Setsu Uzumé - [BCS203 S02] - The Only Way Out is Through (html)

by The Only Way Out is Through (html)

  She paused, fighting nausea, and squinted through the wind and the dark. She couldn’t see either of the moons.

  The great hall’s roof was a steep and uncertain climb, even in dry weather. The hall itself was an obstacle, packed close against storehouses, equipment sheds, and servants’ quarters that spread further in a half-circle, leaving only one direction to run. She would have to get down from the roof, beyond the main cluster of buildings, and across the open plain of the ward without being stopped or questioned—as for the gate itself, if the alarm went up before she reached it, it would all be over.

  Guards darkened the door. Before they could take in the extent of Ulti’s butchery, Dagn hurled herself out the window and into Fate’s hands.

  An eave, then hard tiles, and she lost her footing. The icy, bruising tumble sent her right off the edge, an eight-foot drop into a drift over frozen ground. Fate saw fit to land her on her wounded side, and the pain sent an offering of vomit sputtering into the snow.

  She cooled herself there for a moment, listening to the shouts above and the quiet in the courtyards around her. No alarm yet, but that would be next.

  She dragged herself toward the gates. The darkness and falling snow might conceal her for the moment, but the drifts on the ground were too deep to hide her tracks, and she left a clear trail with every crunching step.

  Ahead, warm light spilled from an open door where a courier was loading supplies onto a sled while the dogs stood obediently in their lines. The courier was unfamiliar, but she recognized the dogs. Outpost dogs, replenishing food, oil, and tools to border stations that littered the countryside. The nearest was on a rise two miles south of the keep. She could get word to her mother about the traitor Utheyn from there, if she could get there before she froze. Or bled out.

  She hugged the wall in a patch of shadow, panting. The rebels’ plan might be dead already, but she had no way to tell. It was only two miles. In high summer she could’ve run there. She had to try.

  The courier finished his work, shut the door, and drew on his mittens, preparing to head out.

  Breath smoking, side burning, Dagn crept up behind and snatched him backward. With his throat against the bone of her wrist, her other arm levered his head down. She squeezed, holding him until he stopped thrashing, then let him fall. She stole his cloak and mittens, then eased onto the sled’s nearest runner. A final glance back at him reassured her he was still breathing. Killing a servant never sat well with her.

  With feet planted on the footboards and her grip secure, Dagn whistled the command for home. The dogs took off, and the sled, fishtailing at first, steadied behind them. With a shaking hand, she pulled the cloak’s hood low over her eyes.

  They had made it all the way across the grounds, within sight of the locked gates, when the distinctive sound of a mallet clanging furiously on iron bells rang out across the courtyard.

  The watchmen on the ramparts grew rigid at the alarm, but Dagn didn’t slow her approach. “Food for the field troops,” she barked. “Let me through!”

  The guards knew an order, as sure as the dog team did. They obeyed and lifted the bar, shoving the gates wide.

  Dagn slid through. Wind roared, the sled hissed, and the guards shouted as hundreds of waiting rebels surged out from the knee-break pits under the shadow of the walls and poured into the keep to begin the slaughter.

  She could not stop and help, and she couldn’t breathe without pain. The ride across the stubbled hayfield was chaos, but she shouted the dogs onward. The snow and the pain made every freezing moment stretch. All she had to do was get there. From the outpost south of the keep, she could signal all the camps—warn them, before Utheyn’s forces fell on them like an avalanche.

  The sled bumped and wobbled in the wake of the team. Dagn held fast to the handlebar, keeping her balance as best she could with the wind icing her hair and snowflakes slicing her cheeks. She wanted to stop, to pack snow against her side, but her fingers and toes would freeze long before the cold deigned to numb her wound.

  By the time she saw a faint glimmer ahead, some of the ropes had dribbled loose beneath the sled. The outpost was situated up a lookout hill, and if anyone was watching for smoke signals, they’d see hers above that rise. The soldier stationed there knew her. Respected her. Maybe enough not to ask why she’d come or how she’d been wounded.

  The dogs took the hill, and a third of the way up Dagn spotted a rock jutting up from the snow. It must have rolled there since the track was last used. The lead dogs flowed around it as they’d been trained to do on level ground, and the wheel dogs followed, but sometimes Fate was unkind. The incline was too steep. Like a snapping neck, the brush bow at the front of the sled caught on the rock. The sled jerked to one side and tipped.

  Dagn wasn’t certain when she lost her grip. She landed in crunching snow, skidded, and toppled down the steep rise.

  Above, the dogs yapped, making slow progress with the overturned sled. Once the lead dog had sighted home, she would pull the team and sled along or die trying.

  Dagn lay face down, shivering, at the end of her strength. She couldn’t rise. Perhaps Fate would be kind—perhaps Utheyn had been delayed. Perhaps Fate would stop her mother from welcoming an enemy force into the keep the moment she’d taken it. Perhaps Dagn’s frozen remains would be found and burned before wild pigs tore her apart.

  The dogs’ yips softened into the distance. The snow would cover her, her tracks, and her stupid, predictable mistakes.

  Then, crunching boots broke the silence. One set, then two, then more.

  Many more.

  The first soldier didn’t recognize her, but the third one did. Dagn’s name traveled down the line as they turned her over, prodding her injuries. She wondered if Fate would let her warning die here, a gift to the traitor’s forces.

  Then she heard a voice she recognized, summoned from the back of the column. A voice she thought would be howling on the front lines of the invasion force. Her mother’s voice, rasping her name.

  Hands pressed her, lifting her. Dagn wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck and made a tiny sob only her mother could hear. She wasn’t going to die. Not tonight. No more poisonings. No more games.

  Dagnija secured her into an unfamiliar-smelling sled and tucked the furs tightly around her. Then she grabbed one of the rebels. “Send a runner to Utheyn, tell him my daughter has escaped.”

  “No!” Dagn worked spit into her mouth. “He’s Ulti’s dog, he’s—”

  Dagnija patted Dagn’s cheek with a grin. “Utheyn is loyal to me. Ulti heard what she needed to hear, so she’d let his forces through.” There was no anger in Dagnija’s growl; just an eager, playful impatience. “I’ve been at this longer than you. Keep up.”

  Dagn blinked grit from her eyes and stared at the clouds. Somewhere beyond them, Little Moon was passing Elder Moon. Fate had hidden their race, forcing Dagn to race instead. It had sent a knife deep into her side, battered her, frozen her. Fate was not kind, but neither was this sort of work.

  “You got the gate open at least, even with the weather hiding the moons. Well counted.” Dagnija’s playfulness sharpened to a hungry edge. “By morning the Boar’s piglets will be spitted.”

  Dagn’s dry laughter lanced through the wound in her side. “There’s no need.”

  “We’re nearly at the end. The Boar’s family must be—”

  “Destroyed?” Through cracked lips and a sore jaw, she smiled her first real smile in a long time. “Let me tell you how I got this little cut.”

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