A moment later, the bag scraped free of the rocks and the Italian wobbled upright, swinging the bag over his shoulder.
“Shoot!” Alonso cried.
I’m killing a man in cold blood. I’m shooting a human being. I’m committing murder. What if…
Taziri held up her shaking arm against the arctic blasts of snow and sleet and she pulled the trigger. The shotgun’s recoil shoved her back and the side of her head clipped Alonso’s chin. For a moment all she could do was clutch the blazing spot on her skull and clench her eyes shut, grinding her teeth and trying not to scream. Alonso groaned through his pressed lips.
With a blazing, throbbing ache in her arm, Taziri sat up and saw Fabris staring back at her with a hateful glare.
I meant to wing him, not to miss him!
She fumbled through her pockets for another shell as she stood up. Alonso dragged himself up by grabbing her belt and almost pulled her back to the ground. By the time she found another shell and opened the chamber to reload, Taziri’s fingers were blue and numb.
The Italian was already halfway back to the trail with the bag slung over his shoulder by the time Taziri raised her gun again, but she dropped her arm a second later.
Not in the back.
“Come on!” She grabbed Alonso’s arm and together they began trudging and stumbling and clawing their way up through the snow and over the rocks.
Chapter 24. Lorenzo
The hidalgo almost leaped after Salvator, but Mirari’s shrieking turned Lorenzo back to the tower of shaggy white hair behind him. The basajaun didn’t seem to notice the knife still stuck in its back or the dark red streams of blood running down its arms and legs to stain the snow. It leaned down to roar in the masked girl’s face, and the masked girl raised her hatchet to scream back into the creature’s fanged maw.
The beast swung its sharp rock at Mirari’s head and she swung her hatchet two-handed into the basajaun’s wrist. A thin spatter of blood sprayed across the virgin snow as the creature fell back a single step, wailing and clutching the stump where its hand had been.
It lunged forward again, throwing its full body weight down on the girl as through to crush her into the freezing snow. Lorenzo caught the tails of her coat and pulled her out of the way. The basajaun collapsed face down on the ground, two of its outstretched fingers clawing at Mirari’s boot.
Lorenzo scrambled forward and slid his espada into the beast’s neck and then again through the back where he guessed the heart to be. Standing back and surveying his work, a sudden coldness and emptiness hollowed him out, leaving him disgusted and saddened. The creature didn’t move, didn’t twitch, didn’t gasp.
Rest in peace, whatever you are.
He turned away and made a half-hearted effort to look for Shahera and Dante on the trail ahead.
Mirari stood up and retrieved her knife from the carcass. “You fight well, Don Lorenzo. You should try using a real sword some day.”
He glanced down at the thin whip of a blade in his hand where a few drops of blood had already frozen and crystallized on the steel. “This one seems real enough.”
He frowned at the snow obscuring the trail and then peered down the slope where he could see a cluster of bodies around a large rocky outcropping. “Mirari, go find Shahera and Dante. Make sure they’re all right.”
“But Alonso!” she pointed at the figures below them.
“I’ll get Alonso, you just take care of the others!”
She nodded and dashed off into the whiteness, leaving a thin trail of blood dripping from her knife.
With his sword in hand, Lorenzo leaned down to find a handhold and begin his descent when he heard the gunshot. The boom echoed up the mountain side and he froze, staring through the driving snow at the blurred figures.
Did she kill him? Or did he overpower her and kill her with her own gun?
“Alonso! Taziri!” Seconds passed and no one seemed to be moving so Lorenzo slid down a few yards to the first boulder. Then he saw Salvator climbing back up toward the trail, angling away from him, and below the Italian he saw two more figures struggling to ascend.
They’re alive. They’re all right. So I need to stop him.
Lorenzo scanned the terrain for a safe path, but saw only shining and shadowy whites, and so he dashed out from his boulder with a breathless prayer on his lips. He crashed and slipped and jumped and ran across the face of the mountain, careening downward twice as fast as he moved forward but still plunging straight for Salvator. Lorenzo kept his uphill hand on the ground and with the other he held his sword high and ready to strike.
Five more paces.
Two more.
Lorenzo sliced at the Italian’s hand holding the canvas bag but his feet betrayed him, shooting across a sheet of ice and dropping him to the ground. His espada slashed down Salvator’s leg and the Italian shouted, “Merda!”
Lorenzo fell on his side and grabbed at the snow and the rocks but his momentum carried him on below Salvator, sliding and falling sideways, faster and faster. He skidded to a stop just a few yards above Taziri and Alonso. He blinked down at them. “Are you all right?”
They squinted up through the freezing wind. “Yes!”
He looked up to see Salvator still trudging up the slope, though slower than before. Lorenzo sheathed his sword and grabbed the Mazigh woman’s hand. Together, they hauled Alonso up the slope one painful step after another. Several times the hidalgo looked up to see how far Salvator had gotten, and finally he looked up to see that Salvator was gone.
He took the skyfire stone. He took my stone. What am I going to tell Ariel? How will I track him down? Where will he go? Back to Rome? And what will he do with the stone when he gets there?
At the top of the slope, they staggered onto the trail and stood in the knee-deep snow beside the body of the basajaun already covered in a thin blanket of white powder. After a moment of exhausted gasping and shivering, Lorenzo helped the other two to properly close up their coats against the bitter storm and then he led them slowly along the trail in search of Mirari and the others.
It took longer than he expected to find the three people huddled in the lee of a large overhang. They were kneeling and sitting close together in the snow.
“Where is he? Where is Fabris?” Lorenzo shouted over the wind.
Mirari pointed down the trail. “He ran past a moment ago.”
The wind screamed higher and louder and everyone stumbled half a step toward the mountain side, all clutching their coats and hats.
“Get up! Everyone needs to get up. We need to keep moving,” Lorenzo said. “I know we’re all tired and hurt, but if we don’t get off the mountain before dark, then we’ll freeze. Come on, everyone up.”
He held out his hand to Dante. The Italian didn’t move. Shahera lay curled up beside him, one bare hand on his chest.
“Both stabbed through the heart,” Mirari said calmly. “He must have killed them as he came up the path to find you.”
Lorenzo swallowed as he knelt down to check them each for a pulse. There was none. Dante slumped against the rock, his legs dusted with fresh snow, one of his eyes still open and white with frost. Shahera’s mouth hung open, her lips blue. Lorenzo closed their eyes and mouths and smoothed their hair away from their faces.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. None of this was supposed to happen. And now we have to leave them here like this.
He stood up. “We have to leave them here. We can’t carry them with us.”
“Oh God, no.” Taziri knelt down beside the bodies. She took Shahera’s hand.
“I’m sorry, but we have to go now.” Lorenzo helped her up and started her moving on down the trail.
