Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
ISOLDE
“It was that night that Hruudwulf’s sorrow was heard. From that day forth, that place was known as Wolfswail. None can walk there without sensing the grief of his betrayal soaked into the stones.” ~ Southern lore
I didn’t bother trying to give Chay directions and didn’t dare distract Audrey. My horse had lost its head in the blast of wind that had forced my eyes closed, and I steered it best I could, loosing an arrow based on my memory of Ylva’s position.
Branches were groaning and cracking under the force of the wind. I could hear hooves and cleared my vision enough to see Ylva clutching at the arrow in her chest. My horse wanted me to flee in the direction Audrey had gone, and that sounded perfect to me.
My heart beat heavily. I felt slow, but I’d been fast enough to cost them their princess, at least.
Leaning low, I hugged the side of the horse and let it have its head, keeping track of Audrey and Chay from the sound of the crashing underbrush and their horses’ heaving breaths and terrified whinnies.
Breathe, I willed of Audrey. Breathe. Guide her. I felt an arrow pass me by, and fury pulsed through me. Regardless of what I’d said to Chay, I hadn’t thought it would really be a trap. I would never have allowed Audrey to take such a risk. I didn’t expect Ylva to be our ally, but if she was a neutral party, that was better than an enemy. And Audrey was going to need allies.
My legs straining, I pulled myself up and tried to see ahead. They were silent to our ears.
Magic users didn’t use bows.
The Worgs had come to fetch Ylva.
Ahead, I caught glimpses of a clearing through the trees, of Audrey fighting for control of Storm, and of a posturing Raider’s Ban warhorse in his element.
Well, he wasn’t the only one.
Against other foes, I’d’ve sent my horse on its way and laid in wait, but I wasn’t fooling these people’s superior senses. Instead, I reined in my girl, slowing her as she broke into the clearing.
“How many?” Audrey was shouting.
I had no idea. I’d caught a slight movement from the corner of my eye. That, and the tightness of my gut, had told me all I’d needed.
“They’re Worgs,” I said to the pair. “They’ll hear you coming, they’ll smell you. Use a stream to muddy your scent.”
Chay pointed his sword at the sky. “Magician,” he said grimly.
My bow followed my eyes, but my arms felt heavy, and even with the battle energy forcing my heart to beat harder, I still felt too damned slow.
The sorcerer was a dark blot against the clouds. He dipped from my view, vanishing into the trees like a leaf fluttering from the sky. I struggled to make sense of that when I saw Chay moving, shield on his arm, and his horse high-stepping arrogantly.
Arrows bloomed in his shield, two of them. I blasted a whistled warning. Audrey twisted, dropping down beside her horse as we’d practiced. But she kept falling, graceless, tangled.
My heart twisted, too. Just as graceless. Just as tangled.
I was in my forest, and it was early morning . Giselle lay before me, her body still warm, her eyes glassy. I reached out, dirt on my hand, and closed her eyes. But they didn’t close the way they did when the Commander did it. Her lashes prickled. I tried to get purchase on the skin of her lids and ran the pad of my finger over the moist softness of her eyeball. My stomach rebelled. I tried again, dropping my bow so I could hold her head still.
The wind gusted around us. Chay’s sword came down against Storm’s side, and the horse danced around Audrey, lashing out at him. She rolled free, staggering toward the closest source of cover, a big, moss-covered rock. Her saddle slipped drunkenly where Chay had cut it loose.
I drew in a breath and cast my eyes around for targets, sitting high to make myself vulnerable. “And I heard Worgs shot like ’sion riders,” I said derisively. “That’s five shots I’ve counted you’ve missed. How many more arrows did you loose?”
To prove my point, a shaft skimmed past Audrey, and she fell back against the stone. She’d saved herself, barely, falling backward hard. Her hands dropped to her sides, and she made a noise of pain that I heard against all reason, over the horses and the wind, over my own drumming heart and the roaring in my ears.
There was no target in the trees, though. There was nothing except the blur of more shafts. Not even coming at me. And they were so far from me.
Chay whirled hard. I heard the arrow sink deep into the wood of his shield. But beyond him, another flew toward where Audrey was prone against the stone.
It struck the air before her like it was made of wood, too. The shaft stood, bristling, like those Chay’s shield boasted. Almost immediately, another split it.
I didn’t know what magic that was, and I didn’t care. I steered hard to Audrey and kicked one foot free, readying myself to help her mount up and flee.
“Truce!” a voice shouted. “Unless Ylva dies.”
There was no way she wasn’t dying, and now wasn’t the time to wonder. “Get up,” I told Audrey, landing beside her. One of my knees gave out, and agony screamed up my legs. I kept my face blank. She didn’t notice, her eyes on the arrows ahead of us. Blood streaked down the outside of one arm, nonfatal. As she stood, the arrows tumbled from the sky like they’d been dropped by whatever magical force had stopped them mid-air. I boosted Audrey into my saddle.
Over my horse’s rump, I saw a man striding into the clearing, longbow at his side and quiver over his shoulder. The fur-lined cloak he wore strapped over his chest, and his long hair pulled back in a club both marked him as Southern.
“The earthworker says we shouldn’t kill you,” he called. “Let it be known that is the only reason you are still standing.”
Chay snorted, and so did his horse.
“You’re coming with me and will be thanking her,” the Southerner called.
I shared a quick look with Audrey. “You actually shot her?” she demanded, taking my reins.
I didn’t bother to point out the Worg had led us into an ambush. My quiver was on that saddle, and I only had the fistful of arrows I held and my knives. None of them were useful against invisible targets.
My bones ached. But over the Southerner’s head, I saw a dark form move in the trees. Judging from the number of arrows loosed, I suspected there were mayhap two more after this crusty cocktugger, at most.
I didn’t hate those odds, if I had eyes on two of them.
Deliberately, I looked up and caught Chay’s gaze, drawing in a deep breath. I didn’t question the flicker of compassion that was swiftly disguised, simply noted the way he sheathed his sword to take up his reins.
Go. I whistled and swung my bow up at the same time, letting fly at the figure lurking within the shadows and then charging toward the man in the clearing.
He spun. Horses screamed in fury, and hooves churned the ground. I dodged the arrow stabbed toward me and kicked out. A shaft whistled past me from the shadowed area where someone had lurked, and I knew that while I’d missed my secondary target, I’d accomplished my main one.
Safe travels, I thought to Audrey, sending another arrow into the darkness.
A foot in my abdomen drove me back, and a little further from the crusty cocktugger, I saw another emerging from the shadows.
“Enough!” the man roared, his face twisted in fury but his hawk-like features were still strikingly familiar. If he wasn’t Ylva’s blood, I’d cut Audrey’s throat myself. “Cut her string!”
I dropped my arm so the man before me missed my bow, and I ducked to the side. But my legs weren’t as sure as they should have been, and the ground gave way a little.
There was really no other way it was going to end than this brute pointing his drawn bow at my chest. “Do we take this one?” the man in front of me asked.
I could just about see Ylva’s kin considering whether it was worth it to rough me up. “The Butcher’s Brat won’t come back for her.” Fury pounded at my temples, and he smiled. “Will she?”
“You’d better hope not,” I said quietly. “She was gentle with your sister. She wouldn’t bother with you.”
“ Gentle?” He raised a finger. “Walk, bitch.”
I considered fighting against it, but by now, the two other men would have a solid line on me. I had two arrows left.
If it came to it, I’d kill Ylva’s poor-tempered kin and let her live.
So I walked, biding my time, ignoring the exhaustion and the agony that had settled deep in my limbs. None of them got within range of my fists. The third man stayed mostly out of sight. And while I could hear the occasional noise that could be from Audrey and Chay in the distance, I wasn’t certain of it, though the men around me would be. They’d know their location, but more, they’d know whether their hearts beat too fast under duress, or whether their horses stumbled. They’d know if they were angled into the wind and whether they’d be home, safe, by nightfall.
It was beyond me to not resent them for the knowledge of my charge that I so desperately wanted. I remembered the blood on Audrey’s arm, the fistful of arrows she’d held. She’d done fine. Not well, perhaps, but fine. And Chay had been the boon I hadn’t expected. Apparently, he could use a shield when he was on a horse, at least.
Ylva was lying on her back where she’d fallen. The arrow shaft lay beside her. Her skin was pale, and the woman bent over her didn’t look up from her hands, folded over the wound, and slick with her blood. She had the strange stillness of a magic user at work.
I had no guilt whatsoever. But the sight of this mage made me uneasy. I didn’t know enough about Southern magic to know if she ought to be my primary target. She hadn’t been the greatest threat earlier, and potentially had even halted those arrows to protect Audrey. But was that just because her primary focus was saving Ylva?
“Don’t even think about it,” murmured Ylva’s relative behind me. “Her life is worth a thousand of yours.”
I assumed he meant the mage. I studied the woman’s bare, dimpled knee, soft forearms, and long brown hair that seemed to ripple in wind I couldn’t feel. Whatever storm had been blowing in seemed to have calmed.
“If we came this far, and she dies…”
I cast an unimpressed look at Ylva’s bearded double. “You’ll kill me?” I held up my hand. The movement made the splinters of agony in my bones scream. “See those black nails? I’ve got the plague. So does more than half of that city you were planning on slipping into. Those two who you couldn’t kill despite your best efforts?” I folded my cloak tighter around myself and leaned back against a tree. “Pretty much doomed. You’d be wasting your time going after them.”
“You just sacrificed yourself for fun?” Ylva’s kin asked me, his mouth kicked up in amusement. “I appreciate your service, Sister.”
“I want to see if she pulls through,” I said, jerking my chin at Ylva, and it wasn’t entirely a lie. If Ylva had called them off, was it because she didn’t intend for it to be an ambush, but wheels had already been turning? Or did she just think better of them all dying on our arrows? “When I shoot a man, he stays shot. Lucky Ylva’s a woman, isn’t it?”
“Your bravado would be more convincing if I couldn’t hear your heart laboring like a fish trying to breathe air,” her kin drawled, then picked at one of his teeth.
If only he’d been the one the Duke had captured, I’d happily have let him rot in the dungeons. He was top priority to turn into a pincushion. The mage could live if he needed both my remaining arrows, and so could Ylva.
“Why’d you come after her?” I asked him, realizing they were risking much, sending a mage and another member of the royal family for a princess never destined to be heir.
“There’s too many women for me to keep satisfied,” he told me, his eyes on the mage. “I need someone to tag in, and I’ve heard she eats cunt almost as well as I fill it.”
“That’s not what I heard,” murmured the other man, and the quick, annoyed glance shot his way by Ylva’s brother made both the other man and I grin.
I was wrong. He wasn’t the crusty cocktugger. Ylva’s kin was. “What’s your name, hero?” I asked him, keeping it friendly.
Dark eyes above Ylva’s hawk-like nose flicked back up to me. “Wuden,” he told me after a moment.
I considered it. “No, I haven’t heard of your prowess.”
In the darkness, I saw the man opposite me hide another grin. “You wouldn’t,” Wuden said icily. “I don’t stick my dick in northern bitches.”
Without hesitation I responded with, “Speaking on behalf of northern bitches, we’re grateful.”
The mage before us stirred, then fell gracelessly back onto her bare backside with a heavy thump. A pretty, heart-shaped face was turned toward us, and the look she sent me was full of disgust. “She’ll live. What’s this one doing here?”
“She’s a guarantor,” Wuden said, shooting me a smile.
“She’s a hazard,” the mage shot back. “And she’s infectious. Get rid of her before Ylva gets sick, or I’ll heed the wind’s call.”
“Reckon she’ll make it through the night?” Wuden asked the man beside him.
“I’ve got two arrows,” I told him, making my eyes big and round. “It’d be a shame to die with them unspent.”
His attention narrowed on me again. “Go. You might just get lucky and need those to bring down game. It’s a long walk back, and your time is short.”
He wasn’t wrong, and we all knew it. “Tell her I’m sorry,” I told the mage. “I thought she’d led us into a trap.”
“She knew,” the woman said with a nod. “Gaelena ease your path, Sister.”
I touched the back of my knuckle to the circlet I hadn’t worn in more than a decade, suddenly feeling naked without it. “Walk tall,” I told her.
“Die standing,” the woman returned, as few knew to. “I’m sorry, but I’ve no magic to spare for you.”
I waved her kind words off rather than think on what they might mean, drew my hood closer, and headed into the darkness. It, at least, I could face.