As usual the anger burned all else away. Common sense. Her sister’s orders. Thoughts of consequences. Riv could almost feel it spreading through her veins, like ink through water, seeping into her head, whispering to her.
You should be a White-Wing already, inside those walls with the other warriors, not out here with unproven, untested fledglings. You’re as good as any of them with a blade, better than most, and they only give you a knife!
Before Riv realized what she was doing, she was running. Not towards the town, because that would take her through Balur and his giants, and even when she was rage-blind she wasn’t that much of a fool. She skidded down the embankment and sprinted across the open space towards the trees of Forn Forest. Dimly she heard a voice behind her, Jost hissing her name, didn’t think to look, and then she was amongst the trees, in an instant moving from bright day to a world of twilight, shadows shifting, branches swaying, vine snagging at her feet.
She ran on, hardly breaking her stride, flitting through the forest, around trees, becoming one of the shadows herself. Even sound was different within the forest, noise magnified, the crackle of forest litter beneath her feet, the scratching rustle of branches overhead. Her own breath in her head, a drum keeping time.
Looking to her right, she saw the shadow of walls beyond the trees, veered towards them and burst out into a strip of cleared meadow between the forest and Oriens’ walls. This north-facing wall was not as well tended as the western gates: Riv saw patches of the timber wall covered in great swathes of vine, and further on a giant oak spread a gnarled branch over the town’s wall.
She sprinted towards the oak, hardly breaking her stride as she reached the twisted trunk of the ancient tree, running up thick roots, gripping ridged bark, clinging like a lizard to a sun-baked wall. A contraction and extension of muscle in calf and thigh and she was leaping, almost felt like she was flying, grinning with the joy of it, and then her hands were clamping around the branch, pulling herself up, getting her feet set and she was upright, running along it, arms spread wide for balance. In heartbeats she had crossed over the wall and was jumping down from the oak onto a wooden walkway.
She paused and looked around, chest heaving. The town spread before her, a patchwork of thatch and timber. There was a flash of movement to the west and her eyes were drawn to the higher roof and long structure of a feast-hall, what looked like a town square before it. She heard marching feet, rising from a main road that cut from the gates to the town square.
Aphra’s hundred.
A shadow flitted across the ground.
Ben-Elim. Or Kadoshim?
Without thinking she sprinted down a stairwell and carried on running, into a wide street, then zigzagging into a smaller one. She threw herself against a shadowed wall and twisted her head to look up, searching the skies, but whatever had made the shadow was out of sight.
What am I doing here? What have I done?
She stood there, breathing heavily. The thought of going back crossed her mind, but the red mist was still making a fog out of everything; the idea of her sister walking into danger without her was a wildfire fuel. She ran on, through smaller dirt-packed roads, searching for Aphra, thinking she could check on her, ensure her safety and then maybe head back to the wains. The town was eerily silent, shuttered windows dark with shadow, doors closed, dew-filled cobwebs latticed across them. And then the shadow was flashing across the ground again and Riv glanced up, saw the dark outline of wings haloed by the sun. She ran on.
She burst into an open space, the town square, the long feast-hall of timber and thatch before her. Skidding to a halt, churned mud spraying, legs scrambling, arms windmilling desperately to stop, she just stood there for a frozen moment staring at the scene before her in horror.
In the centre of the square, placed immediately before the steps to the feast-hall, stood a mountain of severed heads, steaming in the winter’s cold.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
SIG
Sig swung her weapon, a swooping curve, from high to low that arced around her opponent’s attempt at a parry. Too late he tried to dance back out of reach, but the length of Sig’s arm with a blade was too far for any man to evade in half a heartbeat. Her weapon crunched into his leg, just below the knee, lifting him from the ground and spinning him a full circle in the air before he crashed to the hard-frozen grass, flat on his back, the air leaving his lungs in one massive whoosh.
The scuff of feet behind her and, without a second’s thought, Sig spun on her heel, parrying the axe blow aimed at her head, flinging it high and stepping in close to stab her sword-point into the chest of the giant before her. As he stumbled back, dropping to one knee, Sig ducked, air hissing over her head as she spun again, this time chopping her blade two-handed into the waist of another giant, seeing him sway and slowly topple to the ground. Sig took a step forwards, standing over him, sword-tip at his throat.
The giant on the ground looked up at her, then swore.
‘Ach, you’re just showing off for the new bairns,’ he said gruffly.
‘Give me your hand,’ Sig replied, lifting her wooden practice blade away from Tain’s throat.
He smiled then, that infectious grin, even as he was wincing with the pain of moving as his waist twisted and bruised ribs contracted.
‘I’m going back to my Crow Tower,’ Tain said with a mock groan, ‘it’s safer up there.’
‘Not by the looks of your cloak,’ Sig commented, looking at what was once a black bearskin cloak, now streaked and strained with the arse-end of crows.
‘That I can live with, pain’s a much deeper issue,’ Tain grunted.
Behind her Fachen, another giant warrior of the Order, was climbing to his feet.
‘You all right?’ Sig asked.
He raised a hand to Sig, nodded.