“What is there to plan?” Firenza pulled her axe from its holster and waved it around. “We run in, then we HIT THEM UNTIL THEY DIE!”
“Any insight, Adi?” Ezo ducked the axe.
I grunted a negative. The day was gray as steel. At first, I’d been happy to ride next to the lake if it meant the sleet became snow, but my fingers and toes were just as numb as they had been the previous days, and after a while I was just as wet. I was ready for an inn and a dry bed, and woe to anyone who spoke to me before I got one.
“Maybe just the layout of their lair, then?” Ivy partially twisted around, trying to see me. I hunched lower, but she persisted. Her horse slowed, and we fell a few steps behind the others. “It’s in a ruined village you said? On top of a hill? Two days into the forest. I think we can work with a ruined village.” She laughed a little. “It will be like a children’s game for Talsar.”
“Can you stop?” I whispered, so low only she could hear.
Ivy’s finely arched brows drew together. “Sorry?”
I glanced ahead, but the others didn’t seem to have heard. “Listen, Ivy, sweetie. You are embarrassing yourself. We can all see how you feel about him, including him, and it’s sad.”
Her face reddened, and I knew she’d heard me, knew I’d hurt her. My hand clenched, and I discovered I’d wrapped my fingers around the candies in my pocket. “I hate to tell you this—” I didn’t. I needed to tell her, needed her to hate me, to stop being nice. “But he is not into—”
“INCOMING!”
Firenza’s shout jolted me from my malicious haze. Ahead of us, her great midnight wings sprang open, and in a moment, she clambered up on her saddle and leaped from her horse directly into the sky. Ezo jumped from his little seat and stood balanced on the saddle, crossbow in hand and pointed ahead. Beyond the road, the long, dead grass poking out through the snow was moving. Shivering and bucking in great waves.
“What is that?” Panic constricted my chest. Whatever it was, it did not look friendly.
“Gythan.” Ivy freed her longbow. She wouldn’t look at me. “They’re everywhere up here.”
Behind us, Talsar’s horse stood alone on the road—the dark elf had vanished.
“Gythan?” My throat squeezed, panic turning to paralyzing terror.
Ivy did look at me then. Her hurt expression fell away, and she put a hand on my shoulder. “Just sit tight, Adeline. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
I stared at her as she bent and strung her bow, then moved next to Ezo, the two of them between me and the moving grass. Oh goddess of knowledge, I was going to die. I didn’t for one second believe she’d stick her neck out for me. Not after what I’d said.
Bad timing, Adeline.
And then a wave of muscular gray-brown bodies burst from the grass and onto the road. I froze, fingers gripping the edges of the saddle, lost in memories of a place this cold, fifteen years ago. Of huddling with the other children, praying the monsters wouldn’t take us. Praying they wouldn’t take our parents.
But they had taken mine.
Ivy let her arrow fly and nocked another. I could only watch, shrouded in surreal numbness. Gythan were the nightmare children of apes and mastiffs created during the War of Six, vicious, rabid monsters that were much of the reason the children from the provinces had been sent to the interior. Most hunched over, galloping on both knuckles and feet, but others had pushed themselves to their hind legs, hefting rocks to fling at us. Their heads were bulbous, with small eyes and heavy, slavering jaws.
They were miles from being thinking creatures, but they were far cleverer than normal beasts. Some king had his archmage develop them during the war. Now, a decade and a half later, gythan ran wild. Usually they confined themselves to the far grasslands, where they hunted anything large enough to catch their interest. But if there was a lean year, they would get just hungry enough to wander toward civilization and attack an armed party of travelers.
From the size of the pack careening toward us, it had been a very lean year.
Firenza roared and dived from the sky, slashing at the growing mob with a great sword she must have concealed beneath her wings. A slew of them fell before her, but for every one she cut down, five more emerged from the grass.
Numb shock gave way to panic. A scream rose in my throat, and my whole attention was occupied keeping it in. Noise would attract their attention.
You have to be quiet when you’re with the other children, Adeline. So quiet, sweet pea. You keep yourself safe. Oh gods, Mama? I hadn’t heard her voice, not even in memory, for so many years. I didn’t want to hear it now.
They closed in on us. Ezo kept firing from the back of Firenza’s horse, but Ivy ditched her bow and drew her swords. There were so many. One got past her and clamped its horrifying teeth onto the leg of her horse—which also happened to be my horse. It reared, and the next thing I knew, the sky was sailing by beneath my feet. Bob’s handle smashed into my spine like an iron bar as my back hit the ground, wind knocked clean out of me. For a long moment, I lay there, unable to breathe. The horse’s hooves were too close, big as my head, thundering as it danced. Finally, air rushed back into my lungs. With a force of will I didn’t know I had, I rolled away and regained my feet, Bob tangling in my legs as I lurched away, its handle vibrating with fear.
All around was chaos—the screams of horses and gythan, the twang and whistle of Ezo’s crossbow, the flashing whirl of Ivy’s blades. I hunched next to a tree and reached a shaking hand over my shoulder to grip my broom’s handle. “It’s going to be okay, Bob.”
But I didn’t know that, not at all. I was a thinker, not a fighter. Not brave, not strong, except for in magic. I pressed against the tree, fumbling in the pouch at my belt, and cast the first spell I could force my trembling fingers to sketch upon the air—the flying spell. Just as one of the monsters lunged for me, I launched myself up. The ground fell away, but not fast enough. The gythan’s jaws snapped around my heel, and pain ripped up my leg.
I did scream then. Focus broken, the flying spell dissipated, and I fell on top of the monster who’d dragged me down. It wriggled beneath me, jaws snapping, catching the attention of another gythan, who let out a hooting bark and headed our way.
They say life flashes before your eyes, but there was nothing in my mind at that moment except the knowledge that I needed to brace myself for the pain of being ripped apart.
But pain—at least, more pain—never came. A solid thud reverberated through the gythan, and it went still. I rolled off, catching sight of a crossbow bolt in its neck. The other one still came for me, but before it could attack, a raven-covered dagger zoomed seemingly from nowhere and embedded in its eye. It stood for a moment, as if it hadn’t realized it was dead, then keeled forward. I scrambled out of the way.
“Come on!” Ezo was there, covered in blood and dirt, bruises darkening on the side of his face. He pulled me toward Ivy, who’d taken up a defensive stance in front of a high boulder. With their help, I scrambled up the rock. Ezo climbed after me, perching behind and loading another bolt into his crossbow. The height didn’t offer much protection, but it was better than nothing. In the sky, Firenza dived, rose, wheeled, and dived again. Half the time she took out multiple gythan, half the time they dodged, and her great sword sent dirt and rocks and bits of grass flying.
“Talsar?” Ivy asked.
“He’s somewhere,” I wheezed. “Unless someone else throws raven daggers.”
On cue, another dagger appeared in another gythan’s eye, and the creature fell.