Chapter 19 : VAIL - The First Confrontation71Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0H4Ylg0Q16
The hunters caught up with them in the narrow pass where the mountains pressed close and the wind had teeth.
They'd been riding hard for two days, pushing the horses through snow that had frozen to a hard, treacherous crust. The Frostwood loomed ahead, a dark wall of ancient pines whose branches were heavy with ice and whose shadows seemed to swallow the light. Vail had felt the presence growing stronger with every mile—a pressure at the back of his skull, a cold that had nothing to do with the weather. Yska was close. The prison was close. Everything that mattered was close.
But Aldric's men were closer.
They came at dusk, when the light was failing and the shadows were long and the horses were stumbling with exhaustion. Six riders in Council livery, their grey cloaks stained with road salt, their swords already drawn. They'd been tracking the group since the capital, Vail realised. Following the same trail, waiting for the right moment. The pass was the right moment—narrow, steep, with walls of black rock on either side and nowhere to run.
"Ambush!" Sersha's voice cut through the wind, and then the first arrow punched into the cart, splintering the wood a handspan from Liska's head.
Liska threw herself sideways, rolling off the cart and landing hard in the snow. Her flask skittered away, brandy spilling in a golden arc. "Fuck!" she screamed—not in pain, but in fury. "Fucking Aldric's fucking cunts!"
Vail's horse reared. He fought it down, one hand on the reins, the other fumbling for the sword he'd barely learned to use. He was not a fighter. He'd never been a fighter. He was a scholar, a theorist, a man who killed with knowledge and experiments and cold, calculated decisions made in the safety of a laboratory. But there was no laboratory here. There was only the snow and the dark and the six men who wanted them dead.
Eira was already off her horse, her obsidian knife in her hand, her father beside her with his hunting blade. Sersha had her sword out, her missing ear a pale scar in the fading light. Torrin, the silent rider, had dismounted and was moving toward the nearest attacker with the economy of a man who'd done this before. But there were six of them, and only five who could fight, and Vail was not one of them.
He drew his sword anyway.
The first rider came at him—a young man with a soft face and hard eyes, his grey cloak billowing, his blade already red with someone's blood. Sersha's? Torrin's? Vail couldn't see. The world had narrowed to the point of a sword and the beat of his heart and the cold certainty that he was going to die here, in this pass, without ever seeing the prison or understanding the plague or telling Eira that he'd started to feel something, something that wasn't empty, something that terrified him more than dying.
He raised his sword. The rider swung. The blades met with a shriek of steel, and the impact jarred up Vail's arm and into his shoulder, and he almost dropped the sword, almost fell, almost died. But the horse shied, and the rider's swing went wide, and Vail was still alive, still breathing, still holding the sword that felt like a stranger in his hands.
Then Eira was there. She came out of the snow like a blade herself, her knife finding the rider's throat before he could recover. The obsidian edge opened his neck from ear to chin, and blood sprayed across the snow—hot and red and shockingly bright against the white. The rider gurgled, clutched his throat, and fell from the saddle. He hit the ground with a wet, heavy thud, and his legs kicked once, twice, and then he was still.
"Stay behind me," Eira said. Her face was splattered with blood, and her eyes were cold, and she was already turning to face the next attacker. "You're not a fighter. Stay behind me and don't fucking die."
Vail didn't argue. He couldn't. His hands were shaking—those steady hands that had never shaken, not once, not in eight years of experiments and deaths and his mother's hollow eyes. They were shaking now. He looked at the dead man in the snow, the way his blood was already freezing into red crystals, the way his bladder had released when he died, the sharp ammonia smell cutting through the cold. He'd seen death a hundred times in his laboratory. He'd caused death a hundred times. But he'd never seen it like this—messy, fast, final. He'd never smelled a man's piss mixing with his blood. He'd never watched a man's legs kick out the last seconds of a life that didn't matter anymore.
Another rider came at them, and Eira met him with her knife. Her father was beside her now, his hunting blade wet with blood, his face a mask of cold fury. Sersha was screaming something—a war cry, maybe, or a curse—and Torrin was fighting two men at once, his sword a blur, his silence more terrifying than any scream. Liska was on her feet, her surgeon's kit slung over her shoulder, a clay jar in her hand. Not brandy. Something else. One of the jars from the laboratory, filled with the residue of the caged gods. The god-death.
"Liska, no!" Vail shouted, but she was already throwing it.
The jar shattered against the chest of one of the hunters—a big man, bearded, his sword raised to strike Torrin from behind. The god-death splashed across his face, his chest, his hands, and he screamed. It wasn't a human scream. It was something deeper, something that vibrated in Vail's teeth and made the horses rear and the snow shake. The hunter dropped his sword and clawed at his own face, his fingernails gouging deep furrows in his cheeks, and then he turned and ran—not toward the fight, but toward the cliff's edge. He went over without a sound, his body swallowed by the darkness, and the scream faded and died.
Liska stood over the shattered jar, her chest heaving, her hands shaking. "Got the fucker," she said.
"More coming," Sersha said. Her voice was hoarse, and her sword arm was bleeding. "There's—"
She didn't finish. An arrow punched through her shoulder, spinning her around, and she dropped to one knee with a grunt that was more surprise than pain. Torrin caught her before she fell, his silent face tight with something that might have been fear.
And then Vail saw the assassin.
He'd come from the shadows, not on horseback but on foot, his dark leather armour blending with the rocks. He was moving toward Eira—Eira, who was fighting one of the grey-cloaked hunters, her knife flashing, her back turned. The assassin had a blade in each hand, curved and cruel, and he was fast, faster than anyone Vail had ever seen. He was going to reach her before she could turn. He was going to kill her, and Vail was the only one close enough to stop him.
He didn't think. He couldn't think. Thinking would make it impossible. Thinking would make it real. He just moved—one step, two steps, his sword raised, his heart hammering, his mind a blank white roar. The assassin saw him coming and turned, his blades flashing, but Vail was already swinging. The sword was heavy and clumsy and wrong, and he didn't know how to use it, didn't know where to aim, didn't know anything except that Eira was going to die and he couldn't let that happen. He couldn't.
The blade caught the assassin in the side—not the chest, not the throat, not anywhere clean or heroic or precise. Just the side, just under the ribs, tearing through leather and flesh and something that crunched. The assassin staggered, his eyes wide with surprise, and Vail pulled the sword back and swung again, and again, and again. Not killing blows. Not clean blows. Just hacking, desperate, furious blows that turned the assassin's side into a mess of torn meat and shattered bone. The man fell. He was still breathing, still trying to raise his blades, and Vail dropped the sword and fell on him with his fists, with his knees, with his forehead. He felt the assassin's nose break under his skull. He felt the wet heat of blood on his face. He felt something give way in the man's chest—ribs, maybe, or the sternum—and still he kept hitting, kept pounding, kept screaming words he didn't recognise, words that might have been his mother's name or Eira's or just the raw, wordless sound of something breaking inside him.
"Vail." A hand on his shoulder. "Vail. He's dead. He's dead. Stop."
He stopped. He was on his knees in the snow, his fists bloody, his breath coming in great, heaving sobs. The assassin lay beneath him, his face a ruin, his chest caved in, his blood pooling black in the fading light. His eyes were open, staring at nothing. He'd been alive a minute ago, and now he was meat. Just meat. Just like the man in the laboratory, just like the old woman with her shift riding up, just like his mother with her blackened tongue and her hollow eyes. Just meat. All of them, just meat.
Vail leaned forward and vomited. Everything in his stomach—the dried fish, the hard bread, the brandy from the night before—came up in a hot, bitter rush, splashing across the snow and the blood and the dead man's ruined face. He vomited until there was nothing left, and then he kept heaving, his body trying to expel something that wasn't in his stomach. Something that had been lodged in his chest for years.
"First time?"
Eira's voice. She was kneeling beside him, her knife still in her hand, her face still splattered with blood. Her pale eyes were unreadable, but her voice was soft, almost gentle.
He nodded. He couldn't speak. His throat was raw, and his hands were shaking, and he couldn't stop looking at the dead man's face.
"It gets easier," Eira said. A lie. He could hear it in her voice. She was seventeen years old, and she'd killed more things than he could count, and it had never gotten easier. It had just become something she could do. Something she had to do. Something that carved a piece out of her every time she did it.
"No," he said. His voice was a croak. "It doesn't."
"No. It doesn't." She put her hand on his shoulder. Not his bloody fists, not the sword he'd dropped in the snow. His shoulder. A human touch. A thing he'd avoided for years because it made him feel things he didn't want to feel. "But you did what you had to do. You saved my life."
"I didn't—I wasn't thinking—"
"That's the only way to do it. If you think, you freeze. If you freeze, you die." She stood, offering him her hand. "Get up. We need to move before more of them come."
He took her hand. It was warm and blood-slick and strong, and she pulled him to his feet without effort. The snow around them was a butcher's yard—bodies in grey cloaks, bodies in dark leather, blood everywhere, freezing into red ice, the smell of opened bowels and fresh piss and the hot, iron tang of arterial spray. The horses were skittering, their eyes white. Liska was on her knees beside Rennic, her hands pressed against his throat, her face grey.
"Rennic," Vail said. He stumbled toward them. "Is he—"
"He's alive." Liska's voice was tight. "Barely. One of the cunts got him with a blade. Took a chunk out of his throat. Not the scar side—the other side. I can stitch it, but he's lost a lot of blood. He needs rest. He needs warmth. He's not getting either of those things on this fucking mountain."
Rennic's eyes were open, his scarred face pale beneath the blood. He tried to speak, but the only sound that came out was a wet gurgle—the same sound the dying soldier had made in the waystation, the sound of a man drowning in his own fluids.
"Don't talk," Liska said. "You're a stubborn old cunt, and you're not dying on this mountain. I won't allow it."
Rennic's lips twitched. It might have been a smile.
"We need to get him to shelter," Eira said. "There's a waystation half a league ahead. We passed it on the way south. It's not much, but it's got walls and a hearth."
"He won't make it half a league."
"He'll make it. I'll carry him myself if I have to." Eira looked at her father. "Help me get him on the cart."
Eirik nodded and moved to lift Rennic. Torrin, still silent, still bleeding from a cut on his arm, helped them. Sersha was on her feet again, the arrow still lodged in her shoulder, her face white but her jaw set. She caught Vail's eye and gave a short, sharp nod. I'm all right. I'll live.
Vail looked at his hands. They were still shaking, still bloody, still not his own. He'd killed a man. Not with an experiment, not with a machine, not with a decision made in the cold safety of his laboratory. He'd killed a man with his fists and his forehead and a sword he didn't know how to use. He'd felt the man's ribs break under his knuckles. He'd smelled the man's blood and his piss and the sour stink of his own vomit. He'd become something he'd only ever studied from a distance.
"Vail." Eira was beside him again. "We need to go."
"I know."
"Your hands are shaking."
"I know."
"That's not weakness. That's proof you're still human." She reached out and took one of his hands in hers. The blood on her fingers mingled with the blood on his. "Come on. We've got a prisoner to interrogate, a waystation to reach, and a god to kill. In that order."
"The prisoner?"
"One of them is still alive. The one Liska hit with the god-death—he went over the cliff, but the others didn't. One of them is just wounded. Torrin's got him tied up." She squeezed his hand once, then let go. "You're a killer now. That means you get to decide what to do with the ones who survive."
Vail looked at his hands. At the blood. At the last faint tremors running through his fingers. He thought about his mother's death, the cold version, the empty version. He thought about the crow-warden, its eyes clearing for one moment before the plague took it back. He thought about Eira's voice in the dark of his bedchamber, telling him he wasn't frozen, just scared.
He was still scared. He'd always been scared. But he was still here. Still fighting. Still alive.
"All right," he said. "Let's go talk to the prisoner."
They rode into the dark.71Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDKi2JY3adq
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