Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
After binding Safi’s hands, Safi’s captors hauled her onto a horse—one of their own, since they left Dandelion and Cloud behind.
For some reason, this made Safi want to weep.
She’d thought she could feel nothing but magma right now, yet an oceanic hole split her chest. She had to fight the tears, had to pump false authority into her voice: “How far are we traveling?” She spoke in Marstoki, of course, for these raiders spoke Marstoki—and she had to assume that meant they were Baedyeds.
The woman riding with Safi blatantly ignored the question.
“I only ask,” Safi continued, “because I’m in a lot of pain.
I got shot in the arm—by a Marstoki one-shot pistol, actually.
And you know how much damage those can do.
This one was even Firewitched, so not only have I lost a lot of blood, I seem to be cursed as well.
” She paused here, having to suck in a breath. “It’s quite unpleasant.”
False, her magic laughed. It is so much more than unpleasant.
“There should be a healing kit in my gelding’s saddlebag,” Safi added. “As well as some Painstones. If we could just go back to get him—”
“Shut up,” barked the Baedyed riding at the fore. He glared, his eyes dark holes surrounded by pale scarves. First he looked at Safi. Then at the woman riding with her. “If she speaks again, gag her.”
Safi grimaced. A gag would not do right now.
She was already on the verge of vomiting; a gag would make that worse.
So she bit her tongue and tried very hard to focus on what little horizon she could see through the forest. The trees were beeches, the underbrush mostly moss over peat.
But the ground, she couldn’t help but notice, was softening, eating up each hoof fall.
They must be moving west toward the river, toward Poznin.
And therefore toward the Raider King.
Gods below, everything had gone to goat tits, hadn’t it? Clearly the intel on the Raider King’s forces had been wrong. Or else, her brain prodded with surprising clarity, the Raider King was simply being smart.
An old lesson from Habim percolated to Safi’s mental surface: If the enemy is too small to target, then restrict their range of movement.
Make them come to you. This was a battlefield tactic for dealing with stealth units that larger battalions struggled to fight—and it would seem it was precisely what Ragnor the Raider King had done to Safi, Iseult, and Aeduan.
He had attacked them from one direction, which had sent them running into a trap.
Safi frowned, her gaze fastening on the Baedyed riding ahead. Then on the raider walking across the earth in front of him.
When Habim had taught her and Iseult about battlefield tactics, he’d used real-world examples from the battles he had led. Against Baedyed raiders in the Sand Sea. These raiders right here.
She compressed her lips. It was one thing to learn lessons about faceless, distant enemies.
It was quite another to ride with those enemies and realize that not only did they, in fact, have faces …
but the reason those faces were here, in Arithuania, was because of the strategies General Habim Fashayid had used against them.
Do not vomit. Do not vomit. She fell forward. Her arm burned, her stomach revolted.
“She is fading,” her companion barked. Then arms slid around Safi to hold her upright.
The man walking at the front called back, “Ride on. We will catch up to you.”
The horse beneath her kicked into a fluid gallop, and the entire forest bled into a hazy, dreamlike blur.
The pain was so intense in Safi’s arm that it felt as if her consciousness had simply given up and said, Nope, this is too much for me.
But rather than drag her into darkness, it clambered outside her body and watched the scene unfold from a distance.
Tree trunks muddled past, the barks shifting from shapeless beeches to shapeless alders. The ground sucked up all sound. The canopy overhead thickened, not with leaves but with branches that wove and braided until they were almost a ceiling.
And onward the horse galloped. Steady, true. A three-beat rhythm that rocked through Safi in a disconnected unreality. Even the flames in her arm seemed to fade, until she found herself cold. So, so cold.
This is what we call death, she thought, but she lacked the strength to escape its widening arms—even as the Cahr Awen souls were waking up again, were shouting and jostling and clamoring: NO. YOU NEED TO STAY ALIVE AND REACH THE WELL.
It was only when the Baedyed reined their horse to a stop that Safi realized she was no longer in a forest. That snow no longer covered the ground, but only mossy peat and mud. And that the shapes and shadows surrounding her were not trees but instead makeshift tents and hovels.
And people. So many people. They were dressed in all manner—some in Purist gray, some in Nomatsi-style furs, and others with no discernible faction to mark them. They watched Safi pass, aggression on a few faces, but most only wearing fear.
The Baedyed woman dismounted, and a different woman, her blond hair in thick braids, strode up.
She hauled Safi down, not roughly but not gently either.
Safi’s vision crossed. She doubled over as soon as her feet sank into the earth.
She was so cold. She was going to collapse onto the welcoming moss of this strange settlement and then she would never wake up again.
NO. YOU NEED TO STAY ALIVE AND REACH THE WELL.
Safi’s left arm was limp and agonizing. She wished the thrice-damned Cahr Awen souls would shut up and let her sleep. She wished she could vomit or pass out. Anything to end this pain.
Then, as if the souls were actually listening for once, they did quiet.
Abruptly. They scattered from her skull like flies from a corpse, and Safi felt their fight drain from her body.
The world around her silenced. She swung her gaze upward, stars flashing, to find a path had cleared through the people so a single man could pass.
He was cast in shadow, but Safi didn’t need to see his face to know who he was.
The Raider King, she thought. Finally we come face-to-face.
He was not a towering man—the Lusquan woman stood taller—and he was thin. Rangy, even. He wore no crown, no adornments to glitter in the dim light. He was just a man, and distantly Safi appreciated that.
Her eyes sank shut. She let her head loll down, let the mossy earth take her. She wanted to fight, but there was nothing left in her to fight with. The Raider King had won, and this was how her story would end.
She didn’t even have the energy to feel grief or regret anymore.
The Raider King’s boots reached her. Worn brown leather that blended into the dark peat. A chime like buckles clinking. A huff like someone who was tired and … of all things, amused.
Then the man crouched before Safi and warm skin brushed her chin. “Domna,” he said softly. “Stay awake. A healer is on the way.”
For several moments, Safi didn’t understand what she was hearing.
Domna? The Raider King must have heard I am no longer a domna.
She dragged her eyes open. Forced her pupils to find the king’s face.
It was veiled by such deep shadows that it had become half shadow itself.
His hair was dark and cropped close, his eyes …
Ah, his eyes.
“Prince,” she rasped, her voice a tragic, dying thing. “Is it really you?”
“Hye,” he murmured as her magic suddenly woke inside her and sang with a warm, blissful truth. “It’s me, Safi.”
That was the last thing she heard before Merik’s arms scooped beneath her and blessed unconsciousness swept in.