Wryth glanced again to the blazing bronze torch. The shining woman remained dangerous and formidable. He still feared approaching too closely. For now, he would leave it to Brask’s forces to grind her down, to drain and deplete her, to hopefully bring her low.
Then I’ll collect her.
In the meantime …
Wryth touched the drover’s shoulder and pointed to the two figures stumbling across the stone. “Drop us hard in front of them.”
* * *
NYX AGAIN FELT the pressure in her ears as something came for her, that dark storm driving at her. She trembled in fear, sensing the menace and fury. She gave up searching the skies for it and glanced around.
Behind her, she spotted a fire far more golden shining in the smoke.
Shiya …
Nyx wobbled as she tried to turn. “Aamon, we’re going the wrong way.”
The vargr continued his path forward. Maybe it was the only way he could go. His legs quaked under him. Her palm on his shoulder lay soaked in his hot blood. He fought onward, nearly dragging himself. She didn’t understand his goal, if he had one. Maybe just to draw her farther and farther from the smoke and flame.
Still, with each pained step, he seemed to be drawing her closer to that dark storm in the air. It no longer felt beyond the horizon, but sweeping toward her, coming straight at her.
Suddenly, the world roared in front of her. She ducked and gasped. Flashburn flames raged ahead of her, slowing a sailraft that dropped out of the skies like a falling boulder.
She stumbled back, tripped over her tired legs, and fell to her knees.
The sailraft blasted to the plaza, wreathed in smoke and smolder.
Aamon rounded in front of her, still ready to protect her. But he could not hold himself up anymore. His legs gave a final shake, and he dropped heavily before her, creating a wall of bloody fur between her and the fiery craft.
Ahead, the stern door of the raft crashed open. Two Mongers stalked out of the hold, unfolding their giant frames to exit. They carried hammers, but rather than approaching, the pair moved to either side.
Between them, two Shriven climbed out. One she did not recognize, but she suspected was the Iflelen Wryth. The other—all bone and sagging flesh—had to be the one Kanthe had described, the Shrive who had come to the Cloistery with the king’s legion. Kanthe had said his name was Vythaas.
The pair did not approach farther than the end of the ramp. Maybe they were leery of the growling vargr. Even wounded, Aamon was dangerous.
Her hands reached to his fur, feeling the tremble of his threat.
The Shriven then parted, allowing two more figures to leadenly stalk forward. They moved stiffly, as if risen from the dead. They dragged iron pikes behind them. Each wore skullcaps of steel, like those worn by the scythers.
As they neared the Shriven, a smaller copper box—held in Vythaas’s hand—glowed brighter, humming with a noise that ate at her ears, trying to worm into her skull.
She ignored it, too shocked by who had arrived.
Their features were slack and dull; ropes of drool hung from their lips. Still she knew them. They were part of a life that seemed lived by another.
She whispered their names from that other life. “Ablen … Bastan…”
Vythaas lifted his copper box. He spoke a command to it, glowing it brighter with his breath. She could nearly see his words carried through the air on threads so corrupt and inimical that she shuddered.
She also heard that command.
“Kill them … kill them both.”
Ablen and Bastan swung their pikes up and marched forward.
* * *
RHAIF DUCKED AS Shiya cast out another bolt of lightning, scattering knights away from them. She also watched the skies, ready in case another scout-ketch should draw too near. Two ships lay in smoldering ruins, adding to the thick smoke that both choked the air and kept them hidden.
While Shiya did most of the protecting, Rhaif and Frell added to the defense. If they spotted any archers in the distance or the streak of flaming arrows in the sky, they would shout out. With such warnings, the group would hopefully have time to cloak themselves in smoke to make harder targets or shelter under Shiya’s bronze form.
Still, a question remained.
Frell asked it again. “Where’s Nyx?”
Their group held off making a strike for one of the gates until they found her—not that such an escape would be likely either way. As proof, Rhaif watched one of the purple-faced mandrayks go bounding by through the smoke. It raced wildly, its tail on fire. It scribed a glowing path through the pall.
On all sides, the gates burned.
As Rhaif followed the mandrayk’s trail, his eye was drawn to a sailraft in the distance. It smoldered under hot forges. He nearly looked away, thinking it was yet another shipment of the legion’s forces. Then he spotted a furry mound nearby—and a small girl sheltering behind it.
Nyx …
“Frell!” Rhaif shouted.
The alchymist ducked and winced, believing Rhaif was warning about another attack.
Rhaif drew abreast of the man and pointed. “That’s Nyx over there.”
Frell squinted and stiffened with recognition. He stepped forward. “We must get to her…”
Before the alchymist could move farther, a bronze hand grabbed his arm. “No,” Shiya warned. Her lightning-hot grip smoldered on his sleeve. “I hear what is being sung over there. It is … wrong. No one must go there.”
“But Nyx…” Frell stressed.
Shiya did not let him go. “No. She is lost to us.”
* * *
NYX HID BEHIND Aamon as her two brothers stalked slowly forward with raised pikes. Though this pair looked like Ablen and Bastan, whatever approached now was not them. They might wear their faces and bodies, but those were not the brothers who had teased her mercilessly and who had loved her just as fervently.
She stared at the lengths of hard steel raised at her. Over her lifetime, she had watched them spear fish with similar weapons, able to strike at the merest flicker of silver in black water and draw out a flopping karp or a squirming eel. With stouter spears, they had hunted great armored krocs and had driven off grimwolves who harried their bullocks.
While what approached might look dull and dead-eyed, she suspected those lethal reflexes remained, all controlled by whatever sang to them from that copper box in Vythaas’s hand.
The two Iflelen studied her brothers, staring with cold curiosity, as if testing what they had wrought. The pair could have sent the Gyn after Nyx and Aamon, but maybe they believed this death would pain her more. Maybe even get her to stay her hand.
She knew both to be true.
Even if I could, I have no heart left in me to kill my brothers. If they would die for me, can I do any less?
Still, she refused to simply bare her throat to the knife.
Her hands were still atop Aamon, who growled his challenge even as his life ebbed. She had tied herself to him, to his brother. She drew upon that bond.
I will be vargr.
She fought the only way she knew how. She drew a deep breath and sang to her brothers. She drew on their love, their friendship, trying to remind them who they were. Her eyelids drifted closed. She remembered them laughing, cajoling, taunting, snoring. She put all that into her lilt and rhythm.
Remember who you are.
She cast out tangles of song and reminiscences, brightening those strands with voice and heart. She tried to send them toward her brothers. But there was something foul in the air, frizzing any approach, a wind blowing against her. She shuddered from its corruption. It was a fever’s heat, the stench of vomit, the boil of pus and rot. It fought the strands she cast.