Chapter 20
Iwoke to find my arms bound behind me, something else preventing my legs from moving. I was in a seated position, and a rapid wiggle confirmed I was likely seated on a chair. Maybe one of the ones I had seen in that small hut.
The small hut had been a trap, my subconscious reminded me. Still, I didn’t regret talking to Mela, even if it had been just to lure me into a false sense of security. Regardless, this is what I had been trained for.
A strange scent lingered in my nose, and I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, trying to place the slightly earthy scent that remained. It smelled a bit like . . . moth flower.
Before I could take another moment to gain my bearings, the bag was ripped from my head, leaving me blinking at the sudden introduction of light, even though the room I was in was far from bright. But it was definitely brighter than when the cloth had been over my head.
“I’m going to make this simple for you. You tell me the truth, and no one gets hurt.”
It was the same voice as before, but now that I had the opportunity to look at him between my rapid series of blinks, I realized, though he appeared slightly familiar, I had no idea who he was.
He was broad-shouldered, tall, yet lean in a way that suggested he hadn’t been getting enough nourishment.
A scowl occupied his face, though his gaze was trained on the ground.
Like Mela, his face was worn, tired looking, and I wondered what had caused him so much stress.
He paced back and forth across the room in front of me, giving me a moment to look around.
I had been moved while I was out, as the building I was enclosed in was not Mela’s home.
Strangely enough though, he was the only one here.
Surprising, considering I was not small for a woman, and that he must have dragged me here without help.
I took a quick catalog of the room, but besides me, the chair I was tied to, and a basin on the far side of the room, it was barren.
His pacing came to a sudden stop, and he turned to face me. “Who are you?” His expression was anything but welcoming, the lines on his face making his scowl more pronounced.
“Runa.” I breathed, trying to keep my nerves under control and keep myself from spiraling.
“Last name?”
“Don’t have one.” That was the truth, at least.
He leaned in appraisingly, before sneering, “Lies.”
I raised my eyebrow. Crazy how I had pretended to be someone I wasn’t my whole life and now I was being heralded as a traitor the one time I gave my real information.
“My general knows you—spotted you right away on the horizon. Knew you were some sort of spy.”
Ah, well, there went my cover. The way he said general made me pause, however, because it made me feel like perhaps Otho was the one to betray me . . . but that couldn’t be. I shook my head.
“My general seemed to know you very well. Too well, if you ask me.”
I gulped. Maybe Otho had betrayed me after all. It would explain why he wanted to help me—to get back at Adis. But one thing it didn’t explain was how Friar was allowed to remain a healer in General Adis’s home.
“I swear.” I swallowed. “I don’t know who your general is, but my name is Runa.” I didn’t know if I could save this situation or not, but I was going to try.
“Well, you will have to iron that out with him. Care to explain why you crossed the front lines to come to Bru?”
I was able to surmise that the town I found myself in must have been named Bru. “I was trying to find my way home and ended up lost.” The words sounded rehearsed, even to me.
“Another lie, I see. The hard way it is then.”
I didn’t even get a chance to inquire as to what he meant by that before he was on me. I screamed, trying to fight him off as he untied my legs from the chair. For a moment, I paused, confused as to why he was untying me, but then my legs were tied together instead, away from the chair.
My heart pounded, trying to escape the confines of my chest. He was trying to move me.
I knew whatever the hard way was, it wouldn’t be good for me, so I raised and lowered my elbows, trying to hit him anywhere that would hurt.
Then, when his arm was brought near my mouth, I dug my teeth into his flesh.
He shrieked but didn’t stop his motions as he dragged me from the building, my arms and legs bound to each other to prevent me from running.
Exposed to the bright light of the sun, I found myself groaning once again.
Mentally, I reviewed the effects of moth flower, but as far as I could remember, they didn’t cause lingering effects.
Considering I had conspired with Otho at dawn, I arrived at the conclusion that I hadn’t been knocked out for long and that we were still in the same day.
What did surprise me, however, was the large audience standing in a circle, their dark eyes appraising me as I was dragged to a pole in the center. Whatever this was turning out to be, it couldn’t be good.
The crowd whispered among themselves as my bindings were adjusted to attach to the wooden pole.
Their eyes remained fixed on me even as they leaned in to whisper to their friends.
I couldn’t help but be dismayed that my one venture into society had ended so poorly.
I didn’t even have a chance to practice my spying, and here I was, my life coming to an end in front of the small village of Bru.
Otho would be waiting in five days, and I would never show up. He would think I ran away and was living somewhere happily. Unless, of course, he was the one behind this spectacle and his training me to be a scout was a lie. Either way, it didn’t matter. I was resigned to my fate.
Despite my dismay at the fact that things had ended this way, I didn’t regret anything.
That is, until a blur of man shot into the camp, my eyes catching on his dark hair—jet black and reflective of the hot afternoon sun.
I only had one single second to question what he could possibly be doing here beyond the possibility of him being general for both sides of the war (as I was beginning to assume) when the screaming started.
First, the individuals who had been standing in a circle, intent on watching my demise, began to scatter. Whether they were scared or grabbing weapons, I couldn’t be certain.
The man who had tied me to a pole dove back into the building we had emerged from, which was nothing more than a basic hut. I hoped he wasn’t grabbing a weapon capable of taking down General Otho.
It didn’t matter though, because Otho moved fast, and a blink later, he was behind me, the sound of a knife cutting through the ropes that bound me to the pole tickling my ears. It only took a single swipe, and then I was free, being pulled behind Otho, my legs dragging in the dust.
We started running, him continuously pulling even as I struggled to keep up with his large strides. I had never been a runner, but I was discovering that I would need to devote some time to becoming stronger when this was over—if it was ever over.
I assumed he would direct us back to the barren land I had traversed that morning in my journey here, back to the front lines. But to my utter surprise, we were heading in the opposite direction.
We passed through the town, which, if I had been on my own, I would have advised against, but I figured that Otho knew what he was doing. The town was small, the buildings a blur in the corner of my vision as he forced the grueling pace.
We were almost out of the town, and the forest rose ahead, which I assumed Otho was aiming for, when I noticed a brown blur out of the corner of my eye. I turned just in time to watch an arrow sink into the muscle in Otho’s shoulder.
I grimaced, my breath catching as I waited for him to call out, yell in pain, and fall to the ground. But he didn’t.
While he did stumble for a moment when the pointed end entered his flesh, he didn’t say a word, and continued his pace.
I was still reeling, trying to figure out why the man in front of me wasn’t writhing in the dirt in pain when we crossed into the shadows of the trees. But wisely, Otho didn’t stop. He kept running, kept pulling my arm even as I stumbled over roots and tree branches.
Having barely eaten all day, and having only consumed a small amount of water after my other adventure, it wasn’t long before my steps slowed, a pain shooting up my ribs, which had me grabbing my side.
Otho glanced over at me, his gaze catching on where my hands gripped my sides. “Are you injured?”
“Says the man who has an arrow in his shoulder.” I don’t know why the words came out of my mouth, but they did, and I couldn’t take them back now. Otho’s pace slowed.
“And I asked a question that you didn’t answer.” His voice was firm.
I breathed for a moment, using the fact that I was still panting to my advantage. But I continued to avoid the question, focusing instead on what I was really dying to know. “You said you wouldn’t come for me.”
He frowned, his gaze still appraising me instead of connecting with my own. “I know.”
“But you did.”
“I KNOW!” he growled.
He still refused to look me in the eye, his eyes scanning the trees. Though he wasn’t panting like I was, I could tell he was stressed about something thanks to the empathy book.
“Why?”
He didn’t answer, still scouring the woods for something I couldn’t see.
I opened my mouth to press further, but was interrupted by a shiver that went down my spine. Something was going on here. Not here, in the woods, between the two of us, but in Ralheim. Something larger than I had been led to believe.
I looked over my shoulder. I could no longer spot the brown buildings of Bru in the spaces between the trees. “Do you think we are far enough away?”
“Not yet.” Otho swiveled his head from left to right, seeming to be able to see something I couldn’t, before adjusting his path forward slightly to the left.
We walked in silence, neither of us willing to discuss what we likely had to.
My side still ached, though I gritted my teeth through the pain and said nothing. We wouldn’t be able to stop here anyway, and I wasn’t the one with an arrow in his flesh. My throat grew parched, and though there was foliage on all sides of our path, we had yet to follow a source of water.
“All the water in this area is beneath the ground. We will need to dig for something to drink.”
I furrowed my eyebrows. “Did you just read my mind?”
“No, I’ve just seen that look before. I knew what you were searching for.”
“Ah.” I pursed my lips. “So you have sent scouts to their death and had to rescue them before.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, the only sound our boots as they shifted through the foliage at our feet. Then, “Unfortunately, yes. I had hoped that because you were a woman you would be able to catch them with their guard down and infiltrate in a way my male scouts were unable to, but . . .”
“But they figured me out anyway.”
“Unfortunately.”
“So much for that plan.” I sucked my lower lip into my mouth. Though I knew I should be mad at Otho for sending me to what was probably about to be my own demise, I couldn’t deny that I might have tried the same tactic, had I been the general.
“Yes.” He narrowed his gaze, his pace slowing once more. “We are almost there.”
I glanced around the forest around us once more, wondering if there was something I had missed. “Almost where?”
I swore the edge of his lips turned up into something I thought might almost be a grin. “Salheim.”
I tilted my head to the side. I had never heard of such a place. “You mean . . . like Ralheim and Malheim, there’s also a Salheim?”
This time he did grin. “There’s many more towns in the Heim region than those depicted on maps.
” He lifted the arm that didn’t have an arrow embedded in it, running his hand through his dark hair.
“But Viscount Adis’s father demanded all the maps be remade and the smaller towns eliminated from them. ”
I had never heard of that. “Why?” I asked.
He swallowed. “Because he planned to kill their viscounts and didn’t want an uprising from his people.”
My mouth dried up. “How would taking them off the map help him to kill other viscounts?”
“Because . . .” His grin was long gone now. “Because he could label them as intruders—outsiders who were residing in the woods without paying tithe. Unruled peoples. Or peoples ruled by a rebel viscount. And then his men would have reason to slaughter and unseat a viscount on his order.”
“But wouldn’t people remember the previous maps that featured the towns?” I could see Salheim now, see the straw-thatched roofs coming into view.
“It was his first order of business when he took over for his father, Adis’s grandfather—many years before you and I were born.
His second order of business was the one-child rule, so he could fill his home with servants.
Then the mandatory conscription rule so he could fill his army.
” He paused, and I could tell the words were a struggle for him to form.
“His fourth order of business was the purging of any who understood the Seid language.” My breath caught at the mention of the Purge, and I fought the urge to pass out.
Otho continued. “The thing about greed is, it never ends, and I don’t know what Adis plans to do next, but he is no better than his father. ”
I chewed on my lower lip. I had learned far more than I had bargained for in the past few moments.
And as the huts grew closer, I knew my time to ask questions was coming to an end.
There was so much I wanted to ask, so much I needed to know.
But I settled on asking for the one answer I knew I couldn’t continue forward without.
“If he is so evil, why did you become his general?”
“Because it is much easier to demolish a tyrant from within.”