I ra⬛ at a half-sprin⬛ through the w⬛ods, one hand latching onto sn⬛wy branches for balance or casting aside frozen vines while the other clenched around the hilt of my sword. My body veered around heartwoods, slipped between the froze⬛ lengths of speartrees and leapt over low-roots. Beads of clear ice bloomed red as they distorted the colour of the plants they clung ⬛o; melted in the day’s peak and frozen again when the sky had faded into night. Numbness worked its way down from the t⬛ps of my fingers, and I resisted the urge to keep caressing my blade to clench my fist around the heated stone sown into my pocket. I couldn’t afford to let my fighting arm go numb.

Weeks of trudging through snow, shivering in shelters, and sleeping huddled for warmth had taken us from Wil’s old home to the edge of the Heartlands. We’d prepared for the trip as best we could, but even the small heating stones Gast had painstakingly carved for each of us couldn’t fend off the cold forever. Vin’s blood kept them going for a while, but eventually the heat faded as the blood’s divinity returned to him. A few more of the rocks might’ve done us good, but we’d needed to leave as quickly as possible. Wil’s kid had already tried to kill Vin once.

Hadn’t stopped the Ravenblood from spending an hour trying to coax the boy into coming with us. No success; the fact he’d even made the attempt felt an eerie breed of bizarre. Then he’d spent the next half-day extracting concessions from Jana. His requests slithered twixt threats and pleas, promising both reward and retribution for the children’s fate. I might’ve been tempted to try beating him into the dirt were it not for the fact a single swing from him could make me a drooling idiot for life and that Jana was a sick little snake who I still suspected hated kids.

Though maybe that was unfair. She’d taken care of Tippi and Crumpet for long enough. She’d taken care of me when I was tiny and weak, during the days my parents led the band out. I wouldn’t wish her ‘care’ on my worst enemy, but they’d live.

Regardless, none of them had marched into the snow with us. And every single moment we spent outside, I became increasingly certain they’d made the right choice.

The vengeful winds the Aching sent swirling across the land had calmed into something approaching normal. Frost was finally falling to Tempest, but the season still had enough teeth to steal toes and fingers from the unwary. As it stood, between Gast’s heat-stone, my blood-stained furs and a cloth-stuffed helmet, I retained just enough heat to keep me from losing anything important. Just not to keep me comfortable.

The cold clung to my skin like a disease. Snot squirted from my nose with every panting breath and I shivered like a drowned dog. The scars on my cheeks ached and my knuckles throbbed, as they had for the entire time we’d been travelling. No amount of heat could scare the cold from the deepest parts of my marrow: it’d set up camp in my body and sometimes I feared it’d never leave.

The short of it was that it was colder than Wump’s deep-sea teats, and there was almost nothing I could do about it. Except run faster.

While creaking my stiff limbs into a sprint had initially been difficult, a small part of me was grateful for the heat it spread through me. The rest focused on picking out obstacles looming through the fog and preventing myself from breaking my skull on a low branch. The Aching had wiped away most trails and the ubiquitous fog obscured anything more than a dozen paces away. Without Davian’s yellow ribbons leading me back to our camp, I might’ve gotten lost. Enough to lose me a few minutes at least. We could scarcely afford the waste.

I needed to find someone who knew what to do.

Back in Spires, it would’ve been Whip. She’d tell us what to do in a brawl. I’d thought her dead weight at my first glance, but I hadn’t ended up a monster-chewed corpse so I’d been about as wrong as wrong could get. Then it would’ve been Tully. Woman’s face was a jigsaw just a bit too familiar to be comfortable, but she had given orders with the best of them. Vin should’ve been next in line. Anyone could see it: instincts like his showed the man’d been in more battles than there were hairs on Kani’s arse. Helped that he didn’t like fighting: a coward – or just a less bloody-minded person, I supposed – would keep losses low. Better than a dull brute like me ever could.

I slid around one final tree and staggered into the crag where we’d dug out camp. Though our tent was sturdy enough to keep water away, covering its roof with snow was the only way to keep heat inside. Davian had been the one to put forward the idea of pitching our tent against hills or in cracks – in the darkness, it ended up looking like a big rock instead of a bed of bedraggled, shivering fugitives. Yet ever since I’d watched the crater yawn open to reveal wet strings of meat beneath it, sleeping so close to the earth had ceased being reassured.

A flinch travelled through me as a large silhouette slowly twisted its head towards me from its perch in the tangled crook of two branches. Its eyes were two unflinching pools of onyx, lit only by a dagger of beaming moonslight yet unmistakeable even through the fog. I unwittingly shuddered, then swore at myself and stepped closer.

Vin’s eyes were set warily, as if beholding a rabid animal. Before a heartbeat had passed, a crease formed between his brows. His gaze pointed at some far-off place, then returned to me without the hostility.

“You’re done?” he asked eyes flickering towards the woods. All seven of them. They swivelled in his bare skin, somehow seeming more like jagged wounds than when I’d found him pulling them out weeks ago.

They’d grown back. Maddie, Ronnie, and I had convinced him to keep them in. As each of the seven swerved back to stare at me, a weak part of me regretted that.

A yellow eye on his arm drifted towards the forest. Vin glanced at it, then back at me. “Kit,” he stated.

“Yeah, came out nice an’ clean,” I blurted. “Listen, we gotta figure out a way…”

My voice drifted off as his eyes stared at me, even as the two in his head closed. The Ravenblood growled in frustration at something I could not see or hear, then launched the small carving he’d been working on into the forest.

Three eyelids blinked. “Sorry,” he belatedly told me.

I swallowed. “Get yer stuff. We’re leavin’.”

His unnerving gazes snapped towards me. “What did you find?”

“Let me get Maddie an’ Davian.”

“The Head should- “ he began, then stopped and beat a palm against the side of his head. He winced at himself. “I understand. Go get them.”

I took a hesitant step. When Vin made no move beyond lowering himself down from the tree, I carefully padded towards the concealed tent and tore its flap open.

“Get up,” I hissed into its side.

Inside, Davian rolled into a crouch immediately as Taja and Maddie groaned. Beneath them, Ronnie flapped their infantile arm against their stomach in childish protest, while the giant’s proportionate arm reached over and shook an unresponsive Gast. Yowler – curled under Ronnie’s arm – staggered upright before releasing a mighty yawn. As the four humans and one dog extricated themselves from the tangled knot that bound their limbs together, the old Strain exited the tent.

“What has you so frightened?” Davian asked.

“I’m not- “

“What has you so frantic?” he corrected.

“There’re torches an’ people shoutin’ in the fog a little ways away. They’re ‘tween us an’ Vane.”

Fort Vane was less than a day’s travel away. We’d seen it the previous day, before the mist had settled over the land; a strip of thin bandage over a rotting wound. An ugly little splotch of grey squatting at the edge of the horizon, a stone’s throw from the Heartland’s end: all grey stone and stumpy buildings packed inside stern walls so thick it’d take the Ox itself to break them. One half-sphere of glass bulged from its top like a toad’s eye. The whole place looked liable to chew up any would-be invaders and spit them out into the ditch someone had dug around the place, where they’d be eaten by whatever ravenous creature might dwell there while the Fort watched, unblinking.

From a distance, I hadn’t liked the look of it. But funnily enough, having an army roaming around us made me appreciate its humourless walls a whole lot more.

Davian nodded slowly. “Do you think they’re part of the groups from the crater? The Albrights or… the…”

“Seeds,” I supplied. “Vin said they’re called that.”

“Yes, of course. Any indications of their affiliation?”

I rolled my tongue around my mouth. “Way they were talkin’? I reckon they’re Baylar.”

His eyes regarded me from beneath wiry strands of greying hair. “…Why do you think so?” he replied slowly, as if tasting the words in his mouth. “It could be those people we saw in the crater.”

“Cause they were talkin’ about a, uh…” I paused, searching my memory. “A ‘Heltian de-tach-ment sheltering fugitives’. A ‘dumb little Head’.” My mimicry of a Baylarian accent still sounded disappointingly like my own voice. I waved the irrelevant thought away. “Don’t think either of the crater-people cared much about anythin’ but each other.”

The Strain inclined his head. “And what lay beneath them.”

A breath hissed through my teeth. “Yeah,” I muttered. “A river o’ blood. Explains a lot.”

“Indeed,” Davian agreed. “It is almost miraculous how well the existence of a god of all things was hidden- “

“Anyway,” I snapped, “there’s a bloody army out the- “

“With all this fog, how do you know it’s an army?” the Strain asked. “It could simply be a squad.”

I barked a laugh. “By all that’s good ‘n green, Davian, you think I would’ve come runnin’ if I weren’t certain?”

“Well, it’s easy- “

“They lit up half the damn world,” I scoffed, then snarled. “This is absolute rot. How’d they find us? Aching should’ve covered our tracks, an’ the bloody Frost should’ve stopped them.”

Davian’s face was indecipherable to most people. Before I’d gotten to know him, his warped features made understanding what he truly felt a matter of trusting his words reflected his true thoughts. But with a face as cryptic as his, he’d never needed to learn how to lie.

The old Strain splayed his empty hands smoothly. If he’d left it there, I would’ve been none the wiser. However, he opened his mouth and far, far too casually, told me, “I haven’t the slightest, myself.”

I looked at him, his beard and hair impeccably oiled. Few people went to all that trouble. “You’re takin’ this pretty easy.”

“Of course I’m scared,” he snapped, too quickly. “But they aren’t after us. If the worst-case scenario comes to pass, all we need to do is give them the erstwhile Head.”

I nodded slowly, eyes drifting to the side. “Sure.” I nodded while working my jaw, desperately straightening the emotions tugging at my features. “Blood.”

“What is it?”

I kept nodding, like some sort of boneless doll.

“What- “

He ducked to the side as my poorly-thrown punch glanced past his chin. The second managed to catch his shoulder. By the time I’d cocked the third, surprise at my own actions had given way to more acutely-trained instincts and instead of attempting to hit him I slammed my body against his. His wiry build was similar to mine, but age had robbed him of whatever natural edge in strength masculinity gave him. Momentum and skill were both mine, allowing me to slip a foot behind his ankle and shove him into the snow. As he lay there stunned, I knelt on his chest and drew a knife.

“You- “ I hissed, fumbling the word. “You- “

“Kit, what are you doing?” Maddie screamed from within the tent.

A hand fell on my shoulder. I shook it off. “Those damn ribbons. They weren’t to keep us from losin’ our way. They were t’lead Baylar to us.”

“Kit…” Taja called in low, soothing tones. “Davian- “

“Quit talkin’ like I’m crazy – do I look like I’ve more’n two eyes? Ask him.”

“We can have a conversation when you don’t have a knife to his throat!” Maddie yelled, voice cracking.

“Baylar’s just over th’ way,” I retorted, eyes locked on Davian’s writhing features. “We don’t have time for anythin’ but an interrogation.”

“Ronnie, don’t- “

Gone was the earlier delicacy as Ronnie’s hand fell on my shoulder. Its fingers sunk into my flesh like a pair of jaws. I groaned as it begun to wrench me backwards, but managed to seize a handful of Davian’s coat as I did so. My muscles quivered as I tried to wrench his weight into range of my knife-arm, even as the giant Strain heaved us both backwards into the snow in an artless heap. My blood pulsed loudly in my ears as I saw Davian grip a knife in his belt, then release it a heartbeat later to in favour of trying to tug his coat away from me. My wordless snarls mixed with the cries of Maddie and Taja as I attempted to roll into a position with better leverage. Yowler barked, high and frantic. The pressure disappeared momentarily, only for Ronnie’s arm to loop around my waist and lift me high into the air.

As I flailed towards his freed body, Davian staggered upright and took several steps backwards. Then Vin seized the man and slammed him against a tree. The pack slung over the Ravenblood’s back clacked in the perfect silence that followed.

“Ronnie,” he commanded, voice calmer than it’d been for weeks, “let her go. I think she’s right.”

The Strain’s arm didn’t budge.

An eye on the Ravenblood’s bare neck affixed the figure holding me. He didn’t turn to face us. “Do you remember when we were trying to sneak through Baylar’s lines? How it was Davian of all people who got us through? We didn’t have much time to think about it. Later, he told us he’d said he’d given the captain a bribe. That he’d claimed to be some kind of merchant.”

His voice was iron. “A little thin for an excuse, don’t you think?”

Ronnie’s arm loosened slightly, allowing me to slip underneath it. “You weren’t even bloody there,” I spat. Then, glancing at his impossible number of eyes, I moved onto the more pressing question. “You didn’t think to tell us this?”

“They tried to kill him too,” he stated. “We all had bigger things on our minds than how he greased their palms, and most of the people who saw it ended up dead.”

I tried to scoff, but my teeth were clenched too hard. “How could you be so dumb?”

“Ronnie’s been with Davian for years, and can’t speak besides. I…” I heard the frown in his voice. “I just wanted to be done with you all. Or…” He paused. “I did? Is that right?”

Maddie took a step closer to the man, hand cautiously held outward. “Vin…”

His brows drew closer. “Head Maleen, he’s not…”

We held our breaths as he stared at the snow, frowning.

Eventually, he exhaled. “Regardless, of… me…” Vin whispered the word as if saying it for the first time, “…He’s led them to us.”

Davian stared rigidly up at him. His hair hung behind his head, revealing the warped set of his face in full. Beneath Vin’s hands, the Strain’s fingers twitched towards his hair, as if to pull it back down, but could not escape the far larger man’s grip. I felt as if I were spying on something too intimate to be seen. But I wouldn’t do him the decency of looking away.

Ronnie made a gesture. “You wouldn’t,” Vin translated for the giant, without turning.

The old man tried a weak smile, yet gave up before it had settled on his face. “I- I just gave a few of our chits to…” His tone frayed at the end and trailed away into nothing.

Another set of signs twisted the Strain’s hands, growing increasingly sluggish until they dissipated entirely. “The trail you made was never about keeping us safe? It was always…”

Mutely, he shook his head.

I rubbed the corners of my eyes, sneering against the emotion building there. “Why’d you- “ My voice cracked. “Why?”

“They just wanted Maddie.” His voice broke. His eyes shone. “They would’ve paid us. The Captain gains prestige for tracking us. We receive a place in House Baylar. Everyone- “

Vin wrenched Davian towards him then slammed against the tree hard enough to pop something in the Strain’s back. “You signed up for the job!” he snapped. His eyes shivered; his jaw wobbled. “Against my wishes. I told you this would happen; you don’t get to complain when everything begins falling apart.”

“We didn’t know- “

“You went in with a half-cocked idea of what was occurring and stuck your nose in something that wasn’t your business, and you want to complain? To sabotage everything? As if I didn’t warn you!”

“They used us!”

“You were happy to let them!” Vin scoffed. “What happened to wanting a better life for Strains? What- “

“I was never a Strain!” Davian hissed.

A harsh laugh escaped my throat. “No? What are you then: a damned dog?”

He struggled against Vin’s grip, eyes panning frantically. “Both of my parents were unblooded. They- ”

I shook my head in disbelief. “Maybe yer mother was gettin’ a bit on the side.”

“There were no Blooded men around her!” he insisted. “My father checked exhaustively.”

“Then what happened to yer face?”

“I was just…” His eyes were wide. “Born this way.”

“That means,” I drawled, “yer a damned Strain!”

“Then where are my abilities?” Davian affixed everyone standing in the clearing with his gaze, one after the other. “Strength; Intellect; Perception; Any divine powers?”

“Strains aren’t Blooded,” I stated. “They don’t get divinity.”

“Yet they hold an echo of the power.”

“How’re you so good at trackin’ then?” Before he could reply, I continued. “Yer a Foxblood’s kid. It’s damn simple.”

“Fifty years can teach a man any amount of woodcraft!” he insisted. “Any talent I have is mortal.”

Taja’s voice was a shock. The teenager rarely spoke. “Are you trying to tell us that not all Strains…” His voice was tight. Something glinted in his eye. “…Are descended from Blooded?”

“I know I was never a Strain. If I had another face, I would have been a Baylarian scion.”

“You were- “

“I was.” His tone was flat; clipped to end on sharp points. “But of course, my parents couldn’t keep me. If it came out that our line sired something resembling a Strain, they would be seen as muddied. Impure. And who would believe some warped person was anything but the child of a Blooded? So I had to go.”

Ronnie’s hands flashed. “You speak nonsense,” they said in Vin’s voice. “Strains are Strains.”

“I know I’ll never be a noble, but I could be Baylarian again.” He swallowed. “You could all be as well.”

“No,” said Taja. His arms were rigid by his side. “Not everyone.”

Vin craned his head around look at Taja. He turned back to Davian. “Not Malee or Laja,” Vin rumbled. “Not the Growers, or the Smiths. Not the guards. Not Whip.”

It took a moment to realise he wasn’t speaking for Ronnie. Then another to process what he’d said.

“Baylar killed Whip,” I began. “Spat a damned arrow into her gut. She died in our arms, and you wanna help them?!”

“The soldiers that hurt her are dead.” Something lifeless lay beneath Davian’s voice. “We hurt them. They hurt us. We ended them. If any fault lays in that process, it belongs to everyone involved.” His eyes drifted towards Maddie. “To her most of all.”

The orange-haired woman was so small. Her hands fiddled with some jewellery beneath her cloak.

I stepped in front of his stare. “Don’t you look at her.”

He glanced away. I tried to find some sort of satisfaction at that, but failed.

“Why didn’t you take her?” Vin released the older man, allowing him to slump to the cold snow at the foot of the tree. “Over Frost. You would’ve had plenty of opportunities.”

The lifeless set of Davian’s eyes was marred by a deep wince. “You would have followed.”

“Out of all of us, you’re the better woodsman by far.”

“Against a Ravenblood?”

Vin silently acceded the point. “You could have distracted me in some way.” A pause. “Easily.”

“I…”

“You could’ve killed me.”

“I couldn’t have.”

The Ravenblood released a breath. “Maybe not. But I refuse to believe that you couldn’t have outplayed… me, like this,” he whispered, then redoubled his voice. “So all you did was leave a trail?”

Davian said nothing.

Ronnie signed something. “Say something,” they said using Vin’s voice. “Why won’t you defend yourself?”

A laugh halfway to a sob slipped shamefully from me. “Just a trail? So even when you’re betrayin’ us, you’re a coward?”

Gast’s round body squeezed out of the tent. “Don’t.”

I ignored her. “Don’t even have the will to stab us in the back properly?” I was barely understanding my own words. “T’fight for what you want? Had to bloody tip-toe ‘round it. What’s the point o’ you, then? You- “

An arm shoved me to the side as Taja barrelled towards Davian, knife in hand. Before he’d reached Vin, Gast’s greater mass slammed into him and knocked him to the ground. Instead of rising, he remained in the snow, one forearm over his eyes. From behind his clenched teeth rose a dull whine.

Davian closed his eyes. “You should- “ His voice cracked like a rotten egg, and I covered my eyes and turned away. “You should walk away from me. You’re so close. I’ll talk to them.”

I whirled on the man. “Why’d you do this if you’re jus’ gonna give up on it? You think we can trust you, now?”

“I had to promise her something, to get us past. At the very least, she seemed honest. Head Maleen,” he spat, as if it were a shard of bone stuck in his mouth, “never was. We all deserved better than this.”

The wind whistled softly through the bare branches, which wept sap redly down their bark.

Gast pinched one nostril shut, then ejected snot from the other onto Taja’s back. “Dunno,” she said.

Taja squirmed beneath her.

In reaction, Maddie gave an aggrieved bark at the disgusting display, then quietened as her gaze fell upon Davian again. His face hadn’t moved.

I tried to laugh, as if the whole thing were the punchline to a joke I’d heard before. And I had heard it before – from Mother; from Jana; from myself, in my lonely, angry moments – but I still hadn’t seen it coming. I was a fool.

Ronnie’s massive shoulders quivered silently. Yowler shifted beside the giant, shuffling his paws to keep the chill of the snow seeping into them. Iron cold had crept into my fingers.

“We killin’ him?” I asked.

“No,” Vin snapped. “We take him with us.”

Everyone froze. “What? Why?”

He finally turned, readjusting his pack so he could clutch it to his chest. Too many eyes darted in dozens of different directions. “We need to keep him.”

I waited for him to supply the other half of that thought; the reason laying behind his demand. When nothing was forthcoming, I realised there was no other half.

Maddie swallowed. “We can’t, Vin. Ferrying a resistant captive through hostile territory isn’t a good idea.”

“It will be fine,” he insisted.

Ronnie, who had turned away to begin shakily packing, shook their head. Yowler sat beside her, canine gaze darting towards whoever was speaking with panicked focus.

“You all want to leave him? We can’t,” he demanded, fingers gripping the fabric of his bag. “We can’t. We can’t. We can’t.”

“…Why not?” I asked.

“Because we need to keep him safe.” That final word reverberated with something unnerving.

“He betrayed us, Vin.” I paused, thinking carefully. “We don’t need to kill him. Jus’ leave him.”

“Davian will tell Baylar where we’re going.” The syllables tumbled from his mouth like dead leaves. “That Head Maleen is with us. We shouldn’t. It’s too dangerous.”

I looked to Maddie for help.

Her palms squirmed together while her jade eyes remained affixed at the ground. After a moment of viewing that dumbly, I placed a hand on her back. She paused, then smiled weakly at me.

“He will survive if we leave him,” the small woman stated gently. “But we won’t if we take him.”

His body slowly turned as each of his seven eyes flickered between us, unnervingly asynchronous with one another. His hands clung to the fabric of his pack. Despite the darkness, his confusion was writ clear in his features.

“I can’t leave him,” he stated.

“Why?” I pleaded.

“I can’t.”

I opened my mouth, but Maddie cut me off. “What do you have in your bag, Vin?”

His many eyes spun as he pulled it closer to his chest. In a foolish gambit to find reasons, I reached out and snatched at it. My fingers caught over its opening, but in the war between Vin’s strength and mine the poorly-woven material of the pack was the first to give.

The Ravenblood fumbled after the contents of the bag as they spilled into the snow. “Ah, ah,” he exclaimed, many eyes wide.

I looked down and found myself in miniature. And Whip. And Tully. And Taja and Wil and his kid and Maddie and Malee and Rita and Tippi and Odrin and Atifi and Jana and Old Snapper and Willow and Gast and Miriel and Crumpet and Aron and Laja and Wil and a dozen other people I didn’t know and an Oxblooded woman I’d seen him carve countless times, bereft of an arm but given a red grin across her throat, all writ in exquisite detail by ten thousand different strokes of a knife into frozen, unmoving moments.

Their wooden eyes followed me as I stumbled backwards. “Why?” I asked.

All his eyes snapped towards me. “Because they’re mine.”

----------------------------------------

The heels of my boot trod silently on the roots of a heartwood. My efforts were ruined as three other pairs of feet crunched loudly in the snow behind me. Davian would know the right way to lead them: the firmest soil; the steadiest stones; the quietest route. We’d left Davian behind, pulled from Vin’s grasp when Taja promised, in no uncertain terms, that he’d kill the old man if he came with us. And Davian, shamefully on his knees, pleading with Vin to let him go. So he’d let him go.

All that was left was a fat woman, a lopsided giant, a gawkish teenager, a noble without any of the things that made her noble, a thug with half the brains of most people but thrice the willingness to murder, a man with the blood of a dead god rotting in his veins, slowly driving him mad, and a dog.

The lute I’d tied to my back poorly whacked the back of my head with every step. I gave a long snort, gathering the snot in my sinuses, and hawked a lump of phlegm from the back of my throat into the snow. It blinked yellowly in the snow. After a moment of consideration, I kicked a chunk of snow over it and continued onwards.

A few steps later, Gast’s foot crushed that same lump of snow and the snot beneath. I snickered. She glanced at me, then at her boot. The silhouettes of the others loomed through the mist, and the contrast between their ghoulish figures and Gast’s suspicious squint drove another chuckle from my throat.

Ahead of us, Vin veered to the right. His stitched-together pack jangled with the miniature sculptures.

We all stared at him, but no one made to follow. After a moment, I steeled myself and ambled towards him. “What?”

He marched onwards, all his mass making barely a whisper against the ground. The clack of wood within his bag was louder. “They’re to the left.”

I peered into the darkness. Fingers of fog curled, gnarled and twisted, over my sight. “Where’re their torches?”

“Seems they’ve put theirs out.”

My teeth chewed cold-cracked lips. “Should we go around?”

He gazed forward. “There is no ‘around’.”

I frowned, then groaned. “They’ve encircled us?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d they know where we are?”

“They found Davian.”

“That- “ I growled incoherently. “Should’ve killed him.”

He released a heavy breath that bloomed white amidst the cold. “Mm.”

I eyed him sideways, hoping for some response to measure his mood. When none was forthcoming, I cocked an eyebrow and attempted to coax one out. “No argument? Lest my head’s gettin’ old, I remember it bein’ you who- “

“They have him now,” Vin snapped. “I don’t think they’re treating him kindly.”

I snorted. I blinked moisture from my eyes. Stomps resounded from behind as Ronnie caught up with us. The Strain’s fingers worked frantically. All I could pick from a slurry of gestures was ‘Reason?’

“I don’t think he was forthcoming with his answers,” Vin muttered.

“And you know this for sure?”

“No. But he’s hurting.”

My lips woodenly twisted into that same tired old sneer I always wore. “Maybe they didn’t know about the deal.”

Vin scoffed. “Maybe he refused to say anything.”

“Serves him right. Hope he’s bitten off his tongue,” I muttered, knowing I sounded like a child. “Hope he dies. Hope he- “

Ronnie slammed the back of my helmet hard enough to send it spinning off my head. I swallowed the poison rising from within me, bent down, and picked it up. The Strain stomped away from me.

“Right,” Vin commanded. “We’ll need to break through.”

I stared mutely.

“I’ll need a moment to pick the precise spot,” he told us. “But ready yourselves.”

When Vin himself drew his onyx sword and raised it in the erratic light of the moons, I did the same. I wondered whether Ravenblood let someone plan a battle at the same time he examined a sword, then realised each of Vin’s eyes were closed. Both he and the sword seemed two parts of a statue, with the blade the most important piece.

Behind me, I heard Gast exchange several words with Ronnie, before the woman hoisted Yowler into the air and shoved him into Ronnie’s pack. The dog moaned and writhed, but silenced at a gesture from his master. When Gast began shrugging her great-shield off her back, Taja hurriedly lifted it off her shoulders and held it aloft for the Strain to buckle her arm to. As Ronnie manoeuvred their axe from its holster, I belatedly began shifting my weight from foot to foot, seeking to loosen sore muscles. My arms were already filling with frantic energy.

As I gradually danced in a circle, I turned to find Maddie with a white-knuckled grip around a dagger’s hilt.

“Put that thing away ‘fore you stab yerself,” I snapped.

She flinched, then began fumbling it back into a sheath.

“No, wait,” I growled, mostly at myself. “Show me yer grip.”

Maddie bobbed her head and held the knife with her arms fully extended, like it was about to leap out of her hands and bite her. I placed my hand around the hint of hilt remaining and yanked it. I almost swallowed my own tongue when it left her hand.

“That’s a bad grip,” I understated. The blade caught my eye, and I squinted at it, then ran my finger over its point. “It’s blunt. You plannin’ on beatin’ someone t’death with it?”

Her cheeks, already red from the cold, reddened further.

I tossed the dagger into the snow and kicked snow over it. After transferring my sword to my left hand, I ran my fingers over my belt to select my best dagger. Only having three made it an easy selection. Back with the band, it might’ve taken me the better part of an hour to find the best. After a moment considering its dual edges, I sheathed it and drew a single-edged one.

“Here.” I held it by the blade and handed it to her. She took it from my hand as if it were a snake’s tail. “Hold it blade-side away from you. Round chest-height,” I said, demonstrating the movements myself. “Keep the other arm lower – fer stoppin’ anythin’ guttin’ you while your knife’s elsewhere.”

Her eyes – trembling in quiet concentration – flickered to me. “You don’t fight like that.”

“I’m better’n you. Anyone’s better’n you, an’ anyone with anythin’ bigger’n a knife’s gonna chop you in half, so don’t- “

“I’ll let you do the fighting.”

“Yeah.”

I demonstrated a reverse grip, as well as few stabs – hurrying to get it done before the others were finished preparations. Briefly, I touched her arms to adjust her grip and almost immediately stopped when an uncomfortable heat flitted through my face. Maddie practiced a few stabs, face twisted in solemn focus, while I tried to fight warmth back into my legs.

The energy sourced from the drawing of my sword was beginning to dim. I swallowed and glanced around. Gast gazed at some far-away thing, while Ronnie tried to reach their arms behind their back to pet Yowler. Vin was a black chasm amidst the darkness. From between withered, ancient-seeming branches a scattering of stars watched the moons gradually fall beneath the night sky’s bowl.

“You, uh… You think Davian was tellin’ the truth?”

“About what?” Her large green eyes gazed up at me, searchingly.

I looked away, both hands clasped together over my sword. “Everything. Anything.”

Maddie’s tone was much calmer than it’d been mere seconds before. “I think if he were going to lie, he would’ve done so about the betrayal.” She reversed her grip, feigning a stab through the air. “And I think he was honest about that.”

“Oh,” I said, and felt my face crumple. I stepped behind Maddie – out of her sight – and buried my face in the crook of my arm.

The quiet huffs of breath that accompanied the orange-haired woman’s jabs ceased. “Kit?” I heard snow crumple as she turned.

I tried to seize the rhythm of my breathing. The clenching of my chest as it folded in on itself again and again, growing increasingly smaller until with one last fold it was nothing at all. The jagged shapes of my breathing receded from my awareness. Then it was just quiet.

I took my arm off my face and looked at Maddie, and felt like crying. I glanced away. “How many of us’ll be left at the end, d’you think?”

I saw her face suddenly draw together as she held back tears. I saw Ronnie place a meaty hand over their small face. I saw Gast lay a hand on the giant’s back. I saw Taja stare at the ground, fist clenched. I saw Vin flinch.

“I know where to go,” he said stiffly, and strode into the fog.

Our boots crunched after him, beneath the cold, red branches of the Heartlands and the frozen sky far above. I slapped my unoccupied hand on my furs, beating sensation back into it, then switched hands and repeated the gesture. Someone’s teeth were chattering.

A few hundred steps passed and Vin whispered for us to be ready.

Another five dozen and two men appeared from the darkness, gawping at us as we gawped at them. As one flinched backwards, he fumbled a spear that posed no opposition to the blade I sent hissing through his throat. His blood stained the snow an eager red.

His partner stood, staring at the Ravenblood smeared with eyes like slime on a slug. Vin stared at him, perfectly frozen, his features folded into something approaching terror. Then the man screamed for help and died as Vin’s onyx blade cleaved his body just above the waist.

“Blood,” he panted, sweat already beginning to soak through his bandana. “Blood.”

Shouts travelled through the fog as if from right behind us. One of Vin’s eyes stared at the ground. I followed its gaze to the corpse. Beneath a stinking mess of gore, a hint of white revealed the meticulously arranged segments of the dead man’s spine, sliced into something less than meaningless. His entrails steamed in the night air; immense heat slowly deteriorating into impossible cold. I wondered if he had felt just as frost-nipped as us, before he died. Whether we would steam just as well in the snow.

I knew the answer. “We gotta go,” I said.

----------------------------------------

Boots crunched through the snow and underbrush as we fled, leaving a trail of broken branches, torn shrubbery, and Baylarian corpses in our wake. Each that emerged from the fog scarcely have time to shout before Vin or I cut them down, but every scream yielded our location to the surrounding forces more surely than a beacon of flame.

But frantic moments of violence were rare: the rest were filled with aching legs and arms, strangled lungs, and the long shadows of late night, My straining focus drew leering enemies from inanimate obstacles: making arms of low-hanging branches and spears of the icicles that hung from them and red eyes from red sap and faces from speartrees and soldiers from the long shadows of tall trees.

All of this in constant, gruelling motion as my body pushed the landscape behind me, marred by my own bitter stubbornness desperately fending off the desire to rest. Blood pounded in my ears, screaming at me to do something, so I kept running.

All of Davian’s fault, the twisted little rat.

Suddenly, Ronnie’s panicked inhalation accompanied a stomach-churning sound of boots skidding on ice. It took the efforts of both Taja, Maddie, and Gast to arrest the giant’s momentum before they crashed into one of the many pointed branches that seemed expressly designed to draw blood. Vin and I both halted as well, extending our blades to quiver against the fog. I stared into its heavy whiteness, simultaneously hoping it would give me something to kill and wishing I’d never have to kill anything again.

Vin’s voice was scarcely louder than a soft breeze. “Kit. Blooded coming.” A wince spread through his too-many eyes. “The Foxblood’s yours.”

Then a flash of orange hair attached to a toothy grin emerged from the fog and I parried a short-sword that wriggled like a snake while ducking a glinting knife that screeched against the steel of my helm.

My riposte aimed for the woman’s armpit – unarmoured and exposed from her swing – but she pivoted sideways to trap my blade between her arm and body. Calculations flashed through my skull – better to not fight it, surrendering use of my blade to immobilise her sword-arm – before her knife swooped again, allowing me to barely close my fingers around her wrist. With both our arms locked, I slammed my skull into hers, and reared back, blood squirting, after she tilted her head to allow the hardest part of her skull to smash against my nose.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Weight fell on my sword-arm as she released my blade to swing her short-sword – far more suited to our close range – to chop at my back. I repositioned my sword to clumsily block and nearly lost it as the force of the blow reverberated up my arm. The Foxblood cackled and whipped her blade back for another blow. Unable to think of any better options, I wrapped my legs around hers and bore us both to the ground.

We fell sideways into the cold snow in a tangle of limbs, as I desperately kept one hand clenched around her blade and the other around her knife-arm. The impact felt like a kick across the entire right side of my body. As I growled and she cackled in the snow, for a single, excruciating moment, I had no idea where her sword was. But mine was still clenched in a white-knuckled grip, so I awkwardly pressed it length-ways against her neck and began pushing. A sharp bark emerged from her throat as the woman abandoned her short-sword to slip fingers underneath my blade and begin pushing back. Her other hand writhed beneath my grip, and even as my steel scraped against bone I realised that in the next few seconds I would lose control over her knife-arm and she’d kill me.

I howled wordlessly in her face, pulled my feet upwards, and heaved her away from me. The effort might’ve meant less than nothing, were it not for a purple glow that flashed over her stumbling form, stealing her legs from underneath her and slamming her head into the ground. It took scarcely a heartbeat for her to leap into a standing position, where Ronnie’s axe slammed into a raised dagger and sent her flipping into the air. The woman’s form twisted in an insane display of athleticism that failed to prevent an onyx blade sinking into the side of her neck. Blood sprayed everywhere and bones snapped as her twitching body crashed into the ground.

All seven of Vin’s eyes blinked rapidly. He grunted, hand raising towards his forehead, where the Foxblood’s lifeforce was beginning to soak through his bandana. I scrambled upright, but before I could reach him Taja had already stumbled over to him and torn off the Ravenblood’s bandana.

At that, I halted, keeled over, and sucked in a massive breath. Including the woman I’d fought, two other bodies lay dead around us, bearing hints of the broad, blunt features of Lizardbloods. Taja’s lanky form hovered over the dead Foxblood for a moment before leaning down and tugging a scabbard from her belt. He’d already picked up a spear from a soldier I’d killed a while back, but I supposed everyone could use a second weapon. I scooped the woman’s abandoned short-sword from the snow and handed it to him silently. He gave it a few a practice swings, then his face tightened.

“Here,” he said, and presented it to Maddie. “I will use this spear.”

Maddie’s cloak fluttered as she shuffled closer to the bodies. “But- “

“He’s right,” I said, ignoring the flicker of anger that filled me at his kindness. “You need somethin’ better’n a knife. Probably a shield, too, if we can find one.”

“But- “

Fire filled me. “You die, we get nothing,” I hissed. “Take the damn sword, if only t’block one swing.”

“I don’t know how to use one!”

I growled incoherently.

“The pointy end goes away from you,” Taja offered.

“Yeah, that.” I seized the sheathed sword from the teenager and pressed it into her chest.

She gingerly took it, then began several excruciating attempts to buckle it onto her belt.

“By all that’s good’n green,” I groaned, then snatched it from her, knelt, and began buckling it onto her myself.

Ronnie curled a few fingers at Gast, who cocked an eyebrow quizzically. A few more signs and the woman turned to us.

“Ooooh,” she intoned.

Ronnie shook their head and gave another firm set of signals.

“Oooh-oooh,” Gast groaned in an attempt to sound suggestive, pitching her voice far too high on the latter half.

“Shut up.” I was grateful my dark skin hid my flushing cheeks.

Maddie frowned at them, then me, then blushed far more visibly.

Ronnie gave a wobbly smile, and I was suddenly grateful for the humour.

While I was working the straps around Maddie’s waist, Vin approached the two remaining Strains and exchanged a few muttered words with them. Gast’d guard both the rear and Maddie, while Ronnie would chop anyone who got too close and carry anyone who needed carrying. He muttered his plans in moments.

“You take the sides,” he told me. “I’ll take point. Taja: you stay in the middle and spear anyone you can. All of you need to seize any shields available. The larger the better.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Archers.”

If there was ever a word to get people running, it was that one.

----------------------------------------

Everything hurt.

My legs screamed with every step. My arm protested the weight of the bloodied sword attached to its end. My lungs spat fiery hatred to my brain. Sweat swamped my body beneath my furs in a sticky heat. Even my feet moaned pitifully, as if sitting in a soggy pair of boots and doing absolutely nothing were one of the worst fates the world could offer. It was all I could to wrangle my limbs into a vaguely coordinated order. But that’s the job of a leader, isn’t it? Screaming obedience into a bunch of ungrateful dullards with not an ounce of good sense between them. Still didn’t stop it hurting.

Vin was doing a good job at that – making sure anyone who moaned or groaned knew the Baylarians were closing in on all sides. He’d do a better job if he looked more than slightly fatigued by our hours of running. Instead, he seemed as if he’d stepped in from a light stroll, making all my pain feel like a bad joke only he could laugh at. Almost made me wish I had some of his crazy, if it would stop my body from hurting.

But besides him, I was probably the best-off of us all. Both Maddie and Taja tottered forward in a cloud of frosted panting thicker than the mist surrounding us, limbs stiffly flopping in every direction as if the muscle in them had turned to wood. Ronnie was a bit better – the Strain’s legs were thick enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if they could carry another Ronnie and keep running – but the weight of their body, scrap armour, pack, dog and axe had to be at least thrice the weight of my own load. The pressure of it all had lowered Ronnie’s head, their bizarrely childish face slack with the mute delirium immense fatigue sometimes births. I’d felt a kind of smug pride watching Gast stagger and wheeze her way behind us, until she’d started tripping every three seconds. Pathetic gratitude had filled me when Vin had slung her over his shoulders like a bloated sack of potatoes, saving anyone else from carrying her. He’d toss her over to Ronnie whenever the fighting was about to start, where the fat Strain would cast her witchcraft while fat beads of sweat dripped from rolls of flab.

I ran, and knew it was only going to hurt worse the longer we ran. And we had a long run remaining.

“Ox’s balls,” I swore. “Wump’s soggy teats. Lizard’s rotten tongue.”

Ronnie raised a weary head to glare balefully at me.

“Godsdamn bloody pile of greasy goddamned piece of stupid asshole garbage- “

“Quiet,” Vin whispered.

“Go jump in- “

“Quiet,” he snapped. “Do any of you hear that? Is it real?”

I shut up. Silence lay beyond the thud of our feet, whistling of rushing air, and throbbing blood. And beyond silence lay the high, frantic barks of a pack of dogs.

“Ox’s bloody bollocks,” I swore. “If I ever see Davian again, I’ll gut him.”

----------------------------------------

I’d never much liked watching people ride horses. The bit shoved in the horse’s spitting mouth to drag its head whichever way the smug rider wanted, restrained by dozens of ropes tying down a beast whose only crime was being good at running. Worst of all, even when the rider did force the horse into a sprint, they couldn’t help but pull out a switch and start beating the creature. A great, powerful animal, brought low by a strip of wood. Years prior, I’d watched one of the band shoot a horseman in the gut and send him slumping off his horse. Seeing him get trampled by his mount remained one of the few memories of justice I had.

But with a tsunami of roiling fur slavering barely thirty paces from my heels, I could’ve really used someone beating my arse with a switch.

We ran at an absolute sprint – legs and arms pumping like damn stallions – as branches and icicles and thorns ripped opened our skin like the whole forest was an angry mother determined to discipline her foolish children. But if the forest was a mother, it was one that hated the dogs: they had to lumber through shrubs and roots and branches we could leap over, and slammed into trunks or speartrees or branches they hadn’t the height to see coming, and soon each was beaten bloody by the chase.

Yet they didn’t stop. They wouldn’t, because there was a godsdamned Dolphinblood sitting astride the shoulders of a godsdamned massive Oxblood, whipping the dogs into a rabid frenzy far more ferocious than any horse-rider could manage by force alone.

I hated that Blooded’s guts. I needed that hatred, because sluggish surrender kept creeping into my mind and pure spite was the only thing hot enough to burn it away. Godsdamned Dolphinbloods. Mother’d always said Yoot was her favourite god, and that was enough reason to think the entire bloodline worth wiping out.

Ahead of me, Taja’s eyes dulled as his legs began faltering. A thorny branch ripped open a long gash on his arm, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Taja,” I wheezed.

He continued slowing until he ran next to me.

“Taja!” I punched him in the arm as hard as I could. “If you don’t stay in front of me, I’ll slit yer damned throat an’ leave you t’the hounds.”

The teenager glanced at me, which I responded to with another angry punch. Then I started smacking him, and with a solemn glower, he lowered his head and slowly pulled ahead of me.

If I had to be the switch beating his arse, I would be. I increased my pace again to match his, then began muttering threats to anyone with the audacity to run slower than me. Finding the least essential, most tender parts of the other’s bodies to hit despite the forest swaddled in shadowy mist soon dominated my focus.

Perhaps that’s why I missed the valley.

Suddenly, my next step found the ground absent. Its panicked successor tried to find purchase on the icy snow beneath and completely failed. I shot past Maddie; Taja; Ronnie with Yowler watching me wide-eyed; Vin with Gast over his shoulder – all with the good sense to slow. My hand smacked uselessly against the branches and trunks flashing past in a fruitless search for purchase. My other arm frantically tried to fumble my sword into its sheath before it gutted me, but moments later my arm caught in a shrub and whipped my momentum into a wild spin. Steel, fur and skin were shorn from my arm as I ripped free of an entire sleeve and my sword, alongside any semblance of control over my fall as I smashed backwards.

Heels-over-head I fell; world flashing past in a chaotic swirl of black tinged with white and red. I coughed; flailed; tore my nails out on snow and ice and dirt – and everything only spun faster. A purple glow swaddled my body, but any consideration of that was robbed from me by an impossible impact on my pelvis as I crashed into a speartree and spun sideways, slamming my helmed head on a root and setting a thousand sparks in my head; face slamming into the snow and swallowing a mouthful as one of my fingers jarred painfully against the ground. Stale sweat and grime mixed with snow and mud and dung as I rolled over everything the hillside had to offer. Then another titanic force slammed my entire body and my roll began to slow until I was sliding over cold, hard, flat ground. Then I stopped. The purple glow disappeared.

I lay on a cold surface, blinking at the sky. Through the fog, whispers of orange were tickling the sky. My body hurt. It felt as if Enn had chewed me up. Then spat me into a crowd of swinging clubs. I regarded the pain disbelievingly. A groan escaped me. Why wasn’t I dead?

I felt for the lute strapped to my back. Miraculously, it was intact. The sudden urge to say something witty appeared in my mind. Like in a Divinity, or a song. “Wuh,” I managed.

I shifted myself sideways, then pushed myself cross-legged onto my elbow. Something caught my ear – a crackle. Like the grumbling of an old greybeard, forced out of bed.

I looked down. I sat on a smooth, flawless river: winding between the hill I’d fallen from – that the others streamed downwards even now – and a far lower bank until it vanished behind the bend. Its surface was covered with a thin scattering of snow. Its frozen surface was just as thin.

I cautiously moved my feet underneath my body, then flinched as the ice snarled in protest. I’d sneered at a thousand snarls before, but I doubted it’d do much good here. I lowered myself onto all fours. Beneath, the hidden waters beat at the ice.

“Kit!” came Vin’s deep call. The man stood on the hillside’s bank. Gast remained atop his shoulders, fingers dancing over a runestone. Judging by the strangle yelps from above, she was working some magic on the hounds. I tried not to wince at the noise. Few sounds were worse than a dog’s whimper.

They were scarcely a dozen paces away. The distance was as indomitable as the gods themselves. “Are you alright?” Panic lined his voice. “Gast tried to stop- ”

“Bloody no!” I snapped. “Ice’s thin. You didn’t see this coming?”

“I’ve no extra sense for hills,” he said, eyes shifting. He produced my sword from his belt and flung it underarm in an impressive arc. It plopped on the other side of the river. “We’ve- “

He whirled and caught Maddie in an extended arm before she could stumble onto the ice. Ronnie – miraculously upright despite their weight – stumbled next to him moments later. Vin looked between the two of them, then whispered something to the Strain. Gast slowly slid from his shoulders.

I tried to find better footing. “What- “

The Strain and the Ravenblood grabbed Maddie simultaneously and threw her sideways in much the same manner my sword had been tossed moments before. She gave a shrill shriek which abruptly cut off when her body smashed through the ice close to the other side of the bank. I moved my shaking body towards where she vanished under, before the short woman erupted from the waters – apparently no more than waist deep where she stood – and waddled onto the other side.

Maddie began to let loose a series of swears through chattering teeth, but was cut off when Taja crashed through the ice a few short steps from where she had fallen. I glanced back to find the three far larger individuals beginning to gingerly lower themselves onto the ice. Their cautious movements were at odd with the panic strung through their faces.

I began to do the same, when a glint caught my eye. An arrow sailed from the top of the hill we fell from then travelled through the air downwards. Then it embedded itself in the ice a few short steps above my head.

From the ridgeline, someone loudly castigated an archer for firing out-of-turn.

Snow flew as I scrambled on all fours across the ice, limbs gawky and uneven in the world’s worst imitation of a mutt’s lope. Creaking complaints accompanied my scrabbling, but an organised volley of arrows struck more fear in me than some grumpy remnant of a fading season. I slipped into the patch of open water Maddie and Taja had created, sloshed through it for a few meters, then scrambled up the bank and threw myself behind a tree-trunk. Shivering beside me, Maddie pressed my sword against my chest.

The others weren’t so fortunate. Or maybe they were just heavier. Either way, none had made it more than eight cautious paces from the bank, where the Dolphinblood had ensorcelled his legion of canines into torpor alongside a red-faced Oxblood. The man leered at the three of them above his protruding chin, before Vin whipped a stone from his sling at the man’s head. It rung off his helmet like a dog, but even as he stumbled backwards the Oxblood shifted a massive halberd towards Vin. The dogs – freed from their slothful doze – ran up and down the bank baying. Yowler – on Ronnie’s back – whimpered softly. There was no retreating back to the hill they came from.

I saw Ronnie look up as a dozen arrows filled the sky. Vin followed the giant’s gaze. He watched them, barely a flicker of emotion on his face. Fear only entered his many eyes when he looked at the two Strains beside him.

The arrows reached the zenith of their arc and began falling.

“Hold your breath,” the Ravenblood told the Strains beside him.

Then he raised both fists and smashed the ice beneath all three of them.

They were sucked away by the current underneath. Barely a handful of heartbeats later, only a hole in the ice and a few scattered arrows marked them as having been there at all.

The three of us remaining ran downstream.

----------------------------------------

A flicker of a silhouette had me swinging my blade through air – through a shattering of light. The silhouette continued walking through the trees, according a path decided and ended Siik-knows how long ago. I sheathed my sword and continued running.

“Bloody ghosts,” I panted.

Across the river and through the mist, the hounds bayed – big, man-killing dogs, snorting and groaning in excitement – but were caught between the urge to chase us and the need to check on their unconscious master. The Dolphinblood’s helm had dented, and his chest rose and fell haltingly as his giant companion jogged after us.

The Oxblood couldn’t do anything: at a head taller than Ronnie and half again her weight, the frozen river formed an impenetrable barrier. Which was good, because Enn’s ilk could swing faster than my mortal eyes could follow, leaving any combat with them a matter of judging their intentions before they moved. A gamble I’d ended up on the better side of twice before but this warrior was no thin-blooded caravan guard. House Baylar was known more for making money than martial prowess, yet I still wouldn’t bet my life on my skill overcoming a halberd that fell like lightning.

If the others had clambered up on his side of the bank, I might be forced to anyway. I’d chop him to pieces, I was sure. Definitely. I gripped the hilt of my sword harder.

But as the three of us pounded between speartrees and branches to finally round the bend of the river, I couldn’t supress a relieved sigh. The three of them had washed up on our side.

That sigh caught when I realised Ronnie wasn’t breathing.

Vin beat at the giant’s chest furiously, seven eyes rolling in every direction. He tilted the Strain onto their side and pounded their back, arms aglow with purple energy. Gast held a wriggling Yowler, whining and moaning as she ran one hand over his fur and the other over her runestone. She wheezed, staring at Ronnie’s body.

I slowed momentarily, then sprinted to the fallen Strain. I slid next to Vin, hands hovering over the body. “What do I do?”

The Ravenblood opened her mouth and reached inside. He said nothing.

“Vin, what do I do?”

He scrabbled at Ronnie’s armour, attempting to peel it off their chest. The whites of his eyes were huge.

“Uh.” I joined my hands with his and helped him doff the Strain’s ramshackle breastplate.

He slammed his palm into the Strain’s chest as I desperately searched for some way to help. But all I knew how to do was hurt people; healing was beyond me. As Vin’s grunts grew increasingly jagged, I began to suspect he was the same.

Then the giant ejected a lungful of water onto their chest and erupted into harsh coughs.

“Ronnie?” I said, in concert with Maddie and Taja and Gast. Yowler wriggled from his master’s arms and licked the giant’s face hurriedly.

The prone giant clenched their eyes shut and continued coughing.

Vin rolled Ronnie onto their side and slid backwards. He halted against the trunk of a tree, head buried in his hands. None of us had time to pay attention to him.

“What happened?” Maddie asked.

The fingers on Ronnie’s child-like arm curled weakly, and for once Gast beat the Strain to a response.

“Too heavy,” the round woman supplied blandly, her eyes fixed on Ronnie. “Under too long. Vin pulled them from the riverbed.”

“You’re fine?” I frowned. “You’re a good swimmer?”

Before processing my request, Gast touched Ronnie’s face lightly. When the giant refused to crumble to dust, the woman huffed a small sigh.

Then she glanced at me. “I float,” the Strain said, rubbing her belly and sending ripples through it.

“Are you sayin’…” My mouth hung open. “Bein’ fat helps you- “

It was a stupid revelati⬛n, by a stupid gir⬛, at a stupid time. ⬛e were all caught up in our own relief at Ronnie’s survival: heads too deep in the sand to notice the arrows arcing above. Maybe the night and the fog would’ve blocked it regardless. But Vin noticed – I don’t think he was capable of failing to. His jaw worked, all his eyes twitching t⬛wards us, but the only sound to e⬛erge from his throat was a dull growl. There was no warning wh⬛n he hurled Maddie and Taja into the forest like they were no more than two hefty pieces of luggage. Gast had a better view of the sky, and she seized Ronnie’s leg and began trying to pull her.

By the time I heard the shafts in the air, it was t⬛⬛ late.

Vin thr⬛⬛ Gast an⬛ I a⬛op Ron⬛ie, the⬛ hi⬛⬛elf over the th⬛⬛⬛ o⬛ us. The whip-thud of falling arrows surrounded me as I squirmed beneath the oppressive chill of his body. Fo⬛⬛ sh⬛⬛ders wracked his body. The volley ended, and the Ravenblood pushed himself into a slovenly stumble, four shafts hanging from his back. His eyes blinked. His arms groped for his back. Black blood oozed from the wounds.

⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛. “⬛’ ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛,” he said.

⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛. “⬛⬛⬛…” I ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛, ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛. “⬛⬛⬛⬛…”

⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛. “⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛. ⬛’ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛.” ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ -- ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛. “⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛, ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛?”

⬛’ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛. ⬛⬛⬛ ⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛. ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛. W⬛⬛t bu⬛⬛⬛ess d⬛⬛s a ⬛hug h⬛⬛e try⬛⬛⬛ to heal?

“We need to move,” he told us, eyes drifting sluggishly, then staggered away.

How could any of us deny that?

----------------------------------------

It only got worse.

Amongst the thousand little injuries borne from my roll down the hill was a small twinge in my hip. I was familiar with the ache: the kind old bodies blathered on about constantly and young bodies laughed off with a few nights’ rest. I hadn’t got a few nights’ rest – I hadn’t even gotten a minute’s, and as the ache transitioned from a dull throb to the reckless swings of an incompetent smith on red-hot metal, I was about as far from laughing as I’d ever been.

Vin snapped ‘Right,’ and another form emerged from the fog. I swung a trembling arm at it with all the stolid determination of a woodcutter doing the same thing, day after day after day, but with none of the strength, leaving my blade to skitter off the soldier’s armour like a frightened spider. All I could think was ‘At least it’s not another damn ghost.’

Ronnie – having lost the axe that previously haunted her body in the river and replaced it with Gast – punched the woman I’d missed in the head so hard her body performed an entire cartwheel in the air and landed on her feet. I might’ve thought she’d never got hit at all, except for a gory mess of a nose and a jaw flapping far too low. She fell behind us as we continued onwards without breaking stride.

Killing people was a taste I’d worked hard to acquire, but even if the task hadn’t soured a smidge in recent months, the constant repetition was enough to turn even the most colourful task flavourless. Murder was best done full of enough fire to make you believe you’re a god yourself. And my entire body felt like a spent coal. I’d make a pretty pathetic god. God of Premeditated Murder, maybe. Perhaps the God of Sore Legs. God of Rolling Very Quickly Down Hills seemed most likely.

The Lizard? The Ox? The Fox? Better make room, or else the Ball might roll on top of them.

I wheezed a laugh that felt like coughing broken glass, but hadn’t the breath to share the joke. I had to laugh. Enough to keep everything else obstructed. With my head turned towards the sky, my foot was blind to the root that caught it and yanked my entire body downwards. I landed heavily, stunned, but someone was already pulling me onto my feet and I was running again.

My legs hurt from running. My lungs hurt from breathing. My hip hurt from falling. My arms hurt from killing – though, to be fair, they likely hurt a lot less than the soldiers they left dead. I’d have liked to have dropped dead myself, but all evidence suggested that hurt even worse. But if Davian showed up offering to sink a knife into my back and finish the job he started, I might be sorely tempted.

I cackled hard enough for my vision to swim, which wasn’t hard at all, and lumbered after Vin. The sight of his back, soaked with midnight blood, obliterated the forced humour. The arrows were gone but the wounds remained, despite the Lizardblood he’d claimed coursed through his veins. The Ravenblood ran in fits of gasping breaths, so silent I only noticed them by the cloud of white breath that followed him. My skin was soaked with sweat, but my body was wracked with shivers.

The dogs barked distantly, yet even through the fugue of exhaustion squeezing my mind I noticed the sound was closer than it had been moments ago.

Vin barrelled into a man, running him through on his sword even as his other arm sunk that strange bone-spike of into the soldier’s skull. Gore splashed across his forehead.

I swore, but Taja was already there, wiping it away.

Vin blinked rapidly, then halted. I took a dozen steps past him before realising what had happened. When I finally finished blinking in mute incomprehension, I collapsed onto my back, amongst the others.

Gast had been carried – the lucky tub of lard – so she didn’t need to. “Why do we stop?” the Strain asked, and I wanted to kill her. There was a strangled groan as Maddie raised a threatening hand towards her, somewhat ruined by the fact she sounded like a dying goat.

His brows furrowed. “Why’re we running?”

“They’ll,” I panted, “kill us.”

“The… Baylar. Right.” His eyes scanned the trees at mismatched paces. “You all rest. In a tree. Somewhere safe. We’ve time.”

Maddie responded amidst jagged pants. “What’re you doing?” she slobbered.

“Ending the hounds.”

He began walking back the direction we came. I blinked at his fading silhouette, then threw myself upright and shambled after him.

Vin whirled fast enough to make me flinch. “No,” he snapped. “Stay here.”

“I can- “ My protests paused to haul in a great breath of air. “- help you, bastard.”

“I’m not- Or am- “ He clenched his eyes shut and growled. “You cannot help me.”

“Go stick yer head in a monster’s maw,” I sneered. “You need all the help you can get, Ravenblood.”

He jabbed a finger into my chest. “Stay. Here.”

I seized it, but hadn’t the energy nor the strength to tear it away. “Go. Die. Moron.”

The Ravenblood smiled thinly. “I don’t think I can.”

Then he turned and sprinted away, far too quickly for me to do anything but follow his orders. A cold sweat broke out over my abused body. He was our eyes in a sea of enemies, and without him we were blind. Any idiot could kill a man, but a pack of dogs and two Blooded? Why take that risk? He couldn’t die? Avri itself could be killed. If even the gods themselves could fall, what chance did a Ravenblood with delusions of immortality have?

I wished my gaze could pierce the fog around us, but if any of my fervent hopes were fulfilled we wouldn’t be collapsed in the middle of a forest full of people that wanted to kill us, without Whip and without Davian and without Jana and the kids I’d risked my life to save. Sometimes things just go wrong, and there’s nothing you could’ve done to prevent it. I didn’t believe this was one of those times.

We waited. Our panting faded into bated breath. The hounds howled their bloodlust into the fog. Ronnie broke a large branch from a tree for use as a club, Yowler’s eyes flickering cautiously from their back. Maddie clutched her short-sword in the wrong grip. Taja stared into the spaces between trees. Gast listened with her eyes closed. I stretched and shook my limbs and limped back and forth. Then the howling was replaced with frantic yelps, then sharp wails, then nothing at all. With their braying stripped away dozens of short calls and blown horns were revealed to us: instruments for the Baylarian forces to gradually cleave towards our location.

As we lay beneath the trees, waiting for our mad leader to return, the fog through the canopy began to glow with flickers of orange. The sun was rising, chasing the night away to return to its throne once more. Where it would burn away the layers of mist until we were completely exposed, and all eyes on sky and earth would know our location.

Droplets of water beaded on the edges of blood-red leaves as the hoarfrost began to melt. Branches wept crystalline tears even as they lost their rigidity, once more capable of bending and tearing their gnarled, thorny branches into skin. I broke a long icicle from an overhanging branch and crunched it between my teeth, the freeze sending shards of pain into my skull while cooling my overheated body.

Between the drooping of a leaf as it gathered droplets on its edge and it springing back to life, Vin’s large silhouette appeared through the fraying borders of the fog. Those of us seated staggered upright – Gast needing assistance from both myself and Taja – in anticipation. He stomped into the clearing. Maddie stifled a gasp.

The first thing I noticed were his arms. Each were covered in patchy chunks of fur, soaked with a mixture of red from whatever he had killed and thick drops of black oozing from the bites sunk into his arm. A flap of flesh hung from his forearm. His knuckles quivered.

The second were his clothes. His jacket was in tatters, as was the shirt underneath. An ivory white plating gleamed from underneath.

The third was his eye. The left in his skull – once an earthy brown at odds with its deep black counterpart – had been torn from his face. The entire left side of his face leaked gore.

I gripped the hilt of my sword.

“Vin?” Maddie asked.

He frowned, the expression twisting the gouge in his face. “Vin?” After a pause, he continued. “Oh. I ran into a few extra.”

“Are you…”

His eye-socket gaped. “There’s no time. You need to keep moving.”

I swallowed. “Jus’ let us- “

“No,” he barked. “Move.”

My hackles raised, then fell at the raw need in his ruined face.

We continued onwards. My eyes were fixed on the path ahead, but every hair on my neck bristled at the man walking behind us.

----------------------------------------

The sun rose. The fog was stripped away, layer by layer. Suddenly, the Heartlands were at an end.

The red foliage, pink earth, gnarled heartwoods, unearthly mushrooms, crimson lichen, sharp grass and ubiquitous speartrees halted mere steps in front of us against a long strip of muddy snow. Past that were trees beginning to grow small, green leaves; their branches neither sharp nor gnarled. One was shaped like an elongated pyramid, limbs extending horizontally to sprout green needles. A few bushes rustled in the breeze that ran along the open space. Sprouts of rich green were beginning to poke from the muddy soil.

I could count on one hand the number of times I’d left the Heartlands. It always struck me how similar the plants were, in places where everything didn’t bloom red. How unchanging; how immortal. The land could go a millennium without trying anything different. Yet when blood watered this earth, it remained an apathetic brown. Out here, when people died, the earth didn’t care.

There would be no Aching to save us from the strip of Baylarian soldiers standing across from us. Some two hundred yellow-clad individuals faced us: a wall of shields bristling with spears and short-swords arrayed in front of a row of archers. Around a dozen cavalry stood aloofly to the side, watching as their massive horses stomped the ground eagerly. A banner was raised at the back: a hexagonal turtle swimming through three thin lines of river-water.

We stood in the protective shadow of a strange, red-leafed fern. Its thick leaves ought to break the outlines of our bodies enough to prevent any from seeing us. But with the rest of their forces coming in at our backs, we needed to move soon, lest we be crushed between the two forces.

“Davian,” I muttered, placing a hand over my eyes. “Bloody fool.”

“Do we…” Taja’s pupils shook. “Go around?”

Ronnie made two distinct gestures – I recognised ‘No’, but not its antecessor. When no translation was forthcoming, I looked to Gast.

“No going back,” the Strain explained.

Maddie swallowed. “I can- “

“No, you’re not,” I told her.

“I didn’t even- “

I waved a hand. “Doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. Give yerself up? Like Davian tried to? They’ll slit our necks jus’ t’see us bleed.”

“We can negotiate- “

“I’m not gonna do no godsdamned negotiation,” I erupted, snarling, “with the rats who killed half of us unless it’s with their face gettin’ ground in the dirt!”

A short pause as my words echoed.

Taja’s lips thinned into a grim line. “…I won’t either.”

Ronnie shook their head, teeth bared.

Gast glanced at Maddie, then shrugged.

“It was never an option, Head Maleen,” Vin rumbled.

The vicious injuries he’d received had barely stopped bleeding, but somehow the sight of wounds that would outright incapacitate a normal man had him only giving an occasional wince as his movements stretched or reopened cuts. The left side of his face was dominated by a blackly gaping hole. Despite my efforts, my vision continually gravitated towards it.

“I’ll get you all out of here,” he promised.

“How?” I scoffed. “Grow some wings an’ fly us over, Mr. Ravenblood?”

Vin’s six remaining eyes bored a hole into their ranks. “We just need to get there.”

“There’s no cover,” noted Maddie. “That many archers won’t miss all of us.”

I nodded. “We’ll make a pretty set of hedgehogs by the time we make it.”

Vin turned to Gast. “Can you change trajectory of that many arrows?”

“No.” She paused, brows furrowing. “Yes. With more Godsblood.”

“How much?”

“A lot.”

Vin nodded slowly. “…More than you’ve taken before?”

“Yes. More than other Blooded could give.”

“Whaddaya mean?” I asked.

“Vin’s blood is potent,” she told us.

“Like he’s got a lotta Ravenblood?” I glanced at the large, too-many-eyed man.

Gast shrugged, then turned to Vin. “You should drink water.”

I began to retrieve by waterskin, but stopped when Vin waved a hand.

“No,” he said. “You need it more than I do.”

My gaze darted towards his ravaged left eye, still leaking some viscous juice. After a brief moment of hesitation, I took the waterskin out. It sloshed thinly.

Vin refused it. “Lizardblood, remember?” he said with a grin.

“D’you really think I’m gonna- “

“You’ll feel it,” interrupted Gast. “The loss of divinity.”

He gave a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I could use a bit less.”

“It’ll return,” she noted.

“After it’s used, I know.” He sighed. “Such is the case with any shed blood.”

“So, arrows are dealt with,” I began.

Ronnie shot Gast a thumbs-up.

“But there’re still cavalry, the entire godsdamned formation, and – if we don’t kill everyone, an’ I doubt we will – another five-minute run ‘til Vane. An’ there’s undoubtedly a few Blooded hidin’ twixt it all. I mean…” I chewed my lip. “I figure we nab some shields an’ scrunch up together when th’ horsemen charge – show ‘em some real turtlin’ – but we needa kill them horses if we want any chance of makin’ the run. Whaddayou think, Vin?”

I glanced at the Ravenblood, then flinched. All of Vin’s eyes were fixed on a single spot. Their pupils dilated. His empty eye-socket yawned strings of gore. He leaned forward.

No one spoke. My mouth was suddenly dry.

He took a step forward.

My hand moved to grab his belt and haul him back, but I thought better of touching him. “Woah, Vin,” I said, failing to hide the warble in my voice. “You, uh… Don’t go out.”

“I didn’t recognise him at first,” he muttered, gaze unmoving.

“Who?”

He raised an arm and extended a single finger. “Davian.”

My sight reeled across the invisible line his finger cast until it was finally pulled to the old Strain – or just old man, I supposed – himself. Slumping on the back of one of the warhorses, hands placed demurely together. I squinted. Not placed. Tied together. Even from the distance, I could tell his face was far more deformed than usual.

Ronnie signed something.

“A few fingers are broken. Some fingernails have been torn out.” Vin swallowed. “He’s missing teeth. They’ve taken his boots. He’s… Gods.” His jaw creaked audibly. A single one of his eyes leaked a long stream of water. “He’s been tortured.”

Maddie repeated my thoughts. “But why?” Her eyes were wide. “He was on their side.”

Ronnie buried their head in their hands.

“He must not have told them anythin’. Or maybe they just like makin’ faces a pretty shade o’ purple.” I barked a hollow laugh. “Bloody Davian.”

“D-do we…” Taja stuttered. “Get him?”

They must’ve been torturing him the entire time we were running. But even on horseback, even with the winding, circuitous route their movements had forced us to make, how could they have forged through the unbroken wilderness before us? They must have been familiar with the area.

I’d never cut up a person myself – bent fingers and tore flesh until answers came tumbling out. That was always Mother’s job. But I’d heard the screams. I’d given myself a lot of reasons, but in the end they had always struck an discordant note within me. Knowing Davian – stupid, bastard, old, worn Davian – had screamed the same way…

Even so, I clenched my teeth and turned my head away to answer Taja. “We’ll die- “

“Yes,” interrupted Vin. His ravaged eye-socket leered at Davian. “We do.”

“We’ll die,” I reiterated, keeping a watchful gaze on Vin’s hands and feet for sudden movements. “Maybe you won’t, but th’ rest of us’re mortal as anythin’. I understand you wanna help him, but you’d jus’ be tradin’ our lives for Davian’s.”

He raised a hand to shield his one remaining eye but I flinched before I could stop myself. Judging by the sudden tightening of his face, he noticed. “I’ll lead you all to safety before going back for him.”

Maddie winced. “That isn’t- “

“It’s stupid,” I snapped. “There’re nearly two hundred- “

Vin nodded. “Sixteen cavalry, one-hundred and seventy-seven infantry – fifty-nine shield-bearers, spearmen, and hammermen – and fourteen archers. Two-hundred and seven.”

My estimation was closer than I thought it’d be. “Yeah. Two an’ seven. Siik knows how many Blooded- “

“Three. Lizardblood, Oxblood, Owlblood.”

Everyone except Gast stared at him. “An Owlblood?” asked Taja.

“That’s bad,” mused Maddie.

“How’s Gast gonna block arrows if an actual Blooded’s workin’ against her?”

“A Spiderblood would be worse,” Vin told us. “Yoot’s ilk are easier to account for.”

“What’re you- “

“They’ll enhance the first few volleys, and use some kind of bloodtech projectile or explosive if that fails. Possibly a variation of the blinder we used back at the farmstead if they’ve already sifted through Heltia’s ruins. If that fails, they’ll have to move closer to foul our footing. None of these are good, but so long as we close our eyes and block our ears at the right moments, Gast should be able to handle the rest.”

“You’re sure?”

“Any other, more devastating tactics will likely kill some of their own.” He paused, gazing at empty space, before continuing in a subdued tone. “They would have to be truly desperate to resort to them.”

“What if they are?”

“They… won’t be.” He gestured vaguely at those of us gathered beneath the tree. “Would you be?”

I scowled.

“I didn’t think so.” Vin crouched down, his blood-soaked back facing Gast. “Take however much blood you need. We don’t have long to plan.”

----------------------------------------

At the end of it all, our plan was so excruciatingly simple that it was a wonder we’d needed to discuss it at all.

Vin sprinted from the shadows of the tree with Gast, Maddie and Taja quickly following. Ronnie and I emerged moments later, taking our place in the formation’s wings as our feet left snow and sunk into the thin strip of mud dividing the Heartlands from the rest of the world. It clung to our feet desperately, but the hysteria of earth would always come second to that of mortals. We quickly left the mud. Patches of delicate green grass met my boot for scarcely an instant before I sprung past.

I stared at Vin’s back, holding my breathing in an iron-grip even as I demanded the body I’d spent the entire night wringing every drop of energy its flesh could possibly give yield just a bit more. My vision rocked in time to the pounding of my feet, and my eyes flickered towards the wall of yellow ahead, then back to the large man’s bloodied spine.

We ran as fast as the Ox itself, yet could not outrun the arrows. Distantly, some indistinct call commanded the ranks of archers to nock arrows. Then they slithered from the land in front of us to the sky above, gleaming purple in their transition towards their apex. For a moment, they basked in the dawn sky, leaving black outlines in the sea of mottled crimson lavishing above, yet both gravity and magic refused to allow them to stay there for long. They fell faster than they should have.

As we ran Ronnie placed a hand on Gast’s back as the other Strain gazed upwards – her steady gaze performing calculations perpendicular to conventional reasoning – then steadily tapped at the massive runestone strapped to her arm. A blinding glow emanated from the device, forcing all around her to close their eyes. Its radiance pierced through my eyelids, accompanied by thin thuds from every direction. Yet all of my focus lay on the soles of my feet: dissecting every single sensation from them in a manic bid to not trip on some errant arrow, fall, and have Gast’s protection leave me behind. An arm flailed into my side as Maddie shouted, and I hauled her upright.

The light faded and I opened eyes still alight with the afterimage of that massive glow. Between blinks I found the faces of the Baylarians close enough to count individual wrinkles: some stern or solemn or gleeful or nervous or outright confused beneath bronze helms as they watched six people charge towards a force they could not possible overcome.

The shield-bearer directly in line of our charge took a single step back, but the crush of soldiers behind prevented her from moving further. From behind the shields a set of spears extended, readied to dive through skin and organ and flesh to emerge into empty air once again. A stolid middle-aged soldier clapped the trembling man beside him on the shoulder. From somewhere a drum beat, and the line resolved itself to receive us.

Then Vin howled at them – jagged and discordant, as if two screams had been fit into one – and bounded forward faster than I’d seen anyone – Blooded or otherwise – moved before. Several of those holding the front of the line flinched backwards, wide-eyed. They hadn’t the time for anything else. He smashed into them in a blur of flashing onyx, blade darting like a minnow as the bone-spur on his left arm wrenched shields and smashed faces and shoved soldiers to the ground. People flew in the air. Soldiers fell with red grins on their throat or skull bent in the wrong shape. In three seconds, he must’ve killed nearly a dozen people. The army’s three layers were torn almost immediately.

But there was no time for any more quiet observation. I’d caught up. A man on the front of the line had turned his shield to face the Ravenblood, allowing my blade to cleave cleanly through the back of his neck, and then I was with Vin amidst all the screaming and heat.

I stabbed a woman through her armpit and elbowed a spearman in his face. A shield-bearer screamed towards me and jabbed his short-sword towards my torso. I tried to move around it but bounced off a man holding a hammer and chisel towards me as if it were some magic ward so I staggered the opposite direction, whipping my blade into the shield-bearer’s face with a crunch.

When the haft of a spear whacked against my gut I turned and found myself gripped by a large man, beard bristling above meaty arms and a lightly armoured torso. I brought my sword up and tried to bash its hilt against his nose but he’d grabbed my wrist and began squeezing. I wrenched my arm away but his hand already held a knife diving towards me, and I stepped backwards for more space and halted against another person which forced me to catch its tiny blade with my own. The far larger person bore it downwards, spittle flying from between his clenched teeth, and I slowly sunk to my knees. He reared his leg back for a kick which sailed past my head as I slipped aside and slit his femoral artery, crawled between his legs and stabbed someone else’s ankles behind him and then sprung upright into the open, covered in spit, throat alight with a ragged roar.

“Come on!” Vin shouted from ahead.

He and I had opened a large enough space to allow everyone to slip through the infantry and begin sprinting towards the archers. I was the furthest behind, but with most of the soldiers behind me unable to see how many of their fellows we’d killed, it would take a moment for the officers to corral the rest into pursuing us.

From Ronnie’s back, their dog barked incessantly. There were moans and there were cries and there were screams. And there was someone drawing closer to me from behind.

I grunted, ducked under another hissing blow and slashed a man who’d fled the crush across the face. I left him clutching his face between gurgling howls as I sprinted away. The archers waited. We had to make sure they wouldn’t fire as we were running the rest of the distance to Fort Vane. Vin had attempted to argue, but the simplest and cleanest answer to the problem their arrows posed was to kill as many of them as possible.

The distance between the group and the fourteen archers would take barely ten seconds to cross. It was enough space for a few of the cannier ones to recover from their shock and loose arrows towards us. But Gast was pushing in front of Vin and slamming her shining great-shield to the ground. Every arrow fired flew towards the shield like flies to honey, cracking against its metal surface with such ferocity that the force sent Gast toppling to the ground. The lightly armoured archers muttered trembling words of encouragement to one another.

The round Strain was hauled upright a moment later by the combined effort of Maddie and Taja, but the momentary pause gave the archers another chance to fire. I managed to dive behind Gast’s shield a mere breath before they loosed their payload. But this time, her shield wasn’t the only thing to glow purple. While we were distracted, a horsewoman previously close to the archers had pranced further away. Her huge round eyes and lack of expression betrayed her as an Owlblood. Both Vin and I barked a warning, but the arrows were already in the air.

Once again, Gast’s shield shone as her fingers danced across the runestone. Yet the moment the projectiles were released, they emanated a deep purple and swerved away – far too wildly for them to hit any of us in mundane circumstances. But each still gravitated towards the shield, so they arced back towards the six of us huddled together. Some whipped in front of us and broke against the ground, their momentum entirely spent. Others snapped against the shield. But some turned sharply enough to curve behind the shield.

I managed to yank Taja backwards an instant prior to an arrow sailing through where his body had been. Neither Vin nor Maddie were so lucky. From my position on the ground I saw Vin snap his left arm out in front of Ronnie’s head, which immediately erupted in gore as an arrow pierced almost entirely through his forearm. He keeled around his impaled arm with a strangled groan. Beside him, Maddie slipped and fell heavily on her side. It took me several moments to realise one of her thighs had been shot. She blinked astonished tears onto the grass.

I shoved myself upright. “Bastards!” I shrieked, fire filling every inch of my body.

Despite still holding their bows, they didn’t have time for another shot before I was among them, chewing through each like a wolf amidst hens.

I opened one’s throat in the same swing I decapitated another. Broke through a bow held in quivering defence with two hacks, then ripped through the shoulder beneath. Smashed a woman in the head with my hilt, impaled another, then stabbed a third in the throat with a knife before I had even ripped my blade from their comrade. A massive club split the skull of a man in front of me as Ronnie stomped into the fray, face narrowed in grim determination. One flailed at me with a knife, causing me to take two steps backwards and dismember their entire forearm. A flash of a blade from a man in front forced me to crouch, pummel his crotch twice then jam the entirety of my blade through his chin and out the top of his head. The blood sprayed and I felt my snarling grimace transform into a grin.

I’d felt this way before. In places where bodies were pressed against one another, my limbs burning as I strived to kill everyone around me. Full of raw hatred for people I’d never met. All-consuming lust for the sight of the blood of those that faced me; indefatigable proof of my worth writ with brutal simplicity. The lute strapped to my back couldn’t sing to me like the sword could. In the stinking, spitting, thrashing crush of the melee, I was certain nothing could.

Then there was no one left standing to hate, and all I had was a gore-smeared body, heavy limbs, and the cold air against my face. Behind me, someone gurgled a plea for their mother. Someone else begged and bargained with the blood leaving their body. Others just died. I looked at the sword in my hand; the thing I’d spent most of my life drilling into every fibre of my muscles. Steel dressed in the torn remnants of other people’s bodies. It used to shine.

I wished it still did.

The battlefield was a mess. Ronnie leaned on their club beside me, massive body almost as bloody as my own. Their face was twisted in a rictus of dull agony as they cradled an arm against their chest. Yowler barked and whined and moaned from their back.

Behind us, the infantry had begun to wheel around at the behest of several mounted officers. Most bore an expression of disbelieving bafflement at the sight of us amongst the ruins of their archers, thought to be safe under the wall of shields and bronze they were meant to form. In their eyes, it must’ve seemed like we’d sprouted wings and flown over their entire formation. Those beside the point we’d broken through knew better. Confusion was still scrawled across their faces, but underneath the blood and gore it slowly took a different, darker light. If those remaining managed to reach us with a charge, we would be crushed under the two-thirds of the infantry that still stood.

I blinked at that number. Blinked at the sight of so many missing from the hundred-seventy-seven that had originally stood before us. Around fifty bodies lay in the bloody hole we’d pierced through: necks severed; skulls pulped; lives obliterated. We’d been among them for seconds. I’d killed maybe six.

My eyes were drawn farther out, towards Vin’s blood-soaked body. He was withdrawing his boot from a pulped corpse that lay beside the fallen body of a horse. It screamed shrilly at a severed foreleg that would surely kill it. The Owlblood and her mount, I assumed. Every inch of his body was caked in strings of gore, as if he’d waded through a cloying swamp of innards. Blood trickled from his nose and six remaining eyes. The Ravenblood ran a quivering hand through his hair. His eyes were fixed on each of us. The ruined half of his face turned towards me, and I looked away.

Maddie limped towards Fort Vane, supported on one side by Taja. Gast stumbled in their wake, chest heaving. It was a clear shot to our destination: the walls that had seemed squat the previous day now dauntingly tall. A few more minutes of sprinting to add to the constant running that had filled our night.

Its moat was wide enough to break a charge, but the hefty drawbridge would take time to lower and raise. Our little princess had been certain they would let us in. Which they’d need to, because any attempt to swim the moat and scale the battlements to open the gate would likely end with a broken neck. If they didn’t, I’d have to try anyway.

My eyes drifted back to the three as I grabbed Ronnie and began jogging towards them. A flicker of motion on my peripheral vision caught my attention. The cavalry – bereft of eight officers which had whipped their horses over to scream order into the infantry – were beginning to wheel towards them.

I swore and sped into a sprint. Across from Ronnie and I, Vin did the same. As the eight remaining riders urged their horses from a canter into a gallop, it slowly dawned on me that none of us would make it before the horses trampled all three of them.

We screamed warnings to the three of them, and Gast blearily turned her head in the direction we were pointing. She froze, her eyes locked onto the stallions – some of the beasts Blooded in their own right and larger than any other creature on the battlefield – bearing down upon them. A hand danced over the slate of runes attached to her hands. In response, all eight horses’ legs lit up, and each went down in a tangle of horseflesh, as if splintered under the talons of some feckless god. They screamed and screamed, all rolling eyes and sweat-covered hide, spittle flying as their masters howled, crushed beneath their mounts’ bodies. One horse wobbled upright, only for a bone to crumple like a dry twig underneath it.

Two men survived the horses’ fall. One was an Oxblood, who’d been thrown clear of it all by the bucking of his gargantuan steed. Once he staggered upright, the man towered over the rest of the battlefield. His gaze fell on the mass of broken bodies, then his wide, disbelieving eyes fell onto Gast, Taja, and Maddie. Suddenly, the Blooded’s ugly features twisted into rage beyond mortal comprehension.

Behind him was Davian, bound arms bruised where they’d shielded him from the fall.

The giant flexed his meaty palms. A low rumble emanated from his chest as he began stomping towards them. When the Oxblood managed a full sprint, he would be as unstoppable as the wind itself.

Davian must’ve known this as well, because he’d hauled a sword from the one of the dying horsemen. After a limping burst of speed, the far smaller man was close enough to throw his entire body upwards, into a ragged, sloppy swing. Any warrior worth investing Oxblood into should’ve noticed his footsteps. But the Blooded couldn’t be the same man he’d been as a mortal. I wondered if he could hear anything in his divine rage.

The blade slipped underneath the Oxblood's lamellar armour to slam through skin, muscle, bone, and finally intestines. The old man howled as the impact shuddered through his broken fingers and staggered backwards, leaving the sword in the Oxblood. Who turned and kicked Davian with enough force to tear the wound across his own torso; to break every frail bone in the old man’s torso in a series of snaps that in my mind sounded as if an entire forest had been torn asunder. In a sound that I knew I would never forget.

The Oxblood collapsed, muscles no longer able to support his immense weight. Davian spun through the air like a ragdoll tossed by an angry child. He slammed against the grass. He rolled. He slowed. Bones stuck in every direction. His lips flapped, silent except for broken shards of noise.

Ronnie, Vin and I finally arrived at the others and stared as Davian halted in front of the line of infantry, who had finally finished rotating themselves to face us. Distant as we were, I could still see them raise their feet.

“No,” Vin mumbled. He shivered like a frightened dog.

They advanced.

“No, no,” he said.

A boot fell upon Davian’s shaking fingers with a crunch.

“Stop,” he said quietly, then continued at greater volume. “Stop! Please!”

But they could no more hear our cries than a child who had just seen the world collapse around them. Another boot crushed the old man’s crooked elbow flat.

“No, no, no, no.” Vin pressed his skull between his two arms blackened by their own blood.

Another boot pressed down on Davian’s face, and then he vanished behind a forest of legs, inexorably moving onwards.

Vin’s sword dropped from limp fingers as he wrapped his arms around himself, eyes fixed on the point that old know-it-all had vanished. That was how I knew Davian was dead.

“Vin,” Taja said, and grabbed the torn remains of the Ravenblood’s tunic.

The man flinched away from the touch.

I blinked. I swallowed. I rubbed moisture from my eyes. “We needa move.” It took me a moment to recognise the words were my own.

Vin said nothing. The army of infantry began speeding up.

I worked saliva into my dry mouth. “We need to godsdamn move, people.”

Ronnie nodded through watery eyes. Maddie gave a wide-eyed nod. Gast bobbed her head. Taja nodded, lips in a thin line. Vin didn’t move.

“You lumbering oaf.” The insult fell limply from my lips. “We have to run.”

“It’s all my fault,” he breathed.

“What’re you talking about?” I finally snapped. “Move, you damned fool!”

“I made the plan,” he said, gaze unmoving. “I lied to you about who we were; where we were going. I organised the caravan for Head Maleen.”

“Tully?” Maddie breathed. “Is that…” Her voice cracked, and her face folded into sudden tears.

“You aren’t Tully, Vin,” Taja said, and the huge man’s breathing grew increasingly erratic in response. “You’re not her. It cannot be your fault.”

His eyes quivered, flickering between all of us yet not truly seeing anything. “I killed Whip.”

“There was nothing you could do!” I snarled, surprised by the sudden severity of the emotion that welled within me. “Nothing! She- She told us what to do! We all agreed to this! We all wanted this!”

“No one wanted this!” He jammed his sword in its sheath, opening his arms to the death around us. “And I knew, I knew it would end this way. I could’ve pushed harder in Spires, to avoid all of this – persuaded you or sabotaged everything – but I said- “

He gritted his teeth, blinking the one remaining eye on his face rapidly. “- I said, ‘It’s not my business,’” Despite his voice cracking into sharp, rough tones, he continued still. “That carrion call, cowardice summarised in a single line, and I did nothing, and the second time on the hill when I was seduced by the thing I wanted most, and there’s nothing,” he moaned, “I did to stop any of this.”

“We made our choices! The past is the past,” I insisted with trembling lips. “It’s done. It’s gone. We can’t do anything; We move on.”

But the time for persuading Vin had passed long ago. I was only speaking to myself.

Tears leaked from each of the Ravenblood’s eyes. The ravaged chasm of his empty eye-socket wept onyx blood. “I killed her in every way that matters! My mistakes caused everything! I killed her! I slit her throat myself!”

“You didn’t- “

I stopped. Whip hadn’t died from a slit throat. “Who’re you talkin’ about?”

“They won’t kill me again. I’ll protect you, this time,” he sobbed. “I’ll keep you safe. I’ll keep you safe.”

Ronnie’s shoulders quietly shook as the giant wept. They faced towards the oncoming horde of Baylarian soldiers.

“Vin,” Maddie pleaded. “We can’t do this without you.”

“I’ll protect you,” he promised. “I’ll keep you safe.”

I grabbed the side of his shirt. “Please.”

But Vin wasn’t there. All that remained was that same phrase, muttered endlessly by a frozen body, as if every minute contour of his soul was bent towards a single task. Calcified by a substance too intractable to budge at charging army or apocalypse. A thing that could only be still. Frozen in an eternal flinch.

“I’ll keep you safe,” echoed endlessly, far quieter than the charging ranks of soldiers yet dominating my consciousness all the same. But even as Ronnie braced themselves for the impact of the wave of human flesh, Taja, Gast, and Maddie all stared at Vin’s face in abject horror.

I slowly inched around his body, and saw what they had. Vin’s mouth was closed. The words continued from him, regardless.

With slow, trembling steps, I followed the sound around to his back, where I’d thought the wounds of the arrowheads had long since coagulated. Instead, the rent fragments of his tunic revealed his darkly bloodied back, where a toothless, tongueless maw quietly spoke.

“I’ll keep you safe,” it said. “I’ll keep you safe.”

My vision blurred too much to see. I was crying. I had been for some time.

I sheathed my sword, and raised its scabbarded form above my head.

“I’m sorry,” I told it.

Perhaps he was too focused on the other enemies. Perhaps he truly could not move. Perhaps he had forgotten we weren’t sculptures. Whatever the reason, Vin didn’t move when I brought the weapon down on the back of his head. He listed sideways for a moment, then fell, motionless.

I held the blade for a second. Then I drew it again.

“Ronnie,” I said, wiping my face, “grab Vin. We need to get him to Vane. He’ll get the blood out.”