Chapter 68 #2
A soldier steps up to Noeve’s side, his helmet shielding all but his thin mouth, nose, and the red bead dangling from his ear.
Piercing green eyes fix on us.
“To what do we owe the pleasure?” Noeve pulls on her stick, looking right at the soldier as she blows a smoggy breath free, dousing him.
It’s hard not to smile.
He bats at the smoke, passing an uninterested glance over Kaan and myself. “You headed to Gore?”
“Nearabouts,” Noeve says. “I have feathers from my slaughtered flock that I’m hoping to sell.”
“The city is already at capacity. We’ll require three pouches of bloodstone for your passage in. Precautions, of course, in case you don’t leave before the fall.”
Three pouches? Precautions?
What a load of spangle shit.
Noeve stares at him for a long, tense moment, then clicks her tongue and lifts the lid on the compartment by her feet. She pulls out three bulging brown pouches of bloodstone and hands them over.
Though she’s quick to replace the lid, the soldier’s beady eyes are quicker. “We’ll take whatever else is in there, too.”
I go to tug my dagger from its sheath, only to find Kaan’s hand clamped firmly around my wrist.
Rude.
Teeth gritted, I loosen my fingers, hoping he can feel the displeasure I’m radiating.
“Be my guest,” Noeve says, her tone almost passable for loyal servitude. “There’s nothing I enjoy more than lining our king’s pockets.”
The soldier pins her with a fierce glare, receiving pouch after pouch of bloodstone. “Your belongings will now be scoured for stowaways,” he snips out, as if we didn’t just pay for the passage of thirteen folk. At least.
He and three other soldiers move around the cart without invitation or approval.
“Folk these daes,” Noeve mutters, flicking the butt-end of her smoke stick, dashing ash into the now-churning wind. “They’re all a bunch of mannerless shit scoops, if you ask me.”
Puffy, stabbing sounds come to us, suggesting the soldiers are hard at work slaughtering Noeve’s plump, feather-filled sacks.
Brow raised, I look sidelong at Kaan.
He clears his throat.
There’s the sound of material ripping before a burst of feathers whip through the air like an eddy of snow.
Noeve sighs and pinches another smoke stick from a pouch at her hip, lighting the end with a weald. “Shit-eating bastards,” she says, dragging deep while slaughtering the guards on the other side of the gate with a honed glare.
Clode spins and flicks about with the feathers, dancing to her own tune while the soldiers finish their search, finally moving forward. One jerks his chin at us. “Get up so we can check beneath the seat.”
This is getting tiresome.
Kaan’s the first to climb down despite their shit manners, feigning a limp—which does nothing to soften his immense presence, but I appreciate the effort. He moves around the back of the cart and helps a grumbling, bow-spined Noeve down from her seat.
I follow, positioning myself so I have a good view of every soldier. The perfect vantage point to watch Noeve’s cushions get flung to the ground.
I wince.
Clode whips into a shriller, squealier dance, flicking feathers about like it’s a celebration. The tingly anticipation shooting through me suggests things are about to get much more interesting for her.
Kaan moves beside me as the board is removed, the compartment beneath tousled through, not that Noeve seems to carry many belongings bar some jerky, spare smoke sticks, and another three pouches of bloodstone the guards are quick to stash in the back of their own cart.
“They’re clear,” a soldier yells, and they all retreat from the cart like they’re abandoning a freshly torn-up carcass. Showing no inclination to clean up their mess.
Kaan and I are just moving forward to begin picking up the cushions when the faintest squawk comes from the cart.
Heart in my throat, I slice my stare through the contingent, all narrow-eyed, looking between each other. Then to us.
Another shrill, hungry squark seals their fates.
“Beneath the floorboards,” one of them shouts. “They’re hiding something!”
Clode shoves back my hood, like tossing me onto a stage while she languishes in the wing, giggling like the chaos queen she is.
A soldier goes wide-eyed, pointing at me. “That’s the Ath bitch! I watched her get eaten!”
I sigh.
That shit’s gonna follow me everywhere.
“Hail ui, Clode, gail arr enuin. Shuie!”
Feathers gather to take the lithe, ethereal shape of Clode jumping up and down, clapping, squealing with glee.
She dances toward the soldier, flicks around with a lash of her gusty hair, and slaps him so hard he pelts off the path like a tossed stone.
His dense scream is short-lived as he plummets through the mist, and my hands are already moving, sinking a blade into the eye of a nearby soldier before he even has a chance to process what he just witnessed.
Blood sprays, dousing the colk—nonchalant as she chews cud.
Kaan manages to get Noeve sheltered behind the cart, just powering back into the throng when hissing words streak at me—
I whip around, seeing the green-eyed soldier has a weald open, flames heaving from the tip.
They ribbon toward me like a lashed rope.
Kaan leaps from a spear of stone punching up from the ground, seething through a sentence that veers the flaming threat before it has a chance to snap at me, instead wrapping around the male who charmed it into existence.
He ignites. Becomes a towering inferno of bloodcurdling screams.
I avert my gaze as the rope of flames tightens so much he rips in two. Like Ignos just took both halves in his flaming fists and tore.
More blood sprays.
The smell of burnt flesh fills my nostrils, but I stuff my fear down. Hone it into a weapon of freshly forged rage, then jerk another dagger free, opening my mental sound snare far enough to welcome Bulder’s song.
“RUTHIN UT AHN, ATAH!”
The words leave a grated trail, like I just vomited shafts of stone. Probably because I forgot to tighten my neck muscles first.
Four wonky spears shoot from the ground, up through the guards stationed on the gate’s far side, plowing through bodies to the tune of gurgling screams and choked, wet breaths.
In the same instance, Kaan launches forward and hacks into the neck of a male surging toward me, sword raised.
One hefty swipe that looks so effortless, yet it’s enough to leave the male’s head wobbling.
Toppling.
It barely hits the ground before Kaan boots it with such gusto it rolls all the way to the edge and plummets into oblivion. The soldier’s body falls to the ground between us, armor clattering.
I turn, scanning the mess of skewered and hacked-up bodies dashed across the path, bleeding out into the muddy snow—some still twitching through their final motions.
We got them all.
Heaving breath through my grated throat, I see Kaan’s hood is shoved back, his face sprayed in blood that’s dripping from his beard. He looks straight into my eyes, and the fierce intensity of his molten stare almost knocks the wind from my lungs.
I stuff my blades away. “This was much more enjoyable than being stabbed to death in a feather sack.”
He grunts, moves toward another lifeless corpse, and smashes his sword through his neck, splashing himself in more blood. “You shaped spears,” he says, jerking his chin at my handiwork on the other side of the gate.
I scowl at them while Kaan continues his ceremonial decapitations, no two spears the same size or thickness. One was way off course, impaling a soldier straight through the base of his skull.
Guess my coordination still needs work.
I point. “I was aiming to shaft him up the ass until it burst out his brain. I’ll try harder next time.” I turn away before Kaan has a chance to respond, scanning the heavily runed, very closed gate. “I hope Ahvi can break us through that.”
His muffled voice comes from the cart. “No problem!”
Wonderful.
Noeve’s clambering back up, having already grabbed her stolen bloodstone and pieced the seat back together, lined with the only cushion that didn’t end up covered in muck. Kaan and I manage a single step forward before she whirls around, spearing us through with a storm-cloud stare. “No.”
We stop.
A skein of water thunks onto the ground, chased by another, before two brown cloths dash through the air and flutter to our feet.
“Rinse first.”
I’m about to argue when Kaan shakes his head in warning, drops to a knee, and gathers the supplies. “She’s more likely to boot you off the Path than she is to let you on like that.”
Right.
I take a cloth and skein. “Cold sponge bath it is.”
Noeve pulls out the half-spent smoke stick she must’ve tucked behind her ear at some stage, pinches it between her lips, then blazes the end. “And you’re both buying me new cushions!” she belts out with a puff of smoke.