Chapter 12
Kiera
The distress horns were faint at first.
We’d been riding all day when Nikella stiffened in front of me. I’d been dozing against her back despite the constant jostling.
I hadn’t slept well last night. At least at first. I’d been having nightmares where I seemed caught between awake and asleep, not knowing what was real. But then I dreamed Aiden had lain down behind me and held me close. And I’d faded into blissful darkness.
When I’d awakened in his arms, I realized it hadn’t been a dream. My cheeks had burned, wondering what had happened that caused him to take pity on me. Had I called out for him in my sleep?
The last time we’d lain together like that had been in The Hollow.
Unbidden, the memory of his deep voice whispering into my ear had floated through my waking mind.
“For the first time, I have hope. Hope that my heart might not be too scarred for a certain beautiful thief to consider stealing the rest of the pieces she hasn’t already taken.”
A warm ache had stirred in my belly that I escaped as hastily as his unconscious embrace.
Yarina and Nikella had shown me a few sword maneuvers by firelight as the others packed up the camp.
I’d borrowed a sword from Vorkahn, who was a walking armory.
He’d handed it to me with a hard glint in his eyes, saying it’d belonged to his niece, Bronwyn.
I recognized the name from Frieda’s funeral speech as one of the dead.
It felt clunky and unwieldy in my unpracticed hands, but I didn’t dare turn down such an offering.
Renwell had never seen fit to teach me much of the sword since my father had banned them from Aquinon.
My lip had curled in disgust when I told Nikella such. And of the deadly sunstone sword with which Renwell had beheaded my father.
She’d nodded as if she expected this and corrected my sword grip.
We spoke little as we continued north. When Aiden rode past us, I turned my face away.
Dawn came and went. The air grew colder, stabbing at my nose. The golden trees faded away, leaving only a blanket of fuzzy pines.
Nikella passed me dried meat and apples for lunch, but we never left the saddle. As the sun set again, I was beginning to think I’d never be able to fight if I couldn’t regain feeling in my ass.
But I forgot all about my aching body when we heard the horns. Faint, but blowing fast and frantic. Fear rippled through our party with grim expressions and stamping hooves.
Jek shouted, “Onward, faster!”
Everyone galloped down the path. I clung to Nikella’s cloak.
Please, Holy Four, help us get there in time.
We burst from the tree cover onto a ridge that rolled down into a valley. A wide river snaked through the bottom. And on the other side, a behemoth mountain pierced the sky. The setting sun bathed the valley in bloody light.
Arduen’s Mountain sparkled with snow and flecks of light like fireflies.
A beautiful, dream-like scene. But the valley below was a nightmare.
Waves of fire engulfed the large Urzost village spread out before us.
A ship floated on the wide river, its catapults flinging balls of fire into the village.
I gaped, unable to take it all in. Unable to comprehend.
The distress horns had fallen silent.
Nikella kicked her horse, and I nearly flew off the back.
We roared down the ridge in a flurry of hooves and furious shouts. My heart felt as though it would jolt straight up my throat.
Terrible screams filled the air as we neared. I squeezed my eyes shut, hiding for just one more moment.
But then Nikella yanked her horse to a stop and leaped to the ground. She tore off her cloak and unsheathed her spear, then looked up at me with a fierce calm. “Get them out.”
She charged into the burning village on foot while Maz and his sisters galloped after her. They shouted a one-word war cry I couldn’t make out.
A black horse reared amid the cluster of stampeding Dag warriors. I locked eyes with Aiden. Fury lined his face. He lifted his sword in a salute, then rushed after Nikella and Maz.
Gods, what if they didn’t—
A flaming barrel hit a lodge, tearing a hole in the roof and showering the air with oily fire.
High-pitched screams sounded within. I slid from the horse’s back and raced toward the lodge. My boots slipped in the icy mud, but I didn’t slow down.
The heat from the burning lodge seared my skin. Black smoke billowed out, and I coughed. Ripping off a chunk of my borrowed cloak, I tied it around my mouth. I tried to open the wooden door, but it wouldn’t budge.
Fucking Four, come on!
I shoved harder, grunting, my eyes tearing. A child’s voice cried out from within, shredding my heart.
With a roar, I kicked the door, and it finally gave way the tiniest bit. I peered inside, but all I could see was a piece of wooden furniture that blocked the door.
I seized a smoking board nearby and wedged it in the gap. I threw my body against it. The door shrieked open another few inches. Enough for me to stick my head inside.
Smoke blasted my face, blurring my vision and raking down my throat. I coughed and blinked rapidly. “Hello? If you’re still in there, come out this way!”
A child’s sob reached my ears. I craned my neck further and saw a small girl huddled next to a larger body crushed under a burning timber.
“Please,” I choked, sticking my arm through the gap. “Come here, I’ll get you out!”
The girl looked at me, her blond curls a tangled, sooty mess, her cheeks streaked with tears. “Mama,” she cried.
“I know,” I rasped, tears burning my eyes. “I’m sorry. But your mama wants you to be safe.” An ominous groaning filled the lodge, and I looked up to see the rest of the roof caving under the vicious flames.
I waved my hand desperately. “Please, please, hurry!”
Much too slowly, the girl crawled away from her mother.
“Yes, that’s good, so good,” I coaxed her, even as the roof groaned louder. “Now, shove this table a bit.”
She screwed up her face and pushed on the table blocking the door. Flaming embers rained down, one striking her arm, and she cried out.
“Fucking Four!” I shouted, grabbing my board and jamming it against the table.
Just a few more inches. Just a few more gods-damned inches.
Sweat poured down my skin. Then the table shifted backward. I tossed away the board and held the door open.
“Hurry!” I beckoned for the girl.
She crawled out just as the rest of the ceiling collapsed with a roar. I swept her little body into my arms and sprinted away from the burning rubble.
“Camilla? Camilla!”
The girl pulled her face away from my neck and waved wildly at someone over my shoulder. “Brodney!”
I twisted around to see a young boy chasing after us, his clothing singed and torn. She wriggled out of my arms and into the boy’s. He pressed a kiss to her matted hair. He couldn’t have been more than twelve years old, but he had the grim expression of a warrior who’d seen too much.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “Are you with the Rellmirans?”
I shook my head. “I’m just here to help. My name’s Kiera.”
“She saved me,” Camilla announced.
Brodney subjected me to another moment of suspicion before relenting. “I’m her cousin. I’ll take care of her,” he said.
I nodded, relieved. There would be others, and I couldn’t search for them with Camilla wrapped around me.
I pointed to where Nikella’s horse had trotted to a patch of grass to graze, as if the world weren’t burning down. “Can you ride?”
Brodney gave me a look that reminded me so much of Ruru, I couldn’t catch my breath. “I’ve been riding since I could walk.”
“Good. Go as far as you can. Don’t come back until the ship is gone.”
He nodded and hurried toward the gray horse, tugging Camilla with him.
Swallowing hard, I turned back to the burning lodges. They were much larger than the Yargoths’ and more permanently built, with thick wooden beams and stone. But that didn’t stop them from succumbing to the barrel bombs.
I checked each structure, working from the outside in. Most were empty or already ash. Families fled through the muddy streets, heading for the safety of the treeline while shouting for their friends and relatives.
In a healer’s shop, I found an old man with his leg crushed under a bookshelf. Torn books littered the floor around him, and liquid from crushed bottles flavored the smoke in the air with heavy herbal notes.
I held up the bookshelf long enough for the man to crawl out. Then I helped him hobble partway up the ridge. He said nothing, just stared at the destroyed village with hollow eyes.
At some point, I lost my face covering, but I didn’t stop searching for survivors.
The closer I moved to the center of the village, the more bodies I stumbled over. I tried not to look, but I still saw too much. Burned and broken bodies. Some large, some much too small.
Then there were the others. The ones with missing limbs and bloodied clothes. Warriors with shattered weapons and Teachers with torn robes.
Fire didn’t do that.
With shaking fingers, I unsheathed my borrowed sword and edged closer to the center of the village. A small square that must have been a market, judging from the destroyed carts and spilled goods, opened before me.
War raged within.
Dags clashed with figures dressed all in black with metal masks covering their faces. Figures that haunted me like gods-damned demons. Shadow-Wolves.
Holy Four, save us.
The Wolves stole life all around me. Young. Old. Men. Women. They didn’t care. Their glittering black swords and knives carved death with every strike. And carved away my sanity with it. Leaving wounds that would never heal.
A young woman in a bloody dress tripped and fell in front of me. A Wolf noticed and swung his sword high above her head.
Rage flooded my body, and I charged forward. I shoved my sword through the Wolf’s side with every ounce of strength I possessed. His body jerked. His sunstone sword fell behind him. He collapsed over the woman, twitching on the end of my sword.
Gasping, I yanked it from his body.
The woman stared up at me with wide blue eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered. Then she slid out from under the body and kept running.
My arms shook. My fingers were sticky with blood. But I didn’t care. I wanted more. I wanted revenge for every life they dared take. I wanted them to feel some sliver of the pain they were wreaking.
More barrels exploded around the square, but I hardly noticed as another Wolf sprinted at me with a sunstone knife in each fist.
He slid to one knee and swiped at my ankle. I dodged and swung my sword at his neck. Too slow. He blocked. Sunstone sliced through steel. My sword split in half.
Hissing through my teeth, I jabbed at his chest with the broken sword. The metal fractured, vibrating my arms.
Fucking Four! Sunstone armor!
He came at me in a flurry of blows. I tossed the useless hilt and focused all my energy on evading. He cut me a few times. But I felt no pain. As I ducked, I felt the press of a familiar knife I’d forgotten at my hip.
The Wolf swung again, and I whipped out my mother’s knife, meeting his sunstone blade with mine.
He faltered for a split second. I knocked his blade aside and sank my knife into his stomach. He stumbled backward.
But then a fist crashed into my temple. I fell to the ground, close to the first Wolf. My knife flew away.
I flipped over and scuttled backward, away from a huge Wolf that stalked toward me, a sunstone-tipped spear in his hands.
Suddenly, Davka barreled into him, knocking him back a few steps.
She growled, wielding two swords. The Wolf threw his spear at her, and she twisted away with a grin. He produced a small sunstone knife and attacked.
While they fought, I scrambled for a weapon of my own. I didn’t see my knife. But there had to be another—
A victorious cry rose. I whipped my head up to see Davka with her two swords buried in the Wolf’s stomach.
But then another Wolf snuck up from behind.
“DAVKA!” I screamed.
She turned just as the Wolf shoved his sword through her chest.