. Besides, I told myself as I hurried away, she was only wounded, not dead, and that meant she was still dangerous. Perhaps she was keeping so still in the hopes that I would do just that, ready to attack as soon as I appeared.
Well, I wasn’t falling for that. I headed in the direction of the creek I’d seen, moving faster than before. The knowledge that I had an assassin right behind me, even if she was wounded, urged me on. My shoulder blades prickled with unease.
But even if she was still in the game, she’d have to take some time to get the arrow out and bind up the wound before she could resume the chase. I’d make sure I was far away before then.
When I reached the creek, I found it wider and deeper than I’d hoped. Too wide—here, at least—to jump it, and somehow, now that I was standing on the bank, swimming didn’t seem so attractive anymore. The black water glittered in the moonlight, but I couldn’t see into its depths, which made me more than a little reluctant to take the plunge. This was a sith, a piece of the Realms broken off. There wouldn’t be any crocodiles, but there could be things much worse. My arrows would be little protection against one of the drowning fae, who liked to lurk in bodies of water much like this and drag unwary animals or travellers to a watery grave.
There was nothing to do but head along the creek, hoping to find a bridge or a place that was narrow enough to jump.
That turned out to be a lot harder than I had hoped, as the bank was steep and treacherous. More than once, I slipped as I was clambering over logs and forcing my way through the bushes clustered along the edge of the creek with their roots eagerly seeking the water. After a while, I moved farther back into the trees, keeping the creek on my left hand as I walked. I was still heading roughly east, if I hadn’
t lost my bearings completely. Ash had said the shrine was a little east of where I had started.
I was well and truly beaten up by the time the creek narrowed, a mass of bruises and scratches from forcing my way through the vegetation. I’d fallen a couple of times, losing my footing in the dark, but it couldn’t be helped. I sucked on a particularly nasty scratch on the back of my hand while I considered my options.
I would need a bit of a running start, but I was confident I could make the distance. The problem was that there was no clear landing space on the far side, where the bank was even steeper than it was on this side, eroded away to a sheer, unforgiving drop into the water. The trees on the far side crowded right up against the place where the bank dropped away, jostling each other for room, their branches hanging out over the water.
That gave me an idea. Rather than trying for the bank itself, I could jump out and catch a branch.
No sooner said than done. I made my bow as secure as I could over my shoulder, took a few steps back, and powered forward.
The night air rushed across my skin as I flew across the creek, momentarily weightless, hands outstretched. I caught the branch with a jolt and used my momentum to swing my body up and get my legs wrapped around the limb as well. I hung there a moment, my bow dangling from my shoulder, almost skimming the black surface. Hanging there, I had a sudden vision of a hand reaching out of the water, grabbing hold of the bow, and pulling me down. Two of my arrows fell from my quiver before I could stop them.
Heart racing, I hauled myself up onto the branch, grateful for all those hours in the gym building core and upper body strength, then wriggled along until I reached the safety of the trunk. From there, it was a moment’s work until my feet were safely planted once again on the forest floor.
I peered back across the creek, but nothing was stirring on the other side. If Nuah was following me, there was no sign. I turned and plunged into the dark forest. It would be just my luck if there was a bridge beyond the curve of the creek, but hopefully the water would slow her down, too, assuming she was still on my trail. With any luck, she was bleeding out in the bushes instead.
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