39. One Foot After the Other #2
They dragged Etiana out of the tree. For a moment, she lay curled on the ground, a hand over her ankle in a useless attempt to shield it. One of the Red Guard stuck his toe beneath her shoulder and flipped her over.
“Get away from her,” Rerdas choked. He had barely enough breath to speak, let alone shout.
Hize laughed. He tilted his chin up, smoothed his hair back from his face, and took a deep, satisfied breath. As though he could taste his victory, and Rerdas’s dread.
“Wester should have followed my lead. I knew you sneaking little rats had found a way out of Kirinoll. But none of them listened to me, did they?” Hize said. His gaze fastened on Etiana. “No matter. Better this way. Kuraya will finally see what I can do.”
“She won’t,” Etiana panted. “You’ve failed. She doesn’t want us, you idiot. She wants my mother. And you’ll never catch her.”
Rerdas’s pulse felt as if it spiked behind his eyes. They were alone in the forest with no one to help them, both ruined with exhaustion and pain, and she was poking a whip-wielding beast in the eye.
“I’ll catch her. I caught you, didn’t I?” Hize’s gaze darted around the trees, as though he expected to see Uralta peeking out from behind a nearby branch.
Rerdas closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing. First, slower breaths. Slower thoughts.
There were only four guards with Hize. Three swords and a spear, plus the decorative piece of shit Hize wore.
His mouth trembled as he realized whose voice was growling in his head.
These were Imalroc’s thoughts. The battleboxer would calculate his odds exactly this way.
And Eternals damn him, he probably could take on all of them.
But Rerdas was no battleboxer. He could barely stand, let alone fight off five trained enemies. And even if he and Etiana somehow broke free, they couldn’t outrun the dogs.
No, they would have to wait. Gather strength while they were hauled back to the town. Pray someone would see them and be willing to help. And if they were taken all the way back to Kirinoll, he would have to place the last dregs of precious hope in Hassindra.
“Lord Hize,” one guard began in a low voice. Rerdas felt a dull pang of recognition. The man from the stable, the one he had seen earlier on. “We are dangerously far south. There are rumors of southern patrols.”
“Be calm, we’ve won our prize and will return to the Midlands.” Hize flexed his fingers in his gloves. “We’ll carry on through the night if we must.”
Two of the guards exchanged a glance.
Hize caught it too and scowled. “It wasn’t a suggestion. Move.”
Rerdas let his limbs go limp when the guards tried to stand him up. One of them swatted his shoulder impatiently, but the pain shot through him and only made it easier to flop back to the ground. The other two had lifted Etiana up completely and were trying to carry her up the hill.
Hize strode ahead with the dogs. “Hurry!” he shouted back at the guards.
Rerdas let his feet and legs drag over the earth, colliding with the guards’ ankles as often as possible. Their labored breaths came out in puffs.
“This isn’t—” one of them muttered, but her partner cut her off with a swift shake of his head. He was not quick enough.
Hize strode back to stand toe-to-toe with the guard. The dogs milled at his heels. “You question my order?”
“No, my lord, never,” the woman said. “It’s just that… this seems a bit…” She quailed beneath Hize’s glare.
“You find yourself overwhelmed by this scrawny, half-flayed rat?” He jabbed a finger into Rerdas’s chest. “Is he putting up too much of a fight for you?”
“No, my lord.”
Hize shifted his fevered gaze to Rerdas. “That's right. No fight at all. Positively spineless, aren’t you, Toriem?”
Rerdas stared at Hize’s boots. He recalled the sound of Hize’s nose crunching beneath his knuckles, and the spray of blood. He balled both hands into fists and let that sound fill his ears to block Hize’s words.
“Look at me, Master Toriem.” Hize’s voice took on the same lilting tone from the Wishing Well. “I could kill you here and carry your empty head to the nearest post for Sol Serene. But you don’t belong to Umber now, you don’t belong to anyone, and I can make you bleed a long time before I do.”
Rerdas tried to burrow further into the memory of Kibo. But this time, he remembered the cracking of the whip, and he could not hide the shiver that wracked him.
He knew Hize had seen it, because when one gloved finger forced Rerdas’s chin up, the beast’s face was aglow with delight. “Walk along nicely with my soldiers, and I won’t take a whip to your cousin when we get back to Kirinoll.”
Etiana, madwoman that she was, laughed. “What was it Imalroc called you, Melgreth?” she boomed. “Putrid fuck, wasn’t it?”
Hize dropped his hand and spun to face her.
Rerdas craned his neck toward his cousin. “Etiana, please don’t—”
“Listen to your whining rat cousin, Lady Toriem,” Hize said. “Fear gives us all wisdom.”
“Know that from experience, do you?” she asked brightly. “How many times has our great Queen Kuraya made you piss yourself? I can smell your wisdom from—”
Hize hit her with a fist. Her head bounced into the nearest guard, and Rerdas almost wrenched his arms out of sockets to get free, heedless of his shoulder.
Etiana lifted her head and spat a wet red glob directly into Hize’s face.
Rerdas, gaping at his cousin, spotted a flicker of movement in the trees beyond her. Something was there, crouched among the chaos of green. He tried not to stare at the place where he thought it was.
“Perhaps my guards were right,” Hize hissed. He swiped a handkerchief across his face. His eyes were slits; his attention entirely trained on Etiana. He had not caught sight of whatever was so close to all of them.