“I don’t see anyone. It’s too dark,” she said, her mouth next to my ear once more. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. I didn’t want to tell her what was inside my head had opened up to tell me. “I can feel them. How long is it until dawn?”
“Three hours.”
We huddled in the darkness as I willed time to go faster, praying snatches of the liturgy and the soldier’s prayer for fools.
In the midst of my prayers, Gael’s mouth rested against my ear. She spoke so softly I felt as much as heard it. “I hear footsteps in the grass.”
She tensed beside me, a coiling of muscle that presaged violence. Bolt, hiding behind the next tree a couple of paces away, would be watching. Now I heard the steps as well, a shuffling gate through the grass to brush aside any twigs that might give them away.
A distant snap, a cascading crash of something falling through a tree, broke the heavy silence, and I heard the muffled sound of footsteps, a lot of them, pounding away. I let a trembling breath loose and pulled its twin into my lungs.
“Don’t move,” Gael whispered in my ear. “They’re not all gone.”
Footsteps, a solitary pair, continued toward us from the other side of the tree. The moment he stepped around the trunk, he would see us. Gael curled into a crouch without making a sound, her legs coiled beneath her.
I groped for a dagger, though how I would be able to use it in the darkness, I had no idea. The footsteps stopped. The air filled with restrained violence. One sound from our attacker would bring the rest. Gael gathered herself, waiting.
The footsteps moved away, slowly at first but gathering speed.
After a few moments, Gael resumed her place at my side. “Don’t move,” she whispered. “I don’t know how good their hearing is.”
About an hour later, my heart resumed its normal rhythm and I dozed until someone nudged me awake.
“Let him sleep for a few more minutes,” I heard Gael say.
“He’s going to want to see this, yah?” Rory’s voice came from right beside me. “I’ll get Mirren.”
I stood up, my hands shaking from too little sleep and the rush of fear, but I didn’t see any immediate threats. “What’s he talking about?” I looked around. “Where’s Bolt?”
Gael shook her head.
Rory came back with Mirren in tow. Erendella and Herregina followed, each with a pair of hulking guards looming protectively over them. “Hurry, before they move,” Rory said.
We ran toward the road half a mile away. Well before we got there, I saw Bolt standing near a figure in a soldier’s uniform. He had his sword in hand, his posture threatening. The soldier shifted his feet as if he wanted to run away.
Rory pointed to a solitary tree by the road that stood a bit taller than the rest. “It’s easier to see from up there, but you’ll understand in a moment.”
I stepped up onto the fitted stones of the road. Checking south, I saw a solitary figure, moving away from us, with backward glances, the universal language of flight. A moment later, he left the road to disappear into the trees. To the north, the road ascended a slight rise that went on for over a mile. Along that stretch, I saw two soldiers, moving as if their lives depended on evading capture.
“Were those the men hunting us?” I asked Rory.
He nodded. “Came within a hairsbreadth of spotting you, I think.” He pointed to a stretch of woods on the far side of the road. “I threw a stick to draw them off of you. At first light, they split up and fanned out, running away along the road.”
I still had enough fear coursing through me that my hands trembled. I checked to make sure the sun was visible over the horizon before I walked over to Bolt and the soldier he guarded. I stripped off my glove.
“Every minute you take is one we lose,” Bolt said.
When I reached out, the soldier’s eyes went wide and he gathered his legs and jumped, his arms straining for my throat. Bolt’s stroke took him through the heart, and he fell at my feet, the life draining from him. His gaze, already beginning to empty, locked with mine, and one hand reached for me, curling into a claw. With a sigh, his arm fell to the ground and he lay still.
That’s when I noticed his eyes were a light brown, like tea with cream. “What’s your eternity like?” I asked him. His gaze went through me, just like all the others. “What’s out there?”
“Willet,” Bolt’s voice broke the spell the dead man had cast over me. “It’s time to go.”
“Yes,” I said looking up the road. “I want every man or woman in a soldier’s uniform brought to me.”
Bolt shook his head. “That’s going to take time we may not have.”
“There’s a way a man looks at another he knows or has been taught to recognize,” I said. “This one knew who I was, but there’s more to it than that.” I pointed ahead and behind. “Why did they split up?”
His mouth opened to reply then closed. “Why wouldn’t they?”
“Because it’s not what people do in war—especially injured ones,” I said. “They stay together.”
“But they’re not in enemy territory anymore, yah?” Rory said.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “By the time I got done with the war ten years ago, you couldn’t pry me away from my squad. In battle, stragglers die. So why is this man alone?” I wedged my knife beneath the thick, bloody bandage around the dead man’s leg and cut it away, making sure I kept the knife edge away from his skin. Then I ripped his breeches up to the groin. The flesh was already pale with death but unmarked.
“Should have expected that, I guess,” Bolt muttered.
“I don’t understand,” Rory said. “Why would they pretend to be injured, yah?”
“The
