Sibba turned back, her eyes on the chief and her daughter. Isgerd the Younger was drawing her swords. Jary was right. She would kill them as they climbed. There was no way around it. Sibba wasn't done fighting yet.
“Give me my ax,” Sibba demanded, but Jary wasn't listening to her. He was hobbling away from her, toward the edge where the two women stood while their city burned around them. “Jary!” she called after him, but his one good eye was unwaveringly fixed on Isgerd the Younger. She raced behind him, going for the Crowheart sword that lay discarded not far away on the ground. But before she could even reach it, the ax left his hand, hurtling end over end, slicing a clean, straight path through the air, as if the storm winds parted to let it through undisturbed.
It buried itself deep in Chief Isgerd's chest. The woman's mouth dropped open and her hands went to the ax handle, jerking it out. Blood poured from the wound, and the scar in Sibba’s abdomen ached sympathetically. She cannot live. Of course he hadn't meant the daughter. He meant the puppet master, the one who had called all the shots. The one who had snapped the manacles around his wrist, not the one who had unchained him.
“Jary, come on.” Sibba wrapped her brother's arm around her shoulders as icy rain began to fall. Between the sheets of rain and the gray smoke from the raging fires, Isgerd and her mother were barely visible, but she saw when the chief fell to her knees, and she heard Isgerd's wail even over the cacophony of sounds around the pit.
“You're tall,” was all Jary said. She almost laughed, maybe would have laughed if the rain weren't blinding her and freezing her at the same time. She pushed Jary onto the ladder but his progress was painfully slow.
“Faster, faster,” she urged. When he was nearly at the top, hauling himself over the edge, she finally began to climb after throwing the Crowheart sword up beside him. The rain clung to the wooden rungs and made them slick with ice. She was weak, the aftermath of the battle fury leaving her drained and sick, but still she climbed, forcing one hand over the other, her feet quaking on the rungs. What would happen if someone came to their senses and saw Jary lying helpless there? How long before someone drove a sword through his heart?
She tried to climb faster but her limbs felt frozen. As she clung to the ladder, rain streamed down her face and into her mouth, and smoke stung her eyes as it wafted over the mouth of the pit. She couldn't move another muscle. She would die here, frozen on the ladder.
A long-fingered hand reached out of the oblivion and wrapped around one of hers, hauling her up the rest of the way. Sibba groped for the edge of the pit and helped pull herself over with her free hand, landing on her stomach beside Jary. Hands rolled her over and she looked up into green eyes, so out of place in this gray world.
“Tola?”
“Do you believe in me now?”
Sibba nodded her head and wrapped the girl in a hug that was over too soon when Tola pulled away.
“We have to go,” Tola said. “Quick.”
Tola helped Sibba stand, and then they both pulled Jary to his feet, each of them ducking beneath an arm as they hauled him forward. Tola held her staff in her other hand, using it to keep her balance beneath Jary’s weight. Above the pit, it was mayhem. The air crackled and sparked, and when a guard stepped in front of them to stop them, a gust of wind hit her with such force that it blew her off of her feet and across the ground until she disappeared into one of the fighting pits.
“Is this you?” Sibba asked Tola behind Jary's back, rolling her eyes to the sky.
Tola opened her mouth to respond when someone called her name. “Tola!” The sound cut through the roiling storm, the pounding rain, the crackling fire, and they all turned. Tola's mother, Audra, stood in the middle of the madness, somehow protecting herself from the rain and the smoke, looking as serene as if she were calling her daughter to come in for dinner. Shadows swirled around her feet, seeming to feed on the confusion and panic, reaching small tendrils out and brushing them against passersby.
“No,” Tola said, her only reply. Against all her better instincts, the three of them turned their back on the vala and hobbled away.
“She could kill us, couldn't she?” Sibba asked.
“Yes,” Tola confirmed. “But she's my mother. She won't. Not today.”
The town gates hung open and unguarded, and the trio passed through without notice. Beyond the gates, the storm died down and Sibba heard the call of a hawk. Aeris was bearing down on them, something clutched in her talons. She landed just off the road in the tall grass. Sibba left Jary with Tola and went to investigate. Aeris hopped away, taking her place on Sibba's shoulder, and Sibba picked up the object.
It was her ax, the one that had saved her life so many times, the one that had almost killed her. She had thought it lost to Isgerd Grimsson. Its blade was coated with congealed blood that she wiped on the dry, brown grass. She tucked it into her belt just as a rider emerged from the nearby woods, leading two other horses. The rider was slim but tall, and when her hood fell back, Sibba saw that it was Estrid.
They had both come for her. They had both risked everything. Without them—and Evenon—she would be dead on the dirty floor of the fighting pit.
Estrid dropped down from the horse and flung herself at Sibba, wrapping her arms around her neck. Sibba buried her face in the girl's loose hair and was surprised to feel only affectionate friendship. She wanted nothing more than for Estrid and her baby to be safe and happy, and Sibba knew that she wasn't the one to provide that life for her. She never had been.
Together, they helped Jary into the saddle of one of the horses, and Sibba mounted the other, reaching a hand down for Tola, ready to help her onto the back.
Tola wagged a finger at her. “I don't think so.” The words stung until Tola smiled. “I'm taking the reins.” In spite of everything—the chill that had seeped into her bones and the ache in her muscles and the weariness of the fight—Sibba smiled and scooted back, helping Tola situate herself in front, flush against her from knee to knee.
Sibba wrapped her arms around the vala's tiny waist and put her chin on her shoulder, blowing strands of wet, red hair out of the way. “Let's go.”
They turned the horses and walked back down the road, away from Ydurgat. Behind them, the town burned. Ahead of them, the skies were clear and blue. They followed Estrid down the dirt path, the only ones going in their direction. It was weird for Sibba not to be in control, not to be in the lead, but she found that she trusted these girls. Enough to close her eyes and let the gentle sway of the horse and the rise and fall of Tola's back lure her into sleep, surrounded by friends, feeling like even here, on the road in a strange place, she was finally home.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Rayne