Chapter 10 Aurora
AURORA
The world is a blur of noise and violence. The clatter of the cart’s wooden wheels on the last of the city cobblestones gives way to the deep, sucking thud of mud as we smash through the North Gate.
Othic roars, a wordless sound of agony and triumph, and whips the reins with his one good arm.
I'm thrown back against a pile of stiff, chemically-cured taura hides. The stench is a dead, salty smell that mixes with the hot, coppery reek of Othic’s blood.
He is a hard mountain of muscle in front of me, his massive body shielding me from the arrows that are already flying.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Black-fletched bolts slam into the wood of the cart’s siding, inches from my head. I scream, burying my face in the stiff, stinking hides.
We're moving so fast the cart threatens to tip, lurching and sliding in the mud, but we are out. The dark, oppressive walls of Eelry are behind us, swallowed by the night. We are in the wild.
We are alive. He did it. He got me out.
But the shouting behind us is not fading. It is changing. The sound of running feet is being replaced by the rhythmic, terrifying thunder of hoofbeats.
"They are coming!" I scream, scrambling to my knees.
I look back. Through the darkness, I can see them—four, no, five dark shapes on horseback, easily gaining on our clumsy, heavy cart. Krell. He is in the lead, his pale elven hair a banner in the moonlight.
"Faster!" I beg, but Othic does not answer.
He is slumping.
His massive body sways in the driver's seat, his grip on the reins slackening. The poison. The blood loss. It is too much. The taura pulling us is panicked, but it is tiring, and his one-armed whipping is not enough.
"Othic!" I cry, crawling forward, grabbing his arm. His skin is cold, clammy, despite the heat of his exertion.
An arrow hisses past my ear and slams into the rump of the taura. The beast screams, a high, terrified sound, and bolts, but it is a lurch of panic, not a burst of speed.
Krell and his men are laughing. I can hear it now, a faint, cruel sound carried on the wind. They are toying with us. They know he is wounded. They are just running the beast to ground before they move in for the kill.
He is dying. He is bleeding out, and I am watching.
"Hold on," Othic growls, his voice a low rasp.
He yanks the reins hard, not slowing, but turning the cart sharply off the main road. The cart slams into a ditch, tilting at a horrifying angle, but Othic’s weight keeps it from flipping. We crash through a line of brittle trees and into the swampy, sucking mire of the Worg Bog.
The horses behind us balk, whinnying in panic as their hooves sink into the mud.
"He is taking us into the bog!" Krell’s voice is a distant, furious shriek. "Spread out! Find the ridge line! Head him off!"
The taura strains, its hooves finding purchase in the mud where the horses cannot. The cart slows to a grinding, sucking crawl, but it is still moving. He is a genius. The horses cannot follow us here.
But the ground is changing. The soft mud gives way to hard, slick stone. The trees are thinning. I can smell... nothing. Just cold, empty air. Mist.
Othic raises his head, his senses, even dulled by poison, screaming a warning. He yanks on the reins, pulling the taura to a skidding, terrible halt.
The beast digs in its hooves, its panicked eyes rolling as the cart slides, the front wheels stopping inches from a sheer, black void.
A cliff.
The bog path is a dead end.
My breath seizes in my chest. It is over. He is trapped. They will kill him, and then they will drag me back to Privis.
No. I will not go back. I look down into the misty, bottomless canyon. I will jump. I will jump before I let them touch me.
Hoofbeats, slow and confident, sound behind us. Krell and his four mercenaries emerge from the trees, fanning out in a relaxed semi-circle, cutting off all escape. The trap is sprung.
"It is over, Tusk!" Krell’s voice is smug, victorious. He dismounts, his boots clicking on the stone as he approaches, his sword drawn. "Nowhere to run. Give us the girl, and I will make your death clean. My personal promise."
Othic is slumped over the reins, his breathing a wet, ragged sound. He is done. He is finished.
He lifts his head. He looks at Krell, at the line of mercenaries. Then he looks at me.
His amber eyes are glazed with pain, a dark, muddy film covering the fire. But beneath it, a spark ignites. A new, desperate, insane idea.
He does not look over at Krell again. He just looks at me. His bloody lips pull back from his tusks, not in a snarl, but in something else. A grimace of a pure, final gamble.
He looks past the edge, down the cliff face. His eyes lock on something in the mist that I cannot see.
"Trust me!" he bellows, his voice a raw, cracked roar.
Before Krell can react, Othic roars again, this time at the taura, and slashes the reins, sending the beast into a final, terrified panic. He turns the cart, hard.
Toward the cliff.
The cart lurches forward, directly toward the open air. The taura screams, its hooves scrambling on the slick stone.
Krell shouts, his voice a mix of confusion and triumph. "He is killing himself!"
"Now!" Othic roars.
He does not just push me. He grabs me. His one good arm, a band of steel, wraps around my
waist and hauls me from the seat.
He does not jump down. He jumps out, leaping from the side of the cart with all his remaining strength, aiming for the spot in the mist.
We sail through the air for a heart-stopping second, a tangle of orc and human, and then we crash.
We slam onto a narrow, hidden ledge, a deep, overgrown crack in the cliff-face masked by the heavy mist from a waterfall below. Thorns and branches rip at my clothes, but the rocky ground is solid beneath me.
The cart and the screaming taura do not stop. They go sailing out into the black, misty void.
I am tangled on the ledge, my heart stopped. I hear the taura's high-pitched wail fade... fade... fade... followed by a distant, shattering crash of wood and bone on the rocks hundreds of feet below.
Silence.
I peek through the thorns, my body shaking. Krell and his mercenaries are at the cliff's edge, peering down into the darkness.
"Hah!" one of them shouts. "The beast killed himself! And the girl with him!"
Krell sheathes his sword. "Good. Saves us the trouble. Privis gets his justice, and we get a bonus. Let's go. Eelry's filth can have what's left of them."
They laugh. They actually laugh. They wheel their horses around and ride away, back toward the city.
I am alone, tangled in a bush, on a hidden ledge, next to a massive, bleeding, and now-unconscious orc.
But...
But they are gone. They think we are dead.
We are free.