Karin’s eye was caught by something white moving across the twilight landscape. This time it was the Wanderers.
But they seemed to be fleeing, not coming to join the battle. The shadows behind them seemed dense somehow- And then she saw they were pursued by the dragon.
They were running, the lords of voima were running in terror. The dragon, seeming even more ferocious on the open plain than it had in its den, was maybe a quarter mile behind, flying low with its neck extended. Its eyes glowed like a forest fire. In its den it had been slow and inexorable; here it had picked up speed until it moved like an eagle before the wind.
“Take a bite from a dragon’s mouth and see how immortal you are then!” Eirik shouted gleefully.
“Mortals are supposed to have extra powers here,” Roric commented quietly in a tone pitched below the shouting and the din, edging carefully forward. No one looked in their direction; all the fighters had turned to stare. “I presume that also applies to creatures of voima which are supposed to stay in mortal realms.”
There were a dozen Wanderers, all looking strangely shorter, less imposing than had the one who had spoken to them. They called out as they came toward the Hearthkeepers, ignoring Eirik and his men. “Help us! Our powers are failing with the end of day! Destruction is loose in the realms of voima! You must help us!”
This must be the most vulnerable moment for the realms of voima, Karin thought, in all the great cycles that fate ordained. The powers of the lords of voima were waning fast, but those who would replace them had not yet come to power. She expected the Hearthkeepers to laugh derisively at the plea for help, but instead they whirled, their mares rearing, and pounded to meet the Wanderers
“Look at them go!” Eirik shouted after them. “They’ve no stomach for a fight with real men!”
He started to turn back toward Valmar and the bodies of his slain warriors, but his men too were off, racing on foot after the mounted Hearthkeepers. “Come back and fight! We’ve got you now! You’re caught between Eirik and a dragon!”
After only a second’s hesitation, the outlaw king too ran after them. Roric was in motion at once, hurrying up onto the ridge toward where Valmar and the one Hearthkeeper still lay bound. Karin was only a step behind.
“I should have expected it,” she gasped. “Women always have to come to men’s rescue when they get themselves into serious trouble.”
There was a great bellow from the dragon as the Hearthkeepers reached it, but Roric did not turn his head. Karin closed her eyes for a second as though to fend off a horrifying realization. If somehow, at this moment of weakness, all the lords and ladies of voima were destroyed, what would that mean for mortal realms?
Roric went straight toward Valmar, jumping over the dead bodies spread out on the ground, not taking the extra seconds to go around. Karin caught her breath through her teeth. Even in the heat of battle, it was said, warriors avoided stepping across the dead unless they were convinced that they would join them very soon.
Valmar lay on the grass without struggling, his face showing no expression. For a moment he looked so unlike the Valmar she knew that Karin wondered wildly if he might be someone else. But in a second his face changed, lighting up in surprise and delight as he recognized them.
“Karin!” he cried. Then his eyes went wide as Roric leaned over him with a blade in his hand. The white stallion whinnied and tried to rear, but he too was tied.
Roric did not bother saying that he had come to rescue Valmar, not to kill him. The knife slashed through the ropes that held him, and Karin saw Valmar close his eyes, swallow, and resume his stony expression. He had passed in a second from joy to terror to embarrassment and now had again nothing in him of her little brother.
“I can’t take time to explain,” said Roric fiercely, gripping Valmar by the shoulders. “Just listen and do what I tell you.”
But he paused for a second to turn and slash the curly-haired woman’s ropes, then whirled back to Valmar. For a moment he smiled. “Attractive woman you found,” he said, then was grim again. “I hope the Wanderers remembered to open the way back into mortal realms before their powers went. Take Karin home. Go! Don’t worry about me or anything else.”
Karin expected the Hearthkeeper to race to join her sisters, but instead she sat quietly, rubbing her wrists where they had been tied, looking at Valmar with a half smile on her face.
Roric glanced over his shoulder. A crowd of warriors was rushing back toward them across the plain. Eirik must have decided that staying away from a battle with a dragon was better for men who had no honor to lose anyway.
Roric jerked Valmar to his feet and pushed him forward. “Along the stream from the spring, then down the waterfall,” he said roughly. “Karin knows the way. You’ll either tumble through into the faeys’ burrow near Hadros’s castle, or we’ll be the stuff of story-if anyone ever hears of it.” He tossed Valmar his knife, glittering in the twilight, and drew his sword. “Get Karin through if you can, get her through now. I’ll protect your backs. If they kill me and there’s no way through, take as many of them to Hel with you as possible.”
“They’re getting away!” Eirik yelled. “Stop them!” Two of his younger warriors, already running even faster than the rest, pulled ahead of the band, coming straight toward them.
Valmar came to life again. He started in the direction Roric had pointed, Karin’s hand clasped in his, then abruptly turned back.
“Go!” the woman called. “I shall not follow you to mortal realms.” And she was away then herself, running quickly and lightly, not toward Eirik’s band, which was now very close, but off at an angle, as though she intended to circle around and join the Hearthkeepers’ battle against the dragon.
Valmar stretched out a hand tentatively, imploringly, either toward the woman or toward his horse. The white stallion whinnied again, pawing the ground. “What are you waiting for?” Roric demanded, then gave a humorless laugh. “The faeys don’t want another horse in their burrows!”
When Valmar still hesitated, Karin tugged at his hand. “Come on, little brother,” she said as she had said to him a thousand times over the years, forcing her voice to be gentle. His face was now not expressionless but anguished. After she had come all this long hard way to rescue him, she could not let his hesitancy now doom them. She had no idea what had happened to him in this realm, how he had served the Wanderers or been taken prisoner by Eirik, or why he had apparently captured a Hearthkeeper. But if there was safety for him she had to take him to it.
Roric, much less gentle, gave them both a hard push. “Get away! Now!” The first of Eirik’s warriors had reached the base of the ridge and were coming fast up the slope. There was another great bellow from the dragon. Karin, running and dragging Valmar with her, caught a flash of lightning from the corner of her eye. Would the Hearthkeepers and their swords, with the help of the Wanderers and the last of their power to shape this realm, be able to stop the dragon?
And if not, even if they made it safely into the faeys’ burrows, would mortal realms even still exist on the other side?
Roric, behind them, shouted defiance at Eirik’s men. Karin reached the lip of the little cliff and swung over the edge. Valmar, more clumsily, followed her. She lowered herself downward as fast as she could. At the bottom of the waterfall the water poured into a stream that ran back to a pool, inside a limestone cave.
For the first time in her life, Karin felt no hesitation about a rough, enclosed tunnel. This was not merely safety for her; this was safety for Valmar.
At the top of the cliff above them came the clang of steel on steel. Then Roric came down in one long leap, landing lightly next to the water. He barely glanced toward Karin and Valmar, who were scrambling back into the cave, but tossed back his hair and grinned, looking up at the warriors above them.