An Ember in the Ashes

Helene had yanked on my belt—she must have attached the rope then.

Which means she is on the other end. Which means if the soldiers throw her over and I’m still dangling like a comatose spider, we’ll both fall hard and fast to the hereafter.
I swing toward the cliff face and scrabble for a handhold. The rope is thirty feet long, and this close to the base of the watchtower, the cliffs aren’t as sheer. A granite shelf juts out from a fissure a few feet away. I wedge myself in tightly and only just in time.
A shriek echoes from above me followed by a tumble of blonde and silver. I brace my legs and pull in the rope as fast as I can, but I am still nearly yanked off the rock shelf by the force of Helene’s weight.
“I’ve got you, Hel,” I shout, knowing how terrified she must be hanging hundreds of feet in the air like this. “Hold on.”
When I pull her into the fissure, she is wild-eyed and shaking. There is hardly room for both of us on the shelf, and she grabs my shoulders to anchor herself.
“It’s all right, Hel.” I tap the ledge with a boot. “See? Solid rock beneath us.” She nods into my shoulder, clinging to me in a most un-Helene-like way.
Even through our armor, I feel her curves, and my stomach leaps strangely.
She fidgets, which really doesn’t help things, seemingly as aware as I of the closeness of our bodies. My face grows hot at the sudden tension between us.
Focus, Elias.
I pull away from her as an arrow thunks into the rock beside us—we’ve been spotted.
“We’re easy pickings on this ledge,” I say. “Here.” I unknot the cord from my belt and hers, and stuff it into her hands. “Tie this to an arrow. Make it tight.”
She does as I ask while I grab a bow from my back and scan the cliffs for a harness. One dangles fifteen feet away. It’s a shot I could make with my eyes closed—except that the legionnaires are hauling the harness back up the cliff face and into the tower.
Helene hands me the arrow, and before more missiles come hurtling from above, I lift my bow, notch the arrow, shoot.
And miss.
“Damn it!” The legionnaires pull the harness just out of range. They yank up the other harnesses along the cliff, strap themselves in, and begin rappelling down.
“Elias—” Helene nearly flings herself off the ledge trying to avoid an arrow, grabbing on to my arm. “We have to get out of here.”
“I figured that out, thanks.” I barely dodge an arrow myself. “If you’ve got a genius plan, I’m open to ideas.”
Helene grabs the bow from me, takes aim with the corded arrow, and a second later, one of the legionnaires rappelling down goes limp. She pulls the body over and unbuckles him from the harness. I try to ignore the distant thump of the soldier’s body hitting the dunes. Hel frees the cord while I grab the harness and strap myself in—I’ll have to carry her down.
“Elias,” she whispers when she realizes what we have to do. “I—I can’t—”
“You can. I won’t let you fall. I promise.”
I test the harness anchor with a sharp yank, hoping it will hold the weight of two fully armed Masks.
“Climb onto my back.” I take her chin and force her to meet my eyes.
“Rope us together like before. Wrap your legs around my waist. Don’t let go until we hit the sand.”
She does as I ask and ducks her head into my neck as I leap off the edge, her breath coming short and fast.
“Don’t fall, don’t fall,” I hear her muttering. “Don’t fall, don’t—”
Arrows streak toward us from the tower, and the legionnaires have dropped level now. They draw scims and glide across the cliff face. My hand itches toward a weapon, but I resist—I have to keep hold of the ropes so we don’t plummet to the desert floor.
“Keep them off me, Hel.”
Her legs tighten around my hips and her bow twangs as she launches arrow after arrow into our pursuers.
Thwunk. Thwunk. Thwunk.
One howl of agony is joined by another and another as Helene draws and shoots, fast as lightning striking. The arrows from the tower thin as we drop, clattering off our armor uselessly. Every muscle in my arms strains to keep us dropping steadily. Almost there...almost...
Then a searing pain shoots through my left thigh. We slide fifty feet as I lose control of the descender. Helene grabs me as her head snaps back, and she screams, a girlish shriek I know I should never, ever mention.
“Damn it, Veturius!”
“Sorry,” I grind out when I get hold of the ropes. “I’m hit. They still coming?”
“No.” Helene cranes her neck back and stares up the sheer cliff face.
“They’re going back up.”
The hairs on the back of my neck rise in warning. There’s no reason for the soldiers to stop the attack. Not unless they think someone else will take over for them. I peer down at the dunes, still two hundred feet below us. I can’t tell if there’s anyone down there.
A gust of wind blows out of the desert, knocking us hard against the cliff face, and I almost lose control of the ropes again. Helene yelps, her arm tense around me. My leg burns with pain, but I ignore it—it’s just a flesh wound.
For a second, I think I hear a peal of deep, mocking laughter.
“Elias.” Helene looks out at the desert, and I know what she’s going to say before she says it. “There’s something—”
The wind steals the words from her mouth, sweeping out of the dunes with unnatural fury. I release the descender, and we drop. But not fast enough.
A violent gust rips my hands from the ropes, halting our descent. Sand from the dunes rises in a funnel around us. Before my disbelieving eyes, the particles weave together, coalescing into large, manlike shapes with grasping hands and holes for eyes.
“What are they?” Helene slashes the air uselessly with her scim, her strokes increasingly uncontrolled.