Daniel tore back towards the stone wall and heaved himself over it. On the other side, he pressed himself against the stones, his breath coming in halted gasps. The pain returned to his side. He clenched his teeth and forced himself to get up.
Back in the glade, gunfire blazed and voices shouted incomprehensibly. Daniel clumsily stumbled to his feet and lurched towards the forest. Run. Get away from there. Stay alive. More gunfire erupted behind him, and he glanced over his shoulder. The trees blocked his vision.
A foot tripped him. He tumbled to the ground. His back landed on a protruding rock and he lay there, stunned.
Kora bore down on him from out of nowhere, her bloody face stretched in a gloating grimace. Her chest and shoulders were torn to shreds, and claw and teeth marks ran down her arms. Each breath she took rattled in her chest. She wielded Tess’s knife in her hand. “You did this to me. You did this to me!”
She plunged the blade into his chest. Indescribably cold pain erupted in him. He saw the madness in her eyes, and he could only wonder why. Then it was over.
* * *
“Daniel, run!” Tess ducked behind the tree in the nick of time. Bullets ripped off chunks of bark where she had just been. She reached around the trunk and fired off a couple rounds without much hope of actually hitting Andrale.
Andrale abandoned Maravek and retreated to the edge of the glade, where he put his back to a tree. He wasn’t running, though. As the Akorites advanced across the clearing, he pivoted left and right around the trunk, sending volleys of bullets into their midst.
The Akorites pressed towards him. Dasha hobbled on her injured ankle next to a pale Lazar from the right. Barin brought up the middle on his own, keeping his bulky frame low to the ground. The two bruisers advanced from the left.
In spite of his desperate shooting, Andrale was no match, and in a few brief moments, Barin reached the tree, wrapped his arms around him, and took him down. The whole time, not a word came from the mountain guerrillas.
Only one of the Akorites diverged from the group converging on Andrale—Nikolai broke off and made a straight line to Maravek. The First Preceptor crawled away on all fours, but Nikolai planted his foot in the small of his back and shoved him to the ground.
Maravek rolled over onto his back, his mouth twisted in a silent snarl.
The Akorite leader whipped out a gun. “You know why I’m doing this.” He shot.
Tess regained her breath as silence reclaimed the glade. The gunshots seemed to linger longer than they should have until the echoes dissipated into the trees.
The Akorites gathered. There was no celebration among them. They had done the work they came to do.
Moriah approached Tess from the side, unscathed. “Should we go to them?”
“No,” said Tess. “Let them be with their own. Our job isn’t done yet.”
From across the glade, Nikolai caught her eye. She wasn’t sure if she should say something, but he merely dipped his chin at her. Then, silent as the grave, the Akorites melted back into the forest.
“They’re gone,” said Moriah.
Tess knew what she meant. “They are.” She paused, looking with a heavier heart than she had anticipated at the two dead bodies lying in the grass. “Find him, Moriah. Bring him back here. He doesn’t need to run anymore.”
Moriah nodded and took off in the direction Daniel had gone. Tess lingered on Maravek’s body, and, almost reluctantly, she approached him. “You weren’t always like this,” she said. With two fingers, she closed his eyelids. She did the same for Andrale, though for him she had no words. And though Maravek’s unchecked madness was finally over, she didn’t feel the satisfaction she had imagined. She felt only sorrow for what he had become and pity for those who followed him.
“Tess!”
She looked over her shoulder, and dread wrapped its fingers around her heart. Moriah labored back into the clearing, carrying a body over her shoulder—Daniel’s body.
“What happened?”
Moriah put Daniel down. There was a deep stab wound in his chest. “Kora,” she said, breathless. “She—she was dead beside him. Maravek’s dogs got her. Had your knife in her hand. She did this.”
“Is he dead?”
“Not yet.”
Tess grabbed the medical kit from Andrale’s pack and sprinted to Daniel’s side. “No, no, no,” she said, frantically trying to stop the bleeding from the knife wound just above his heart. She bent over his mouth—he was still breathing. Barely. She detected no blood in his mouth, which hopefully meant the knife hadn’t punctured his lung. She grabbed sterile gauze from the medial kit and pressed it down on the wound, securing it in place with strips of tape.
Once the wound was dressed, she hooked her arms under his shoulders, hoisted him half off the ground, and dragged him further into the forest. “Stay with me, Daniel Black. We’re not done with you yet.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Ram crossed the bridge into freedom without a trace of joy in his being. He hadn’t spoken a word since leaving the cave, nor had Litty made a sound. There simply wasn’t anything to say. Daniel was gone, and that was that.
His feet crunched on the gravel at the other side of the Weeping River. Before them, the final foothills of the Untamable Mountains rolled down into the green hills of Cerdania, and in the distance, he thought he could make out the gleam of sunlight on shiny city buildings. It was going to be a long, painful walk.
He gave Litty a comforting pat on the shoulder, though he didn’t suspect it would do much good. “Everything’s going to be okay, you know. We still have each other. When a Mallard makes a promise, he keeps it.”
Ram determined then and there that he would not let the memory of Daniel Black be forgotten. “Someday, when you’re old enough to understand, I’ll tell you the story of a brave man who loved his little sister more than anything else.” He took in a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “I suppose we’d best be going if we’re to make it to that town today.”
Despite the fact, he was very reluctant to take that first step towards their new life. Truth be told, he was scared of what lay ahead. The only thing he was certain of was that he was going to take care of the little girl in his arms.
He took one last look over his shoulder towards the forests of the Untamables. Back towards the place where a man named Daniel Black had changed his life. He was a soldier now.
He was about to turn back when movement at the edge of the rocky hillside caught his attention. Something—no, someone—was coming towards the bridge. His heart hammered in his chest. Had they tarried too long? Had Maravek sent one of his men to chase after them? He panicked, and his knees locked—he could neither run nor hide. It was too late, anyways—the figure had definitely seen him.
But then he squinted as the person drew nearer. Whoever it was dragged something behind them…something that looked an awful lot like a body. He took an involuntary step towards his end of the bridge.
A gasp escaped his lips. It was Tess Kerrigan. She reached the middle of the bridge, stretched out a hand towards him, and then collapsed to the flagstones on her hands and knees.
Ram dashed across the bridge, Litty bouncing in his arms. “Preceptor Kerrigan! What are you—” He stopped when he saw whom she was dragging. It was Daniel, lying on his back. His face was pale, and there was a bloody gauze taped to his bare chest.
Ram quickly turned to the side so Litty wouldn’t see her brother’s body.
Tess gulped in breaths, her chest heaving in oxygen. Sweat poured down her forehead and glistened on her shoulders. She must have dragged Daniel halfway through the forest to get here. But why?
“Is he…?”
She looked up at him with weary eyes. “Alive? I don’t know. I did the best I could.”
Ram helped her to her feet.
“Let the girl down.”
He obeyed without question. Daniel hadn’t moved a muscle—it was hard to tell if he was even breathing.
&n
bsp; Litty stood at Ram’s feet at first, hugging Ducky close to her. But after a few tentative steps forward, she dropped the stuffed animal and scampered to her brother’s side. She threw her arms around his neck and said one word. “Danny.”
For an agonizing moment, nothing happened.
Daniel’s eyes cracked open, and a weak smile spread across his face. “Little one.”
The End
Little One Page 30
