Nila was up and running a moment later. She didn’t have time to think about the murder. It was just one more on top of the countless she’d committed over the past few weeks. She had to flee. The Kez magebreaker might have sensed her sorcery – he could be on her trail in minutes.
She navigated the hills with the use of her third eye, fighting down nausea. Between the darkness and the fog, her regular vision would be useless. She ran, forcing herself forward though each step made her want to scream in agony. Her thighs hurt from riding, her body from a night with her arms tied. Tears rolled down her cheeks from the pain, and her stomach pitched like she had been at sea for weeks.
Hours passed. She stopped on every hilltop to listen for pursuit, but no sound followed her. She ran blindly – she would be hopeless at getting her bearings in the misty darkness. She knew that, for now, she had to get as far away from the Kez as possible. Though every hilltop looked the same to her in the Else, she attempted to memorize each one, tearing up grass or piling rocks whenever she could. She hoped that in the light of day she would be able to lead the Adran cavalry back the way she’d come.
It was Olem’s only chance.
The earliest light of morning tinged the mist. Nila could no longer open her third eye. Exhaustion flooded her senses and it was all she could do to keep stumbling through the dew-soaked grass. Her uniform was ripped and sodden, her boots full of water. She clutched her arms to her chest, shivering violently.
She stopped to rest at the bottom of one of the countless ravines she had traversed. Her fingers stiff, she used what was left of her strength to coax a nimbus of flame from the Else. Kez pursuers be damned, she had to get warm! The flame sheathed her hands, then her arms, and she felt a dull warmth work its way into her bones. Her shivering slowly subsided. Steam rose from her clothes, and with a startled curse she realized that the flame now covered her whole body.
It winked out, leaving her standing at the bottom of the ravine, the world once again cold and wet. She wanted nothing more than to lie down in the muck and sleep. The Kez be damned. Field Marshal Tamas be damned.
A vision of Olem’s face, his beard matted with blood and his flesh torn to ribbons, sprang into her mind. That was all it took for her to begin to climb the side of the ravine.
The rising sun began to burn away the mist. If the fog cleared, she could get her bearings. She would head east in the hope that the rest of the Riflejacks were looking for the Kez camp to save Olem. It was risky, if the Kez were, in turn, looking for her. But she had no choice.
It was not long after her rest that she caught a distant sound on the wind. The neigh of a horse, perhaps? The peaks and valleys of Brude’s Hideaway played tricks on her ears, and she struggled on to the next rise, where she stopped to listen, peering into the thinning morning fog.
She thought she heard a shout. Whether Kez or Adran, she did not know. It was impossible to get a bearing on the sound. Please, she thought, please be Adran. She strained, head tilted to the side, until she heard it again.
The sound came from behind her. She began to move again, heading cautiously onward. An Adran scouting party could have gotten behind her. After all, she didn’t know north from south right now. She could be heading just about any direction.
Another shout. Nila’s senses pricked at the sound and a chill went down her spine. It hadn’t been quite intelligible, but that sounded Kez.
The clop of hooves on stone reached her ears. She had crossed a series of flat rocks a while back, hadn’t she? Those hooves were following her, and the shouts were getting closer.
She broke into a sprint, calling up every ounce of her energy for the run. They were on her trail now and when they found her, they would run her down like a tired dog in the street. A glance over her shoulder showed men on horseback less than two hundred yards behind her.
Leaping across a streambed, Nila scaled a steep escarpment and threw herself down the other side, tumbling head over heels down a hill. She was back up a moment later, ready to run, when the sight of a mounted figure brought her up short.
The figure was less than ten paces away. It sat silently, the fog barely seeming to touch it, the rider’s body cloaked against the weather. Steam rose from the horse’s nostrils, indicating it had just made a hard ride.
She was cut off. The Kez had her now. Nila stiffened and waited for the figure to draw his or her pistol and fire.
“Why do you run?”
The voice startled her and she nearly fell. It was speaking in Adran. A male voice. “What?”
The figure slapped his saddle horn angrily. “Why do you run?” he demanded.
Horses rounded the far side of the escarpment thirty paces to Nila’s left. There were a dozen of them, coming hard, and she saw carbines raised to fire.
“Bo?” she asked, breathless.
“You aren’t a fox, fleeing before the hounds! You are a goddess of fire to these ants.”
What was Bo doing here? How had he found her? “The magebreaker is chasing…” Nila ran toward him. The two of them might have a chance of escaping on his horse.
“He’s not with them. You should have stopped to check. Turn and defend yourself. Show them what you are!” Bo’s voice rose to a bellow at the end. Nila stared at him, astonishment freezing her in her tracks.
The crack of a carbine snapped through her thoughts and she found herself whirling in response. She made a flinging motion with her off-hand and fire like liquid gold spewed from her fingertips. The flames crossed the space in the blink of an eye and cut through men and horses like a bullet through paper. Black powder exploded on contact with the flames, and a single cry of dismay reached her ears before the entire party was gone, reduced to a black, smoking skid on hissing soil.
Nila stared at the spot for several moments, trying to process what she’d just done. There had been no thought, no concentration. She’d just killed a dozen men and horses purely by instinct. The air hung heavy with acrid black smoke and the smell of burned meat.
“Well done.”
“I…” She turned to look up at Bo and could instantly see that something was wrong. He slumped in his saddle, his face pale and sweat on his brow. He swayed back and forth, knuckles white on the saddle horn. “Never run from a fight you can win. By the saints, you’re going to be powerful. I’ve never seen such… beauty.” His words were labored and breathless.
“What are you doing here? Are you all right?” Nila rushed to his side and put a hand on his leg, from which she immediately recoiled. She had touched something hard and thin, and when she reached forward to lift his pant leg, she found not flesh, but a wooden prosthetic where his calf had once been.
He didn’t seem to notice. “I got your… note.” He fumbled at his jacket pocket and removed a creased paper. It fluttered from his fingers and he made a weak attempt at catching it.
Nila snatched it out of the air, barely remembering the angry words she’d scribbled down before riding off with Olem. All thoughts of the charred remains behind her were gone. Memories of the way she’d been treated by the Deliv Privileged were shoved aside. “Bo. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, nothing.” He frowned at the paper now in her hand. “I’ve… I didn’t think… it proper… my apprentice off on her… own.” His words were halting and disjointed.
“Bo?”
He waved away her concern, and promptly slid from his saddle. She threw herself beneath him and they both went down in a heap beside the horse. She looked up in horror at the prosthetic still stuck in the stirrup, and the empty pant leg beneath his knee.
“Sorry,” he said. “Feeling a bit fuzzy.”
Nila felt tears in her eyes. Bo was her only hope of getting away, and here he was, crippled and sickly. How would they be able to find the Adran cavalry and return to rescue Olem? She briefly considered leaving him here and taking his horse, but that could very well be the death of him, and she couldn’t do that. Not after he’d brought himself out here to find her.