Chapter Forty
WILDER
T ime was a circle without Thea: no beginning and no end. Wilder had no notion of the hours and then days that had passed, but for the vague awareness of the rise and fall of the sun somewhere beyond the pines.
He kept himself as busy as a man stranded in the middle of a frozen nowhere could: tending to the horses, gathering firewood, building a makeshift shelter, hunting. A simple existence punctuated by bodily needs and the changing colour of the sky.
At some point, he was wrenched from the haze of his days by a throbbing sensation across his forearm. It was the wound from the skirmish with the arachne. And the venom that had coated the cut.
‘… a fifty-fifty chance it’ll kill you. It’s slow to activate, so you won’t know right away… But basically, avoid it at all costs. It’ll fuck you up either way,’ Torj had told the apprentices in Aveum, the same words Talemir had once shared with them as Guardians.
Glad for the distraction, Wilder settled against the trunk of the tree he favoured, right by the road and right in front of the swirling mist of the mountain. There, he removed his vambrace and grimaced as he worked the fabric of his shirt away from the sticky slash.
A bitter tang hit his nostrils.
‘Not good,’ he muttered to himself. He’d taken to doing that a lot since Thea had crossed the threshold into the Great Rite. Besides the horses, his voice was the only sound across the expanse, and it temporarily relieved him of the torture of being trapped in his own head.
He stared at the wound. It was on the verge of festering; that was his first mistake. The second was that he knew arachne venom was slow-moving, that its effects could sometimes lie dormant for days…
‘Fuck.’ The last thing he wanted when Thea emerged from the Great Rite was for her to find his frozen corpse.
The sensation at the edge of his senses was oddly familiar, and it was only after he’d cleaned and dressed his wound that he realised what it was.
The manacles. They had been treated with some sort of strange alchemy that suppressed his strength.
The site of the cut had the same weight to it, as did his whole arm.
He gave a rough laugh, loud enough to startle the horses. Wren had used arachne venom in her experiments; it was the very same thing. He didn’t know why he found it so funny, but he laughed again, shaking his head in disbelief. He had probably reached a level of delirium.
Over the last few days, Wilder had tried to keep his mind from wandering to what might be happening within the mountain.
Tried and failed. When he wasn’t performing a task, his imagination took him on a vivid tour of all the horrors he’d faced himself at the demand of the Furies.
He had seen the Great Rites of other Warswords too, in the memory orb.
The only comfort he had was that Thea had seen them too, and that he had prepared her for every scenario the gods had concocted in the past.
As another night fell around him, Wilder saw to the horses and fetched the whetstone from Thea’s saddlebag before settling into the makeshift shelter he’d built around the fire.
There, he removed his weapons from his person and laid them out before him, beginning the methodical task of cleaning and sharpening each one.
His blades were in near-perfect condition, but the job gave him something to focus on, something to steady the tremor that had begun in his hands.
As he expertly dragged the whetstone across the steel, he was taken back to teaching Thea how to do exactly that for the first time during their travels to and from Delmira.
He had been so fearful of the thing between them back then that he hadn’t taken her hands in his and guided them like he’d wanted to, but he’d guided her hands many times since then.
As the flames of the small fire danced and crackled, he lost himself in the quiet scrape of metal on stone for a time, the motions of the task second nature to him after all these years.
Outside the shelter, the wind whispered through the ancient trees while dappled moonlight streamed through the broken canopy, casting an almost ethereal glow on the dark and icy surroundings.
Wilder’s hand stilled on the whetstone, his scalp prickling as he heard a faint rustling nearby.
Soundlessly, he gripped both of his Naarvian steel swords and rose to his feet, creeping out of the shelter, willing the snow not to crunch beneath his boots.
Abstractly, he wondered if the spy from the arachne skirmish had decided to make a reappearance.
He could certainly use the distraction; in fact, he would welcome a swordfight, or even a brawl if it meant getting his mind off the Great Rite, even for a few moments.
Looking to the horses and finding them calm, Wilder scanned the treeline, noting that the weight of his sword tugged insistently at the gash in his arm. He didn’t dare think too hard about it, but he had the sneaking suspicion that the venom was affecting him more than he would have liked.
Twirling his great swords, he stalked the perimeter of the camp, his impatience finally getting the better of him.
‘Show yourself,’ he demanded, his voice hoarse.
Silence followed, stretching out long into the dark night.
But then Wilder’s gaze snapped up – where he heard the distinct beat of wings.
Not membranous as he’d come to recognise them, but feathered. And sure enough, when he scanned the branches above, one sprung up and down beneath the weight of a great hawk.
‘Terrence,’ Wilder murmured. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
The bird stared at him with those unforgiving yellow eyes, stretching out his wings before tucking them neatly away with a dignified squawk.
Something else rustled in the bushes and Wilder pivoted, blades still raised, ready to strike.
Snow shifted beneath a considerable weight and Wilder found himself staring at the huge mass that was Dax, his brother’s dog. The mongrel gave a soft bark and ran up to Wilder, nuzzling his legs and licking his hands, which had fallen in relief to his sides.
He eyed both creatures with a huff of amusement. ‘Sent to keep an eye on me, were you?’ he murmured, scratching Dax behind the ears and starting back towards his shelter, feeling the gust of wind by his shoulder as Terrence soared closer to camp.
Feeling light-headed, Wilder settled back in by the fire, and at long last drifted into a fitful sleep.
He dreamt of Thea. Of her bronze hair trailing across his chest as she kissed her way down his torso.
Of her stormy eyes as she argued with him, the scent of sea salt and bergamot toying with his senses.
He dreamt of her swinging her blade and spilling cursed blood.
He dreamt of the hot springs and of burying himself inside her. He dreamt of her whispering his name.
When Wilder woke, there was something wrong.
Dax was nosing his bad arm, which he’d been sleeping on. As he came to, the pain and fever hit. Gods, had there really been that much venom in the wound? He’d thought he might get away with a few days of queasiness, but what he was feeling right now – it went beyond that.
With a pained groan, Wilder hauled himself upright, his head spinning with the sudden movement. Half of all arachne victims died. That was the statistic. He didn’t want to be one of them, but it wasn’t looking good.
Dax sniffed the wound and growled.
‘I know, I know,’ Wilder told him, fighting the wave of nausea that hit him.
He shouldn’t have laid down; the horizontal position overnight had given the venom free rein to spread throughout his body.
Scanning the place where he’d slept, he only hoped his head had been elevated, lest the poison get to his brain.
Dax’s ears pricked up and Terrence let out a warning call overhead.
Wilder lurched to his feet, staggering to the edge of the forest to peer down the long, winding road to Tver. There was a cloud of dust on the horizon, a telltale sign of a force on the move.
Wilder cursed, unable to make out the banners or colours from a distance.
He stumbled back to the horses, where he knew Thea had a spyglass somewhere.
He damn near emptied the contents of her entire pack to find it, but once he had it in his grasp he went to the road again, sweat beading at his brow with the effort.
He put the small cylinder to his eye and adjusted the focus, lengthening the contraption to cover the greater distance.
Dax was already growling at his heels, and when Wilder saw the colours and banners, his knees nearly buckled.
For King Artos rode right towards him, an entire army at his back.
‘Fuck…’ he breathed, his mind struggling against the haze of poison coursing through him.
He had to act fast.
With a final surge of energy, Wilder moved.
He dismantled his shelter and hid the evidence of any form of comfort.
Every task was like a hot lance to the wound in his arm, causing him to dry-retch with the pain of it.
He realised with each action that for the first time in his life, he couldn’t fight. Not against one man, let alone an army.
And so he made a decision.
Wilder turned the horses loose, discarding their saddlebags at the foot of the mountain, where hopefully no soldier would enter the swirling mist.
He only took one thing.
The manacles Wren had made with the same foul venom that coursed through him now.
Holding the hefty weight of them in his hands as the drumbeat of the army’s march drew nearer, Wilder turned to Dax. ‘Make yourself scarce,’ he told the dog. ‘I don’t want Artos connecting anything about this with Malik.’
Daz gave a low bark and remained rooted to the spot.
‘Go!’ Wilder ordered, lacing his voice with authority, taking some of the much-needed strength he barely had. ‘Get out of here.’ He shooed Dax away, praying that he returned to his brother at the Singing Hare.
With a whimper, the mongrel retreated into the trees, and Wilder nearly collapsed with relief. He’d seen Mal lose too much for him to lose his canine companion as well.
His vision blurred, and for a moment, a wave of irrational anger washed over him. How had he gotten this far, only for it all to end here? For him to be so close to seeing Thea emerge from the Great Rite, only to be felled by a fucking scratch?
But he shoved those thoughts aside, urgency spurring him on.
He fell towards the tree where he’d left a coil of rope from his shelter. With a ragged gasp, he collapsed into the snow and worked the rope around himself and the trunk, his entire right side burning now.
When he could barely move, he twisted with his back against the bark to scratch something there with the tip of his dagger. A symbol, a calling card.
His dagger hit the snow, and he felt distant regret for all the care he’d taken with it only to leave it to rust in the wet. But the thought was fleeting as his breath turned shallow.
Just one more task , he told himself. One more thing and you can close your eyes .
He placed his wrists in the manacles, another wave of discomfort washing over him, and then he locked them in place.
‘What do we have here?’ came a deeply smug voice.
Wilder took a moment to rally his strength, to inhale a lungful of crisp mountain air, to be grateful that no one he cared for was here to witness his demise. He looked up into the handsome face of King Artos Fairmoore, his will no longer enough to keep the force of the venom at bay.
He met his enemy’s green-eyed stare without hesitation, without fear. ‘You need not have brought your whole army, Artos.’
‘A king of the midrealms is dead because of you,’ Artos declared. ‘An army to hunt you down and see you in chains is more than justified. But I see someone has saved us the trouble. It appears the rumours were true. I presume we have Althea Zoltaire to thank for your capture?’
‘She makes a formidable enemy,’ Wilder rasped.
The last thing he saw was Terrence’s yellow eyes, and the flap of his great wings against a bright blue sky.
‘I regret nothing,’ he murmured, picturing stormy celadon eyes.
Then, darkness swallowed him whole.