Chapter Fourteen #2
“Wait,” Pepha stopped her. “You need to turn slightly more, and there’s a board on the floor you need to step over.”
Iryana’s hands balled into fists, frustration making her body feel unsteady. They needed to be more careful. More specific in their directions.
“Take a step up,” Mezhimar ordered.
She moved her foot forward until it hit something solid, then slowly raised it until she could slide her foot across the smooth surface, whatever it was.
Her chest expanded as she shifted her weight, pulling herself up.
Shuffling slowly, Iryana felt a ledge to her side.
She wobbled, arms thrown out to keep her balance.
“Steady,” Pepha yelped quietly from somewhere up ahead. “Shuffle slowly forward, straight toward my voice.”
Gods, she was on a ledge of some kind, wasn’t she?
Her feet were glued in place, her heart pounding relentlessly. They didn’t care if she fell, wouldn’t care if she got hurt. Maybe that’s what they wanted: an excuse to kick her out. A failure to blame her for.
“Iryana, you need to move,” Vaneshta urged. “Trust us.”
But she didn’t. She didn’t trust them at all. She didn’t trust anyone.
She tried to take control of her breathing, to calm herself so she could keep pretending.
But in that quiet moment, panic seized her harder.
Iryana couldn’t hear anything beyond her own breathing and the quiet movements of her team.
Where were the night critters that roamed the city? Surely there should be some noise.
She froze, ears straining. Were there dakii in the city?
A creaking sound a short way off had every hair on her arms standing, a shiver running over her body.
“What was that?” she asked, voice hushed.
No one answered for a bloated moment until Pepha said, “Vabihn probably stepped on a loose board.”
Probably?
Gods, she couldn’t breathe. Her head was light, her whole body prickling, and she could barely keep herself standing. It felt like the world was spinning, like she was about to fall off the edge of a cliff, a gust of wind blowing the hairs that had escaped her braid against her neck.
It felt like she was being watched, hunted.
She wanted to see, to confirm for herself. Her breathing was so fast, so loud, that it wouldn’t be hard for a dakya to hear them.
“Are you sure?” Her voice cracked.
“Yep,” Shahn sighed.
“It’s fine. And there’s been no signal from the guards on the wall that they’ve seen anything,” Vaneshta added.
Her teeth grated. Why would they care? They could jump into action quickly, arm themselves with a moment’s notice. She was the defenseless one.
Iryana took another steadying breath, but it didn’t stop the spinning.
“It’s fine, Iryana. Focus.” Vaneshta’s voice was edged in frustration.
They weren’t used to being alone with the dakii, with having to pay attention to every sense, every movement. They were used to having a team around them.
They might not sense the dakii before it was too late for her.
And that broke her resolve.
“No!” Vaneshta cried as Iryana reached up and ripped the blindfold off in one sharp motion.
Iryana’s chest heaved, vision still spinning. She was standing on the edge of a curb, only a foot above the ground. Her eyes darted to the shadows, to the empty alley behind them, to the forest she could see glimpses of down the road.
Nothing.
“Iryana—”
“No,” she snapped, gasping. “You don’t know. You could be wrong, and I’d be the one with my throat ripped out.”
They were silent, but there was a mix of pity, confusion, and discomfort on their faces. She couldn’t stand it.
Iryana started walking back toward the fort, blindfold slipping out of her fingers and onto the road.
She couldn’t do it.
After a block, Vaneshta caught up to her.
“We can try it again. Or something else. A different exercise.”
Iryana just shook her head. She was going to pass out. Every inch of her skin crawled.
“I just need to know you aren’t going to put the team at risk. That when it matters, we can count on you.”
A shudder ripped through her.
She stopped, staring hard at Vaneshta. “I’m not a coward. I am not going to abandon the team.”
“I know, but teams need to work together. Need to have each other’s backs.”
Iryana wobbled. She couldn’t have this conversation now.
“If the captain is fine with me being on the team, then just. Just—” She shivered. “We don’t all have to get along. It’s okay if we aren’t tied at the hip. I’ll do the job. Okay?”
“The captain doesn’t—” Vaneshta cut off with a loud sigh.
“It’s fine, okay?” And Iryana took off running. She needed to be alone.
“Iryana!”
She didn’t stop for Vaneshta, couldn’t.
The world was closing in on her, vision swirling with dark spots. She needed to be alone. To get somewhere she could breathe again.
Sweat glued Iryana’s shirt to her back despite the chilly spring air. She only wore her chest armor, a compromise between protection and the exertion. She would have preferred to remove the armor entirely, but it wasn’t safe enough outside the walls.
After her run that morning, Iryana had been pulled into a group of various soldiers to work on the defenses outside the fortress walls, repairing the damage from dakii and the mud season. It was hard work, but she welcomed the reprieve from her team.
Up close, the spikes and trenches smelled of stagnant water and the traces of inky black blood that pooled in them.
There were hints of damage from the last attack on the walls about a week earlier.
Iryana had been on a mission at the time and missed the excitement.
There was almost always something going on at the fort; a team dragging injured or dead soldiers back, a squad sent out to protect a settlement beset by dakii, or a guarded caravan passing through.
She mostly tried to keep her head down and focus on what was relevant to her.
A few soldiers, fully armed, patrolled the edges of where she and a dozen other soldiers worked. The only other soldier she knew was Pyetar.
Since the failed exercise two nights earlier, things with her team had been awkward.
Working through forms and sparring together had been tense, and the mood during their patrol yesterday was stifled.
Iryana had followed every order, stayed alert and focused, everything she could to show she wouldn’t let them down.
When they ran into a small pack of dakii, Iryana rained arrows down on them, but it didn’t feel like much of a victory as they silently marched back to the fort.
At least no one mentioned how Iryana had run off the night before.
And it would be moonless that evening, time to face her sister the next evening. She dreaded it.
Iryana slammed the butt of a new spike into the hole she had dug, her arms aching from hauling the sharpened timbers.
Her gloves were torn, blisters already forming on her palms, but she didn’t complain as she hammered the spike into place with a half-rotted mallet.
The barely-thawed soil didn’t make it easy.
Pyetar was working two rows ahead of her, sleeves rolled to his elbows as he worked with mechanical efficiency.
Digging cracked and splintered spikes out of the ground, replacing them, and hauling the old ones away to be chopped into firewood.
His arms were corded with muscles beneath the splatters of mud.
He hadn’t said a word to her all afternoon, but she’d felt his presence in her chest. He’d threatened her family, roughed up her cousin, crippled a man for a minor offense. And he was one more person that knew she didn’t belong.
She hated him.
“This one could probably use replacing too.” Pyetar patted one of the spikes further down her row as he walked past.
Iryana bristled. “I haven’t gotten there yet.”
He shrugged and kept walking as she glared at the back of his head.
She took a short break, wiping a bead of sweat off her brow and taking long gulps of cool, sweet water. Pyetar looked back at her, and she narrowed her eyes, quickly getting back to work. She wouldn’t give him any more reason to doubt her if she could help it.
Then a horn blew high up on the wall, carrying over them.
She froze.
All around her, soldiers stilled.
Her gaze focused along the tree line, searching for what had alerted the watch.
Then she saw blue-gray fur and sharp, black horns as dakii burst out of the forest. One of the younger soldiers near the front screamed and fell backwards into the trench.
Soldiers dropped their hammers and spikes, metal-forged weapons forming in their hands.
The soldiers that had been guarding them rushed forward to form a line midway between the spikes, but the others didn’t seem to know what they were meant to do.
The soldiers at the front raced to get behind the line.
It was chaos.
Iryana fumbled for her bow and quiver leaning against the pile of spikes beside her row. But she didn’t know what to do either. The dakii met the first line of spikes, leaping over them with great bounds. Most scraped across the sharpened points with angry growls, but some made it across unscathed.
“Get back to the wall!” someone yelled from behind her.
But she saw Pyetar already running—not toward the wall, but toward the line of soldiers that was already breaking.
Everything was moving so fast around her, but she felt frozen in time.
Pyetar held his arm out, and Iryana felt herself focusing on it. Dark magic lengthened from his hand, the color a blend of indigo and charcoal, forming the long beast spear. The three spear tips gleamed, even from that distance.
“Form up!” Pyetar yelled, snapping her out of her daze. “Spears to the line, shields and finishers cover from behind. Archers, get to higher ground and cover us!” His voice cut through the chaos.
Everyone immediately moved to obey his order, even though he was no one’s captain, no one’s commander.