I trudged forward, distinctly uncomfortable. What should I say? Sorry, I whacked you a bunch with the branches under the premise I wasn’t aware they would rebound into your really handsome face? I sounded twelve. Probably because I was acting twelve. Nice. As if I didn’t already feel bad enough. Holy pancakes, he was watching me.
Tyrrik sat on a rock by the fire. His feet were set wide apart, and his inky eyes searched my face with the focus of a hunter searching for his prey’s weakness. Was that aketon normal length? I eyed the hem askance, sure this was a skimpier design. A broody Drae in a skimpy aketon was going to be the death of me. The closer I got to Tyrrik, the more tongue-tied I became. My stomach picked this same time to tie itself in knots.
I was Ryn the Peacemaker who was also Fearless, and I could do hard things.
I took a deep breath and stopped in front of the fire, staring at my filthy feet instead of acknowledging Tyrrik. The panels of my skirt were frayed and spotted with mud and other stuff. Tyrrik’s feet were clean except for a dusting of recent dirt. How was that even possible?
“Here’s your breakfast,” he said in a low voice.
I gulped and raised my chin, but I couldn’t quite get my gaze to meet his. I managed to accept the roasted rabbit, noticing how it was evenly browned and glistening with grease. “Thank you.” I swallowed again and said in a rush, “I’m-sorry-I’m-twelve-and-I-hit-you-with-the-branches-it-won’t-happen-again.”
He pursed his lips. “Pardon me?”
Really? He was going to make me say it again? I met his gaze, and everything else fell away. Tyrrik’s dark eyes were flooded, wholly focused on me, intently so. His brow was furrowed but not in displeasure, more like I was a puzzle he couldn’t solve.
I let my mental defenses slip, and his concern and worry flooded in. All of it for me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry I hit you with all those branches yesterday. That was immature and . . . unkind.”
He swallowed. “It made you smile, and you know I would do—”
“Sorry, love-birds,” Dyter blurted, barreling toward us. “You’ll have to kiss and make up later. We need to leave, right now.”
What the hay? He’d been all ‘talk to Tyrrik, Rynnie,’ last night. I turned on Dyter to give him a piece of my mind, but the fear on his face stopped the words.
“What is it?” I asked.
Both men spoke at once.
Dyter said, “Movement coming down the mountain.”
“Druman,” Tyrrik said, his obsidian eyes hardening. “Closing in fast.”
He kicked dirt on the fire, extinguishing the flames.
I watched Tyrrik move, but my mind was fixated on the memory of Jotun’s cruelty. I blinked but otherwise remained frozen, my breath tripping in my chest. Flee. We needed to get out of here. They were going to catch us again. Tyrrik, Dyter, me. They’d use Tyrrik and Dyter against me. I wouldn’t be able to get free.
I sucked in a breath and gagged on the stench of unwashed Druman, a mixture of body odor and dust and sun-baked leather hide. They were here. They were here for me. I couldn’t go back.
“Ryn,” Dyter said, pulling me after him. “We need to go, girl. They’re coming down the mountain, so we should slip away while we still can.”
My feet moved, but I couldn’t shake the feeling something was off. “Why are we running? Why not go Drae and kill them? We can do that, right?”
“As soon as they die, the emperor will know,” Tyrrik said, scanning the clearing. “He’ll feel them die. If the Druman have to waste time reporting to the emperor, we’ll be inside Gemond before he even knows it. If he feels his Druman die, he’ll investigate, and he could intercept us.”
I nodded. “We need to get in the air.”
No one answered, but Tyrrik jerked his head toward the edge of our campsite. His features hardened, and his lips thinned into a grim line.
“Be careful,” he said to Dyter. “The drop is steep.”
I peered over the edge of the mountaintop—calling this drop steep was like calling night day. “You’re not suggesting we walk down the side of the cliff . . . are you?”
Dyter sat down on the ledge and then pushed his body off and disappeared.
I yelped, and my muscles coiled to leap after him.
“Shh.” Tyrrik intercepted my spring, covering my mouth, and whispering, “There’s a path below. He’ll be fine.”
I glared, and he removed his hand from my face only to grab my wrist and tug me after him. “I thought you said we weren’t going to walk down—”
“We’re not.”
The tension in my body eased a fraction until Tyrrik stood where Dyter had been a moment before.
“I’d rather avoid detection if at all possible,” Tyrrik said, not meeting my eyes.
I heard what he didn’t want to say: Tyrrik wasn’t sure he could shift and fight them off. He didn’t want to admit he was weak.
“We won’t walk,” he continued. “We’ll need to run.”
I felt like someone had kicked the backs of my knees. Tyrrik grabbed my waist and lifted me over the side. I dangled for a second until he lowered me from above.
A moment later, I hugged the rocky wall of a narrow ledge. The path curved around the cliff face before reaching the wide expanse of a steep slope covered in a sparse thicket of low trees. I inched my way along, turning back in time to see Tyrrik drop to safety where I’d been standing seconds before.
He tilted his chin again, and I took the hint, side stepping along the ledge until I was able to scurry into the woods.
31
The smell of Druman was growing, and so was the cold sweat on my forehead and palms. We edged down the almost-vertical pass as quickly as Dyter could quietly move. Dyter couldn’t contain his labored breathing as the ground began to flatten out, and we sprinted and jumped over rocks and hidden gaps in the rough terrain.
Soon, Tyrrik’s breathing was labored, too. This run shouldn’t have been tiring me, but my chest was tight, and my breath wouldn’t completely fill my lungs. I kept seeing my dungeon cell with its solitary drip of water, the sharp rocky ground, the dank smell.
Believing that the scent of Druman was truly lessening took a long time, at least until the ascent of the next mountain. Eventually, even I had to admit their smell had disappeared.
Tyrrik kept us in the foliage as much as possible. Our pace slowed as the ground sloped upward once more.
Dyter held up his hand for a stop and pulled out the now stone-cold roasted rabbit and the water skin.
“You guys need to eat, too,” I puffed, hands on my knees. I felt absolutely wrung out. Like I’d been sprinting for days.
After some insistence, the two men took a third each of the rabbit.
Tyrrik took the water skin from Dyter after the old man had a few gulps. The Drae handed it to me a moment later. I guzzled back the nectar Tyrrik offered and then focused for a few seconds before passing the water skin back.
We continued our climb, our pace slowing further as fatigue settled in. Dyter puffed as he led the way, stopping to consult his compass more frequently as afternoon settled in.
“Are we going to make it?” I asked. My question wasn’t to anyone in particular, and the answer didn’t even matter, not really. The silence was driving me crazy, and I wanted something to fill it. The silence. I hadn’t noticed Tyrrik in my head since the moment by the fire.