6
With Zandra leading the way, the three of them ran hard across the valley, crossing in ten minutes what had taken over an hour when Megs and Zandra had been tracking Linna. Zandra seemed determined not to let the mountainside slow her pace; she bounded up the game trail like a deer or an especially energetic mountain goat. Megs’s breathing was ragged by the time they reached the boulders where she and Zandra had stopped before to investigate the valley below. Linna pressed a hand against the place where her wound was.
Megs gestured at Linna’s hand. “Are you alright?”
Linna nodded, but she looked pale to Megs. “It’s stitched up. And I’d had almost an entire day to rest before you two … found me.”
Zandra made a noise in the back of her throat but said nothing. You mean when you tackled me from above and held a dagger to my throat? was what she probably wanted to say.
Megs took a swig from her water skin and passed it to Linna, who accepted it with a grateful nod and drank deeply before handing it back.
“Time to go,” Zandra announced, glancing pointedly behind them, where the last of the sun had begun to melt behind the mountains and cast long shadows across the valley. “Full dark in an hour.”
They took off again.
The sun fell, Mother Moon rose. But though she was waxing, her silver light was barely strong enough to penetrate the thick canopy of spruce and fir above them. The three women had no choice but to slow their pace. Already, Megs had stumbled twice, scraping her palms against a boulder the first time, coming too close to twisting her ankle the second time. She threw an arm around a tree trunk at the last moment, righting herself before she fell. Linna glanced back to see what had happened, shadowy features creased with concern.
“How much farther?” Megs asked Zandra.
Zandra thought a moment. “Five miles, more or less.”
“Which means how much longer until we reach camp?” Megs asked.
Zandra shrugged. “At this pace? An hour, hour and a half. So long as no one breaks a leg,” she added grimly. “If we had a torch…”
But they all knew a torch was a bad idea, a beacon in the night that would draw any mountain men in range to them just like moths to a candle flame.
Megs pushed off the tree and motioned for Zandra to keep going.
They’d slowed to their pace to something between a brisk walk and a jog since charging up the mountain at the far edge of the valley. It was maddening, not to be able to go any faster than that. Megs didn’t want to be walking towards camp when her people might be in danger.
No one spoke over the next half hour; it seemed that each of them was concentrating on moving as fast as they could without tripping on some root or rock harboring evil intention.
But then Linna stopped all at once. Megs barely avoided crashing into her back.
Linna tilted her face skyward. “Do you smell that?”
Megs had put so much energy into using her eyes to scan for terrain hazards that she’d ignored all her other senses.
Zandra sniffed the air like the forest creature she was. She started to shake her head no, but then the wind shifted and her eyes widened.
“Smoke,” she declared. “Something’s burning.”
“The camp,” Megs said, taking off at a run, passing first Linna and then Zandra, not caring that she couldn’t see more than a few yards in front of her face.
The other two followed, matching her pace while Megs wove through the trees and crashed through the underbrush. Stealth no longer mattered; the only thing that mattered now was reaching her people before it was too late.
And the further east they went, the stronger the smell of smoke became.
#
Never had the last two and a half miles to camp seemed to take so long. But at last, Megs heard the rushing stream that formed the camp’s western border.
Megs had chosen the site for her people’s semi-permanent camp with great care. The stream on the camp’s western side, swollen from the initial spring snowmelt and an entire summer of heavy thunderstorms, was currently more of a treacherous river. On the far side of the water, steep ravine walls climbed upward to the plateau where the camp was built. The ravine was not exceedingly difficult to climb, but it provided one extra layer of protection. And where the stream curved away at the camp’s southern edge, the climbable ravine wall transformed into an unclimbable cliff face that formed the entire southern border. Anyone approaching from the west or the south would first have to cross the stream and face either the ravine or the cliff. Meanwhile, to secure the northern and eastern approaches, Megs and her people had created a makeshift barricade of the spruce and fir trees they’d cut when clearing land for the campsite.
But apparently the precautions hadn’t been enough. Nor had the guards that were always posted in the stands they’d built in the trees in each of the cardinal directions around the camp been enough.
Because at the same moment Megs heard the stream, she saw her worst fear materialize before her eyes: On the horizon, where the ravine rose to form the plateau of her camp, the sky had gone from inky black to hazy orange.
The camp was burning.
She sprinted towards the stream, tripped on a root, caught herself, sprinted again. She was about to draw a weapon when she realized she would need both of her hands to hold onto the guide rope that they’d secured at either end of the stream. At this time of year, the stream would be close to neck-high at its deepest point. Megs was already wading into the ice-cold water when Zandra and Linna caught up to her. Megs didn’t turn to look at them. She didn’t bother to call over her shoulder to Linna to use the guide rope. She had a vague sense that Zandra was calling her name, but Megs had only one thought, a single word pulsing inside her chest, blotting out the icy water, the smell of smoke, the sound of Zandra’s voice:
Azza. Azza. Azza.
Her lover’s name reverberated through her whole body, together with the thought, Gods, not again. Please not again.
The carnage that greeted Megs at the top of the ravine was worse than she could have imagined. Her sword was out the moment she crested the ravine wall, but it was already too late. Corpses littered the campsite, scattered as haphazardly as spilled grain around both smoldering and still-burning tents, tables, benches, and other structures.
Zandra came up beside her, cursing under her breath as she nocked an arrow and held her bow at the ready. Linna came to her other side, sword in one hand, a rune-marked dagger in the other.
Where was she? Where was Azza?
The first corpse Megs came to wasn’t one of her people but a mountain man. An arrow with banded hawk feathers for fletching – one of Dwennon’s – protruded from his eye.
The corpse beside him had long grey hair. Megs rolled the body over with the toe of her boot.
Aldusa. The old woman’s bloodied face stared up at her, one eye dead and unseeing, the other covered with an eyepatch.
A lump formed in Megs’s throat.
“Search for survivors.”
Had Megs said those words? She couldn’t remember deciding to speak. But it sounded like her own voice. It must have been hers, because Zandra and Linna both nodded and fanned out.
Megs resisted the urge to run willy-nilly through the camp, screaming Azza’s name. The soldier in her took over – cold, numb, efficient. She kept one hand on her sword; she used the other to turn over bodies, to feel for a pulse, to close the eyes of the dead when she felt none.
“Over here,” Linna called softly from a mound of bodies. “Someone’s still alive.”
Megs rushed over, Zandra just behind her.
Megs fell to her knees when she saw who it was, heart dropping into her stomach. “Rom?” She slipped a supporting arm beneath his shoulders to sit him up. “I’m here.”
Rom wheezed painfully, arms wrapped around his torso as if he was trying to hold himself together. A long, diagonal gash cut through his leather jerkin, drawing a red line from his shoulder to his hip. Megs didn’t need to pull the jerkin away to know the wound was fatal. If anything, she was surprised he still lived.
He’d probably been waiting for her to return.
“Megs,” breathed the dying man. “I’m so sorry.”
“What happened?” Megs asked, but she already knew the answer to that – her people had been ambushed by an entire clan of tribesmen, either because Lieutenant Clovis had somehow managed to get away and lead the mountain men to them or because the clan just happened to stumble upon the camp as they trekked eastward. It didn’t matter which it was. So she asked a different question: “Did anyone escape?”
Rom nodded weakly. “The fighters… We stayed behind to… give the others a chance.”
To give the others a chancemeant to give the rest of their people an opportunity to evacuate to the rendezvous point. That was another reason Megs had settled upon this site as their camp: Less than a mile to the north was a cave – well, not a cave so much as a barrow, an ancient burial site dug into the mountainside. With an entrance obscured by vines and boulders, it was so well-hidden that even Megs had almost overlooked it at first. Beyond the entrance, a narrow tunnel sloped down to a circular ritual chamber whose walls were packed with human skeletons; about a dozen yards beyond that was a second chamber, rectangular with faded murals painted on its walls. They’d stashed supplies inside that second chamber in case they ever needed to flee camp and hide, and periodically Megs made the entire camp practice evacuation drills.
Relief washed through her. The evacuation drills might have worked. Some of her people might still be alive. Azza might still be alive.
“How long ago?”
Rom swallowed. “Hour ago. Maybe less… I don’t know, time passes – ” He coughed, flecks of dark blood spattering his lips as he did. “Time passes strangely. I-I’m sorry, Megs.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for, my friend,” Megs said, fighting hard to keep her voice from cracking or trembling. “Those who survive this night will survive because of your sacrifice.”
Rom reached for something at his waist, face contorting in pain with the effort. His fingers fumbled with the bone handle of a mountain man’s hunting knife, some prize he must’ve taken for himself after one of their successful raids. Megs couldn’t bear watching him struggle, so she pulled the knife free for him and placed it into his palm.
But he pressed it back into her hand. “Make it quick,” he whispered hoarsely. Then: “I’m glad it’s you.”
Understanding dawned on her, and she shook her head vigorously. “Rom, no. I’m not going to … I’m going to patch you up. Once we find the survivors, we’ll come back for you. You just have to hang on a little while long–”
“Please,” he rasped. “Don’t make it harder.”
A hand fell to Megs’s shoulder. Megs looked up. Zandra gazed down at her, eyes dark and solemn. She nodded once.
Megs felt the sting of tears against her eyes, but she wouldn’t let them fall. Sorrow should not be the last thing that Rom saw. He had fought bravely to protect their people; Megs would be brave enough to let him die with dignity. Her mind’s eye flashed back to her brother Milton, to the way his eyes danced with flames just before she drove the sword into him. After that, she swore she’d never make a pact like that again, the kind where she promised to take the life of someone she loved in the event that a fate worse than death awaited them.
She’d made no such pact with Rom for exactly that reason. But mercy did not require a pact to be enacted.
“Rom of Reit,” Megs said softly, “son of Erik and Gaela, father to Caul and Sara, may Mother Moon watch over you and keep you, and guide you to the land where there is no pain.”
Rom gazed at her one last time, then closed his eyes.