by Shae Ford
He slunk away, kicking dirt at Elena as he passed — and before Kael had a chance to grasp what was happening, he heard footsteps crunching up the frosted trail.
Several heads appeared over the top of the slope. Their faces were wind-burned, their breaths wheezed out in puffs of white, fur caps tipped over several of their brows. But he still thought he might’ve recognized … no, it couldn’t be. It couldn’t possibly …
“Kael!”
Lysander reached him first. Never, in all his life, had Kael expected to feel relieved at the prospect of being crushed against a pirate’s chest, but that was precisely what he felt. Jonathan’s lanky arms wrapped around his head; Nadine’s wrapped about his middle. Declan scooped them all up together and squeezed until they nearly broke.
“Keep that up and there’ll be nothing left for the rest of us!” Morris croaked. When Declan set them down, the helmsman slapped a stocky arm across Kael’s back and said: “You’ll have to run faster than that to lose us, lad!”
A hawk’s cry rang above them as Eveningwing sounded his agreement.
More people stepped up to greet him. The pirates smiled as they clasped his shoulders. One of the giants plucked him off the ground and passed him through their hulking ranks. They ruffled his hair with their meaty hands and guffawed loudly in his ears. Kael didn’t think his feet touched the ground for a full minute.
When the shock wore off and the giants finally set him down, Kael realized all of his companions were dressed like wildmen: fitted in heavy furs and armor, caps pulled tightly over their heads.
“Ah, yes. We came across your village on the way up,” Lysander explained, pulling on his chainmail. “I thought it was a rather charming place —”
“Yeah, once those painted blokes stopped trying to kill us, it wasn’t half bad,” Jonathan said with a wink.
Kael groaned. “They tried to kill you?”
“I really think they would have, to be honest. But once some of us put our daggers away,” Jake said with a pointed look at Elena, “they turned out to be rather civil.”
She rolled her eyes. “If by civil you mean they graciously stopped trying to tear you limb from limb, then yes.”
Jake produced a vial from the depths of his pocket and held it aloft. It was half-filled with a rather sickly looking yellow liquid. “The odor my skin puts off seems to be the one unbearable thing about me. I thought if I could somehow manage to cloak my natural scent, I might not be such a bother. So I’ve been carrying this around with me for ages, waiting to test it on an unfamiliar whisperer,” he said with a slight smile. “I’d hoped it would be useful in an emergency.”
“It’s skunk oil,” Elena said, when she saw the confused look on Kael’s face. “It certainly kept the whisperers away —”
“And everybody else, I might add,” Lysander said with a grimace.
Jake frowned. “It wasn’t all that bad.”
“It’s still burning the back half of my throat!” Jonathan insisted.
“Aye, and there was no saving his robes, either. We burned them up a few miles past the village.” Morris chuckled. “The smoke was worse than the smell! Knocked a bird straight from the trees, it did.”
“That was just an … unfortunate coincidence, I’m sure. There’s no possible way a smell could knock something dead.” Jake’s eyes roved away and he pushed his spectacles absently up the bride of his long nose. “Or is there? I wonder …”
Elena shook her head at him before turning back to Kael. “Even with Jake cloaking his way out of trouble, they probably still would’ve killed us.”
Lysander nodded. “But a little charisma goes a long way. Luckily, I thought to introduce us —”
“Luckily they knew our clodded names!” Declan said with a glare.
“One of the children remembered us from your stories,” Nadine explained. “When he heard our names, he called out to the others and said: I know these people — they are friends of Kael the Wright.”
Kael dragged a hand across his curls; a smile pulled at his lips as he tried to keep the rest contained. “Griffith,” he said.
“Aye, that’s the one. Things got especially friendly after that.” Morris thumped his chest. “Warm clothes, new armor —”
“A nice stall for Braver. They’ve promised to keep him fed and brushed while I’m away. I hope for their sakes that they do,” Elena growled.
“They even tended to our weapons. The giants’ scythes have never been so sharp.” Declan hoisted the weapon once before he slumped forward, planting his hands against his knees. “Plains mother, all the climbing and stomping about … it may be twice as tall here, but I swear the air’s only half as thick!”
The giants let out a grunt in reply — though it wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic a cry as Kael remembered it being.
“Well, now that we’ve got our Wright, all that’s left is to find our favorite mischief-maker,” Lysander declared. “Where’s the Dragongirl?”
Every fleeting shred of happiness he’d felt was gone in an instant, drowned in the depths of their stares.
Kael fell heavily on his knees and his eyes sank to their boots. Their voices swam in his ears. They asked him things — he couldn’t answer. He barely heard it when Morris thumped down beside him. He barely felt the stocky arm that draped across his back.
“What’s gone wrong, lad? Whatever it is, we’ll sort it out,” he croaked. “You’ve got the whole clump of us here, now. We’ll do whatever we can.”
Slowly, Morris coaxed the story from him. Kael told them of the wildmen’s battle at Hundred Bones, how the Earl had trapped them, how Kyleigh had fallen into the river. He told them everything he’d done to try to save her.
“Her bones are frozen. She won’t wake …” Kael clenched his teeth and Morris’s arm tightened its grip, steadying him. “Nothing I’ve tried has worked. I don’t know what to do. There’s nothing I can do. She’s just … Kyleigh’s …”
A tiny pair of hands clasped either side of his face. They turned his chin upwards, lifting him until he found himself staring at Nadine. “Take me to her,” she said softly.
The firmness of her stare made Kael’s heart lift a little — made the hope come back.
“I promise you I will not leave her side until she wakes.”
*******
They’d made their camp a few short miles from Hundred Bones. Beyond the river’s crossing lay the final season: now the wildmen stood in the winter reaches of the mountains.
Only a few scraggy trees still clung to the slope. The sparse grass was shrunken back against the rocks in surrender. And everything, from the trees to the grass was sealed in a shell of ice.
It looked as if the land had been encased in glass. Branches hung perfectly preserved, their buds frozen in time. In some places, faded blooms sat in drooping clumps — evidence that life once blossomed in the wastes. It was as if the winter had struck them so fiercely that the land hadn’t had a chance to wilt. Now it was frozen forever, trapped in a cage of ice.
Kael had the pirates and the giants set up camp at the top of a hill, while the wildmen spread out beneath them. His friends’ bodies weren’t as accustomed to the cold. He had the craftsmen mold them shelters from stone. They used the armor they’d scavenged from the Earl’s men to make little firepots, and turned their swords into spits. Even with the icy earth spread all around them, the camp was warm and well-fed.
Their biggest worry was Titus.
In the days following their battle at Hundred Bones, Kael had begun to realize that he’d made a very serious mistake. He remembered what Kyleigh had told him about how the Earl stalked his enemies. She’d said that he would only strike once, and the only blow he’d deal was the ending one.
Now as Kael thought back, he realized the fort outside of Tinnark had only been a test. Once Titus knew what the wildmen were capable of, he’d done exactly what Kael had done to Griffith: he used the warriors’ battle lust against them. He’d goaded them into a fig
ht, knowing they would follow — he’d tricked them into leaving the craftsmen vulnerable.
But Kael had struck back. He’d countered in a way the Earl hadn’t been expecting … he hadn’t been expecting it because he’d known the craftsmen were weak. Mercy’s sake, how had he known about the craftsmen? Had he been spying on them?
And even though Titus had clearly hoped to destroy the craftsmen at the river’s middle, he’d been prepared for the worst. He’d brought his catapults along, knowing full well that he might have to use them — prepared to break the river and strand his army at the mountain’s top, just so long as he sank the wildmen first.
The more Kael dwelt on it, the tighter his stomach twisted. Perhaps Titus had meant to end them at Hundred Bones … but perhaps that’d merely been another test. Perhaps the real battle was yet to come.
For all he worried, there was one thing the Earl knew for certain: Kyleigh marched with the wildmen. He’d sent his falcons on her the moment his army began to lose its grip. Kael realized why the birds had been attacking so frantically now. Those had been Titus’s blows — he’d been trying to force her into the river, to eliminate his greatest enemy.
And unless he was completely blind, he now knew that Kael would do anything to save her.
“The thing about Titus is you’ve got to get him quick, lad,” Morris said. “You’ve got to get him before he gets you.”
Kael was beginning to understand this. He’d come to realize that every moment he sat idle would allow Titus to add another detail to his plan. But he couldn’t march on — not without Kyleigh.
Nadine had made good on her word. She’d spent the last several days with Kyleigh, tucked right in beside her. Sometimes Elena lay on Kyleigh’s other side, sometimes it was Gwen. But Nadine insisted it be someone she knew.
“A woman as strong as Kyleigh will not lose the will to fight, not even in her sleep. Familiar voices, the beating of familiar hearts — these things will heal the wounds within. If the cold is truly in her bones,” Nadine had said with a determined smile, “it will not last for long. I will speak to her until it melts.”
Kael wasn’t sure he believed that being surrounded by familiar bodies would heal her. But as he’d tried everything else, he was willing to do whatever Nadine said — even if that meant he was only allowed to visit twice a day.
The first morning he’d gone to see Kyleigh, he swore there’d been a little color in her face. That evening, he’d held her hand for as long as Nadine would let him. He wasn’t allowed to tell her how badly he wanted her to wake, or mention how furious he was with her for having tried to fight his hold at the river. Instead, he told her stories. He said things he thought would’ve made her laugh.
And slowly, it began to work.
That morning when he’d gone to hold her hand, there’d been a tiny bit of warmth beneath the frost. He’d pressed her palm against his chest and kept it there for an hour, trying to will more warmth into her blood. It was only after Nadine had stomped her tiny feet at him that he’d reluctantly gone outside.
Now it was nightfall, and Kael had circled the whole camp once already because he was far too thrilled to sleep. On his second turn, Morris had waddled out to join him.
“Titus is like a bit of arrow,” the old helmsman croaked on. “Pull him out right away, and you’ve only lost a little blood. But let him sit, let him fester, and he’ll kill you. That’s something the rebels never figured out.”
Kael nodded absently.
The clouds had retreated and frost-covered blades of grass shimmered in the moon’s unfettered glow. The fires from their camp were little more than dots in the distance. He’d wandered too far out, listening to Morris. He knew he ought to turn back … just a little further, and he would.
“I underestimated him,” Kael said bitterly. “I thought the wildmen lost because they didn’t know how to battle a real enemy. I had no idea Titus was so …”
“Smart? Aye, that he is, and he knows he is — and it’s a cruel sort of smart, too. That’s the worst kind, if you ask me,” Morris muttered. “But you’ve held him off well, lad. If anybody’s got a half-chance against him, it’s you.”
Kael wasn’t so sure.
They walked in silence for a moment — which seemed to be about the only amount of silence Morris could handle. It wasn’t long before his chattering billowed up once more.
“I saw an old friend of mine back in that little village. Never thought I’d see him again.” Morris’s mouth cracked into a wide grin as he looked up at the stars. “I’d always wondered what’d become of Baird.”
Kael’s stomach twisted into a knot. “You knew him?”
“Aye, he was a bard, back in the old days. When the Whispering War broke out, he signed on as a courier. He was a blasted good one, too,” Morris muttered with a shake of his head. “He carried the King’s secrets across the realm. He’d stride straight to the front lines with an order to pull back, if he had to. There wasn’t a thing he wouldn’t have done to save Midlan, and he proved it … did he show them to you?”
Morris touched a nub to the corner of his eye, and Kael’s throat tightened. “He said he cut them out himself.”
To his horror, Morris inclined his head. “Gouged them with a rock, he did. Baird could’ve talked his way out of anything — the rebels only caught him because they stuffed rags in their ears. They were going to turn him over to the Falsewright —”
“Deathtreader, you mean.”
The harsh edge of his voice wasn’t lost on Morris. The old helmsman sighed. “Figured that out, did you? Well, you’re a smart lad. You were bound to find out eventually.”
“I wish you would’ve just told me,” Kael said, quickening his pace. Instead of turning back, he marched higher up the slope.
“You wish that, eh?” Morris grunted as he tried to keep up. His breath came out in wheezes. “Well, then … how come … you never asked?”
“How could I have thought to ask whether Deathtreader was the one who led the rebel whisperers?” Kael said hotly. “How could I have possibly guessed?”
“I wasn’t talking about … Deathtreader.” Morris’s crunching steps came to a halt. “I meant … about these.”
When Kael turned, Morris was staring at him. He held his gauntlet-capped nubs before his face — a face that Kael likely wouldn’t have recognized, had it not been attached to Morris’s stocky body. His eyes had sunk so deeply into their pouches that he could barely see them. The mouth beneath his wiry beard hung slack.
“I know Baird’s told you,” he whispered, his croaky voice broken. “He started singing it the moment Lysander said my name.”
Kael felt as if he stared at Morris from the lip of cavern, as if the man he’d known was tumbling out of reach — as if he would soon be lost forever. And more than anything, Kael didn’t want that to happen.
He would rather hear a lie.
“It doesn’t matter what Baird said to me. If you tell me it isn’t true, I’ll believe you — or don’t say anything at all.” Kael took a step towards him, as if that might somehow keep the cavern from devouring his friend. “I’ll never ask. I don’t have to know.”
“It don’t work that way, lad.”
“No.” Kael took a step back. The cavern opened its jaws. “You didn’t.”
“I did,” Morris said quietly. “I did, lad … I wrote those letters.”
Chapter 39
Choices
Kael could think of only one thing to say: “How could you?”
Morris’s stocky arms sank lower as his shoulders fell. “I was a fool, simple as that. Crevan asked it of me —”
“And you wagged your tail and went along,” Kael said scornfully. “Baird was right to call you the Dog.”
“He was. They all were. When Crevan asked me to write those letters, I did just that. But I’m no traitor,” Morris said sharply, thrusting a nub at the middle of Kael’s chest. “That’s something you got to understand, lad.”
&n
bsp; “Well, I’m having a difficult time believing it.”
“The Kingdom was in a bad state,” Morris insisted. “The whisperers all scattered after the Falsewright’s death. The ones still loyal to Midlan had lost their faith in the crown, and the rebels thought they’d be rounded up and executed —”
“And they were.”
“— but Crevan said he wanted the whisperers to come back. He said it was for the Kingdom’s sake. He said the regions couldn’t survive without their aid, and that the only hope he’d ever have of convincing them is if I did a bit of whispering.” His shoulders rose and fell. “I thought they had a chance, lad. What would you have done if you thought your people had a chance of saving themselves? And what if you thought they might miss that chance out of fear?”
Kael said nothing. He didn’t know what he would’ve done, but he was certain he wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help Crevan.
“He was different in those days,” Morris said quietly, as if he could read the thoughts flickering behind Kael’s eyes. “Banagher did a bad thing, driving the whisperers off. Crevan stood for Midlan when most others fled. He and this sorry clump of outcasts got the nobles rallied and brought the Kingdom back together. They were heroes, lad.”
“Kyleigh could see it in him,” Kael said vehemently. “She knew Crevan was a liar — she attacked him for it.”
“Aye, up in the towers where it was only just the two of them. Nobody in the King’s court knew what Kyleigh was. They didn’t like her, they didn’t trust her. So when Crevan stumbled down the stairs with his face sliced open, who do you think they believed?”
“You knew what she was. You told me you knew.”
Morris looked away. “Aye … and so I had more reason than most not to trust her. Look, lad — being a … a … well, being what she is didn’t exactly help things. We only went along with her because of Setheran. But when we saw what she done to our new King, we thought she was the enemy. It was only after Crevan started to turn that we realized we’d made a mistake.
