Chapter 31
Koerlyn may not have had many soldiers along the wall where I escaped, but they were damn near everywhere now.
The first hours of my flight had been smooth and uneventful.
The few guards who’d strayed from the front gates were simple to evade, and the wide, calm river was easy enough to follow.
But since the sun had risen, casting the woods in a dreary light, I’d already dodged four small troops and heard a fifth amongst the bare trees.
The activity was likely a sign that I was getting closer to the border.
And it also prevented me from moving quickly—something that was rather inconvenient considering Koerlyn had likely discovered my absence by now.
He would no doubt be hunting me, and if he had dogs or good trackers, it would be easy to find my trail.
Trapping animals had made me stealthy in terms of silence, but I’d never learned how to cover my tracks.
I needed to speed up.
Staying within the trees that lined the river, I quickened my pace.
I don’t know how much ground I’d covered when the running water beside me began to roar, white mist spraying above the moss-studded riverbank, just as more voices cut through the trees.
My heart jolted when I realized they came from both sides of me.
I paused just behind a tree, scanning the area.
Movement flashed between the tree trunks lining the far side of the river, but whoever was with me on this side wasn’t within range just yet.
Carefully, I moved away from the water, even as the voices on my right grew in volume.
If I allowed myself to be seen from the other side of the bank, those men could alert those here who had yet to spot me.
An animalistic noise came from somewhere behind me.
Those same voices to the right again.
I leapt for a small ditch and flattened myself, setting my eyes just above the earth.
Heart pounding, I watched as blue tunics appeared in the woods to my right, the owners of those voices slowly trotting on horses in my direction.
Based on their slow pace, they weren’t chasing me. Maybe they were going for water.
The animal cried out again, and I spun my attention to my trail. The noise quickly registered. It was a whine.
Maybe there are wild wolves here.
That whine suddenly became an excited bark. Another joined it. Gray and blue flashed within the brown scenery. The soldiers on my right paused in confusion.
Gray and blue. Dogs and men. A hunting party.
Indistinguishable conversation morphed into words as the distance between us shrank. “Think…have something…this direction.”
Whether this group was here for me or as part of a regular patrol, I couldn’t know. It didn’t matter, either, because those dogs had already scented me. One minute ago, I had a semblance of freedom, of hope. In a mere instant, it’d fallen to pieces.
Adrenaline, now an old friend, readied my muscles. I wouldn’t make it. I knew that. But staying where I was could result in getting run over by horses and mauled by dogs.
I had to at least try.
Galvanized by plain fear, I bolted from the hollow, sprinting forward with everything I had left to give.
Ferocious, eager barks and thundering hooves followed in my wake, growing louder and louder as I leapt over roots and dodged trees and prayed to the skies above that something would save me.
That the ground would open up behind me and swallow my pursuers whole.
That I was more than just a useless villager and was the powerful magvis, itself.
That Harthon would suddenly appear and throw his daggers and save me as he had so many times before.
Something.
Give me something. Please.
I’ll do anything.
A crushing weight plowed into my back, and I was driven into the ground, blinding pain splitting my ribs as they met unforgiving rocks. Hot, wet breath and a low growl assaulted my ear as my arm was wedged between a jaw, sharp teeth breaking through my tunic and into the skin beneath.
Two dogs.
I began to shake, paws digging into my back, waiting for those teeth to finish what they’d started and reach bone. Maybe the other would bite my neck and end it before the pain became unbearable.
“Off!” The stern command came before either of those happened, and my arm was immediately released, the weight on my back gone. Relief was short-lived as a savage grip wrapped around that same arm, digging into the wounds there as it jerked me to my feet.
The soldier before me, an ugly, burly man who could likely break my arm with a squeeze of his fingers, leered at me.
“Pretty eyes.” Foul breath assaulted me as he leaned in, inhaling deeply beside my neck as I stifled a flinch.
When he straightened, it was to greedily take in my form, his perusal pausing on my chest. I didn’t dare breathe, not wishing to draw more attention to the area.
“Looks like we have a reward here, boys.”
The boys were at least ten other soldiers who surrounded me, two horses and those two dogs among them. Saliva dripped from the mutts’ teeth, bodies vibrating with anxious energy.
Even if I could somehow outrun these men, the animals would run me down again. They were skinny, the lines of their ribs giving away their starved state, but that didn’t make them any less dangerous. If anything, they were more motivated to tear off my flesh and feast on it.
Terror was a tight ball beneath my breast, expanding with each breath, too potent for me to do anything but stand there and try to remain upright against the weight of doom.
There was no space for hope.
My prison was already here.
I was one villager against ten hardened, armed men and their animals. There was no way I’d be able to escape them, and by the eager anticipation painting each ugly face around me, they knew it as well as I.
“Don’t look so scared,” the soldier taunted, pulling me forward so hard I bounced off his chest. “We’re usually given orders to hurt, however we want. But not with you. I think he wants to do that all himself. And lucky for you, he isn’t too far away.”
Maybe I should have felt some measure of comfort that the violence wouldn’t begin just yet, that I’d have one last reprieve before it started.
I didn’t.
Koerlyn was going to peel my skin away. If not mine, then someone else’s, and he’d make me watch and tell me it was my fault. And it would be my fault—for coming here in the first place, for not evading capture, for being so sorely insufficient for the eyes and knowledge I bore.
Someone handed the man a rope, and he took pleasure in tying the rough bindings around my wrists tightly enough to numb my hands. When he was done, he gripped the ropes and yanked, forcing me to stumble forward. “Move.”
Someone else’s hand shoved between my shoulder blades, and I tripped, only catching myself at the last second.
“Fall, and we drag you,” he sneered, taking his post beside me as we began to travel back along my tracks, the group an impenetrable cage around me.
There were plenty of hilts available to grab and turn into a weapon.
I knew I couldn’t kill them all—maybe just one, if I was lucky—but it would be something, at least. It might result in a death more merciful than what awaited me with Koerlyn.
Yet even that fruitless endeavor wasn’t a possibility, not with the dogs panting on my heels, waiting for me to flinch in the wrong direction.
That numbness in my hands pervaded my body as we trudged through the woods, veering toward the river and traveling along it, marching closer and closer to something that would be worse than I could even imagine.
Just a few weeks ago, I thought I knew suffering. It was nothing compared to what was to come.
Every few minutes, a rough hand would shove me, and when I flailed and stumbled to catch myself, someone would chuckle.
Beside us, just paces beyond the circle of men, that river thundered and roiled, a warning of the violence to come.
I didn’t know how long it would take us to reach Koerlyn.
Minutes. An hour. Whatever length of time it was, my mind would continue using it to torture me with fear.
And yet I knew I should embrace it, that period of waiting, before the pain began.
One of the dogs suddenly lurched forward, its deadly canines reaching toward my pocket. I recoiled, bumping into the soldier beside me, as spittle flew from the animal’s mouth.
But it didn’t attack.
As I was shoved back into place, I looked down at its wiry body in confusion, noting once more the clear ridges and dips of bones against its brown coat. When its snout nudged my pocket again, a thick glob of drool hanging from its mouth, I realized.
The bread.
It smelled the pieces of meat-stuffed bread in my pockets.
And it was starving, as was its friend.
If I could distract them with food, maybe I could get past them and to one of those hilts. To die fighting here would be a far more merciful fate than what I currently faced.
Continuing to walk, I awkwardly reached my bound hands beneath my cloak and into my pocket, flinging out a few chunks of bread. The dog yipped, and both of them dove for the food, scooping it up without breaking stride.
The two men on horses ahead of me circled wide to the left around a lower-hanging branch. To their likely dismay, it was high enough that I wouldn’t bash my head into it.
Returning my attention to the dogs, I loosened more crumbs from my pockets, and they greedily lapped them up. One of their tails swayed back and forth.
That was a good thing, right?
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” the man who’d bound me demanded.
Ignoring him, I released two more pieces of bread from my pocket. That tail continued to move side to side.
“Hey! Did you hear me?” He gripped my arm and thrust me forward. I crashed onto my knees, throwing out my bound hands to catch myself.
The dogs barked, enraged, deep sounds that sent me into a protective ball.