by Morgan Rice
She saw the truth of that as men were brought down by musket balls around her, falling and dying on the sand because the others with them couldn’t even pause to help without being cut down in turn. The only thing to do then was charge wildly, hoping that it would be enough.
They crashed in among the lines of defenses around the docks, and Kate leapt over a cannon, drawing her sword and cutting through the throat of one of the weapons crew. A man came at her with a bayonet, and Kate swayed aside from the attack, thrusting through his heart in response.
Around her, she could hear the clash of blades and the screams of dying men. The sounds of musket fire had slowed, at least, because this close in, there was no way for the Master of Crows’ men to fire without hitting their own.
Men pressed in around Kate, but she didn’t stop, fighting her way forward instead and cutting her way through the massed ranks of them. She parried a blow aimed at her stomach, then shoved aside a man who was targeting one of Lord Cranston’s men with a pistol. A man swung an axe at her head and she ducked, stabbing upward into his abdomen.
Every step forward seemed to be slower now, as Kate found more and more enemies in her way. She tried to leap high over them, but their sheer numbers meant that she just came down in the middle of the fight again. She took a punch to the side of the head and retaliated with an elbow, then stepped away and stabbed.
There were too many opponents. She couldn’t even use her powers to read the attacks coming in, and pressed in like this, even the mist that she’d managed to summon the last time she’d fought the New Army wouldn’t make a difference. Their enemies already knew where Lord Cranston’s men were.
More and more of them were dying. Kate saw men cut down around her, falling to bayonets and swords, axes and knives. She struck out at the enemy in front of her, but for every one she cut down, another was waiting to fill the gap. They formed a steadily contracting wall of flesh around her, moving closer in a ring of sharp edges.
Kate leapt again, up onto the shoulders of those who were attacking. She balanced on them the way she might have balanced when running from branch to branch in Siobhan’s forest, stabbing down as she ran and leaping clear whenever an answering blade came up toward her. A shot whistled past her, but Kate kept moving. To stop now was to die.
She made for the ships, and managed to use the ropes tethering them to the docks as stepping stones, running across them, then heading up one onto the deck of a galleon. She grabbed a sealed lantern and lit it, even as a sailor ran at her. Kate smashed him out of the way with the lantern, feeling the crunch of it against his skull and hearing the glass sides shatter.
She threw it at the ship’s sails and ran on as the flames licked at them.
With each ship she came to, Kate grabbed for another lantern, throwing it, moving as fast as she could. On the third, she saw a stock of black powder on the deck and aimed for that, sprinting from the boat as the flame she threw tumbled end over end toward it. The explosion behind her felt like being kicked in the back by a horse, even with the speed she was moving ahead of it.
Kate leapt for the deck of the next ship, her hands clinging onto the aft rail as she dragged herself aboard. A soldier ran at her with a blade and Kate slid past him on her knees, cutting him down as she passed.
Looking up, she saw a flag with a crow on it, feathers reaching out to touch all lands. It fluttered from the ship’s mast like a taunt, or a threat. She had a moment to stare at it before another sailor was coming at her, Kate’s blade having to flicker across to parry a curved saber. She sidestepped and cut back, then ran for the ship’s mast.
She needed that flag. It was the closest thing to a standard that was there, and maybe, just maybe, once she had it they would be able to get out of there. Assuming that the others in Lord Cranston’s company were still all right. For now, Kate had left them so far behind that she couldn’t even see them. There were only enemies, which at least made things simpler when she knew that anyone coming toward her was doing it to try to kill her.
Kate climbed, starting out on the rigging of the ship. A sailor grabbed for her, and Kate kicked him away, seeing the man tumble down toward the water of the docks. She kept clambering upward until she reached the wide boom that held the lowest sail. She ran along it, then started to climb up the mast as if it were a tall tree.
She clung onto ropes until she reached the crows’ nest above. There was a lookout there who stared at her, then grabbed for a knife. Kate reacted on instinct, shoving the man so that he fell end over end from the mast.
She reached up and cut down the flag, rolling it tightly and shoving it into her belt. She hoped that it would be enough. Now they could finally…
From her spot in the crows’ nest, she could make out Lord Cranston, commanding his men far below. From the way he was limping, he’d been wounded, but he still fought, and still yelled commands as his men tried to hold off the soldiers in front of them.
Kate was more concerned about the second force that had come onto the approach to the city. Massed ranks of men marched toward Lord Cranston’s men, effectively cutting them off from their escape route. To get clear, they would have to fight their way through the new enemy, but they couldn’t hope to do that when they were already engaged with the foes in front of them.
Kate couldn’t see a way for their forces to get past the new threat, and without that, there was only one outcome that she could see. They were going to die.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Sebastian pushed his fresh horse, and himself, as hard as he dared when he rode back to the crossroads. He’d ridden through the night, not caring about the risk of predators on the road of either the animal or the human kind, not caring about the risk of his horse missing its footing in the dark. By this point, he was so far behind Sophia that he needed to make up any ground he could.
Would she be happy to see him when he caught up to her? The fact that she’d sent him the wrong way suggested that she wasn’t pleased at the prospect, but Sebastian would make her see that he was a different man from the one who had pushed her aside for fear of what his family would say. He would show her that he loved her, and that she had nothing to fear from him.
If this were some minstrel’s song, of course, he would already have found her. In those, gallant knights from the days when there had been such things had ridden after their lady loves and found them quickly, after only a series of trials to test their resolve. They had declared their love, and that had been more than enough.
They hadn’t typically gotten lost.
That Sebastian had been misled didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was further away from Sophia than ever, having to ride hard just to make up the time he’d lost in his pursuit of her. When he finally made it back to the crossroads, he breathed a sigh of relief, but the truth was that he still had a long way to go.
He didn’t even know how far. Sophia was heading north, but where was she going?
The drunk who had been by the crossroads wasn’t there now. Sebastian was grateful for that in a way, because he wasn’t sure how he would have reacted to the man who had tried to keep him from Sophia, if he had been there. Sebastian turned his horse northward, and he heeled it forward even though both he and the beast were starting to tire.
Eventually, though, he had to stop at an inn, if only to change horses. He asked after Sophia when he stopped, of course. To his surprise, the landlord there remembered her.
“Aye, she came past. Sold me some very strange-tasting beer and asked after the way to Monthys.”
“Monthys?” Sebastian said. “You’re sure?”
The landlord shrugged. “I think so.”
“And she didn’t pay you to say that to anyone who asked? This isn’t some kind of trick?”
The other man frowned at him. “Why would someone do that?”
Sebastian didn’t bother trying to explain it. Instead, he kept riding north, taking a fresh horse because he didn’t want to risk killing his mount
with the speed he was asking it to travel for so many hours. He thundered along roads that were paved only in places, having to slow on the sections that were little more than dirt, then trying to make up time on the better section. Whenever he passed travelers, Sebastian stopped to ask them if they had seen Sophia. Most hadn’t, but the few who did remember passing her on the road said the same as the innkeeper had: she was heading for Monthys.
Sebastian tried to work out what she could want in Monthys. The only thing he knew was there was the ruined home of the former noble family the Danses, who were all long dead. Was she heading for that? If so, what did Sophia hope to find? It made no sense to Sebastian, but even so, it gave him something to aim for.
As Sebastian rode north, the weather started to worsen. He could feel the temperature dropping around him, so that he had to wrap his cloak tighter and tighter around himself to keep the cold out. At least that meant that when the rain hit, it was already in place to keep some of it off. Not much, but some.
The rain seemed constant. It started as a chilly drizzle that seemed almost to hang in the air, waiting for Sebastian to ride through it. Then it became something heavier, until he might have been riding through a stream given how wet it was. Lightning flashed in the distance, and Sebastian knew that the safe thing to do would be to stop with his horse until the worst of the weather passed.
He didn’t, though. He had to catch up to Sophia.
Lightning flickered down again, and now it struck a tree by the road, wood flying as its sap boiled. The tree flared in flames, despite the rain, and Sebastian’s horse reared. It was all he could do to cling to it as it bucked in terror. It set off at a full gallop away from the sound, and Sebastian clung to it, knowing that there was no chance of bringing it under control when it was so frightened.
All he could do was let it run, trying to soothe it until finally the maddened creature’s bolt for freedom turned into a run, then a walk. Eventually, Sebastian managed to bring it under control. He dismounted, walking the horse for a while as the rain slackened, but then rode on again.
He came to a river and rode downstream until he found a place to cross, then eventually came to another inn, where the locals stared at him as if expecting him to attack them at any moment. When he mentioned Sophia, their expressions only darkened further.
“Seems there’s a lot of people asking that,” the landlord said. “Are you going to rent a room?”
Sebastian did so, although he had no intention of stopping there. In return, he got a bowl of soup that tasted mostly of turnips and onions, a mug of ale, and the news that Sophia had been through, still heading north to Monthys, accompanied by the two other women he’d heard about, and a forest cat, which he hadn’t.
He set off again as quickly as he dared, pushing his horse through the landscape of rocks, moss, heather, and scrubby grass. There were sheep there as well as goats, clinging precariously to the side of hills that seemed impossible to farm but that held fields nevertheless. Trees clung to them, windblown and stretched by the extremes of the climate.
Sebastian plowed on through it, but he slowed when he saw the bodies ahead. There were two of them, lying on flat stones near the road, apparently left where they’d fallen. As Sebastian got closer, he saw that they were a man and a woman, both dressed in a way that Sebastian associated with the rough people of the road.
“Highwaymen,” Sebastian said.
Dead highwaymen, with only a few signs of what had happened to them. The man had a stab wound that suggested how he’d died, but the woman had no obvious marks on her beyond a faint discoloration to her features that might have spoken of either poison or strangulation. There were signs that they had been robbed of whatever weapons they’d had, suggesting to Sebastian that maybe they’d run into a more dangerous opponent on the road.
Had they attacked Sophia? That thought quashed whatever pity Sebastian might have felt for them. Certainly, these people would have tried to attack someone, and if it was Sophia, then he was glad they had failed.
And failed recently. That thought came to him as he stared at them. No animals had been there to chew at their dead flesh yet. The rain and the ravages of time hadn’t started to decompose their corpses. That meant that whoever had passed must have done so within the last day or so, maybe even the last few hours. Sebastian hurried back to his horse.
Under other circumstances, he might have stopped to bury the dead robbers, but now there was no time to lose. He all but leapt onto his horse and rode on.
How far had he ridden now? It was hard to say precisely, because Sebastian wasn’t sure exactly where he was. Even if he had known, the maps of the kingdom were often things put together with more guesswork than precision, individual nobles paying for maps of their holdings, or cities seeking plans of the surrounding areas. If there had ever been a systematic attempt to map the kingdom, it had gone with the civil wars.
All Sebastian knew was that he hadn’t ridden far enough yet, because he still hadn’t caught up to Sophia. He pressed on through the hills, staring ahead as if he could will her to be around the next bend in the track. There were fewer people here than almost anywhere else he’d been, but whenever Sebastian saw one of the rare shepherds there, he called out to them, hoping they’d seen her.
He was tired now; bone tired with the feeling that he might fall from his horse if he didn’t reach his destination soon. It felt as though he had been riding forever, and even the bowl of soup at the inn seemed like a lifetime ago.
Sebastian was so tired that when he heard the rumble of the rocks, he almost didn’t recognize it for what it was. It wasn’t until he saw the rocks tumbling toward him down one of the hillsides that he recognized the landslide for what it was. The rains must have loosened rocks above, washing away the soil that held them in place. Now, they came down at him.
He pulled his horse to one side, heeling it forward as boulders rolled past, trying to get up onto the far slope, where he might be safe. Sebastian forced his horse forward, knowing that if just one of those rocks hit its legs, it would fall, and he would go down with it. Even if the next rocks didn’t finish him, he would still be stuck miles from anywhere, forced to walk after Sophia far slower than her cart could take her away from him.
A low stone wall marked the boundary of the pathway. He urged his horse into a leap and felt its muscles bunch as it gathered itself to jump. It leapt, and Sebastian felt the moment when its hooves brushed the top of the wall, but it didn’t falter. It sprang forward, up the hill, and Sebastian turned it back to where the rocks were still rumbling forward. They crashed against the wall, almost flattening it before coming to a halt at the base of the hill.
Sebastian was starting to feel as if even the landscape was trying to keep him from Sophia. He dismounted, leading his horse back down to the path as carefully as he could, picking his way through the field of boulders that now all but covered the path. Right then, he felt as though he barely had the strength to remount. Only the thought of Sophia at the end of this search gave him the strength to do it.
His horse plodded forward now on exhausted legs. Sebastian could understand it, and if he had been doing anything else, he would have let the horse rest. When it came to Sophia, though, he pushed forward, along the pathways leading to Monthys. He rode up the next hill, struggling his way to the top.
As he reached the crest, he saw the bridge in the distance, its white marble shining dully, the gaps in its structure looking like wounds filled in by moss and vines. Beyond it, Sebastian could see the hills and woods of Monthys, seeming almost like a prelude to the mountain lands beyond them. Sebastian hoped he wouldn’t have to go that far. The people he’d passed had seemed clear that this was where Sophia was heading.
More than that, he could see hints of her destination there beyond the hills, in the crenulations and stonework of a house that must have been standing there as long as the hills. It had to be the Danses’ old estate that Sophia was heading for, even if Sebastian cou
ldn’t imagine why she would do so. He didn’t even think that there would be anyone living there after all this time.
The reason didn’t matter though. What mattered was that Sophia would be there. He was closer to her now than he had been in days, and soon he would be with her, holding her in his arms. Compared with that prospect, nothing else mattered.
Sebastian rode down toward the bridge with hope in his heart once more.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Sophia stared at the crossbow leveled at her, knowing that there would be no way to dive aside in time if the man there pulled the trigger. Beside her, she felt Sienne tense, obviously getting ready to leap, and she could sense from the new figure’s mind that he would fire as soon as the forest cat moved.
“Just stay calm,” she said, to both Sienne and the man with the crossbow. “We aren’t here to cause any trouble.”
“Wait,” the man said. “I know that voice. I know that face. But it can’t be. Who are you?”
“My name is Sophia,” Sophia said.
“By the gods, it is you,” the man said. He lowered his crossbow. “I took you for Lady Christina for a moment, but no, I recognize you now. You’re her daughter. Do you remember me?”
He stepped forward where Sophia could see him. He was wild-haired, with the tangled beard of a man who probably didn’t see others much. Despite that, he wore the colors of a noble family’s retainer, green and black well faded by time. Sophia thought she was going to have to tell him that she didn’t know him, or pluck his name from his mind to pretend, but to her surprise, her memory supplied a name.
“It’s McCallum, isn’t it?” she said. “You… you used to get me and Kate to help you prune the roses. Kate used to love hacking things down.”
She had a memory of her sister, tiny and fierce, attacking a plant with pruning shears as if it were an enemy to be defeated, while this man, the head gardener, had tried to contain the chaos.
