Hooded

by A A Woods

  She made to wade forward, to help her friends.

  But the Bloody Paws were converging.

  They’d isolated the pup.

  With a breathless struggle, Carlette managed to extract herself from the snow and somersault gracelessly down the mountain.

  She had to stop this.

  Her power stretched out, enhabiting two Bloody Paws at once, holding them still. A snarling Amonoux leapt close and bit off one’s head.

  Carlette gagged at the death.

  She swallowed, plunged on.

  Snow fell like a herd of horses, thundering down the mountain.

  I’m too far, she thought as Tuk called out after her. I’ll never make it.

  Stretching her magic to its very limits, she tried to enhabit all the Bloody Paw warriors at once. But there were too many, her view too chaotic. The avalanche crashed into the gulf, controlled explosions funneling the full brunt of it right on top of the Amonoux pack. Two wolves disappeared under the onslaught. The she-wolf backed away.

  The sun disappeared.

  Carlette coughed as she inhaled ice crystals. A wave hit her in the chest, knocking her to the ground. For a moment of insidious terror, Carlette thought she was buried, that she had misjudged the slide.

  But someone was wrapping an arm around her neck, hauling her backwards.

  “Of all the stupid, prissy things to do, you had to run into it, didn’t you?” Byrna growled in her ear.

  “Are you okay?” Tuk asked, helping Byrna dislodge Carlette from the snow. Her feet scrambled against the loose ground. She couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. Fear pulsed in her, but it wasn’t her own. Something was scratching against her mind like a cat against a door, frantic with desperation.

  Carlette coughed, spitting out snow.

  “No!” she cried out, pulling free of her friends. She stumbled forward. “NO!”

  The snow was settling, and with it the sick reality of what had happened. The Bloody Paws—their hunting party only half what it had been that morning—were standing around the horse-sized infant Amonoux, gloating over their prize. The pup’s muzzle was tied, legs bound like a warthog. Carlette could feel its pain and fear, its innocence.

  She fell to her knees.

  “Come on, we need to move,” Tuk hissed, tugging on Carlette’s shoulder. “It’s not too late, we can still—”

  But he was interrupted by a thud. Carlette spun around just in time to see him fall, eyes crossing. Byrna twisted, slingshot already loaded, but the three Bloody Paws who had snuck up behind them were too fast. Too brutal. A stolen rifle butt slammed Byrna across the face, leaving a horrible crack in the silence the avalanche had left.

  Byrna collapsed in a puff of white.

  Carlette surged to her feet and lashed out with every last bit of her power, with every scrap of her strength.

  She would not allow this.

  She couldn’t.

  Biting, kicking, screaming, Carlette felt them fall around her. One to her magic. Another to her fist. But the third managed to grab her around the throat, choking off her battle cry.

  The last thing she felt was the Amonoux she-wolf slamming desperately against her mind.

  And then she was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: To Die With Honor

  Even Carlette had to admit that things looked hopeless. The Ebonal warriors pulled the three prisoners behind the mountain stags, cruel and impatient. Carlette walked when she could, but with her eyes covered and her hands wrapped in front of her, she was lucky if she stayed on her feet for three paces. Every so often, she felt the prod of a spear, heard a harsh command, but that didn’t bother her as much as the whispers.

  “Byrna,” Carlette murmured when they stopped for a moment, the voices of the hunting party rising in argument. “What are they saying?”

  “They’re debating if they should kill us,” Byrna hissed back. “We’re slowing them down.”

  “They could just let us go,” Tuk grumbled, and Carlette could hear the strain in his voice. Tuk wasn’t a soldier. He wasn’t used to drawn-out pain and bone-deep exhaustion. It had been at least a full day since the capture of the Amonoux pup and they’d been moving the whole time, stumbling—or dragged—through the snow and rubble.

  “The woman is saying they should throw us off the mountain,” Byrna went on, voice low. “We’re close to the cliff’s edge. They could just drop us over the side.”

  “That means we’re over Durchemin. Maybe we could find help.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Byrna snapped. “It’s leagues below us. We’d be lucky if our bodies stayed whole after such a fall.”

  “What about the other side?” Carlette asked. “We could make a run for the ocean…”

  “The blackstone would rip us to shreds.”

  Carlette was silent.

  “Too bad we lost the parachute, eh?” Tuk said with a half-laugh.

  Byrna muttered something rude.

  There was a sudden thump and Tuk cried out in pain.

  “No talking!” barked one of the Bloody Paws.

  Carlette’s lip curled in a snarl, but there was nothing she could do. They were at the mercy of this hunting pack, and it didn’t sound like they were feeling very merciful.

  She felt as if her heartbeat was counting down, ticking off her last seconds of life.

  One of the warriors shouted and Carlette’s rope pulled taut. They were moving again. She stumbled, trying to keep her feet beneath her. But the snow was determined to trip her. She fell. Her knee ripped open on a jagged spear of obsidian. When she tried to cry out, her mouth filled with ice and she wheezed.

  Tuk grabbed her elbow.

  “You okay?” he whispered.

  There was a resounding crack as the warrior hit him again.

  Carlette swallowed a curse. If they died, she vowed to herself that whoever that was would go down with them.

  The wind whistled around her head, and she tried to picture where they were—high above Durchemin, avoiding the hunting trails that the Amonoux might take to reach Tuleaux. The Bloody Paws would march over the peak, pick their way down the cliff on the other side of the Magistrate’s home, and then what? Take a ship into the harbor? Enhabit a whale and swim?

  Whatever their plan, Carlette knew she wasn’t going to stop it as their prisoner.

  An idea bloomed in her mind, a desperate and wafer-thin thread of hope.

  “Are they making up their minds?” Carlette hissed when Byrna’s shoulder hit her own.

  “Afraid so, larva-girl.”

  “Wait for my signal.”

  “To do what, beg for our lives?”

  “Just pay attention.”

  Carlette tried to gather her strength, but she was waning. A full day without food or water, dragged behind a beast with legs as long as she was tall, was enough to deplete anyone’s energy.

  I have strength enough for this, she thought to herself, picturing Tuleaux, Tuk, Byrna.

  Mya.

  So many lives on her shoulders.

  She could not fail.

  The hunting party stopped. Carlette stumbled into the rump of her stag. The rider shouted at her, smacking the back of her head. An argument exploded nearby.

  “No, wait!” Byrna shouted.

  Carlette felt a knife slice through her bonds. A strong hand yanked her backwards, where the wind’s voice was a lethal howl. She took deep breaths. Forced herself to stay calm.

  Now or never.

  Carlette raised her voice. “At least let me die with my eyes open.”

  She felt all eyes turn to her, felt Tuk’s surprise and Byrna’s coiled tension.

  “A mountain death is mercy,” growled a woman’s voice nearby. “If we bring you back, Yokan will kill you slow.”

  “Then kill me,” Carlette said, trying to remember everything she knew of the Ebonal tribe. “But let me die with honor. Allow me to face Hyba.”

  Carlette’s demand was met by a deep silence. She tried to stay strong, keep
her spine straight. Everything hinged on a half-informed guess.

  Were these the honorable Ebonal warriors of legend, soldiers who would already feel revulsion for their monstrous act? Would they respect the traditions Carlette had learned about?

  Did those traditions even exist?

  Her life dangled in the balance of that question.

  “If you bodywalk,” said a voice in broken Delarese, “We kill your friends and bathe you in their blood.”

  Carlette nodded.

  Rough hands yanked off her blindfold.

  For an instant, the sun blinded her.

  And then details came at her like diving birds.

  Byrna and Tuk tied to a stag, her blindfolded, him staring at Carlette. Tall men and women with layered furs arrayed around them. A howling, horrible cliff on one side, a steep slope on the other.

  But only one detail mattered.

  At the end of the convoy was a hulking white shape. The Amonoux pup, more than half the size of the stags pulling it. It was panting through its muzzle, eyes wide, lashed to a toboggan.

  Perfect, Carlette thought.

  “Tell Yokan I send my regards,” Carlette said.

  And then the pup was rolling, tilting the runners dangerously high. Commotion stirred and the Bloody Paws spun, sprinting to the pup, hands reaching for the edges of the sled.

  But the woman holding Carlette’s arm didn’t move.

  This keen-eyed huntress missed nothing. Her gaze lingered on Carlette’s face, on the glowing white rings. She’d lifted her dagger in the moment of chaos, ready to act. But realization was dawning on her clever features.

  “You…”

  At that moment, Byrna lunged forward and dug her nails into the haunches of their stag. The creature reared, screaming.

  The woman’s attention flickered.

  Carlette dove into her mind and snuffed her into unconsciousness.

  The pup had rolled the toboggan and was beginning to slide away, making the rest of the hunting party panic. Carlette felt a surge of guilt as the small white body began to accelerate down the ridgeline, upside-down, but she couldn’t afford to dwell on its pain. Byrna had managed to grab a dagger from her stag’s saddle and was already sawing through her bonds. Carlette grabbed the woman’s knife and hurried to cut Tuk free.

  “What now?” Byrna shouted over the commotion of screaming stags and warriors.

  Carlette cast around for something, anything.

  Her gaze fell on another, smaller toboggan, filled with supplies.

  “Here!” she said, using the stolen knife to slice through the ropes.

  “You’re joking!”

  Carlette tilted the sled, letting the supplies tumble down the cliff face. She spun it to face the slope.

  Byrna opened her mouth to protest, but one of the Ebonals was notching an arrow, pointing at them.

  “Go!” Carlette shouted, shoving them both, twisting to stop the man from firing. She flicked out, but he was ready for her, shielding against her.

  The arrow missed them by inches.

  The man moved fast, nocking another arrow. Two others were sprinting toward them, shouting.

  Time to go!

  Byrna was on the front of the toboggan, Tuk holding its rear, waiting for her. Carlette lunged. With all the force her legs could muster, she slammed into the Nuri mechanic. They hit Byrna’s back with a breathless thump, tipped the sled over the precipice.

  And suddenly, they were flying, barely skimming the snow as they careened down at a catastrophic pace.

  “Hold on to something!” Byrna shrieked.

  They bounced off a rock. Carlette’s body lost contact with the sled but Tuk grabbed her waist, hauled her back. She gripped the frayed ropes with white knuckles, hands still bound. Hard wooden slats dug into her chest, her ribs, her hips, every bump painful. Tuk’s body was heavy around her, holding her down.

  “Fucking shit!”

  They swerved.

  Carlette glanced up. Byrna’s fingers were curled in a death-grip around the antlers built to guide the sled. It was working. Fingerlings of black rock reached for them, sharp as knives, but Byrna navigated through them.

  A ridge appeared, calamitously fast.

  “Look out!” Carlette screamed.

  Byrna threw the antlers to the side. The sled turned so quickly Carlette felt one runner rise out of the snow. Her chin hit the wood and she tasted blood.

  “The cliff’s coming!” Tuk shouted.

  Carlette coughed, spraying blood onto the sled. A whine of panic filled her ears. Tuk had flown over these mountains enough to know what lay ahead of them.

  Nothing.

  “Byrna! We have to stop!”

  “Any suggestions?” Byrna screamed back as she wove through the mountain’s ribs. They were gaining speed. Carlette knew that at any second an invisible rock or crevasse could end them. And if not, then the long drop to the ocean would.

  Their escape would be for nothing.

  “We need to jump!”

  “Are you crazy?” Byrna shrieked.

  “It’s the only way! Try and find some snow to—”

  But Carlette never got the chance to finish. Their right runner caught on something hard, bucking one side into the air. The sled fishtailed, twisted, slammed down.

  And ejected the three human bodies like a slingshot.

  For the second time that day, Carlette entered a snowdrift at a near lethal speed. Her bones shuddered. The sled tumbled over her and pain erupted along her shoulder. A scream filled her ears, not her own. She was rolling, sliding, grabbing out. Her wounds reopened, spilling pus inside her gloves, but she held onto whatever she could. She tumbled, lost purchase, grabbed something else. Bit by bit, her descent slowed to a crawl.

  With a final tumbling roll, she came to a stop.

  For a moment, all she could do was breathe. Her entire body was on fire, each nerve and bone protesting the abuse. Her shoulder had been sliced open by the sled’s runner and her hands were raw and bleeding again. She had broken at least one rib and her neck was stiff.

  Even so, the mountains had smiled upon them.

  It was pure luck that she had hit a snow drift and not a pile of rubble or worse, an obsidian rib. Her plan had worked. They still had a chance.

  With shaking arms, Carlette wiggled towards daylight. She coughed, spat out snow.

  “Tuk?” she called. “Byrna?”

  “We have a problem,” Tuk said from somewhere nearby.

  The fear in his voice made her blood run cold. Surging out of the snowdrift, Carlette stumbled toward the two dark shapes in an ocean of white. The powder grabbed at her feet, its sticky fingers trying to tempt her exhausted body to stop, to rest in its cushioned arms.

  Adrenaline alone kept her moving.

  Finally, she reached them.

  “Oh no,” Carlette breathed, lurching to a stop.

  Byrna’s leg was twisted at a nauseating angle, bent in like an elbow. Her face was whiter than the landscape, her breathing low and shallow. Tuk crouched at her side, apparently unhurt. But his expression was somber.

  “I’m fine,” Byrna said between clenched teeth. “Only a pampered Nuri prince would worry about a little thing like this.”

  But Carlette understood.

  Byrna couldn’t walk on a leg like that, no matter how they splinted it. Even if she could hobble along, the cliffs that would lead them to Tuleaux were steep and slippery, treacherous for even the most able-bodied, not to mention far away. They both knew Byrna would never make it, certainly not fast enough.

  Which meant that Carlette had to choose between abandoning her new friend and leaving Tuleaux open to the Bloody Paw attack.

  Chapter Thirty: Discovery

  Carlette couldn’t help but marvel at the beetle-speaker’s strength. Byrna glared at the sky, jaw clenched so tight that muscles jumped in her cheek, face as white as Carlette’s hair. But still she didn’t scream as Carlette splinted her leg with the wooden shards
of their shattered toboggan.

  “Almost done,” Carlette said as she tied ripped shreds of Tuk’s undershirt around the makeshift cast.

  “I could… do this… all day,” Byrna said, her breath coming in shallow pants. She hissed as Carlette tightened the final knot.

  Leaning back, Carlette prayed she had done everything right. Her medical knowledge was spotty at best. In Jemelle, she’d learned about the human body: what it looked like on the inside, how to cause the most amount of pain with the least amount of damage, and, in rare cases, how to heal injuries. She could staunch bleeding, tie a tourniquet, treat arrow and gun injuries, and recognize a fatal wound. Once, very briefly, a Tuleaux medic had mentioned something about setting bones. She’d been nine at the time, still fresh to Jemelle and shocked by the very concept of war. But Carlette had dragged up the memory anyways, struggling to visualize the healer’s hands as he tied saplings to a dummy’s arm.

  Now, looking at Byrna’s leg, her chest tightened. What if she’d just made things worse?

  Not that it would matter if they all died in the mountains.

  “You should go,” Byrna said through gritted teeth. “You can still save them.”

  “We’re not leaving you here,” Carlette snapped, looking around for Tuk.

  He had sprinted off almost an hour ago, muttering something about the landscape looking familiar. Carlette suspected that the angle of Byrna’s leg had made him woozy, but he should have returned by now.

  “Worried about your boyfriend?”

  Carlette flushed. “It’s not like that.”

  “You hoods,” Byrna scoffed, wincing as she shifted her leg. “Closed up tighter than a virgin’s legs. It’s not that scary, you know, to be ripe for someone.”

  “It is for me,” Carlette snarled, temper snapping.

  Right this minute, Yokan was marching on the place she called home, approaching the fences that protected Mya and Mileen and all the other orphans. Young hoods were being used as shields and here she was, talking about this?

  Byrna snorted. “If you’re going to be a traitor, might as well enjoy the perks.”

  “I can’t do this right now.”

  “Now is the perfect time,” Byrna said, leaning back on her elbows. “You have to decide where you stand, else Yokan will eat you alive.”