by Box Set
“We have to go slower,” Matka said.
“Why is it you aren’t collapsing?”
“I’m used to running. And I’ve been drinking and eating a bit.”
After that, Matka made sure he drank water, and they kept to a walk or an easy jog. Finally, they neared the canyon floor. The Argon and Shyle clans were about a day’s journey in either direction. The road was deserted and quiet. Otec could hear nothing over the running river.
“We need to keep out of sight,” Matka whispered.
“How did they get so far inland without anyone seeing them?” he asked, his gaze straying in the direction of his village.
Matka shook her head. “I don’t know.” She slipped along the base of the mountain.
Taking his bow in hand, Otec grudgingly followed her. “The road is faster.”
“Yes. But the first thing the army would do is block escape points and post enough men to prevent a counterattack.”
“How do you know so much?”
It took her a moment to answer. “At the school I attended, I showed a proclivity toward herbs and healing, so that was my focus. But all of us learned the arts of war.”
She froze suddenly and lowered to a crouch, gesturing for him to do the same. He followed her gaze up into the trees to find a white owl with black striations. It was the exact same owl from before. Otec was sure of it, if for no other reason than the way it stared at Matka. “But I buried it. I put a huge rock on the grave.”
Matka clenched her fists, fury and hatred rolling from her in waves. Finally, she glared at the bird. Otec had a feeling she had never acknowledged the creature before now. After a moment of what looked like intense listening, she eased back toward him and whispered, “There are Idarans about a quarter league ahead of us.”
Forcing himself to look away from the owl, he strained his senses but heard and saw nothing. “How do you know?” he whispered back just as quietly.
She ignored his question. “It will be nightfall soon. Better for us to rest now, eat something, and try to slip past them in the coming dark.”
Otec scrubbed his hands over his face, wishing his brothers were here. They’d know what to do. “The two of us could handle a couple of sentinels.”
“There are more than that—I’d guess a hundred Idarans.”
He ground his teeth. “I’ll not rest while the Raiders have my family.”
When he made to move around Matka, she grabbed his arm. “Otec, you have to trust me.”
He whipped around to face her. “Why? I barely know you.”
“I’m trying to help you.”
He looked back down the trail, trying to see what she had seen. But then he glanced up at the owl, which stared at him this time.
Otec shuddered and followed Matka. They settled down beneath the huge limbs of a pine tree and shared a small meal of travel bread, dried fruit, and meat. She lay down, her eyes closed, but he could tell by her irregular breathing that she wasn’t sleep.
He didn’t sleep either, unable to stop worrying about his family, imagining various torments while he hid safely beneath a tree.
When it was almost dark, Matka suddenly sat up. With the moon nearly full, he could make out the determination and dread on her face. “Time to go.”
As they crossed the ridge of the mountain face, Otec finally saw the men in the trees. Trying to skirt them, he and Matka climbed the mountain again. She was leading the way when she suddenly crouched and motioned for him to do the same. After a moment of listening intently to something he couldn’t hear, she silently urged him to go back the way they’d come.
He clenched his jaw but obeyed, and she followed. After a hundred paces, she touched his shoulder. He paused and she came up beside him, leaning in to whisper in his ear. “The Idarans have posted sentinels all the way up to where the cliffs start. We’re going to have to backtrack and find another way over.”
It took everything in Otec not to scream in frustration. “By then, it will be too late to help anyone. And the Raiders will have infiltrated all of the clan lands.”
Matka dropped her head, her expression hidden by shadows. “You won’t slip past them, especially not under a full moon. They are not just Idaran army—they’re Immortals.”
“What?” The most lethal soldiers in the entire world had attacked his village. “How could you possibly know this?”
She dropped her head. “I heard them.”
“I was right next to you,” Otec replied slowly, “and I saw and heard nothing.” She had been acting so strangely since the attack. He realized he knew Matka the artist, and Matka the woman, but he did not know Matka the warrior. And he wasn’t sure he could trust her.
He rose from a crouch and started off. She reached for him, but he shook her off. “You don’t have to come with me. But I’m going. If I have to fight my way through.”
“Otec,” she whisper-shouted. “You’re no good to anyone if you’re dead!”
“I would rather die trying to save my family than live on having done nothing.” He took off at a run, using his long legs to outdistance her. When he reached the place she had stopped earlier, he paused, listening. He saw no sentinels, but he slipped slowly through the shadows, making not a sound. His already-exhausted muscles trembled from fatigue, and sweat poured down his face.
He came to a place where the trees thinned so that the mountainside was bare. If there were sentinels, this is where they would be. He hesitated, sensing someone was there.
From behind him, Matka lightly touched his arm. When he looked back, she shook her head, a stray bit of moonlight catching the plea in her eyes.
Otec motioned for her to stay behind while he went ahead, then slipped to his belly and crawled forward. No sooner had he entered the clearing than something seemed to burst beside him. His head whipped around in time to see an arrow glancing off the rocks right next to him.
A shrill whistle cut through the silence. Otec was already up and running. If he could just get past the sentinels, he might be able to stay ahead of the Raiders long enough to warn the other clans.
But as he approached the tree line, three Raiders charged from the trees, their heads shaved to reveal a dizzying pattern of tattoos across their scalps. Otec skidded to a stop, lifting his bow.
Another arrow whizzed past him, making him belatedly dodge to the side. There were archers in the trees! He rolled behind a log and forced himself to think.
When the sentinels charged him, the archers wouldn’t be able to shoot for fear of hitting one of their own. Otec had to defeat the three sentinels and make a run for it. Hearing their measured steps approach, he took three arrows in his hand and forced himself to wait. As soon as they were close enough, he rose up and let an arrow fly.
Then another. Then another. Otec was running again. But more Immortals were charging him. He had time to fire one last arrow before they were on him. He whipped out his bow, using it like a staff.
One soldier dropped back, hacking a curved sword down on Otec’s bow. Two more swung at him, one from each side. He jumped back, feeling more than seeing the damage to his bow. They tried to encircle him.
Knowing he was dead if they managed it, he backed up, using the much longer reach of his bow to whack at one of the others. The Raider twisted to the side, trapping Otec’s bow in his armpit and hacking it in two.
Otec dropped the useless bit of wood, realizing he was finished. But he would die fighting. He charged the Immortal in front of him. The man whipped around Otec, took hold of his neck, and shoved him face down into the dirt. When Otec opened his eyes, the Immortal held a sword tip to his face. Otec didn’t know whether he was more shocked that he was about to die or that the Immortal who’d bested him was a woman.
As she pulled back to stab him, terror coursed through his body. He did not want to die. Not like this. But then a voice cut through the stillness and the Immortal paused. Though none of the sentinels moved their swords from him, all of them turned to face the
source of the voice.
Otec’s eyes widened in horror at the sight of Matka. “Run!” he commanded her, wanting to shake her for coming after him only to get herself killed by an archer.
Then she spoke again, but he recognized none of the words. And he realized she was not speaking Clannish. But he was certain it wasn’t Svass either.
The woman holding the sword to Otec’s throat responded in the same language. His gaze darted back to Matka. She was speaking Idaran.
Otec stared at her, horror clawing through his chest. “Matka?”
She turned to face him, surrounded by people with dusky skin and shaved scalps. And he knew. She wasn’t tan—she was dark skinned. And her hair was short because she’d shaved it before.
“You’re an Idaran.”
Chapter 8
Matka didn’t deny it. And if she was an Idaran, so were Jore and all the rest of the so-called highmen. The Raiders hadn’t invaded the Shyle, they’d infiltrated it. And the Shyle had felt safe because half of the visitors’ numbers were women.
Otec’s rage started on the back of his neck and prickled down his arms. “You came to my people claiming to be friends and made us trust you. And then you attacked us.” His voice trembled with barely controlled fury. “But why befriend me—help me—only to do this?” His met Matka’s gaze. “What kind of heartless witch are you?”
She winced and barked something at the sentinels, who barked back at her. Whatever she had said worked. While one sentinel kept a sword to Otec’s throat, the others bound his hands behind his back, checked him for weapons, and removed his bedroll, which they tossed to the side like it was filled with refuse.
All the while he couldn’t help but wonder if these were the same weapons used to kill his friends and family. The same ropes they’d used to bind his family’s hands as they’d made them slaves.
They hauled Otec up and shoved him in front of them. With his hands bound, it was hard to keep his balance, and he stumbled down the mountain in the dark. They passed more sentinels and archers in the trees, which must have been how they’d spotted him in the first place. What he wouldn’t pay to see them all suffer for what they had done.
A shadowy figure came running at them, calling out to Matka. Otec didn’t realize it was Jore until she started shouting at him in Svass. One of the sentinels issued a command. When Matka replied, her voice was softer, but the outrage still came through.
“My family,” Otec said pleadingly as Jore approached. “What of my family?”
The man wouldn’t look at him. “Those who fought were killed. But your family was all alive when I left.”
“Left?” Otec blurted.
One of the guards cuffed him. “Silence!”
Jore stepped closer and dropped his voice so the other sentinels couldn’t hear. “Their guards have no reason to harm your family so long as they remain compliant.”
Otec spit at Jore, who wiped his face without showing any reaction. “I told you to remember,” Jore said without looking back.
Matka stormed up to her brother, shoving him and cursing him in Svass. Jore kept his balance and spoke to her in a low tone.
Ignoring them, the guards dragged Otec into a campsite tucked deep into a grove. There were no tents. No fires. Hardly any sounds. Just dozens and dozens of Raiders sleeping in blankets as if they hadn’t just murdered women and children and burned their homes to the ground.
The sentinels directed Otec to stand before a figure curled up in blankets. They said something in Idaran, and a man shifted and pulled the blankets off his head.
It was Tyleze, the man who’d commanded Jore to stand down after he’d insulted Holla. “What’s this?” he asked.
“Tyleze,” Matka blurted as she stumbled up behind Otec. “You promised me!”
Tyleze yawned and looked up at them. “You should be grateful, Matka. We could have used your help in the midst of battle—the clanwomen might have been unprepared, but they fought like hyenas. We very nearly lost.”
“I should have been there,” Otec said to Matka under his breath, his voice the heat of embers right before they burst into flame. “Because of you I wasn’t.”
She turned her face away from him.
“Why isn’t he dead?” Tyleze said tiredly.
The sentinels spoke Idaran in hushed voices, and Tyleze’s brow climbed higher with every word. Finally he turned his gaze to Matka. He asked a question, which she answered, her head held high and not a trace of fear on her face. Otec only understood one word: “priestess.”
Tyleze grunted and gestured to Otec, who unconsciously stiffened. Matka answered the man, her voice more insistent this time, but he only waved his hand. The guards took hold of Otec’s shoulders, pulling him away.
Matka shot him a desperate look, a tear spilling down her cheek. She brushed the moisture quickly away, so quickly he almost wondered if it had been there at all. Otec didn’t understand why she would betray him and then try to save him. He didn’t know why she’d dragged him into all of this in the first place. He only knew that whatever she had tried to do to save him had failed. He was going to die. But by the Balance, he would take some of them with him.
“I mark you for the dead, Matka.” It was an old curse; yesterday he would have called it a superstition. Today, he hoped it was real. For it was the only way he had left that could hurt her. “I mark you all for the dead.”
“I was marked a long time ago,” she said in a low, shaking voice.
The guards wrenched Otec around, each holding one of his arms. He saw where they were heading—a small clearing with a dead, lightning-struck tree in the center. They shoved him to his knees. One held his hair and pinned his head down. The other raised his sword.
The horror inside Otec sharpened, until he felt all his emotions bleed out of him, leaving a hollowed-out husk. He looked into the dark night, wanting the last thing he ever saw to be the forests of his homeland.
But what he saw was the owl, staring past him to where Matka was standing. “Very well,” Matka said. “You have my word.”
It raised its wings and dove forward. Otec craned his neck head in time to see Matka toss a bag at the creature. It caught the bag in its talons. More owls flew from the trees, and Matka threw a bag at each of them before they disappeared.
Then the man holding the sword over Otec grunted, the breath hissing out of him. The other guard gave a shout and reached behind him for his own swords. Matka charged, her blades thrusting into the guard’s belly. He dropped to the ground, his feet kicking.
“Hold out your hands.” Matka’s voice was strangely calm.
Questions tumbled in Otec’s mind, but right now there wasn’t time for any of them. He held his hands out and she shoved her sword between them and jerked it up. The blade nicked the sides of his palms as it snapped through the ropes. Otec didn’t feel any pain, only warm, sticky blood seeping between his hands.
“What are you doing?” he asked, dumbfounded.
Matka reached own and hauled him up. “Move.” She shoved a knife into his hands.
“We’ll never get away. We’re outnumbered five hundred to two.”
She gave a slight shake of her head. “No. But their help will cost me. Goddess, grant that I might bear that cost.”
Before Otec could ask what she meant, fire exploded through the trees in flames of green, blue, and purple.
“Come on!” she cried as she darted forward without waiting to see if he would follow. As if she wasn’t afraid he would stab her in the back with the knife she’d given him.
But even as the thought flitted through his head, he knew she was right not to fear him—he couldn’t harm her. And not just because she was a woman.
More fire erupted as they skirted the camp. Raiders yelled and ran, trying to escape the flames that seemed to crop up everywhere. Everywhere except where Otec and Matka ran.
Finally, they left the last of the fires behind and ran full tilt down the road in the smoky gray light
.
“What was that?” he gasped.
“Luminash. Something only priestesses have access to.”
“How is it everywhere?”
“The owls.”
Otec didn’t know how to respond, and by then he was breathing too hard to try.
They slowed when he could taste blood in his mouth, but Matka did not pause to rest, simply trotted on and on as if she’d never stop. It took everything Otec had to keep up.
She passed him her water skin. “Small sips.”
She was obviously Idaran, so why would she help him? And since she was helping him, why hadn’t she warned him about the attack sooner? “Matka—”
“As soon as the Idarans off the coast realized the Shyle had fallen, they would have struck.”
“Attacking the clans from two fronts,” Otec choked out.
Matka nodded, then took the water skin and drank deep. “Come on, we have to go faster.”
He did as she asked, watching her study the road behind them. “If you’re Idaran, why are you helping me?”
“Are you sure I am one of them?” she said, her words clipped.
Her anger fueled his own. He grabbed her arm and wrenched her around, breaking open the shallow cuts on his palms. She didn’t fight him as he tipped her head toward the predawn light and lifted the strands of her short hair and saw the tattoos on her scalp. “I’m sure.”
Otec shoved her away. “My clansmen are dead.” It hurt him to say it, down to the bones. “You could have prevented it if you had told me!”
“You think you could have stopped five hundred Immortals?” She turned away and started up again. Otec had no choice but to keep up. It infuriated him that while he was out of breath and stumbling, she seemed completely unaffected.
“I was trying to get them to call off the invasion—to realize Idara is not superior. That’s why Jore was angry that day by the forest. I’d pushed too hard too many times. He was afraid they would kill me for it. That night, Tyleze told me to go with you into the mountains. He said the ships were turning back because of storms at sea.”
