She lifted her other hand, realized it was too much, and settled on a single finger. She slowly reached and rubbed under the tiny chin. The bat stiffened, wings shifting wider, wary and nervous—then with a final tremble, his body relaxed and leaned into her touch. She offered her palm, and he scooped his head against it, rolling one cheek, then another. A raspy tongue tested the salt on her skin.
Then he shifted even closer. He tucked his velvet ears and ducked his head under her chin, rubbing her as she had done to him a moment before. Finally, he settled against her. His gentle peeping softened to a note heard only in one ear.
For a moment, she flashed back to something similar.
Two figures snuggled together in the cradle of warm wings.
She knew this glimpse was not memory fired from any keening, but simply born out of his soft touch now, the shared heat, the quiet murmur of two who had known each other all their lives.
Nyx leaned a cheek closer, allowing her eyes to close again.
Grief still pained her, large and bottomless, but she no longer had to carry it in one heart. While she no longer had the breadth of a thousand hearts to disperse the agony, she sensed the truth.
For now, two is enough.
25
“OFF WITH YOU both,” Anskar ordered.
With the attack seemingly over, the Vyrllian herded Kanthe and Frell toward the swampers’ raft. The rocky shore was a charnel house of torn bodies, steaming bowels, and pools of black blood. The neat circle of the camp’s bonfires had been shattered into a hundred smoldering piles along the bank. Elsewhere, banners lay broken; the legion’s score of sledges and liveries were either smashed or burning.
Only a few of the latter still looked salvageable, though they were probably enough to handle the number of knights and guards who still breathed. Anskar had already sent one of the legion’s physiks running to the school. The plan was to leave the worst of the wounded here, while the rest of them headed back to Azantiia.
Anskar was taking no more chances with the horde above. After this last attack, it looked as if the mass was finally breaking up and starting to wing back toward their mountain home.
Kanthe stared up at the dark storm slowly blowing south.
It seems both sides had enough bloodshed for one day.
Anskar shoved him forward at the raft. “Quit your gawking and get your arses aboard.” He called over to the four vy-knights standing on the raft, two leaning on poles. “Mallik, get the prince and Alchymist Frell deep into the swamp, under as much cover as possible. In case those fanged bastards decide to attack again.”
Mallik nodded sharply. He was the detachment’s second in command, towering the same height as Anskar. While shaven-headed and crimson-skinned, like all Vyrllians, he kept a strip of black beard trimmed along his jawbone. His cold eyes appraised Kanthe as he approached. From the set to Mallik’s scowl, he did not like what he saw.
“Quick now,” Mallik growled. “Both of you.”
Frell hopped onto the raft. Kanthe had no choice but to follow. Not that he would’ve objected. He wanted away from the flies, bloody shite, and ripped bodies. After they left, Anskar would lag behind long enough to square away the rearguard for the trek back to Fiskur, then home.
There was nothing more Kanthe could do. The girl Nyx was still off in the swamps somewhere, and with her brother safely escaped, there was no one in town who knew where she went.
So, she’s safe.
Amidst all the horror and losses, he would take this as victory and be happy about it. Plus, the disappearance of the supposedly bless’d girl would irk his father. Kanthe could savor that. Still, the trek had not been an entire waste of life and limb. The legion would return to Highmount with one significant prize. Shrive Vythaas had managed to secure a batch of the bats’ poison.
Kanthe stared across the swamp to the Shrive’s black livery. Its outline could be seen in the distance. Prior to the onslaught, a pair of bullocks had dragged Vythaas’s sled away from shore where it took refuge under a thick protective canopy. Kanthe noted a thin iron chimney atop the livery puffing with black smoke and imagined the Shrive was already working on those stolen sacs of poison.
He gave a sad shake of his head as the raft poled away from the bloody wreckage along the shore. So much misery for so little gain.
He turned his back on Brayk, hoping to never set foot there again. He settled to a seat next to Frell. The breadth of the dark swamp stretched ahead of them. It buzzed and nattered. It squawked and croaked. Black branches draped to the sluggish currents or hung heavy under matts of yellow-green moss. Clouds of suckers and flies drifted like mist on the water.
As they were poled deeper, the M?r closed around them. The cries and occasional screams soon faded behind them, muffled by the weight of the drowned forest. The boles of the trees thickened. The canopy stretched higher, even the waters blackened. As much as he hated this place, he had to respect its brutal beauty. It was forever changeable with each tide, but still ancient and eternal, its roots dug deep into these lands.
At the front of the raft, Mallik nicked out with his sword and sliced through the churning coils of a pit-adder that draped from a tree branch. The snake’s lengths loosened and dropped heavily to the raft, still twisting and twining in death. Jaws snapped at empty air. Kanthe felt a measure of pity for the creature. Another crimson knight kicked its remains into the water. The loops stirred atop the blackness—then the surface roiled, and the snake vanished into the depths, its flesh returning to nourish the swamp.
Kanthe shivered and stood, no longer able to sit.
Frell followed him up, but he stared behind the raft. “It seems we’ve left the others far behind.”
Kanthe glanced back, peering between the two vy-knights who manned the poles. A handful of skiffs and punts had followed them from shore, seeking the safety of the swamps. Farther back, even the bullocks had begun to haul sledges into the water. Now there was nothing but dark forest behind them.
Kanthe turned to the front. “Shouldn’t we wait for—”
Mallik stood a step away—and plunged his sword at the prince’s chest.
* * *
NYX DROPPED HEAVILY out of the sledge and onto the sandy banks of Fellfire Scour. Tiny crabs scurried from the impact of her sandals, clacking their irritation at the intrusion, heading toward the lake.
She stretched her limbs and stared leadenly across the flat expanse of the Scour. It stretched a full yoke around, and though its black waters looked like much of the briny swamplands, a sharper eye could note a cast of blue under the open sky. Fellfire was one of the few spring-fed lakes. Its waters were fresh, clean of any bitter salts. It was this feature that drew the family’s ancestors to build the winter bullock barn way out here.
Jace came around the back of the sledge to join her. “It looks like an ancient fortress,” he said, his back to the lake, craning up at the barn. “Yet, also like it grew straight out of the swamp.”
She turned to the barn, better appreciating it under the glow of Jace’s admiration. The stout stone barn, five centuries old, climbed twice the height of a bullock. Its walls were stacks of gray boulders, its roof plated in tiles of the same rock, all of it coated in layers of moss and lichens. It did look like the massive structure had been pushed forth from the swamps, a gift to their ancestors. The high doors were timbered in wood so ancient that they had turned to stone themselves. It took a bullock to pull them open and closed.