Allena mounted her horse and galloped out of Stormhall toward Tanzik. She furtively checked her clothes and sleeves for blood. She found one smear on her sleeve and her heart quickened as she swallowed the lump in her throat. She held her hand over the stain and tapped into the energy of the Void to bring a flame from her fingertips to burn the area. She could explain a burn better than blood. The whole situation made her sick to her stomach, but she didn’t have time to slow down.
Eventually she made her way to Tanzik a few miles down the road. He slowed to let her catch up. He looked at her and saw messy hair, sweat on her brow, tears in her eyes, and a scorch mark on her sleeve. She was noticeably breathing heavily as well.
“You okay? You look like you just saw a murder.”
Her heart skipped a beat and she forced an awkward smile. “No, just… talking with Lura took longer than I expected, I had to ride pretty fast to catch up, I’m just winded. Caught my arm on a torch on the way over I was being so careless.” She laughed uncomfortably and reached up to tie her hair back, knowing it must look like a mess. Her hands ran over the scars where her ears used to be and she felt a pang of sorrow and homesickness.
“Hm.” He looked past her into the setting sun. He truly believed she was going to join them. “So I was wrong.”
“Yeah. Sorry. This thing she’s pursuing… it’s more important to her than this. Which is fair, her life is on the line.”
“Maybe for the best,” he said, but his heart was heavy. He’d grown fond of her in a way, after traveling with her for a while.
“Well, you’ve still got me. I’m not going anywhere.”
Tanzik snapped out of his reverie and smiled. “Thanks, Allena. Glad you’re here.”
Allena smiled in return and looked away, not able to make eye contact with him.
“There was a good place to camp about an hour out from here,” Tanzik said. “Be a little past dark at that point, but we can’t waste any time. We’ll have to leave before light as well.”
“I’ll keep watch, I don’t think I’ll be sleeping much.”
***
Allena barely slept and woke up with a nightmare an hour before the sun rose. She woke Tanzik and they ate a quick breakfast while loading up. They rode southwest toward the border at Monscal and Perandor where they expected the Imperial front line to be. They hoped they would be able to cut the couriers off before then, but they were behind by almost a full day.
Allena used her magic to create a beam of light to illuminate the path ahead of them to make travel faster in the dark. They stopped a couple times to eat and let the horses rest, then stopped again after the sun went down to sleep.
The next day it rained and the roads were hard to traverse with the mud. Tanzik put on another cloak as the freezing rain and wind gave him deep and uncomfortable chills. They stopped to eat and Allena took his hands and used her magic to warm him up.
“Thanks,” he said shakily.
“Of course. I know it won’t last long, though.”
“It’s fine, a little break is all I need.”
“Do you regret coming to Serevar?”
“Gods above, almost every day.” He grinned. “Sort of. The only other place to avoid the Empire was the Deadlands, and that was too long of a journey. And from what I’ve heard it’s even less livable than here.”
“Plus you never would’ve met me.”
“There’s that, too.”
The next day they rode into the evening and crested a large hill with an overlook that surveyed the long windswept plains near the Monscalan border. They saw a pinprick of light flickering slightly far into the distance.
“See that light? That must be them,” Allena said. She could see the shadows of two horses near the fire which must have belonged to the couriers.
“How can you tell? I can barely make out the light.”
“Just hoping.”
“Well, we need to sleep a little, get our strength back and let the horses rest.”
“At this distance I bet we could catch up to them in a couple hours.”
“If we caught up to them this quick, they’re probably taking their time. I don’t think they expected anything would go wrong.”
“Better for us that way. That means they’ll probably wait until daylight. So we set out early again, we should catch them before they leave.”
“Good idea,” Tanzik said as he unloaded the camping supplies. “Let’s go back a ways though. If we can see their fire, they might be able to see ours.”
A few hours later they packed up, donned their armor, and rode out toward the other encampment. When they got close, just as the sun was beginning to rise, they dismounted to approach quieter on foot. Tanzik took the bow initially intended for Lura in addition to his own weapons.
“How are we handling this?” Allena asked.
“You’re quieter than me, I’ll stay back and cover. You close in and check to see if they’re the couriers and take them out if they are.”
Allena froze in place and her face betrayed her concern. She stuttered for a second.
“Never mind, sorry. You’ve handled yourself so well I forget you’re not a soldier. I can do the dirty work. Just check to see if they’re our quarry. If so, stay off to the side and I’ll take care of them. If they wake up before I kill them, I’ll chase and you flank.”
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“Okay. I can do that. Wish me luck?”
Tanzik raised a corner of his mouth in a slight grin. “You don’t need it, you’ll do great.”
Allena nodded and moved forward, walking slowly and quietly as she kept an eye on the ground to make sure she didn’t step on anything loud. She crept closer and reached into the satchel beside the horses. One of them stirred and Allena froze in fear, pausing to see if the people in their bedrolls woke up. When they didn’t, she put a hand to her chest to calm her racing heart and looked through the bag.
There was a small scroll case inside under a burlap sack of salted meats. She popped it open and took out the parchment. She scanned it quickly and confirmed the two people were in fact couriers delivering the message of surrender. She kept the parchment and put the scroll case back in the bag. She folded the paper to slip into her pocket. She took a deep, quiet breath and began to walk away.
Tanzik nocked an arrow and pointed it at the closes courier. He saw Allena pocket a paper and walk away. She waved at him and he nodded. He took careful aim, waited until the wind died down a little, then loosed the arrow. It struck one of the couriers in the arm and he woke up screaming. The second woke up and rushed toward a weapon. Tanzik shot a second arrow that missed him as both couriers were awake and rushing toward him.
Allena charged in with her staff, thrusting it forward to trip the wounded man. Tanzik aimed again and shot an arrow straight in the middle of the second courier’s chest, then rushed in to finish him off with his spear. Allena kept back from the wounded courier, using her staff to keep him away. Tanzik hurled his spear and struck him in the side, killing him.
“Nice throw,” Allena said. “Found their letter.” She took it out and a flare of magic burst from her palm and ignited the parchment on fire. She dropped it as it reduced to cinders and ash.
“You didn’t have to do that, we could’ve lit a fire so you didn’t have to use magic.”
“It… yeah. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She meant it, she burned it without a second thought. The callousness bothered her for a second, but she shook it off.
“It’s all right. I don’t mind at all, was just thinking of you. See anything else good in their bags?”
“Some food, but I didn’t look closely.” They rifled through the bags and found a few crowns in a coinpurse, but no other papers.
“Good,” Tanzik said. “That means we can head back to Stormhall.”
Allena froze. “Um… do you think we could actually scout the front?”
Tanzik rubbed his beard in thought for a moment. “That’s actually a good idea. I don’t think King Hárkast has much of an idea what’s going on down here, I’m sure he’d like to know how far the Empire’s made it.”
They took the couriers’ supplies and horses, and kept heading west. A couple day later, they found a village perched atop a hill in the distance, burning, with Imperial banners waving nearby.
“Gods above,” Allena said as she covered her mouth.
“They’re a lot closer than I thought they’d be,” Tanzik said. “We need to hurry.”
***
Lura woke up with a throbbing pain all throughout her body. She tried to move but couldn’t, and the pain intensified when she tried. She tried to muffle her cry of anguish, but was unsuccessful. She heard a clatter behind her and the darkness was suddenly awash with a blinding light from a lantern on the wall.
“So what’s this, then?” She heard a woman say in a slurred Monscalan accent. “Awake, awake. You shouldn’t be awake, little girl. Your pain should not allow it. Nor will I.”
Lura could barely see but she saw the large frame of the woman wreathed in shadow. She poured a foul-smelling concoction from an opaque bottle into a small bowl and brought it to Lura’s lips.
She tried to fight but felt her body tied down by straps. Her muscles burned anyway, and she was too weak to move. The liquid tasted worse than it smelled, with a fierce alcohol taste mixed with a nauseatingly bitter herb. She gagged, but a firm hand covered her mouth and nose and she swallowed unwillingly while an unbearable pain shot through her body from the attempted movement. Her head swam and she quickly passed out.
She woke up again, gasping and screaming, only tangentially aware that she now had the capability of doing so. She still couldn’t move, but her vision was better and she felt more aware.
“No, no, no, little girl,” said the familiar voice of her apparent captor. “You will not be heard. Quiet now, or I give you another taste of medicine.”
Lura remembered the fetid liquid from before and bit her lip to stop from screaming as her body shook. From fear or cold, she couldn’t tell, but the woman seemed happy.
“Now, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Yudhi. I think you know who I work for.” She sat down in a chair beside Lura, and she finally got a good look at her. She was very muscular and carried herself with the confidence and strength of an enforcer. Lura’s heart sank and she immediately gave up any hope she had of walking out alive.
“Rooks,” she whispered hoarsely, the word feeling like broken glass as she spoke it.
Yudhi nodded grimly. “This saves me the trouble of explaining, little girl. It is enough for you to know you are alive by our good grace.”
“Why?”
Yudhi leaned back and her eyebrows raised as a sort of shrug. “Even a broken tool has its uses. Once you are well, you will answer our questions. You will make right what you did wrong. And once we have wrung every drop of use from you… then you can die.”
Lura’s breathing grew heavy and ragged as tears fell from the sides of her eyes onto the slab she was tied to.
“Yes, cry if you must. There is dark work ahead. Get better. Get strong. Else you’ll cross the Rooks a second time.”
Time had lost all meaning to Lura. She slipped in and out of sleep and consciousness to the point she had no idea if she was even alive. One time she awoke and felt almost as lucid as she did before she was stabbed. The thought brought a fury back to her and she began to shake as her fists clenched. Her lips trembled and formed an angry sneer as impotent tears streaked down her face.
“I know that look,” she heard Yudhi say. She was seated a few feet away, arms crossed. “Revenge is a bleak deed. Your eyes are like shark’s. I pity whoever stabbed you.”
“Where am I?”
“Stormhall. Underground. The details don’t concern you now. I ask the questions. Where’s the iron token?”
“The person who stabbed me destroyed it.”
Yudhi’s face flashed a brief look of confusion. “Oh. This is bad news for you, little girl. It was very important to us.”
“Yeah. I get that.”
“You don’t. Why did you steal it?”
“I thought it was valuable. Thought I could get some easy money… vanish from this godsforsaken place. I thought…” She gritted her teeth in pain and took a deep breath. “I thought it would lead to something big if I could just find out what it was.”
“No,” Yudhi said, almost pityingly. “You were dead as soon as you touched it. The token itself has no value, and it doesn’t lead to any treasure. Not the way you’re thinking. Why did your attacker destroy it?”
“I don’t know. I think she knew something about it. She was almost obsessive, like she was hiding something.”
At this, a touch of concern crossed Yudhi’s face. “Who is this woman? And how could she destroy it?”
“Sod off. I’m dead anyway, I’m not going to give you the satisfaction.”
Yudhi got up calmly and moved to where Lura was laying. She put a hand on her wound and pressed gently. Lura gasped and her eyes widened in shock as an agony burst through her whole body. “You are dead, little girl. But before you die, you will give me what I want.”
Lura tried to resist, but as the pressure increased and her screams only amplified the pain, she shouted out “She’s a mage!”
Yudhi stopped immediately and took a step back in surprise. Lura choked on air as she desperately tried to breathe through the pain. “Too bold for a lie. You mean it, don’t you?” Lura nodded as her fists clenched, nails digging into her palms. “So a mage knew about the token. Then she destroyed it and left you for dead to protect its secret.”
“What bloody secret?”
Yudhi ignored her and put a finger to her lips in thought. “Could you draw an image of the token from memory?”
“Yeah.”
“And do you know where this mage went?”
“I do.”
“Then today is your lucky day, Lura Habod.”
“Feels like it.”
Yudhi undid the straps on the table that were tying Lura down. “Oh, yes. For one, you’re going to be the first person to cross the Rooks and live.”
Lura frowned. She wasn’t strong enough to sit up yet, but she felt a slight ease in the pain as the pressure of the straps lifted. “Not like that. You’ve made it clear that I’m a dead woman. What’s the catch?”
“That’s the second thing,” Yudhi said as she adjusted her sleeves casually. “You’re going to kidnap a mage.”