by K.M. Weiland
Chapter Fifty-Two
Allara watched the sky. All day, wind-whipped clouds of green and purple had hidden the sun. Now, the passage into night was marked only by the gray film fading into shadows—and by the Koraudians gathering at the base of the canyon. Mactalde’s time limit was up. And with it, Lael’s only hope of respite.
In the back of the makeshift camp, a woman wailed, and voices tangled into unintelligibility. A shiver wracked Allara’s body. Only a remnant of men remained loyal to the Gifted. Most were too fearful to see beyond the Koraudians across the canyon. If Chris returned in the next ten minutes, they would cast him to Mactalde without a second thought.
Her hand trembled, and she closed it into a fist.
“The time has come.” The wind carried Mactalde’s voice to the center of the camp. “What is your choice?”
Quinnon trotted to her side and dismounted. “As if even a gambler could like the choices he’s given us.”
“The Gifted in my hand and life in yours?” Mactalde shouted into his loudhailer. “Or death for yourselves and the Gifted alike?”
Denegar had ridden to the edge of the ravine to give the formal answer. The people crowded around him, and their shouts rose above his. “Life! We want life! Have mercy!”
Denegar’s soldiers forced the people back, but they could not stop the shouts.
Denegar planted his hand on his thigh and spoke through a makeshift loudhailer someone had manufactured from a thin strip of hammered plate armor. “We will have nothing to do with you, sirrah! And we spit upon your mercy. Are we not the sovereign people of Lael? Who are you to make demands upon us, and who are we to listen to them?”
“I am the conqueror, and you are the conquered. I should think that rather obvious. Where is the Gifted? Let him speak for himself. Let me hear from his own mouth he sentences these people to death.”
“He’s not here!” Dozens of voices carried the words. “He’s gone!”
Allara clenched her hands together. It had looked badly when Chris and Orias had galloped out of the camp. Only those most loyal to him had not been shaken by the sight of his retreat.
“Your vaunted Gifted has run away? How poetic.”
“It is not our fault!” someone screamed. “We would have given him to you!”
“Nay!” Denegar reined his horse away from his post and turned to face the people. “We would not have! We would have fought to the deaths beside him!”
Worick Bowen climbed onto a broken cart. “We have no hope of victory apart from the Gifted! And can any of you wish to live without victory?”
“We wish to live!” a woman shouted.
“Unfortunately,” Mactalde said, “I am a man of my word. And since you have not presented me the Gifted, you leave me no choice.”
Someone clambered onto a pile of boulders. “We’ll give you the Searcher!”
Allara recoiled.
“Well, then,” Mactalde said. “Perhaps you’re not as ungenerous as I thought. I’ll take her.”
Quinnon snarled and snatched his sword. “The rotted devil you will.”
“No!” Denegar shouted. “She is not part of the bargain!”
“You’re right,” Mactalde said. “Which is why I will give you an additional forty-eight hours to fulfill my original terms. Consider the Searcher the price of an extension.”
Allara stopped breathing. All around her, the hillside caved in. Some of these people had been waiting for her head for twenty years. Now they descended with the howls of hungry wolfhounds. The few loyal men and women, most of the remaining Guardsmen among them, threw themselves against the flood, but they were sand in a tidal wave.
She ran, trusting Quinnon to cover her back. Nearby, Rihawn danced at the end of his tether, his eyes edged with white. Someone—Esta perhaps—screamed. Hands closed around her arms. She ducked forward and jerked away. Her coat tore.
Behind her, Quinnon bellowed. A gunshot blasted through her hearing. Fingers clawed at her, tearing at her hair, wrenching her limbs. She ripped free and reached Rihawn’s side. He tried to dodge, but she managed to grab her saddlebow. Up and over, she lifted herself just far enough to close her fingers on her sword hilt.
Hands clamped around her arms, her waist, her legs and hauled her backwards. She dragged the estoc free of the saddle scabbard and levered her arm back as hard as she could. The hilt smashed into bone, and one of the hands fell away. But others replaced them. Someone grabbed her wrist, and someone else tore away the sword. She writhed in their arms and saw Quinnon fall to a man with a stave.
“No!” she screamed.
They had her on her feet now. They forced her arms behind her back and tied them. She twisted her body down and away, and her shoulders nearly exploded from their sockets. A brawny man hit her across the face. Blood welled behind her teeth, and the world tilted.
Despite the best efforts of her uncle and Worick Bowen, she was dragged down the edge of the ravine. At the bottom, a Koraudian delegation, headed by Glelarn Rotoss, met her.
Rotoss gripped her hair and forced back her head. “Well, well, the lioness at bay.” He nodded to one of his soldiers. “Truss her behind your horse.”
While he held her, the Koraudians bound her hands in front of her and leashed her behind a horse. He thrust her head farther back, until the vertebrae in her neck ground against each other.
His gaze rose to her Laeler captors. “The Gifted had best arrive at the gates of Réon Couteau within two days, or you’re all dead men. You and your wee ones. Don’t forget.” He propelled Allara forward, and she staggered out of his grasp. “Tell them, your highness. Tell them they’re doomed unless they listen. Doomed just like you.”
She swiped her bloody chin against her shoulder. “Better doomed than a faithless traitor!”
“Lucky for them, they’re not so daft as you.” He turned his horse and spurred back up the hill to the Koraudian lines. “Move!”
The horse to which she was tethered yanked her forward, almost off her feet, and she wrapped both hands around the line and used the animal’s momentum to lengthen her running strides. Rotoss wasn’t likely to wait should she fall.
The Koraudian troops were already withdrawing when Rotoss’s party reached the opposite hill. She caught only a glimpse of Mactalde’s pennon flickering ahead before her captor fell in at the rear. A single company remained behind to keep watch on the Laelers. It would be more than enough.
_________
They’d taken Allara.
Chris’s heart thudded painfully. Well after the sunset deadline, his sweated horse arrived back on the canyon lip where he had left Allara and the others.
Almost everyone had fled. He’d expected that, or maybe even worse—when he’d allowed himself to consider it at all. But he hadn’t expected this. This changed everything.
How could he even attempt to blow up the palace if she were inside it? He stalked through the snow, back and forth, back and forth.
Worick watched him pace. His shoulders sagged, but his eyes were still alert. “Mactalde’s using her as bait. You have to know that. If you surrender yourself to free her, he’ll kill both of you.”
Chris stopped with his back to his father and stared into the trees where what was left of the army had gathered. Less than a hundred Guardsmen and a battered remnant of Glen Ardeners remained to fight.
He hung his hands on his hips. “What other choice do we have? This is a free pass to meet Mactalde face to face.”
Orias watched him from the shadow of the trees. “Bound and at swordpoint? That’s daft, and you know it. A Riever’d have a better chance in a den of Koraudian lions.”
Chris scrubbed a hand up his forehead. Without the Cherazii’s support, he would never survive facing Mactalde’s troops in the open field. His only chance was to lower the odds.
He turned to face the people. “Nobody says I have to play by his rules.”
Quinnon, his forehead seeping red through a bandage, stalked along the c
amp’s perimeter. He hadn’t said a word since Chris had arrived.
“What if I call Mactalde out for a duel?” Chris said.
From where he crouched beside a nearby fire, Denegar shook his head. “Why should he agree to that? He has all the advantage right now and no reason to risk himself.”
“What if he didn’t have the advantage?”
Orias stepped into the firelight. “You mean blowing up the palace.”
He ran both hands through his hair. “I don’t know. I don’t know about that anymore. Maybe not that. Not now that Allara’s in there.” He clenched his fists in his hair. What was he saying? That he would sacrifice the whole mission, the only mission, on the off chance she was in that castle? What if she wasn’t? What if Mactalde had taken her to Thyra Junction? What if they abandoned the whole plan for no good reason?
And what if she was there, and he went through with it? His body tightened. He couldn’t do that. They were both supposed to be around after this thing was over. Wasn’t that what he had promised her? Except, if he didn’t go through with this, it was possible no one would be around afterwards.
Tireus’s voice rumbled through his head: Sooner or later, every leader learns sacrifices must be made. He threw back his head and stifled a soul-deep groan.
His father cleared his throat. “What do you mean blow up Réon Couteau? How? We’ve no explosives, no padar, nothing. Barely a sword apiece among us.”
“You’re jolly well cracked,” Denegar said. “You’d never get close enough to plant anything. The carabineers and the bombardiers would pick you off from the ramparts.”
He took a breath and turned to face them. “The cliff beneath the palace is riddled with caverns, and I know where the entrances are. We can set the charges there.”
The survivors murmured. For the first time in days, a faint spark of hope and excitement lit faces.
“And what about Allara?” Quinnon’s voice grated across the clearing.
His stomach rolled over on itself once more. He tightened his abdomen and forced it to stop. He had to do this. He had no choice. Allara would be the first to agree. He would do it, and he would pray she was anywhere but in that castle.
He met Quinnon’s gaze and held it. “This is what she would want.”
In the flicker of the firelight, Quinnon seemed almost to tremble. He had made it clear, over and over, that his loyalty was to Allara’s safety and not to her cause. But surely he must know that if the cause died, so would she. Surely he must know how much it cost Chris to follow through with this plan when there was even the possibility of her being harmed because of it.
Finally, Quinnon’s scraggle-bearded chin dipped. He was nodding. He was agreeing. They had no other choice right now, and they both knew it.
Chris started across the camp to where his horse was tethered. He stopped at the animal’s hindquarters and opened his saddlebag. “Mactalde gave us forty-eight hours to comply with his demands. If we leave tonight and move cross-country, we might be able to reach the southern shore of Ori Réon by morning. If we can get a ship from there, we can cross the lake to Réon Couteau in ten to twelve hours. We could be there by tomorrow night.”
His father followed him to stand at the horse’s haunch. “Even if we can get in under the palace, we’ve nothing to use to bring it down.”
Chris pulled his hand from his saddlebag, and into the darkness floated the white glow of the Orimere. “We will by tomorrow night.”
_________
Allara’s guards hauled her into the bowels of Réon Couteau. In the damp darkness of the dungeon, they untied her bleeding wrists and shoved her against the stones. She spun back around, wanting to reach them before they closed the door. She wanted to fight them, to kill just one of them before they killed her.
The barred door clanged shut, and a new globe lent its strength to light the cavern. Mactalde, followed by a soldier bearing the globe, entered the narrow corridor.
He smiled. “The princess Allara.” In front of the door, he tugged off his gauntlet. “We’ve long been opponents in this game, have we not? But I believe this is the first time since my return we’ve had the pleasure of meeting.”
She glowered. “The only thing that would give me pleasure is a stake through your heart.”
“Certainly you must have put your talents for hatred to a better use during the years I’ve been gone?” He bounced his glove against his bare palm. “And what about my friend Mr. Redston? He’s done you some rather bad turns, hasn’t he? I should think you’d want to reserve at least a particle of ill will for his particular benefit.”
She lifted her chin. Her teeth ached where one of her own people had hit her.
“Perhaps you’ll be pleased to know,” Mactalde said, “that in bringing you here, I’m giving you a prime opportunity of revenging yourself upon your unruly Gifted. This time tomorrow, you may spit in his eye, if you so choose.” He stepped closer to the door, until the bars framed his face. His voice dropped to a whisper. “I’d even give you the honor of stabbing this stake of yours into his heart, except, you see, it’s become rather important to me to do it myself.”
She held her breath. “It is not an honor I crave.”
“No. Goes against your maidenly dignity, no doubt. But still, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you’ve brought him here—one way or the other. Your countrymen may well turn him over to me, as they’ve done you.” He clanked his signet ring against a bar. “But I have this rather interesting feeling he’ll come riding in of his own free will.”
“Because I’m the bait in your trap.” She clenched her fist to keep from sinking her fingernails into his windpipe.
“Of course.” His nostrils flared. “Just as your father was bait.”
A pent breath tore free. “The Gifted didn’t step into the trap then.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He smiled. “This way, I get all three: the king, the Searcher, and the Gifted.”
“You’re going to die anyway. The worlds are breaking.” Let him consider that.
His smile fled. “If that’s so, then the only pleasure left in my rather short life is feeling Chris Redston’s neck snap between my hands. Call it my last obsession.”
“You’re mad.”
His hand flashed through the bars and clamped the back of her neck. He smashed her up against the door, her face inches from his. “Dying does that to a man.” His irises were a band of green around the black hole of his pupils. “You think this is what I want? This is not the life I wanted to return to. I wanted revenge, I wanted freedom, I wanted to return to the man I was and forever escape these voices in my head. But, of all these things, I find I am given only the first. And I will exact it to the uttermost measure!”
His fingers jagged pain through her skull. She gritted both hands against the bars and tried to push away. “You haven’t won yet.”
“True. Quite true.” His hand slid from her neck down through the tangles of her hair, smoothing them over her shoulder. He smiled. “Until tomorrow, my princess. You will sleep well, I trust?” He tugged his glove back over his hand, then turned and strode down the corridor.
The soldiers followed, taking with them the globes and dousing the dungeon in utter darkness.
She stood rooted in front of the door, gripping the rusted bars. She didn’t think, she didn’t feel, she just stood, until finally she could no longer do even that. Her hands slipped from the bars and she sank down against the door. The cold of the stones infiltrated her clothes and her skin and touched her bones. She leaned her head against the iron.
Only one plea remained to her. Only one plea mattered anymore: Don’t let Chris come.
