Behind her, Mace snarled a curse before shouting, “On the right!”
Looking around, Kelsea now saw a second group of men, perhaps four or five strong, cloaked in black, bearing down from the northwest, angling to intercept them before they reached the river. Even if Rake was strong enough to outrun both parties in pursuit, Kelsea would be cut off when the river forced her to turn. The river was wide, perhaps twenty yards across, and even from this distance, Kelsea could see that the deep green water flowed rapidly along, occasional spits and sprays betraying underwater rocks. It was too fast and wild to swim, and no boats were visible. Kelsea saw no option, but still her thoughts wandered back helplessly across that vast green land that stretched to all horizons, the fields covered with people. Her responsibility.
If she could gallop west along the riverbank, she thought, both packs of pursuers would be forced to follow her along the water’s edge; there would be no more angles for them to cut her off. They would probably catch her anyway, but it would extend the time during which a miracle was possible. She tightened her grip and rode headlong for the river. Blood from the wound on her neck spattered across her chin and cheek with each stride.
When the water was perhaps fifty feet away, Kelsea yanked on the reins, trying to take the other riders by surprise with a right turn. But Rake misinterpreted the movement and stopped short, and Kelsea went flying, taking in a confused muddle of inverted river and sky before she landed flat on her stomach. Her wind had been knocked out so completely that she could only chuff out small puffs of air. She pushed herself up, but her legs wouldn’t respond. She tried to force breath in and only managed a hitching gasp. The sound of approaching horses seemed to fill the world.
To her left, a man shouted, “The girl! The girl, damn you! Deal with the Mace later, take the girl!”
Something crashed to the ground in front of her. Kelsea looked up and saw Mace, his sword raised in one hand and his mace in the other, facing down four men in red cloaks. The Caden were all quite different in appearance, dark and light, tall and short. One even had a mustache. But each face had the same hard, blank look: disciplined ferocity. The light-skinned assassin got through Mace’s guard and raked the point of a sword across his collarbone. Blood spattered across the Caden’s face and sank into the scarlet of his cloak, but Mace ignored the wound, reached out with one hand, and jabbed his attacker in the throat. The man in red collapsed with a gargling, choking sound, his windpipe crushed.
Mace backed up to stand directly in front of Kelsea now, waiting, a weapon raised in each fist. Another Caden rushed him and Mace dropped to his knees, his sword slicing through the air. The Caden fell to the ground, shrieking in agony. His right leg had been severed just below the knee; blood fountained from the stump in bursts, soaking the riverbank a deep red. After a moment, Kelsea realized that she was watching the rhythm of the man’s dying pulse, his heart pumping out his lifeblood onto the sand.
Dimly, she realized that she should do something. But her legs still weren’t responding, and her ribs ached horribly. The two remaining Caden came at Mace from each side, but Mace ducked them neatly and buried his mace in the side of one man’s head, crushing it in a spray of blood and bone. Mace didn’t recover quickly enough; the last assassin reached him and sliced him up the hip, his sword tearing cleanly through the leather band at Mace’s waist. Mace dove beneath him, rolled once, and came to his feet with the grace of an animal, swinging the mace with crushing force against the assassin’s spine. Kelsea heard a snap, a sound like Barty breaking a branch of greenwood, and the Caden thumped to the ground.
Behind Mace, Kelsea saw that the black-cloaked men had arrived and dropped from their horses with swords already drawn. Mace whirled and charged forward to meet them while Kelsea watched with a sense of disappointed wonder . . . it seemed such a waste for him to die here. She’d never heard of anyone beating one Caden swordsman before, let alone four. She took her hand from her neck and found it slick with blood. Was it possible to bleed to death from a shallow wound? Barty had never covered death or dying.
Someone reached beneath Kelsea’s arms and flipped her onto her back. Black spots danced in front of her eyes. The gash in her neck tore wider and began to pulse with warm blood. Her legs splayed out, the feeling in them reawakened to horrible life as though shards of glass were being driven into her calves. A face loomed just above hers, a face the color of pale death with fathomless black holes for eyes and a bloodstained mouth, and Kelsea screamed before she could help it, before she realized that it was only a mask.
“Sir. The Mace.”
Kelsea looked up and saw a second masked man standing in front of her, though his mask was a mercifully plain black.
“Knock him out,” ordered the man in the white mask. “We’ll take him with us.”
“Sir?”
“Look around you, How. Four Caden, all by himself! He’ll be trouble, for certain, but it would be criminal to waste such a fighter. He comes with us.”
Kelsea hauled herself up, though her neck shrieked in protest, and reached a sitting position in time to see Mace, bleeding from numerous wounds now, surrounded by several black-masked men. One of them darted forward, quick as a weasel, and brought his sword hilt down on the back of Mace’s head.
“Don’t!” Kelsea cried as Mace crumpled to the ground.
“He’ll be fine, girl,” said the white-masked man above her. “Get yourself together.”
Kelsea dragged herself to her feet. “What do you want with me?”
“You’re in no position to demand answers, girl.” He held out a flask of water, but she ignored it. Black eyes gleamed behind the mask’s eyeholes as he studied her, peering closely at her neck. “Nasty. How did that happen?”
“A Mort hawk,” Kelsea replied grudgingly.
“God bless your uncle. His taste in allies is no better than his taste in clothing.”
“Sir! More Caden! From the north!”
Kelsea turned northward. A cloud of dust was visible across the acres of farmland, deceptively small at this distance, but Kelsea thought that the party in pursuit must be at least ten men strong, a reddish mass against the horizon.
“Any more hawks?” asked the leader.
“No. How shot one down.”
“Thank Christ for that. Tie up the horses; we’ll take them with us.”
Kelsea turned to look at the river. It was deep and wild, the far bank covered in trees and shrubs that overhung the water for at least five hundred yards downstream. If she could swim the width of the river, she could probably manage to pull herself out.
“What a coveted prize you are,” the leader remarked beside her. “You don’t look like much.”
Kelsea whirled toward the river. She didn’t make three steps before he grabbed her elbow and threw her toward a second man, nearly the size of a bear, who caught her neatly beneath the arms.
“Don’t try to run from us, girl,” the leader told her, his voice cold. “We might kill you, yes, but the Caden will kill you, and give the Regent your head as a prize.”
Kelsea weighed her options and decided she had none. Five masked men surrounded her. Mace lay on the ground twenty feet away; Kelsea could see him breathing, but his body was limp. When one of the men finished binding Mace’s hands, two more picked him up and began to bundle him onto his horse. Kelsea had no sword, and didn’t know how to use one anyway. She turned back to the leader and nodded her consent.
“Morgan, take her on your horse.” The leader turned and mounted his own horse, raising his voice as he did so. “Quickly now! Watch for outriders!”
“Up, Lady,” Morgan said, his voice surprisingly gentle in contrast to his massive frame and black mask. “Here.”
Kelsea placed her foot in the makeshift stirrup of his hands and hauled herself onto his horse. Her neck was bleeding freely again; the right shoulder of her shirt was soaked, and scarlet rivulets had begun to drip down her forearm. She could smell her own blood, a coppery odor like the old pennies Barty kept in his keepsake box at home. Once a week, he would polish them meticulously and then show them to Kelsea: dull round copper coins with a stately bearded man on the face, remnants of a time long gone. It seemed strange that a good memory could be triggered by the smell of blood.
Morgan climbed up behind her; Kelsea felt the horse settle appreciably under his weight. His arms provided a sturdy frame on either side. Kelsea ripped the fabric of her sleeve until she had a patch to press against her neck. The wound definitely needed stitches, and soon, but she was determined not to leave a blood trail on the ground.
They galloped along the river’s edge. Kelsea wondered where they could go, for the river certainly ran too fast and wild for the horses to swim, and there was no sign of a bridge. Glancing north, Kelsea saw that the group of red cloaks had changed direction and were now on a direct course to intercept. But the masked men around her gave no hint of where they were going, whether they had a plan of escape. The leader rode in front, and behind him another man rode Mace’s stallion with Mace thrown across the saddle, his inert form bouncing with each of the horse’s strides. Kelsea could see only a little blood, but his grey cloak covered the bulk of his body. All of the masked men seemed singularly focused on the road ahead; they didn’t even turn to track the progress of her pursuers, nor did they look at Kelsea, and she felt another pang at her own helplessness. On her own, she would have been dead in a heartbeat.
“Now!” the leader shouted.
The earth turned beneath Morgan’s horse and they galloped headlong into the river. Kelsea shut her eyes and held her breath, preparing for the icy water, but it didn’t come. All around them the current roared wildly, freezing droplets scattering in the air and soaking Kelsea’s pants to the knees. But when she opened her eyes, she found that they were incomprehensibly crossing the river, the horses’ hooves splashing with each step, yet striking solid ground.
Impossible, she thought, her eyes wide with astonishment. But the proof was before her: they were cutting a broad diagonal across the river, each step bringing them closer to the far bank. They passed between two boulders jutting upward from the water, so close that Kelsea could see patches of deep emerald moss slicked across the surface. She thought of the glowing jewel around her neck, and almost laughed. The day had been full of wonders.
When they reached dry ground, the group of horses immediately cut into the woods. For the second time that day, Kelsea found her face whipped and snapped by trees, but she tucked her chin into her chest and made no sound.
Deep in the shade of a massive oak, the leader raised his hand and they brought their horses to a stop. Behind them, the river was barely visible through the trees. The leader brought his horse around in a circle and then sat motionless, staring back toward the far bank.
“That should puzzle them for a while,” one of the men muttered.
Kelsea turned, ignoring a wave of dizziness, and peered through the branches of the oak. She could see nothing, only the gleam of sunlight off the water. But one of the black-masked men chuckled. “They’re stumped, all right. They’ll be there for hours.”
Now she could hear their pursuers: raised voices and an answering shout of “I don’t know!”
“The lady needs stitching,” Morgan announced behind Kelsea, startling her. “She’s losing too much blood.”
“Indeed,” the leader replied, fixing Kelsea with his black eyes. She stared back, trying to ignore his mask. The face was a harlequin, but much more sinister, awful in some way that she couldn’t put her finger on. It reminded her of nightmares she’d had as a child. Nevertheless, she forced herself to sit up straight and stare back at him while blood pooled in the crook of her arm. “Who are you?”
“I am the long death of the Tearling. Forgive us.” He nodded, looking over her head, and before Kelsea could turn around, the world went dark.