breadth from my face, his spittle flying against my lips. His breath stank of blood, and I couldn't seize enough breath to sing again. His maw opened toward my throat, but before he could clamp down, his body slumped. At last the weight of those arrows in him was too great. The full force of his body collapsed on me. He didn't move again.
I thought I was dead too. A hot pain pierced my ankle, a dull pain throbbed in my head. I was pinned to the ground by the wolf s corpse and surrounded by an angry anthill of soldiers. Chinua, his face full of rage and grief, ran forward and prodded his wolf lord to see if he was dead. I pushed against the hairy body with all my strength. The corpse rolled a little to the right, but it was so heavy, I couldn't budge it from my leg.
Then for whole moments, I heard no sound but my own heartbeat.
I let my head fall back, and I gazed into the Eternal Blue Sky. It was morning. Some of the sky was yellow, some the softest blue. One small cloud scuttled along. Strange how everything below can be such death and chaos and pain while above the sky is peace, sweet blue gentleness. I heard a shaman say once, the Ancestors want our souls to be like the blue sky.
I prayed to the sky--
Here I am. I took what the
Ancestors gave me and I avenged their names. You. saw it. You're above all, even the sun, even the Sacred Mountain, even the Ancestors. I submit to you, and if you're sending me on to see my mama again, I'm ready to go.
Just take care of my lady, please, and Tegus, too.
And I closed my eyes to die. But you see that I'm not dead, as I'm still writing. Under heeded my pleas today, though he still tricked me in my turn.
The drums rapped and the horns called. I turned my head and saw five hundred warriors coming from the west gate of the city, Batu at their lead. They halted a safe distance from Khasar's men.
'My lady, are you all right?' Batu shouted to me.
'Yes,' I said, because it seemed what he expected to hear. And I was alive still, which I guess was all right.
He gestured with his chin to the dead creature pinning me. 'Is that Khasar?'
'It was.'
'In wolf form, just as you said. Beware a lady's faith, you warriors of Under's Scorn.'
Chinua looked made of wrath. A company of warriors had come forward, standing behind him with weapons in hand. 'You should beware us, Evela's peasants! Carthen's Glory' is not defeated by the slaying of one wolf.'
Batu shrugged. 'I have nearly thirty thousand warriors ready at the gates, men fighting for their homes. Your numbers are larger, true, but with your wolf lord dead, how many will fight? He was your real strength. If you leave now, you'll make it home before true winter falls. Don't waste the time. Throw down your weapons, let us take Lady Saren safely away, and we won't pursue.'
There was more talk, I think, but I didn't catch it. It took so much effort to try and listen. My ears were so frozen I wouldn't have been surprised to see them break right off my head. My feet seemed to have never existed at all, and my throat screamed with every inhale. Pressed against the ground like that, I was so cold, the only parts of me I could feel were throbbing something vicious, and I wanted to howl and cry with the pain, but I couldn't move enough to do that much.
Suddenly the ache in my ankle pierced me like a new wound, and I screamed before I realized what had happened. Chinua and two other warriors had rolled the wolf off me. They began to tow the carcass toward their camp, and behind them, Khasar's warriors retreated. I guess Batu had been pretty convincing.
I sat up and almost fainted from pain. I paused, waiting for the blackness in my vision to go away so I could stand, and I found myself looking into the eyes of the wolf. They were dragging him by his hind legs, and his dead eyes stared back at me. In death, his eyes lost their wildness. They calmed and saddened some, and I realized that his wolf eyes were as blue as the Eternal Sky. I wonder if right at the moment of his death, Khasar remembered the price his wolf strength cost. He offered his soul to the desert shamans. Now it can never climb the Sacred Mountain, never enter the Realm of the Ancestors. I suppose it's the path he chose. I suppose it's what he deserves.
[Image: A Wolf]
'My lady,' said Batu, 'can you come to me?'
Chinua and his warriors had withdrawn, but I understood that Batu didn't dare turn his back on them, nor could he risk riding to me and putting any more distance between him and the path of retreat.
I nodded and stood on my left leg, making sure my cloak was tight around me. I couldn't feel its warmth.
I didn't know how I would walk. I hopped a few steps and felt ridiculous, a just-hatched bird, hobbling and unsure, while thousands of warriors watched me. So I thought I'd risk one step on my right foot. That was a mistake, I thought, as I yelped in pain and fell forward.
Suddenly one of Batu's soldiers was dismounting, running to my side. He lifted me under my knees and carried me back to his horse, boosting me up onto his saddle as if I weighed no more than a cat. His face was buried in a deep, fur-lined hood, and he rested a moment against his mare, bent forward as if he'd a pain in his middle. He groaned as he pulled himself into the saddle behind me, but he held me on his lap, one arm under my knees to keep my legs from bouncing against the horse. He wrapped his other arm around my waist as if to warm me as well as keep me on the saddle.
'My lord,' I said as we rode back toward the city.
The horse's canter jostled my ankle and I couldn't help whimpering. The pain was like being stuck with a knife again, again, again.
Tegus held me tighter. 'We've got to get you inside city walls and out of bowshot, and then I'll ask Bloodnose here to give us a nice, smooth walk. Just a little farther, just hang on.'
