Chapter 35
The second between her knife burying itself between the commander’s eyes and the chaos that ensued amongst the slaves immediately after was the longest second of Arla’s life.
She had expected Hark, or his crew, or one of the slaves even, to be the cog in the machine that faltered and put everything in jeopardy. In the end, it had been her.
And she didn’t regret it.
She’d seen what he was about to do and something in her chest had roared against it. Never again would Kastonian brutes make vulnerable people suffer at their hands. Never again.
Women and children were screaming, men were… Gods, men were fighting with the soldiers! Where the fuck was Hark?
Kase’s hair was like woven moonlight against the storm, her silver braid catching the miniscule rays of light glinting off blades and swords.
She was hauling people with her, rounding up any that would go and leading them to the safety of where Sebastian was waiting.
Jaz had all but abandoned the plan they had thrown together around the campfire at the bloodstone last night, but she couldn’t be angry with him because she had caused this bloodshed.
A yelp dragged her into motion, and she pulled one of her knives free of its strap and plunged it into the neck of a solider.
Hark swept in like an angel, swiping a child from the path of a solider and throwing the girl to Arla, but Arla’s side was no place for a child too sickly to fight.
Crouching to the child’s level, Arla pointed at Kase and where the group of slaves were now being reassembled, each of them steely eyed and ready to protect the new resistance.
Arla could only pray to gods she didn’t believe in that the child could run quickly enough across the open space to make it to safety.
Hark was a dark blur, downing soldier after soldier as he fought his way through them to get the slaves into Kase’s blockade beside the rocks.
Seb would protect them there, would keep them as solid as a wall, whilst it gave the others the chance to kill every Kastonian that had dared raise a hand to them.
Arla swung her sword with unprecedented ferocity and fired her bow, too, when she was granted an extra second to nock an arrow.
Soldiers poured in from every angle and Hark seemed to not notice the ones coming from behind.
The sight was enough to turn Arla feral – every hour she’d spent training, every target she had ever hit with her knives flooding back to her – as she charged across the space, blades swinging, fire burning deep within her.
She would not fail them. She would not let this happen again.
Blood rained wherever she went. They were falling at her feet, falling like they never had before. Kase was there, dragging anyone who could not fight to the safety of the cliff face.
The sudden twang of a bowstring caused her heart to falter, and Arla felt her blood run cold. She watched the arrow fly towards Hark’s back, poised to land directly between his shoulder blades – to pierce his fierce, unyielding heart.
It happened so slowly.
So very slowly.
Her feet carried her over the fallen bodies around her, her scream threatening to tear her vocal cords as she begged Hark to move.
She’d never felt fear like this. Not when Kastonia had come to Hadalyn.
Not when she’d been locked inside the dresser.
Not when she’d watched her parents die. But this…
The thought of that arrow burying itself in his heart made her want to die.
It made her want to put her own body into the path of that arrow if it stopped it striking him.
There was a word for that kind of feeling.
She didn’t allow herself time to dwell on that word, because Sebastian was there, slamming into Hark, sending the pair of them rolling through snow, and ice, and blood. Relief flooded her as that silver-tipped arrow hit the chest of one of the soldiers instead.
She didn’t allow herself the time to watch Hark right himself and begin swinging his sword again, because the Kastonians were upon her.
She knew the slaves fought – the strongest of the men, at least – using the chains that had bound their hands, slamming the iron into skulls and any open bit of flesh they could find on their oppressors.
Jaz and Kase continued ferrying the rest of the slaves to their position against the cliff, forming an impenetrable wall of what she could only guess – in her fevered state – was magic.
It was the only explanation her brain could come up with, because the wall seemed to deter any soldier who moved in that direction.
The soldiers would run towards the slaves but then slam into something invisible yet solid enough that they fell flat on their backs.
Arla was sure she could see the air ripple, as if the slaves held fast a barrier of wind with their hands, which they held out in front of them, palms facing outwards, while snowflakes and loose gravel were whipped into a violent frenzy around the edge of the shield.
They were doing it.
Slowly, so bloody slowly that she hardly noticed it at first, the Kastonian soldiers were depleting, becoming piles of black smudges against the landscape. They were doing it.
But then her stomach tumbled when she saw a group of children huddled on the other side of the field, eight soldiers running towards them with swords drawn and fury in their eyes.
She’d never make it.
No matter how many miles she ran before breakfast, no matter how many hours she trained in the company of the King’s Guard, it was impossible to cross such a vast distance – nearly half a mile – and get to the children before the soldiers reached them.
It wouldn’t stop her trying.
Her feet were nimble across the hardened ground, bounding over bodies as she charged after the soldiers.
The children – not one of whom could be older than thirteen – didn’t balk in the face of imminent death. They didn’t shudder, or shout, or even attempt to escape. They simply … smiled, as if that ray of innocence would be enough to prevent a blade running through them.
She could hear the grunts of soldiers fighting with Jaz and Hark behind her, the shouts of fury from the slave men who had joined the fight. She almost didn’t hear Kase screaming her name.
‘REINHART, NO!’
Was she fucking serious?
Arla kept running, kept pounding across the earth. She wouldn’t let the children die.
‘Reinhart, leave them!’ Kase screamed, her voice desperate and shrill.
When they got out of here she was going to kill that silver-haired bitch. Arla wouldn’t leave the little ones to die. She couldn’t.
‘Leave them!’ it was a different voice this time – masculine and low and full of terror. Hark.
Gods, even Hark was telling her to leave them.
She would not.
The soldiers were nearly upon the group, their swords just feet away from the children, who still did not move.
And just when she thought her feet couldn’t carry her any further, the last twenty metres seemingly an impossible distance, she was forced to accept that she would watch the children be slaughtered.
She would unleash hell upon those soldiers and leave not one alive. Not one.
Before her very eyes, the children vanished.
They were there, and then they were just … gone.
Arla stumbled at the shock of it, her feet tripping over themselves to leave her face down in the mud.
It wasn’t possible. What had just happened was simply not possible.
Her mouth was suddenly too dry as she kept blinking at the place where the children had been only seconds ago, as though if she concentrated hard enough it wouldn’t be real.
She’d been in denial about what she’d seen yesterday – perhaps tiredness or an overactive imagination – but there was no denying it now.
She didn’t have time to consider it, though, because the soldiers that had been aiming for the children suddenly found themselves impaled on the ends of a row of glinting spears belonging to another wave of their own army.
Arla had been so focused on saving the children that she hadn’t noticed the emergence of another group of Kastonian soldiers from the eye of the storm.
Someone was swearing – Hark, maybe – but there was no time for her to turn and see because in that moment an entire army descended upon her.
It was so rare these days that Arla needed to tap into that violent, unfeeling level within herself where she became death incarnate, where nothing could reach her, or stop her, or break the lethal spell she had woven.
In the face of her astonishment, she found that place to be a welcome friend as the Kastonian army swarmed her.
With a scream that could have stopped the world from turning, she swung her sword quicker than ever, her feet dancing on the line between life and death.
Her knives found themselves free of the straps in which she had confined them and were flung from her fingers, downing any who strayed in their path.
Her blood sang to her, a song of vengeance and wrath and fury. She would not let it happen again.
Distantly, she was aware of Hark, Jaz, Kase, and even Seb fighting beside her, each of them grunting at the effort as they followed her lead through the rows and rows of soldiers.
Arla knew they were there because she could hear the shouts of agony from those who slipped past her blades and met their ends upon the blades of the others.
She didn’t know what was happening with the slaves and didn’t have room to think about it, not when every minute action and reaction was the difference between life and death. Either they were fighting or they were hiding. Either they were alive or they were dead. What else was there?
Magic, her heart seemed to say. There’s magic.
But she couldn’t afford any distractions now because … because…
Because Hark was on his knees.
She hadn’t seen him fall; hadn’t seen anyone even near him when she turned her head for a split second between killing soldiers.
But he was there, kneeling on the ground, and there was a soldier aiming for him.
Gods, she was beginning to loathe worrying like this about someone else, especially him.
Because she did, didn’t she? She worried for him.
She worried and she cared and she knew there was no way back from the place they had arrived at.
If they made it out of here she might have to tell him so.
Especially now that Seb wasn’t there to save him, to haul him free of the swinging blade, because Seb was at her side, cutting down those who came at her.
But her attention was fixed on Hark and the sword about to strike him. She couldn’t draw her bow or her arrows quickly enough to save him.
He caught her eyes across the vast space, and in his look she saw resignation, acceptance, surrender.
She began screaming—
Something heavy knocked her on the head, and then darkness swept in and carried her into its oblivion.