If I wanted any chance of survival, the first thing I’d better do was stop the blood loss. I stripped off my jacket, and then grabbed the knife and cut the sleeves into strips. I didn’t bother taking off my glove—it was probably helping to keep the wound together—and simply wound the strips of material as tightly as I could over my hand and forearm. It would make grabbing and firing weapons harder, but realistically, a lack of movement in one hand wasn’t going to make a great deal of difference if we were caught.
I shoved my jacket back on then pushed upright. There was nothing on the horizon, no sign of dust, and absolutely no indication of where we were. I unclipped the small compass from my belt and held it away from my body. The needle swung about for a second or two, then settled on north. Winterborne lay to the south, Blacklake to the west. All of which wasn’t much help when I had no idea where we’d actually landed and therefore how far we were from either of them. I bent and roughly shook Saska. “Wake up.”
“Can’t,” she mumbled. “Everything hurts.”
I’d heard that sometimes when a witch used too much of their strength to summon and control wind and weather, their body could be thrown into such a state of shock that could take hours—if not days—for them to recover, but I wouldn’t have thought that would have applied here.
But then, what would I know? I wasn’t witch trained and had never asked the wind to do much more than throw up the occasional dust devil.
“Where did you ask the wind to take us?” I said. “Where did it leave us?”
“Home,” she said. “I told it to go home.”
“And is your home Winterborne?”
“No. Yes.” The wind stirred, briefly teasing her hair, and then she waved a hand. “West. We went west.”
Meaning we were probably closer to Blacklake than Winterborne. Which was handy, given the garrison had emptied out to rescue us, but only if they weren’t headed in the opposite direction to where we now were.
“We need to start walking.”
“I can’t.”
“You must.” I reached down, grabbed her hand with my one good one, then planted my feet and hauled her upright. She cursed me, her language colorful and inventive. No gently raised witch, this one, I thought with a grin.
“Lean on me.” I gripped her waist with my bad hand—as much as I was able to anyway—to steady her.
She flung an arm around my shoulders and, after a stumble or two, we began walking in a westerly direction. Although our pace wasn’t great, it was at least momentum.
Time ticked by. The sun got higher, and no matter how hard I scanned the horizon, there was no sign that anyone or anything was coming to rescue us. But there was also no sign of the Adlin, so I guess that evened things out.
We continued walking. The barrenness of this place seemed to stretch on, with no relief in sight. Wherever the hell the wind had blown us, it obviously wasn’t anywhere near the Blacklake encampment. While I hadn’t actually been there, I’d done escort duty to Farsprings, and that place was a veritable garden, thanks to its closeness to the river and the attention the two witches who did duty there gave to the soil immediately around the encampment. I could see no reason why Blacklake, with the river running across its western flank, would be any different.
As the day grew hotter and the air shimmered, walking became more and more difficult. My arm burned, the pain a pulse that was as rapid as my heartbeat, and an odd lightheadedness was beginning to take hold.
That’s when I saw it.
The dust.
Relief stirred and I staggered to a stop. The approaching cloud was thick and heavy, and spoke of numbers.
“I think the cavalry just found us, Saska.”
“No.”
The reply was so softly spoken I wouldn’t have heard it if not for the wind snatching it up toward me. That same wind spoke of the dust and the things that came.
It wasn’t the Blacklake soldiers. It was the Adlin.
They’d found us.
Somehow, the bastards had found us.
I couldn’t run. Nor could I call the wind—not to lift us up and whisk us away. I didn’t have the strength to maintain such an order, even if the wind would obey a call like that from me. Maybe Saska could… but even as that thought crossed my mind, her knees buckled and she became a deadweight that almost dragged me down with her.
I let her go, took a deep breath, and tried to think. To plan. After a moment, I pressed the earwig and said, “This is Nightwatch eight-three, sending out a code red call. We are on foot and in trouble. The earwig is malfunctioning and the scooter is destroyed. Adlin have our scent. We have, perhaps, ten minutes. If you’re out there, if you’re listening, come save our asses. And if you can’t do that, come get our bodies.”
Or whatever was left of them after the Adlin had finished with us.
I glanced around again, looking for someplace to make a stand, to give us hope, but there was absolutely nothing but flat, hard earth….
Maybe that was our salvation.
I gathered the wind to my hand, directed it at the soil, and asked it to dig. Maybe she sensed my desperation and need, because she gathered speed and strength as she clawed at the soil. Dust flew all around us, a choking cloud that would flag our presence to anyone who was out there. It didn’t matter, because the only things that were out there were the Adlin, and they were already well aware of us.
A short trench that was three feet wide and almost double that in depth was soon created. I directed the wind sideways to create a cave, then jumped into the trench and dragged Saska in after me. There was very little room to maneuver but that was the whole point.
The fierce, trumpeting war cry of the Adlin bit across the howling of the wind. I closed my eyes and urged the air to hurry. She picked up strength, tearing at my hair and clothes, threatening to suck us into the vortex that was hammering through the rocklike soil. Chunks of earth began to explode all around us. I shifted to protect Saska’s naked body, but it was mostly the smaller pieces that hit us. The larger chunks were flung upwards and shot sideways. Maybe the wind was doing her bit to help us.
When a deep enough cave had been created in the soil, I asked the wind to ease, then shifted my grip on Saska and dragged her to the very back of the earth shelter. It was about twelve feet in length and three wide, and a little too grave-like, when I thought about. But at least the Adlin, with their big bodies and wide shoulders, would have trouble getting down here en masse.
Their roaring cut out again. I grabbed the gut busters, double-checked they were fully loaded and undamaged, and then returned to the cave’s opening. For a minute, everything was silent. Nothing moved other than the floating dust.
Then a big, hairy body appeared high in the air before thumping feet first into the trench. He wedged tight at hip level and began to pound and tear at the soil. I dropped the guns, grabbed the knife, and slashed at his legs, severing tendons and biting deep into bone. He roared and twisted, the earth shuddering under the force of his blows. Dust and stone rained around me, but I continued to saw at his legs, until one was amputated and the other hanging by threads. Blood poured from the remains of his limbs, a black river that spoke of death. This time, it was his rather than mine. But the trembling earth told me there were at least five others up there, if not more.