The end of the pass.
Not far ahead at all.
“Atrius,” I choked out, and he knew without me saying anything else exactly what I meant. He lifted his sword above his head and let out a roar—a warrior’s roar, a predator’s roar, a sound that seemed fit to match the screams of the slyviks around us.
And with that roar, one juvenile too far away from the rest of the fight figured he’d take his chances here instead, and leapt down at us. Atrius was already responding before my warning shout had left my lips.
The beast came at him with its mouth open, razor teeth bared, and Atrius didn’t hesitate as he brought his sword down on its throat, decapitating it in a single smooth stroke.
I choked out a shocked laugh, but didn’t stop running—none of us did, not until the ground beneath us leveled and the walls opened up and the soul-deep darkness of the cliffs fell away.
I just kept running, and running, and running, until Atrius grabbed me and forced me to slow. The moment I stopped moving, my legs folded beneath me. I sank to the ground—actual ground, not rocks. My breath ached in my ribs.
Atrius sank down with me, his hands on my shoulders. A slow smile rolled over his face. Then he turned back—to see the rest of his warriors, now finished pouring through the opening in the cliff face, bleeding and bruised and exhausted, but very much alive.
My cheeks ached with my grin, which probably looked slightly manic. “I didn’t know if we were going to make it.”
“I did,” Atrius said, matter-of-factly, and I found it so amusing I decided not to tell him that I had been there, and I knew for a fact he had some doubts.
Beside us, Erekkus flopped over on the ground, laughing and muttering a string of curses to himself.
I still was swaying a bit with the shock of what we’d just done.
“You decapitated one of them,” I said. “One strike.”
A smirk he was trying and failing to suppress twitched at the corners of his mouth. “I did,” he said.
He just sounded so smug.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Let him get a little full of himself. That was worthy of some admiration.
He laughed too, softly, and he let his forehead fall against mine, and for a few breaths we both just reveled in the fact that we had survived.
Then, as if in unspoken agreement, we straightened.
We weren’t done. Actually, the slyviks were nothing compared to what we were about to face.
Together, we stood.
The end of the pass was abrupt, spilling us out into an expanse of sandy plain. It was cold here, and the mist nearly as thick as it had been in the cliffs, only just thinning enough that I could sense the moon above—a perfect crescent.
The quiet felt like a warning.
Because there, looming over us to the north, emerging from the sparse trees on a cliff that overlooked the churning, angry sea, was the Pythora King’s castle.
A strange calm fell over me. What did it say, that I had been afraid when picking a fight with the slyviks, but wasn’t afraid to go kill the Pythora King?
Maybe it just meant that anger was the antidote to fear. I hated the Pythora King so much that I had little to be afraid of. I would die either way. Let me die with my blade in his throat.
Atrius was staring at the castle, too, and I could sense the same calm resolve in him. We moved at the same time—our bloody, sweaty hands clasping together.
“Is that his?”
Erekkus’s voice was quiet with rage. Gone was his comical glee at having survived the pass.
Our silence was enough of an answer.
Finally, Atrius turned to him. “We don’t have time to rest. Get them ready—”
But the words didn’t make it out of Atrius’s mouth before a wave of soldiers poured from the forest.
42
They were shockingly well-prepared for us. It was as if he knew we were coming.
The Pythora King was known to be isolated and paranoid, keeping his castle closed to all but very few select followers. He relied on the cliffs and his neighboring city-states to shield him from invaders, and didn’t keep a heavy force of warriors at the castle itself. But something must have changed recently, or maybe he had been bracing for Atrius’s potential retaliation, because there was an entire damned army here. A small army, yes, but it was enough to catch us off-guard coming straight from the cliffs, and they were charging at us before we had even caught our breath.
How they’d known we were here that quickly, I couldn’t fathom.
I didn’t have time to think about it.
At the approaching battle cries, Atrius’s warriors were on their feet immediately, rallying as if they weren’t already starving and injured and exhausted. Atrius roared a command in Obitraen, and we charged, meeting the Pythora King’s men with blades out and teeth bared.