3. Weapons Engineering #2
I braced for a fight. Or to run. I wasn’t in good condition to do either, but we’d been spotted and wouldn’t have much of a choice.
However, the man must’ve wanted an altercation as much as we did, because he staggered to his feet and fell back in line.
Ciarán kept his fingers around mine until the last of the Breachriver soldiers had passed through the clearing. He didn’t move until the sounds of their sleds dragging through snow had disappeared into the trees.
Sabrina was on her feet first, charging into the clearing where soft snow was now compacted and muddy.
“We attack them from behind.” She shook out her shoulder and the wooden arms of a crossbow deployed from her leather bracer. Orange magick sparked between its ends to form a crackling bowstring of Skal. “Pick them off one by one.”
“No.” Ciarán studied the tracks in the snow and then stared through the trees in the direction the men had come. “We go back to Sorcha and Aoife.”
“But the Saergrim—”
“The Saergrim isn’t going to be bothered by a few dozen ill-prepared men from Breachriver. They won’t be able to get through the storm any better than Ferrin or Tamora.” He turned to watch Orla help pull me from the bushes. “Besides, the Sovereigns aren’t safe out here. We should return.”
“Fine. Take them back to Sorcha. I don’t need your help.”
“Sabrina.” Ciarán’s gentle warning seemed to set her on edge further.
Her curls flew around her face as she whirled to face him with fists aflame. “This is our home! Or have you been running across the continent playing savior too long to remember that?”
“A troupe of dead men in the woods will only bring the wrong kind of attention to the area.” Ciarán beckoned for Orla and me to follow him across the clearing in the direction of Sorcha’s hovel.
“Daithi would do it.”
Ciarán stopped but kept his back to Sabrina. “Daithi is dead. Just because you stepped up to take my cousin’s place as a Grimguard doesn’t mean you need to do the same stupid things he used to do.”
Sabrina’s fires flashed as her temper flared. “You dare—”
“Sabrina,” I said. Sabrina spun to face me, fires still blazing. Orla’s steadying grip on my arm tightened. “Stop.”
Her eyes widened at my apparent nerve. “Stay out of this, Keldorian.”
“You have to obey me, don’t you?” I asked. “You’re a Grimguard, but I’m a Saergrim, so I’m technically in charge.”
Her nostrils flared beneath her cowl. We’d almost been friends in Keldori until an ill-timed panic attack ruined that possibility. She was looking at me the same way she had then, with apathetic loathing.
“You don’t know anything about us,” Sabrina finally hissed. “You don’t know anything about our people, our land, or what’s at stake.”
“It doesn’t really matter, does it? Because you still answer to me. And if Ciarán says we go back to Sorcha and Aoife, then that’s what we’ll do. All of us.”
Sabrina’s lips pressed together, and I braced for her to shoot more of her orange magick at me.
However, she flicked her arm and her crossbow collapsed back into her bracer. She gave me a stiff bow of the head and trudged passed me in the direction of the hideout.
“As you wish, Saergrim,” she grunted.
I leaned against Orla, but Ciarán appeared on my other side.
“I’ve got her,” he insisted. Orla cast me an uncertain glance.
“It’s fine,” I said. “Go see if you can calm Sabrina down. She seems to like you more than she does anyone else.”
“Only because she feels bad about shooting me.” Orla walked ahead but placed a hand over her ribs where Sabrina’s arrow had pierced straight through her lung just a few short weeks ago.
“I had Sabrina handled.” Ciarán’s words reeked of a reprimand, and I rolled my eyes.
“Clearly.”
“You don’t need to undermine me.”
“I think what you mean to say is ‘Wow, thank you, my Lady, for solving the problem at hand and stopping my friend from murdering several dozen men in the forest. Thank Skal you were here’. Or whatever.”
“You told me not to call you ‘my Lady’, and ‘Thank Skal’ isn’t a thing.”
“I will throw you off this mountain. Do not tempt me.”
“With your broken ribs and half-assed flails? I’m absolutely quivering, my Lady.”
“You guys say ‘half-assed’ here?”
“No. I must’ve picked that up in Keldori. Your people have such a crude way of speaking.”
I had half a mind to shove him away, but my bouts against Sabrina, if they could be considered that, had left me sore and aching. Besides, I was eager to get back to the hovel, and if leaning against Ciarán meant getting there faster, then so be it.
The trees thinned as we walked, and usually I’d be grateful for less forest, but after seeing the men in the woods, I felt more exposed and vulnerable.
“I’m serious about undermining me,” Ciarán growled as we passed beneath a tree that bowed under the weight of collected snow. “I can handle Sabrina.”
“I know Sabrina. No one handles her.”
“You know a version of Sabrina.”
I watched Sabrina’s strawberry curls bounce in time with her stride. Orla spoke animatedly next to her, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying, nor did Sabrina seem to be engaging back.
“She’s the only one of you who had the same name in Keldori,” I said. “I think I might know her better than I know any of you.”
“Even me, Blue?”
I gave a dry laugh that my ribs protested against. While nearly everything about Sabrina was the same as her Nightmare form in Keldori, Ciarán couldn’t be more different.
“I don’t know you at all.” I braced for whatever smart response Ciarán had waiting for me, but instead, his voice lowered, and his grip on my arm tightened.
“That’s too bad. I would’ve liked to have heard about that version of me.”
“Ask Sorcha. She was closer to you than I was.”
“I think we were closer than you’re admitting.”
Heat flushed my cheeks. “We were just coworkers.”
“I held you as you fell asleep. Is that common practice for coworkers in Keldori?”
Of all the days he’d spent as Liam, I hated that those last twenty-four hours were the only ones he remembered. I shoved him away and stumbled after Sabrina and Orla with an arm braced over my aching ribs.
“Is that a no?” Ciarán laughed in my head.
“Do you remember this?” I reached backwards to show off my middle finger.
“Oh, yes. You showed me that one here. I remember it very well.”
We passed beyond the tree line, and midnight wind bit at my face.
The mountainside offered a stunning view of the night sky, but Gams’s storm swallowed the stars nearest the horizon.
In the other direction, dual moonlight glinted off the sloped, snow-covered eaves of Sorcha and Aoife’s hovel where it nestled at the foot of the cliff.
Warm light spilled out around the rim of the door that led to the main hall.
I quickened my step, eager to warm up next to the hearth, and I stumbled on the slick pathway. Ciarán grabbed my arm to steady me, but I pulled away from his grip.
“I’m fine.”
His cowl muffled his exasperated sigh. “Only you could manage to be so proud after getting so thoroughly thrashed for the last several hours.”
“It’s not my fault Sabrina was more interested in blowing me up than she was in actually teaching me anything.”
“Excuses,” Ciarán grunted.
My temper, fueled by the pain in my ribs and the threat of Gams’s storm raging over the distant bay, flared. I spun to face Ciarán with a blue flail in hand, swung the weapon, and it shattered against his shield of orange.
“That’s not—” I started, but he cut me off with a hand pressed against my mouth. He pulled his cowl down and let it hang loose around his neck.
“Not fair?” he finished for me. I jerked my head away from his hand, but he scoffed. “Go ahead, Blue. Make your excuses. It’s your world and your family on the line.”
He stalked past me to continue up the path alone, leaving me to fume in the bitter wind.
My temper got the best of me, but in my defense, he absolutely deserved it.
Skalmagick heated me from the inside and burst outwards in an array of blue. Ciarán staggered backwards to avoid the attack, landing on his backside with an infuriatingly coy smile on his face.
“My grandmother is about to be buried by volcanoes, and you think I don’t understand what’s at stake?” I sent another burst of raw energy at him, but he was ready this time and cut through the attack from the ground with an orange staff.
“There she is!” he crooned. “The Saergrim we’re all supposed to fear. You have the power to wield Skal, you just need the intention.”
“Get over yourself.” I limped forward, trying not to betray how the expulsion of magick had upset my stomach. The taste of pennies danced at the back of my throat. Great. My ulcers were acting up.
“Sorry, I thought you wanted to be taught.”
“I want you to leave me—”
A distant rumble, low and deep, reverberated through the cliffside, silencing the surrounding mountains.
I stared up at the looming peaks as a rippling wave coursed through the treetops, shaking them loose of their snow and leaving the forests dark.
The rumbling grew louder, and my panicked confusion gave way to stark understanding when the ground disappeared from beneath my feet.
Ciarán fell on top of me, taking care to cover my head, as we rode out the earthquake in the icy dirt.
The mountains were waking up.