Lost Kingdom, page 21
“What’s going on?” I said, peering into the darkness. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the faint light of the moon. The wind howled as it raced through the abandoned structures around us.
“We’re not alone,” Jeddak said as he and Kah stepped silently into the courtyard. I stayed on their heels.
The bird called again from a distance, snapping my attention down the hill to the road. There was movement in the dark. It looked like a small army of black ants was marching under the archway leading into the ruined city, their drawn weapons gleaming in the moonlight.
“Jeddak, look,” I breathed, my voice cracking with fear. The Rathalans had found us.
“I see them.” He scanned the area as he spoke. “They may not know we’re up here. Our fire was concealed in the alcove. If we hide, with any luck, they’ll be on their way in the morning.” But when he caught my hand to pull me back, it was already too late. The courtyard was alive with tall shadows, encircling us like a pack of wolves.
Kah’s menacing growl shook the ground.
“Get back in the alcove,” Jeddak breathed in my ear, pushing me behind him. “Now!” Before I could move, he raised his staff and swung at the closest intruder, releasing a ferocious growl of his own.
The clang of weapons echoed across the cobblestones. A deafening roar reverberated off the mountain face as Kah lunged toward the line of fighters, plowing three of them over like paper dolls.
My feet felt frozen to the ground as Jeddak drove his staff into one of the Rathalan’s chests, knocking him to the ground. He turned to block the blow coming to his left as Kah swatted at several other guards attacking from the right. With one swing, Jeddak flattened the two guards rushing at him and then reached back to grab my arm. Our eyes met. “Please, Raven. Go,” he rasped, his voice rough, pleading.
Without a word, I ran.
I found a hiding place deeper in the alcove. The sounds of fighting echoed against the crumbling stone walls around me. I tried to sit still, but my heart was pounding. I felt useless leaving Jeddak and Kah to fight alone. There were too many Rathalans out there, stacking the odds against them.
You don’t know how to fight, Raven, I reminded myself. What could you possibly do out there but get yourself killed?
Just then, a Rathalan fighter stumbled into the alcove, collapsing to the ground, dead. From my hiding place, I stared at the sword he’d dropped.
I felt my fingers twitch like they longed to feel the weight of the blade in my hand, to grip the rough bindings of leather that wrapped the handle.
For so long, I didn’t have the choice to fight back. In Malengard, I’d cowered in fear every time a guard glanced at me. I’d been terrified someone else would be punished if I stepped out of line. The Rathalans had taken everything from me. My best friend. My freedom. My magic. I wasn’t going to let them take any more.
If I could wield a pickaxe to serve them, I could certainly wield a sword to fight against them.
Jumping up, I grabbed the sword, the handle still warm from its previous owner's grip, and ran out into the dark courtyard.
When I emerged, one of the Rathalans saw me and stalked forward, his dark face all but shattering my resolve. Shaking, I held my sword out, waiting to strike. “For Hen,” I breathed.
My arm moved instinctively to block his first blow. The clash of metal on metal rang in my ears. I kicked him in the knee, and when he stumbled, I thrust my blade forward, slicing a deep gash in his arm. Blood soaked his sleeve.
I was so surprised, I almost laughed out loud. The sword felt familiar in my hand, like we used to be friends in another life. I might not remember my past, but my muscles had apparently retained some of their memory.
With renewed confidence, I lunged forward again and swung my blade at his neck, where his armor was the weakest. He deflected it and jabbed his sword toward me. I pivoted to the side, and his blade skimmed my leather armor. I returned the blow, this time my blade catching him in the thigh. With a snarl, he knocked my blade aside and shoved me backward with such force that I stumbled to the ground with a cry.
“Raven, get out of here!” Jeddak was shouting from across the courtyard, a wildness in his tone.
Breathing hard, I quickly got back to my feet. Pain shot through my leg from where I’d hit the cobblestones, and I could taste the tang of copper in my mouth from where I’d bitten my tongue.
“Drop your weapon,” the Rathalan commanded. By now, his comrades had noticed me. More Rathalans approached out of the darkness, the points of their malarite swords forcing me back against a wall.
“Make me,” I spat, reaching inside for the rage that had fueled me in the malarite mines for so long. I’d rather them kill me than think they could ever control me again.
The Rathalan to my left attacked first. I let my mind go blank so my muscle memory could take over. Our blades sparked from the impact. With a shout, I shoved him back and jabbed my sword into his side. He sank to the ground, blood spilling from his wound. Spinning around, I sliced another guard in the leg, causing him to collapse. I blocked the next several blows, moving fast on my feet, but it wasn’t enough. There were too many of them.
Sweat ran down my back as I scrambled to fend off their attacks. The darkness made it difficult to see, and I was losing ground. Before I knew what was happening, there was a blade at my throat. My breath caught. My body stilled.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jeddak fighting through the chaos to reach me, but too many men barricaded his path.
This is it. I closed my eyes, waiting for the pain to come.
Instead, the Rathalan’s blade clattered to the ground, and he howled in pain. A knife was embedded in his shoulder blade. Jeddak.
I tried to run, but another Rathalan grabbed me and punched me in the stomach. I dropped my sword and doubled over, gasping for breath. He yanked my hands behind my back, kicking my weapon out of reach.
“This is the girl,” the guard said to his comrade. “The commander said he wants her alive. Kill the boy. And the bear.”
“No!” I cried through ragged breaths, frantically struggling against his grip, but he held firm.
“Raven!” Jeddak shouted as they dragged me away. He and Kah couldn’t reach me in the fray.
Suddenly, the guard holding me crumpled to the ground. An arrow was sticking out of his back. Then the two other Rathalans flanking me sank to their knees one after the other, falling face forward. I stared up into the city ruins, but it was too dark to see where the arrows were coming from.
One by one, the Rathalans in the courtyard fell until only the three of us remained standing.
I ran across the courtyard toward Jeddak. I figured if the hidden bowman had wanted me dead, I’d already have an arrow through my chest. When I reached Jeddak, he was standing beside Kah, holding a blade to a guard’s throat. Jaw set, muscles tight like a mountain lion about to make a kill. “How did you find us?” he barked.
The guard didn’t answer. He was clutching the arrow lodged in his side. Jeddak pushed the blade into his skin.
“How?”
Kah growled in the man’s ear.
“We’ve been on your trail for days,” the guard spat as dark blood trickled down his neck.
“Are there any others following us?” he demanded.
The Rathalan made a choking sound that Jeddak took as a yes.
“Where are they?”
“The mountain pass.” The guard made a horrible laugh-cough sound like he was finding this amusing.
A distressed look overtook Jeddak’s features, but the ferocity didn’t leach from his voice. “How did you know where we’re going?”
The guard didn’t answer.
Jeddak’s arm tensed as if he was going to plunge in the knife, but he let his hand drop instead. The guard slumped to the ground, his raspy breaths stilling to silence as death claimed him.
Looking up, I noticed the dark stain on Jeddak’s armor for the first time. He was bleeding.
“Oh skies, you’re hurt,” I said, breathless as I reached out to him.
He sank to his knees on the cobblestones, his head bowed. As I knelt beside him, his hand moved to cover the seeping wound on his shoulder. His breathing was ragged. With the moon at his back, his face was in shadow, but I could feel the pain and exhaustion radiating off him like a dying star. No, no, no!
I glanced over at Kah to see his black eyes rimmed with concern. He nudged Jeddak’s shoulder with his nose, but Jeddak hardly noticed. I wondered if the poison of the malarite blade had already drained the magic from Jeddak, leaving the two of them disconnected.
There was no time to search the ruins for the mysterious bowman as Kah and I helped Jeddak limp back into the alcove. Because he was taller and much heavier than me, my knees almost buckled underneath his weight. When we reached the doused fire, he collapsed again.
I knelt to help him. He winced as he shifted to lean against the wall, pressing his hand against his shoulder again. I couldn’t tell how bad the wound was. Everything was covered in blood—his hands, cloak, leather armor. My stomach churned at the sight.
“The mountain pass …” Jeddak muttered.
“What?” His voice was so low, I had to strain to hear him.
“… the new moon … we can’t … I’ll never …”
Whatever he was trying to say, the words were lost as his eyes closed and his head slumped back.
“Jeddak? Jeddak, no!” I cried.
Kah whimpered. Tears stung my eyes.
Don’t die, Jeddak. Please, please, please don’t die.
26
Jeddak
Iwas home, curled up on my bed, staring out the window. Outside, heavy snow was falling, obscuring my view of the mountains. I hate this place, I thought as I hugged my throbbing arm to my chest. It was broken this time, I was sure of it.
An hour ago, Kah had given up on trying to convince me to go see my grandmother for help and was entertaining himself by trying to catch a mouse that had scurried underneath the bed. He didn’t seem to realize he’d recently grown too big to crawl under there anymore.
There was a knock at the door. “Jeddak? Can I come in?”
When I didn’t answer, I heard the door open and soft footsteps moving across the floor.
My mother sat down on the edge of the bed next to me.
“Oh no, Jeddak. What happened?” she asked, gently brushing my hair off my forehead. Her skin smelled like juneberries and the warm autumn sun.
“Nothing,” I said, not looking up so she wouldn’t see the tear stains on my face. I had a high tolerance for pain, but not for failure.
“Well, your version of ‘nothing’ must be different than mine.”
I managed a small smile. “Father made me train on the advanced course again…” I trailed off, not wanting to explain that I’d fallen off one of the platforms in front of the older kids and broken my arm. My father had called me weak right before I’d run back home.
A flicker of emotion flashed across her face. “Your father just wants you to grow up to be strong. But what he doesn’t know is that you’re already strong.”
“I don’t feel strong.” I feel like a failure.
“You are strong, Jeddak,” she said, carefully pulling me into a hug. In a moment, I knew she’d take me to my grandmother to heal the broken bone, but for now, she seemed to sense that I needed a little more time. She touched my chest. “You’re strong in here. And that’s all that matters.”
I shook my head. That wasn’t all that mattered. I wanted to be stronger. To become the strongest Kovak in our tribe. And I wanted to prove my father wrong.
27
Raven
Skies, this was not happening. With trembling hands, I felt for Jeddak’s pulse. It was faint, but there. I released a shaky breath.
He was alive.
I needed to stop the bleeding and bandage his wound if he had any chance of surviving. If there was one thing I’d learned in the mines, it was that a wound would become angry and red if the dirt and sweat didn’t get washed off. I’d seen fellow workers die of lesser injuries when they caught infection.
To do that, I needed light for me and warmth for both of us. I pulled the moonspar out of my pocket to see if it was glowing, but with the moon still high in the sky, it was lifeless. My heart pounded rapidly as I piled wood on top of the ashes of our previous fire. Because I was shaking, it took at least ten tries with the flint and iron before I could get a spark to ignite it.
When the fire finally took hold, I knelt beside Jeddak, gently pulling his hand away from the wound. He was still unconscious, his skin hot and coated in blood.
Kah looked on from the entrance to the alcove, his attention split between Jeddak and the dark courtyard. I hoped he was keeping watch. If any more Rathalans found us tonight, we didn’t stand much of a chance.
Unless the hidden bowman was still out there. Who was he—or maybe she? Why had he protected us? And why was anyone in Javan in the first place? If the Kovaks had an ally here, wouldn’t he have shown himself by now?
There was no time to solve that mystery. I had to focus.
I drew in a few deep breaths to steady myself before I removed Jeddak’s leather vest and cut away the blood-soaked section of his shirt that was clinging to the broken skin. The wound was deep but seemed to be high enough not to have punctured any of his organs … I hoped. I could see the blue poison from the malarite seeping into his veins, like dark streaks of lightning radiating outward.
Swallowing the lump rising in my throat, I did my best to clean and bind his shoulder, using the water from the waterskin and strips of bandage that I’d found in our supplies. It wasn’t perfect and would probably take weeks to heal, but with any luck, it wouldn’t get infected.
My eyes lingered on the hard muscles across his bare chest longer than they should have. Even in this awful state, he was—beautiful. It looked like his body was sculpted from the rock of the mountains. Exquisite tattoos covered his skin from his collarbone to his wrists, and his chest down to—
Skies, what was wrong with me? He might be dying, and I was ogling him. I felt my face flush with heat. I started to turn away when the necklace he was wearing caught the light. At first, I thought the symbol etched into the metal pendant was a spider, but when I wiped off the blood, I saw it was a sun with light beams extending outward. Like the bird symbol on the suli map, it felt strangely familiar. Had I seen it before?
I heard Kah exhale behind me. He was staring at Jeddak’s unconscious form, his expression unreadable.
Embarrassed, I released Jeddak’s pendant and moved back toward the fire. “He’s going to be all right,” I said, though I didn’t know if that was true, or if Kah could even understand me. I wished we were close to Askeland so his grandmother could help him. If he got any worse, I wouldn’t know what to do.
Kah glanced at me and then set his gaze back to the courtyard. I wondered again if the magic that connected the two of them had been severed by the malarite poisoning, but there was no way for me to know.
I left the alcove to check that the light from our fire couldn’t be seen. Outside, everything was pitch dark. We were hidden for now, though I knew that if any of the Rathalans survived the attack, our location was compromised.
The hours crawled by. The night grew colder, and Jeddak began to shiver violently. I tucked both our blankets around him and added more wood to the fire.
When the howling winds changed direction and broke into the alcove, I curled up beside him to stay warm, but sleep wouldn’t come. So, I lay awake, watching his chest rise and fall, the only proof that he was still alive, still with me.
Inaya, please spare him, I whispered over and over until my voice grew hoarse.
28
Jeddak
Iwoke up with a start.
My shoulder was throbbing. I reached across to touch it, half expecting a blade to be sticking out of it. But it was covered with taut fabric. A bandage.
The dream of my mother lingered for a moment, pressing like a bruise on my heart. I gritted my teeth, quickly locking up this memory of her with all the others before it started to ache.
With effort, I strained my eyelids open. It felt like my body had been trampled by a hundred horses. The pain in my shoulder was dulling my senses, and it took a minute for the world to come into focus.
The sky was dark. The air was icy. I could smell the smoke of a fire nearby. Everything was quiet except the moan of the wind.
What happened? Where was Kah? I couldn’t feel his presence.
With a groan, I struggled to sit up. A blanket crumpled to my waist.
“Jeddak, you’re awake.”
I glanced over to see Raven curled up at my side, the light of the small fire illuminating the look of relief on her face. That’s when the memories flooded back—the attack, the stab of the malarite blade, the mysterious bowman.
“How long have I been out?” I asked through clenched teeth as I tried to get a grip on the intense pain. Skies, I felt like hell.
Raven sat up quickly. “I’m not sure. A few hours?”
She handed me the waterskin, wordlessly instructing me to drink. I took a slow sip, wincing. The water was half frozen.
“How do you feel?” she asked softly.
“Awesome,” I groaned, shifting my weight to get more comfortable. It didn’t work. My shoulder burned from the movement. I pressed my palm against the bandage to ease the throbbing, trying to steady my breathing.
“You’re clearly not awesome,” Raven said.
“Kovaks heal quickly.” I tried to smirk at her but was pretty sure all I managed was a grimace. From the many injuries I’d sustained over the years, I knew my body would heal faster than most, but at times like this, it was never fast enough. I didn’t have time to be injured. Not now. Lila’s days were slipping away with the waning moon. And the Rathalans knew our location. How long could we linger here before they returned with reinforcements?
