Gilded Serpent, page 27
Belting the gown with steady fingers, she added, “Most of the Marked submitted, but not you. Except with your victory over Rufina’s armies at the Ford, he knew he’d lose the favor of the people if he executed you for your treason. Better to wait until you fell from grace. Again. As to why I agreed to help him, well…” She shrugged. “With Malahi dead, my uncle is in need of an heir.”
Gods help him, but Malahi had been right about her father. Right to see that he was as true a threat to Mudamora as Rufina and her armies. Right to have done whatever it took to see him removed from power. And instead of standing by Malahi’s side, as he’d sworn to do, Killian had abandoned her.
But if you hadn’t gone after Lydia, she’d be the one dead … “You’ll be the heir to nothing if the Anuk bring their armies over the border. Your gold will be gone. Your people dead.”
“They’ll come, but I’m not stupid enough to incite them without insurance.” Moving away from the bed, Ria poured a glass of wine and drained it. “The winter storms will be here in another few weeks, making raiding impossible. By the time it’s safe again, tempers will have cooled and better judgments will have prevailed. Not that it will come in time to help you.”
“I’m not going to let you get away with this, Ria. Nor Serrick,” he said. “I’m going to make certain the other High Lords learn what he’s done, and they’re going to rip the crown from his head.”
“On your word?” She chuckled. “With only a foreigner and a street rat to speak in your defense, because you allowed the only other witnesses to be murdered by the Anuk. No one will believe you, Killian, because you’ve failed before. It’s time that you accept that you are nothing more than a pawn being played by higher powers.”
His hands balled into fists, the rage in his chest fueled by his fear that she was right.
“A battle is coming, Killian,” she said. “Go serve your purpose and prepare our defenses.”
“Why should I?” His voice was full of venom. “With what you’ve done, better to allow the Anuk to cross the border and have their vengeance on you.”
“Except it won’t be just me they have their vengeance on.” She took a sip of her wine. “It will be all the people in Rotahn. And we both know you will never let that happen.”
50
TERIANA
They spent another night in the shack, the wolves making only a few lackluster attempts to get in before leaving her and Marcus in relative peace.
“Maybe they’ve given up.” She tried to be optimistic, which was challenging given her exhaustion. Even her hands ached from the effort of softening the wolf pelt enough to use.
Endlessly pragmatic, Marcus shook his head. “They’re being patient. Starving your enemy out is an excellent way to lay siege, if you’ve the time for it. Which I expect they do.”
But now it was dawn of the day they’d attempt to cross twenty miles of barren landscape.
Or die trying.
Together, they’d fashioned clothing from the wolf’s pelt. Big as it was, it was still not enough to cover them from head to toe, so they’d focused, as Marcus had described it, on the parts most likely to freeze off. Boots for their feet, mittens for their hands, and as she stood next to him, waiting for it to be bright enough to risk opening the door, Teriana rubbed her cheek against the deep, fur-lined hood that protected her head and shoulders.
“Ready?” Marcus turned to look at her, his face shadowed by his own hood. Over one shoulder, he had slung the satchel containing what supplies they’d bring, including the kettle, which was full of hot water. They’d have to drink it before it froze, because there’d be no time to stop to build a fire. And he’d already warned her of the dangers of eating snow. He had one mitten tucked in his belt and was holding his gladius, and thinking this might be prudent, she drew her freshly sharpened knife.
“Grab the meat,” he said. “Then we go west. I’m confident the den is north of us, so we’ll move fast at first to put some distance between them and us. If you need to rest, say so. This is a test of endurance, not speed.”
Though she suspected Marcus was mostly talking to himself, Teriana nodded.
Lifting off the crossbeams and setting them aside, Marcus opened the door and stepped outside, Teriana following on his heels. Both of them looked skyward.
“Overcast,” she said, the sun barely visible through the soft grey clouds. It was the first day she wasn’t squinting against glare, and her heart thudded rapidly against her rib cage. The sun was the only ally they had. “Should we wait until tomorrow?”
Marcus was silent, and she knew he was considering the odds. “We could. But tomorrow might be the same. We might have weeks of the same. And that wolf meat is all we have unless we stop to hunt, which—” He broke off and shook his head. “Neither of us has the expertise in trapping we need to ensure quick success, and every day, we lose daylight. Leaving is a risk. But so is staying.”
She waited for him to tell her what he thought they should do, but Marcus only turned to her. “What do you think?”
Teriana eyed the shelter as she considered their options, none of which were good. “Let’s go.”
Marcus didn’t answer, only scanned their surroundings, fingers flexing on his weapon.
There was no movement in the snowy plains, but the light was flat and strange, making it hard to judge depth. The snowdrifts didn’t seem large enough to hide anything, but … “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head and turned in a circle. “Something…”
Teriana’s skin prickled as she watched him walk a dozen paces and then stop, searching their surroundings before turning back. “I think maybe—”
Whatever else he said fell on deaf ears as a black shape rose from behind a drift.
The wolf bounded forward, ears pinned and lips peeled back in a snarl. Then it leapt.
“Tremon guide my hand!” The words tore from Teriana’s lips, and she threw her knife.
It flipped end over end, past Marcus, who was turning, blade rising.
Then the wolf slammed into him and both of them went down, rolling across the snowy ground.
“No!” Teriana hurtled across the space between them, hooking her arm around the wolf’s neck. She dug in her heels, hauling backward, expecting to feel the sharp pain of teeth. It was so heavy—like …
Deadweight.
That’s when she saw her knife hilt jutting from the creature’s eye.
“Shit!” Marcus snarled the word, shoving the dead animal aside with Teriana’s help. Then his eyes landed on her blade and he went still. “Who taught you to throw a knife?”
Killian. Killian had taught her. Or at least as much as he’d teach any skill that might be attributed to his mark. “You look like you’re playing at darts,” he’d laughed at her. “No one has that much time to aim in a fight. Look at what you want to hit and throw the gods-damned blade!”
“A friend,” she whispered, watching as he jerked out the knife, wiping the gore off on the animal’s coat.
Fear clawed at Teriana’s insides as she stared down at the dead wolf. Another pack member that she had killed. “What do we do?”
“We go.” He started walking west.
“Care to justify that decision?” She mimicked his voice as she asked the question, earning a smile as they broke into a jog.
“They won’t give up trying to get in at us tonight. And I expect it won’t be only one wolf watching us tomorrow, but the whole pack. They’re smart. They learn.”
Teriana shivered, and it had nothing to do with the cold.
“This is their territory,” he continued, stumbling in the snow before catching his balance. “There’s nothing to drive them off except for their own need to eat. If we stay, I think we’ll be trapped.”
“And you think things will be any better twenty miles from here?”
“It’s a move in the right direction.” He pulled his hood back in place. “Twenty miles west won’t get us into another pack’s territory, but forty might. Sixty definitely will.”
“Great, more wolves,” she muttered, wondering how the Sibernese survived in this place.
“More wolves that are likely to take issue with another pack invading their territory.” He cast a backward glance over his shoulder. “It’s a long shot, but it’s something.”
51
MARCUS
It was like running in sand.
But worse.
The snow shifted and moved beneath his feet, the crust catching at his toes and tripping him up, making it difficult to tell whether his next step would send him ankle deep or up past his knees.
By the time they passed the first mile marker, Marcus was already dripping with sweat and wishing he could shed some of his clothes, but there was no time. At any moment, the pack might discover their dead scout and decide to give chase.
So they kept the pace.
By the third mile, Marcus’s sides were cramping, the muscles in his legs burning and the scent of his own sweat heavy in his nose with each gasping inhalation he took.
“Make it to the next milepost, then we walk a mile.”
Keep. Running. Keep. Running. He silently chanted the words with each step, helping Teriana up when she fell only to have her return the favor a few strides later.
Never had he felt more relief as they reached the post embedded in the earth, a three carved on one side, a seventeen on the other for those traveling in the opposite direction, and both of them fell into a walk.
As they trudged toward the next mile marker, the wind picked up, tugging at his hood and piercing through his woolen clothing. But Teriana was shivering, so he moved next to her to block some of the wind.
And probably because she was close enough to hear the faint wheeze to his breath, she asked, “Will running like this cause one of your attacks?”
It was a valid question, given the circumstances, but it still made his cheeks burn hot and his temper flare, reminding him of how it had felt to be the weakest before he’d learned to compensate for his limitations. “If it does, just leave me and carry on. No sense in both of us dying out here.”
Teriana stopped in her tracks. “What is wrong with you? Why would you say something like that?”
He kept trudging forward, glaring at the snow and half-wishing the wolves might catch up and spare him from this conversation.
“It wasn’t a damned criticism,” she snapped, jogging to close the distance. “It’s not like you choose for it to happen. It’s not your fault.”
Bloody platitudes. His temper burned hotter. His sister Cordelia had always said the same sort of things, as though being blameless would somehow make him feel better about his situation when it was the exact opposite. He wished he’d done something to cause his illness, because then he’d have somewhere to direct the blame other than bad luck, which only made him feel powerless. “Doesn’t mean it isn’t a problem.”
“Aye, fair enough. But maybe instead of getting defensive, you might inform me how best to prevent it from happening.”
He slid to a halt, rounding on her. “How best to prevent it from happening? Do you think if it were so simple, that I wouldn’t do just that?”
The eyes staring out from under her hood were the grey of storm-tossed seas, the bow of her lips drawn into a tight line as she glared back at him. “Surely there are certain things that trigger you.”
“This conversation, for starts.” Turning round, he picked up the pace, feeling an irritating combination of frozen and overheated. It was not the time for this conversation given the wolves could be hot on their heels. Though he supposed it mattered little if the pack came upon them in a full-blown argument or running for their lives.
“Given that I nearly killed you with a conversation, maybe that’s a good place to start.”
“That wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know.”
As soon as the words passed his lips, he cursed at himself, already feeling her smug satisfaction at having won the argument. Lifting his head, he eyed the next mile marker, where they’d again have to pick up the pace. “I don’t want you walking on eggshells around me because you’re afraid of saying something that will set me off.”
She lifted one shoulder. “When have you ever known me to walk on eggshells?”
With him? Never. And the last thing he wanted was for that to change. He valued her voice too much to ever want it silenced. “I don’t get set off as easily as I did when I was young. Though when it does happen, it’s worse.”
When he’d been small, anything had set him off. Everything. Climbing the stairs. Pulling a dusty book off a shelf. Being teased by the other children. He’d learned to fear it so badly that sometimes the idea that something might set him off was enough to send him spiraling into wheezing fits. “You do it to yourself!” he remembered his father shouting at him. “Quit fretting, and it won’t happen.”
As if that were so easy.
“When I was a child, exertion usually did it,” he said, feeling her eyes on him. “Climbing the Hill in Celendrial was too taxing for me.”
“It’s a big hill.”
He snorted. “Anyway, once exercise became part of my daily life, it started to take more to wind me and after a few months, it only rarely happened due to exertion. Up until that point, it was happening once, sometimes twice, a day. But it’s been ten years since that’s done it. Though this cold air won’t do me any favors.”
“Good to know.”
“Dust and smoke and horses and flowers make me sneeze.” His cheeks burned hot at the admission. “That can still do it, but the attacks aren’t so bad. Not like what you saw.”
“So what does it?” Her voice was soft, barely audible over the wind.
Marcus rubbed his chin, which was itchy with stubble, eyes fixed on the milepost because he couldn’t look at her while talking about this. “Stress, I suppose.”
Though that wasn’t precisely it. His life was one stressor after the next. If stress were all it took, he’d never get off the floor. “It’s when I feel … certain things. Negative things that make me panic.”
Things he felt helpless to combat. Things that sent him spiraling down, as though his own body were trying to strangle the emotions out.
“Like what?” Of course she wouldn’t leave it alone. “What’s the biggest instigator?”
He kicked the snow, thinking hard before he finally muttered, “Guilt.”
* * *
They alternated jogging and walking through the day, moving faster along stretches that had been blown clear by the wind and trudging through places where the snow had settled into dips in the ground. There’d been no sign the wolves were in pursuit, but then again, there wouldn’t be. They were nothing if not consummate hunters. Even still, he cast a backward glance over the plain, searching for signs of motion.
“There it is.”
Teriana was somewhat ahead of him when he turned back around, stopped with her hands resting on her knees, shoulders rising and falling as she panted. He joined her at the top of a slight incline, sighing at the sight of the ravine below. It was steep and icy, and a frozen stream snaked along the bottom, two logs resting across it functioning as a bridge. But on the far side was a shack almost identical to the one they’d left behind.
Casting a backward glance, Marcus calculated the amount of time they had. An hour, perhaps slightly more. “Let’s go. Take it easy, the last thing we need is for one of us to break any bones falling down a hill.”
Taking hold of her hand, he braced one leg and helped her slide down until her feet connected with an outcropping, trying to ignore the slight tremor in his leg.
Almost there.
He eased down to where Teriana stood, then gripped her wrists and lowered her to the next solid piece of footing, all the muscles in his body rebelling against the strain. She balanced him as he slid next to her, then motioned for him to follow. “This way.”
Together, they picked their way down the steep slope, clinging to rocks and the few scrubby bushes that poked through the snow until they stood at the bottom, which was shadowed from the sun. It was not quite cold enough for the stream to have frozen over, bits of ice floating on the rapidly flowing water. Picking his way onto the logs, Marcus knelt and dipped a cup into the water, trusting it would be clean to drink.
It was frigid enough to make his teeth ache, but bliss against his parched throat. Reaching down to refill it for Teriana, he lifted his head.
And locked eyes with a wolf.
It was smaller than the others had been, likely juvenile, but Marcus suspected it still weighed close to a hundred pounds. Like the others, it was inky black, but this animal’s face was frosted with white. Green eyes regarded Marcus intently, ears pricked forward with interest but no aggression. Either a loner or part of a different pack. “Teriana.”
“I see it.” Her voice was breathy. “I don’t see any others.”
Easing up, Marcus kept his attention on the wolf even as he scanned their surroundings for any sign of movement. There was nothing but the gurgle of the stream, but that could change in a heartbeat. They needed to get up that slope and into the shelter. “Move slowly,” he said. “I don’t think it will attack us on its own unless it feels threatened.”
Teriana climbed onto the bridge, knife gripped in one hand as she crossed the slippery wood, the wolf watching with interest as they stepped on the opposite bank.
Wind gusted into the ravine, blasting them in the back and ruffling the wolf’s fur. Its ears abruptly pinned, eyes looking past them as though searching for the source of a smell or noise.
Then in a flash of motion, it was running, climbing the steep slope that awaited them in great leaping bounds. Not a predator.
But the prey.
Marcus’s heart pounded a rapid drumbeat against his ribs, a primal sort of fear filling him. “The pack is coming. Run!”
