Chapter 22 #2
Harwick shot her a glance over his shoulder.
‘We’ll be crushed!’ he shouted back.
‘Trust me!’ Fola held on to the back edge of the saddle with her knees and opened her notebook across the strongman’s back—almost as broad as Colm’s. Harwick grunted something under his breath, but nodded.
‘Stay close!’ he yelled to the other riders, and put his knees to the gelding for another burst of speed.
Fola took note of the gate’s make. It opened inwards, towards the city, and worked by counterweights—massive blocks of stone suspended on chains slowly lowered, driving the mechanism that swung the doors.
It would be a race, then. Horseflesh and her magic against the inexorable pace of gravity.
No other way. She started to draw the circle, despite the searing bar of tension that seized her middle.
The gelding beneath her began to baulk from the narrowing gap. Horses had better sense than people when it came to charging head-first towards certain death. Of course, unlike Fola, they neither understood nor could wield the powers of thaumaturgy.
A simple function of compression, then flow.
With a stroke of her pen, spellpaper burst in a flash and, with the acrid scent of burning ink, conveyed her spell to the air itself.
She hugged Harwick’s middle to keep her seat.
The screams of their horses soared to a piercing, terrified wail, soon scattered by the sudden roar of rushing wind as the air caught and carried them forward, doubling their speed.
A loose formation of guards had begun assembling to bar their way; the sudden gust battered them with flying debris, then bowled them over moments before the three horses surged past.
The bar of tension in her core began to relax as they rode free.
The ensorcelled wind dissipated in the same moment the gates thundered shut.
Fola shook her head, laughed in relief and satisfaction, and moved to put her notebook away—and only then realised that all during the mad dash she had been crushing Frog against Harwick’s back.
The bird trembled, blinking up at her from the swaddling bundle across her chest, startled and confused but thankfully unhurt beyond the wounds Torin had dealt.
To a chorus of shouts and confusion from the city, Harwick led their party east along the First Folk Road, still at a gallop.
They passed the ruined fields where the haunting had struck the festival hardest. Abandoned tent poles stood sentinel over bloodstained grass.
Torn remnants of pavilions and bunting fluttered in the afternoon breeze.
Fola held tight to Harwick and chanced a backward glance as they galloped through the abandoned wreckage.
Llewyn slumped against Spil on the black palfrey, his eyes glazed in agony.
Siwan clung to Damon’s waist and looked about them—perhaps taking in the devastation where so recently a festival air had held, perhaps seeking sign of Afanan, behind them.
The girl’s taut expression poorly masked her grief and guilt.
At their back, a pillar of smoke had begun rising from the southern end of the city.
* * *
‘Harwick!’ Spil shouted. ‘You’ll kill Rusty and Mable if we keep on like this! They’re only carthorses, for pity’s sake!’
They had reached the edge of the festival grounds, well on their way to Bryngodre through open country, little more than gentle hills and grassland dotted with the occasional stand of trees.
Fola looked back. Neither Anwe nor whatever threat the troupers had fled pursued them.
She could feel the roan gelding—Rusty, she surmised—growing tired beneath her, his stride losing its smoothness.
Mable, which bore Siwan and Damon, was faring slightly better with her lesser burden, but of the three mounts only the black palfrey had yet to flag.
‘We’re safe for the moment,’ Fola said.
Harwick nodded, and soon they had slowed from a mad gallop to a steady trot.
‘We should see to Llewyn,’ Siwan said. A deep furrow in her brow held in her grief and questions. ‘He’s hurt.’
‘Is he awake?’ Fola asked.
Llewyn grunted.
‘Anything you can do from the saddle, do,’ Fola said. ‘I’ll tend to him when we’re out of sight.’
‘There’s an old ruin a short ride beyond Bryngodre,’ Harwick said. ‘Used to camp there from time to time back when … Well, before I joined the troupe. Shelter from the cold and wind. We’ll rest there a while.’
They rode in silence for a time after that.
The grey blanket of the sky lit with the red of sunset, then darkened and deepened.
A brisk wind from the north rolled down the distant mountains and set a chill in Fola’s sweat-stained clothes—the stupid riding dress she’d worn in hopes of speaking with the Count of Glascoed, now torn and frayed.
She heard chattering teeth and rustling garments behind her—she was not the only one suffering the onset of the autumn night.
Fola could feel the questions riding beside them—what hunted them?
And what had happened to Afanan?—which began to bubble to the surface as the vast, reaching limbs of Bryngodre’s ancient oak appeared out of the twilight.
To distract themselves from the cold and their fear, the troupers discussed the other members of their company, where each might have gone in the wake of the troupe’s violent dissolution, and the chances of reunion.
The adrenaline tide that had carried Fola through their mad flight had receded, leaving her limbs leaden and her mind a fog.
At the first opportunity she would have Frog brew up enough medicine to bolster them all and knit Llewyn’s injuries.
For now, she rode behind Harwick in a drift, which returned her thoughts again and again to Colm.
The broad plane of Harwick’s back made it difficult not to think of him, try as she might.
Her last glimpse as he faced off against Anwe.
The blood dripping down one of his heavy upper arms and soaking the bandage that wrapped the other.
If Colm had been with her by his own, free, independent choice, motivated by belief in her cause rather than desire for her currency, the prospect of his having traded his life for her escape might have fostered simple grief rather than this guilt that left her shrivelled and hollowed out.
Or … perhaps not. The impossibility of answering that counterfactual question only deepened the pain.
She only wished she could convince herself that he had risked death for her, rather than from a duty born of the gold she had given him.
Siwan screamed, shattering Fola’s dour introspection.
Siwan leapt from the saddle, startling Mable and Damon.
She ran to the edge of the road, her skirts whirling in a gust of wind that stirred the grass and brush.
Another scream tore from her, then became a sob as she fell to her knees beside a humped form half-hidden in the grass and night-time dark.