Eyaaahhhhhh!
But the scream was not his own. It rang out across the canopy, drawing gazes toward the misty heights. Arrows sliced out of nowhere and whistled through the treetop gathering.
Hunters stumbled all around, pierced through arm, thigh, chest, and belly. Bows dropped, and bodies fell with pained exhalations. Krevan and Calla grabbed weapons. Tylar tried to do the same, but his left hand was too crippled. His side flamed with agony.
He had not been arrow-struck. It was only the protest of his shattered rib. He glanced around. None of them had been hit.
“Stay low,” Rogger whispered and pulled him down.
On one knee, Krevan drew upon his bow and let an arrow fly. It sliced through one of the hunters’ throats with a great spray of crimson. The man fell over a railing and tumbled without a sound.
In his place, a shape swung out of the mists upon a vine and vaulted over the same railing. He landed in a crouch, a dagger in one hand. A boy. Tylar heard others landing elsewhere. Cries arose on all sides.
A sharp scream, higher than all the others, keened across the misty balcony. The Huntress. She was being herded back toward the open doorway to her castillion by Marron and the others, protecting their god.
“No! The boy! I must have the stone!”
But the confusion after Brant’s assault had left her still dazed, allowed her to be led, unable to fully drain the panic from the unsettled hunters, to control them. They reacted with instinct, to protect their god.
She vanished into the shelter of the castillion. “I must have it!” she cried out of the darkness. “It is not of this world. It is not of Myrillia.”
A small band of young hunters settled around them. Their faces were painted, but their lips were unburned by Dark Grace.
“We must go,” said the closest, perhaps the leader. He pointed to the railing, where vines were tethered, waiting to swing them away from the balcony. “We must be gone before they rally.”
Tylar waved the others to follow. Still, he hung back, listening to the fading ravings of the Huntress.
“The stone…It is not a rock of Myrillia!”
An arm tugged at his elbow.
Tylar strained to hear. The words were faint.
“It is of our old kingdom! A piece of our Sundered land!”
Tylar took a stumbled step forward, wanting to hear more, but Krevan grabbed his other elbow. He had Brant’s body over his shoulder.
“Leave now,” said the leader of the young hunters. He was gangly and loose-limbed, eyes too large for his face. “If there is to be any hope for Brant, we must fly now!”
Tylar finally turned. “Hope?” he asked. The word almost didn’t make sense to him. “How did you know who-?”
“Hurry.”
Scowling, the boy headed toward the railing.
With one last glance back, Tylar followed. All that rose from the castillion now was the distant screams of fury. The Huntress’s earlier words still echoed in Tylar’s head.
A piece of our Sundered land.
Tylar pictured the stone. He studied Brant’s limp form.
What did it mean?
Tylar hurried after the leader, limping to catch up. He noted the boy also bore a distinct hobbled trip to his gait, which did not slow him down. Tylar finally caught up with him at the railing. He grabbed the boy by the shoulder.
“Who are you?”
“An old friend of Brant’s.” He shoved a loop of vine into Tylar’s good hand. “My name is Harp.”
A PARLEY AT THE BLACKHORSE
Kathryn shouldered the shutter closed against the gust of wind. She prayed no one on the daywatch stumbled past and noted that the shutter was unbarred on the inside. She had chosen the window because it was well hidden in a dark corner, near the cookery’s privy. None had noted as she slipped the bar and climbed out. She planned on returning to Tashijan as surreptitiously as she had left it.
If she was allowed to return…
She pictured the ilked wraith, hunched and brittle-winged.
And the offer.
Come alllone. To parlllley. In town. Blllackhorse tavernhouse.
Kathryn set out across the wintry yard. She was dressed in heavy woolens, feet pushed into furred boots. Over it all she wore her knight’s cloak. She had chosen this place in the yard to cross because it lay in the shadow of Stormwatch Tower, but the low cloud and gray day offered only meager shadows. She gathered what power she could into her cloak, fading her form. She did not want any of the guards from Stormwatch to note her departure.
Gerrod knew where she was headed. That was enough. She did not want all of Tashijan to know her folly. But with no word from Tylar, the safety of Tashijan remained her responsibility. While Argent might be content to burrow inside and shore up their defenses, Kathryn intended to discover what brewed beyond the curtain of this storm. If that meant meeting with Ulf of Ice Eyrie on his own terms, so be it. He had sworn her safety.
But was the word of this god to be trusted?
She gazed to the left, to the shield wall of Tashijan, a cliff of piled brick and stone. Beyond the top, the world swirled with ice fog and snow.
The storm waited.
And it would wait a little longer.
She trudged into the wind toward the stables. She noted the steam rising from the crossed thatching. The stableboys and horsemen must have stoked the hearths against the cold, not just for themselves but for their charges. She knew they had been offered shelter in the towers, but the stablemen would have had to abandon their horses.
Not a one had accepted the offer.
This warmed her more than her heavy woolens.
Kathryn also knew the men would remain silent about her trespass into the stables. They bore little love for the Fiery Cross, since a couple of the warden’s knights had switched a horse near to crippling it. She had already sent a raven down with a terse message, to ready a horse.
An eye keener than any guard noted her approach. The stable door creaked open. The stableboy, Mychall, bundled almost to obscurity under horse blankets, waved to her.
She hurried forward and pushed into the steamy warmth. The smell of patty and hay welcomed her. Only a single lamp was lit here, over by one stall. A shadowy form huffed and dug a hoof, recognizing her scent.
Mychall threw back his blankets. “Did you hear?” he asked breathlessly as he led her forward.
“Hear what?”
“Eventail threw her foal this morning. We was worried. She came close to colicking, back…” He waved an arm to indicate the past. “But she dropped a handsome little mare. Color of bitternut, with bright white stockings up to her fetlocks.”
“How wonderful,” she said, suddenly smiling. The warmth and the boy’s enthusiasm helped dispel the darkness around her heart. And the fact that life was born in the middle of the siege somehow gave her hope.
She was now doubly glad to have decided to fetch a horse for the short ride to the tavernhouse. Ulf’s emissary had not forbidden it. The snow had fallen thick. And the storm winds were not empty. In case it proved necessary, she wanted a means of fast travel.
Ahead, a taller man, Mychall’s father, stepped out of the hay crib, leading a piebald stallion, colored white and black, snow on stone. The boy circled the horse, mimicking his father’s inspection of the horse’s tack, hands on
