She ran along the ridge and into the canyon mouth, trying to ignore the forty-foot drop on her right. The air became thick with dust, and the stone vibrated under her feet with the rhythm of the soldiers passing below. That must have set off the landslide. Sage pulled her head scarf up to cover her face and stepped over an arm sticking out of a pile of dirt and rock. At the last second, she stooped to brush her fingers across the dead man’s palm, whispering a quick prayer.
Several soldiers were ahead, digging with hands and makeshift tools to free a crate of dremvasha half-buried in the hillside. The crate came free, but it was full of dirt now, too. A pair of men dragged it toward the ledge, and the earth began shifting to fill the new hole. Sage screamed for them to get out of the way as the hillside came loose and pushed the crate over the edge, along with one of the men. Watching him tumble made her dizzy enough to turn away and hug the slope behind her.
When the dust settled, Sage was on one side of a vertical scar across the hill, while three men on the other held on to the last crate, which had been ripped open. She looked down on the Kimisar below. Dremvasha and pottery lay strewn on a newly formed hill, and the Kimisar ran over and around it. There was no sign of the man they’d lost, and she hoped for his sake he hadn’t survived the fall.
Every few seconds another rank of Kimisar passed, faster than before, headed into the narrow entrance to the bowl. The only way to end this was to cut off the supply of invaders entirely.
Sage looked back to the men on the other side of the rockslide. “Throw it all out!” she shouted, and waved.
Clay pot after clay pot went over, the sounds of shattering pottery lost, for the most part, in the movement below. The only thing left was the water, which was on her side. Sage turned around to find the barrels of water half-buried. She began flinging rocks away with her hands, grateful she still wore her riding gloves.
One of the men on the dremvasha side called out, telling her to break them open rather than dig them out. Sage reached for her sword, but the soldier shouted again and stretched across the scree between them to hand her an ax. Yes, that was probably better. Sage reached back, but she couldn’t quite grasp it, and he had to toss it to her.
A quick glance assured her the last of the dremvasha would be on the ground soon. Sage gripped the ax with both hands as she turned back to the barrels and took a horizontal swing.
The blade bounced off, jarring every bone in her body, and she nearly lost her footing. Setting her feet, she tried again, this time aiming at a downward angle. A few heavy splinters came off, but it was better than nothing. Again and again she hacked at the barrel, sometimes switching to an upward angle to make the opening that was taking shape wider. When she felt she’d weakened it to the last few blows, Sage climbed over the barrels to the other side. Once the water was released, she’d only have a few seconds to get the other barrel open before the canyon below went up in flames. She worked the second as she had the first, until she felt sure a couple more hits would have it spraying water over the ledge.
Sage stopped for a moment to look back the way she’d come. Lieutenant Gramwell was flying down the path, covered in dirt and blood. “Kimisar coming behind me!” he shouted. “Run!”
“I can’t!” she yelled. “I have to get these open!”
Gram stopped and took in the situation, then nodded. “All right, do it! I’ll hold them off!” He turned and set his feet, gripping his sword with both hands.
If she wanted to escape, she needed to be on the other side. Sage scrambled over the barrels again to where she’d begun, then raised the ax to break open the one on the opposite side. After three hits, the barrel burst open, pouring water from the hole in its side and onto the dremvasha below. Sage was positioning herself to finish the second when Gramwell staggered back against the barrel, gasping, his face gray.
Sage screamed his name and dropped the ax to grab him before he fell over the edge, soaking one leg of her breeches with water in the process. The left side of his body was wet with blood, and as she hooked an arm around him and heaved him to her side, she felt a warm wetness soak through her sleeve.
So much blood.
What had happened? There were no Kimisar on the path she could see. Sage propped Gramwell against the steep hill and felt around his body, finding an arrowshaft buried almost to the fletching under his rib cage. The angle told her it had come from the valley below. There was light and heat at her back as the dremvasha ignited, and she prayed to the Spirit whoever had fired the arrow would be caught in its rage.
“Be still,” she told Gramwell. “I’ll get you out of here.”
But the depth and the blood told her there was nothing she could do. She was sure the arrow had pierced his lung, and probably also his heart.
“I can’t— I can’t—” he gasped, blood bubbling on his blue lips.
There was no place to lay him down, so Sage pulled his hands up to his chest and pinned him upright against the slope. He took a rattling breath, struggling to fill his lungs with air. The pool of blood beneath him expanded.
“Clare,” she said, her face hovering over his. “Think of Clare.”
“Cla-Clare,” Gramwell choked, spitting blood.
“Yes. Think of how much you love her.”
And she stayed with him until he could think no more.
107
HUZAR RAN AROUND a bend in the path and stopped short at the wave of heat and light coming from the canyon below. In the rocky slope, a half-buried barrel poured water from a split in its side, but rather than extinguish the fire below, it seemed to add to it. What kind of weapon was this? He gripped his sword and took a few more steps, looking for the bronze-haired Demoran he’d scuffled with a few minutes ago. On the other side of the barrels, the boy on horseback he’d followed out of the bowl stood straight and faced him. Huzar froze in shock as he recognized him. Her.
He’d seen her first outside Tegann, when she’d climbed a tree and struck down his hawk with a sling. He’d thought about shooting her then; he’d had a clear shot, but something had stayed his hand. Perhaps it was because she reminded him of Ulara, the sister he’d lost three years ago in the famine. In any case, she was relatively harmless.
Or so he’d thought.
She’d used the same weapon to take down his second-in-command as they pursued the prince along the river. Barely minutes later he’d watched her defeat two of his men as they tried to climb into the boat with her and the prince—one killed, one badly wounded. And despite all that, he was glad he’d spared her the first time because, Spirit shield him, that kind of courage was rare. This woman and Captain Quinn had been his two greatest obstacles in the past year, and he could bring himself to hate neither.
Now she stood before him in Casmuni clothes, her short hair flying in tangles around her face, the left side of her body covered in her companion’s blood, a fierce look in her eyes. And Huzar hesitated.
In that moment of hesitation she drew the curved Casmuni sword from her belt and swung the blade around in a fiery arc reflecting the light below. She struck the barrel of water in front of her, and it split in half, sending gallons of water over the ledge in one rush.
Fire exploded below, so intense Huzar took a step back.
Triumph gleamed in the woman’s eyes, but the loss of weight in that barrel and the other leaking next to it changed everything. The slope shifted, the earth moving toward the edge, no longer held back by the mass of the contained water. At least one more barrel went over the ledge with it, and Huzar knew whatever was happening below was now beyond anything anyone could stop.
The woman scrambled to get out of the way, and Huzar watched in horror as she climbed on top of the sliding land mass, clawing desperately at something to pull herself up with but finding nothing until she, too, went over the edge.
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