“And you don’t breathe correctly either,” Kith-Kanan put in.
Voltorno gave him a venomous glance and turned to resume the march. Just then, a loud cracking sound filled the air. The men stood, paralyzed, trying to find the source of the noise. A tree branch broke off a nearby oak and dropped to the ground ahead. The men started laughing with relief.
Behind them, a figure popped up out of the leaves and aimed a stolen crossbow at the back of the last man in line. The quarrel loosed, the dark figure slipped silently back into the bed of leaves. The wounded man made a gurgling sound, staggered forward a few steps, and collapsed.
“It’s Favius! He’s been shot!”
“Mind your front! Look for your target before you shoot!” Voltorno barked. The six men remaining formed a ring with Kith-Kanan in the center. Voltorno walked slowly around the ring, staring hard at the empty woods. There was nothing and no one to be seen.
He halted when he noticed one of his men holding an empty bow. “Meldren,” he said glacially, “why is your bow not loaded?”
The man named Meldren looked at his weapon in surprise. “I must have triggered it off,” he muttered.
“Yes, into Favius’s back!”
“No, master! Favius was behind me!”
“Don’t lie to me!” Fiercely Voltorno struck the man with the flat of his sword. Meldren dropped his crossbow and fell to the ground. None of the other men offered to help him or supported his story.
Voltorno picked up the man’s crossbow and handed it to another of his company. “Meldren will walk in the rear,” he ordered. “With any luck, the witch will kill him next.”
The raiders relieved the dead man of his weapons and gear and moved on. The wretched Meldren, with only a short sword for defense, brought up the rear.
The trail they followed led them down a draw, between a pair of giant oaks. Voltorno went down on one knee and held up his hand to halt the group. He studied the ground and then looked ahead.
“This has the look of a trap,” he said with a wise air. “We’ll not go through the draw. Four of you men go along the right edge. The rest follow me on the left.”
The draw was a V-shaped ditch, twenty feet wide and eight feet deep at its lowest point. Four men crept along the right rim of the gully while Voltorno, Kith-Kanan, and two others walked along the left. As the half-human circled around, he clucked his tongue triumphantly.
“See?” he said. Leaning against an oak on the left was a thick log, poised to roll down into the draw if anyone disturbed the web of vines attached to it. This web extended down into the draw and covered the ground there. The men on the right came around their oak. Voltorno waved to them. The lead man waved back-and the ground beneath him gave way.
The “ground” they’d been standing on was nothing but a large log, covered loosely with dirt and leaves. Held in place by slender windfall limbs, the log collapsed under the men’s weight. With shouts and cries for help, the four tumbled into the gully.
“No!” Voltorno shouted.
The men received only bruises and cuts from falling the eight feet into the ravine, but they rolled onto the mat of vines that was the trigger for the six-foot-thick log poised on the left bank. The vines snapped taut, the log rolled down, and the men were crushed beneath it. Voltorno, Kith-Kanan, and the remaining two raiders could only stand by and watch as this occurred.
Suddenly there was a whirring sound and a thump. One of the two humans dropped, a crossbow quarrel in his back. The last human gave a shriek. He flung down his weapon and ran off into the woods, screaming without letup. Voltorno shouted for him to come back, but the hysterical raider disappeared into the trees.
“It appears you’re on your own, Voltorno,” Kith-Kanan said triumphantly.
The half-human seized the prince and held him in front of his body like a shield. “I’ll kill him, witch!” he screamed into the trees. He turned from side to side, searching madly for Anaya or Mackeli. “I swear I will kill him!”
“You won’t live that long,” a voice uttered behind him.
In shock, the half-human whirled. Anaya, still painted sooty black, stood nonchalantly before him, just out of sword’s reach. Mackeli was behind her, his bow poised. Taking advantage of his captor’s obvious shock at seeing these two foes so close by, Kith-Kanan wrenched himself from Voltorno’s grasp and jumped away from him.
“Shoot her!” Voltorno cried dazedly. “Shoot her, men!”
Remembering belatedly that he had no one left to command, the half-human lunged at Anaya. Mackeli started to react, but the keeper shouted, “No, he’s mine!”
Despite his wife’s shouted claim, Kith-Kanan slogged forward under the burden of his chains. The prince was certain that Anaya didn’t have a chance against a fine duelist like Voltorno. Her agility was drastically reduced, and the only weapon she carried was her flint knife.
The half-human thrust at her twice, then a third time. She dodged, adequately but without her old preternatural grace. He cut and slashed the air, and as Anaya scampered aside, the Ergothian blade bit into a tree. She ducked under Voltorno’s reach and jabbed at his stomach. The half-human brought the sword’s hilt down on her head. With a grunt of pain, Anaya sprawled on her face.
“Shoot!” Kith-Kanan cried. As Mackeli’s finger closed on the trigger bar, Anaya rolled away from Voltorno’s killing strike and repeated her warning to her friends.
“Only I may shed his blood!” she declared.
Voltorno laughed in response, but it was a laugh shrill with desperation.
Anaya got to her feet clumsily and stumbled in the thick leaves and fallen branches. As best she could, she jerked back, out of the way of Voltorno’s sweeping slash, but she could not avoid the straight thrust that followed.
Mackeli’s green eyes widened in shock and he uttered a strangled cry as the blade pierced Anaya’s brown deerskin tunic.
Though he saw what happened, Kith-Kanan was more shocked by what he heard—a roaring in his ears. For a moment, he didn’t know what he was hearing. Then he realized that the sound was Anaya’s pulse. It hammered at the prince like thunder, and he felt as if he would collapse from the pain of it. Time seemed to slow for Kith-Kanan as he watched Anaya. His beloved’s face showed no pain, only an unshakable determination.
Voltorno’s lips widened in a smile. Though he would surely die himself, at least he’d killed the witch. That smile froze as Anaya grasped the sword that pierced her stomach and rammed it farther in. His fingers still locked around the handle, the half-human was jerked toward her. His puzzlement turned to horror as Anaya brought up her free hand and drove her flint knife into his heart.
Voltorno collapsed. So tightly did he grip the sword that, when he fell backward, he pulled it from Anaya’s body. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Kith-Kanan struggled to Anaya’s side and caught her as she collapsed. “Anaya,” the prince said desperately. The front of her tunic was covered in blood. “Anaya, please…”
“Take me home,” she said and fainted.
Mackeli found the key to Kith-Kanan’s shackles in Voltorno’s belt pouch. Freed of his bonds, the prince lifted Anaya in his arms. Mackeli offered to help.
“No, I have her,” Kith-Kanan said brokenly. “She weighs nothing.”
He strode away from the gully, past the places where Voltorno’s men had died. Inside, Kith-Kanan concentrated on the sound and sensation of Anaya’s heartbeat. It was there. Slow, labored, but it was there. He walked faster. At home there would be medicines. Mackeli knew things. He knew about roots and poultices. At the hollow tree there would be medicines.
“You have to live,” he told Anaya, staring straight ahead. “By Astarin, you have to live! We’ve not had enough time together!”
The sun flickered through the leafless trees as they hurried toward the clearing. By now Kith-Kanan was almost running. Anaya was strong, he repeated over and over in his mind. Mackeli would be able to save her.