Tentacles unfurled from the ground like the petals of some murderous flower. Mia looked into the beast’s maw, all snapping beak and hooked bone. As Flowers cut east to avoid the behemoth, Bastard finally came to the realization that he’d run much faster without two riders on his back. And so he started bucking.
Mia had the benefit of stirrups. Reins. A saddle. But Naev was riding on Bastard’s hindparts with nothing but Mia’s waist to keep her anchored. Bastard bucked again, whipping them about like rag dolls. And without a whisper, Naev sailed off the horse’s back.
Mia cut east to follow Tric, roaring at the boy over the chaos.
“We lost Naev!”
The Dweymeri glanced over his shoulder. “Maybe they’ll stop to eat her?”
“We have to go back!”
“When did you grow altruism? It’s suicide to go back there!”
“It’s not just altruism, you knob, I gave her my tithe!”
“O, shit,” Tric felt about his waist. “She took mine, too!”
“You get Naev,” she decided. “I’ll distract them!”
“… mia …,” said the cat in her shadow. “… this is foolish …”
“We have to save her!”
“… the boy’s stallion will not take him back there …”
“Because he’s afraid! And you can fix that!”
“… if i drink him, i cannot drink you …”
“I’ll deal with my own fear! You just deal with Flowers!”
A hollow sigh.
“… as it please you …”
Red earth, torn and wounded, shaking beneath them. Dust in her eyes. Heart in her throat. She felt Mister Kindly flit across the sand and coil inside Flower’s shadow, feasting on the stallion’s terror. She felt her own rise up in a flood—an ice-cold swell in her belly, so long forgotten she was almost overcome. So many years since she’d had to face it. So many years with Mister Kindly beside her, drinking every drop so she could always be brave.
Fear.
Mia jerked on the reins, bringing Bastard to a halt. The stallion snorted but obeyed the steel in his mouth, stamping and snotting. Bringing him about, Mia saw Naev was on her feet, clutching her ribs as she ran across the churning sand.
“Tric, go!” Mia roared. “I’ll meet you at the wagon!”
Tric still looked a touch befuddled from the ink. But he nodded, charging back toward the fallen woman and the approaching kraken. Flowers ran fast as a hurricane toward the monstrosity, completely fearless with the eyeless cat clinging to his shadow.
The first kraken erupted behind Naev, tentacles the size of longboats cutting the air. The thin woman rolled and swayed, slipping between a half-dozen blows. Sadly, it was the seventh that caught her—hooks tearing her chest and gut as the tentacle snatched her up. And even in that awful grip, the woman refused to cry out, drawing her blade and hacking at the limb instead.
Terror filled Mia’s veins, fingertips tingling, eyes wide. The sensation was so unfamiliar, it was all she could do not to sink beneath it. Yet the fear of failing was stronger than the thought of dying in a kraken’s arms, memories of her mother’s words on her father’s hanging turn still carved in her bones. And so she reached inside herself, and did what had to be done.
She wrapped her shadow about herself, fading from view on the stallion’s back. The kraken holding Naev paused, tremors running its length. And with a howl that shivered her bones, the beast dropped its prey onto the sand, and turned toward Mia with its two cousins swimming fast behind.
The girl turned and rode for her life.
Teeth gritted, glancing over her shoulder as massive shapes breached the earth, diving back below like seadrakes on the hunt. Beyond the horrors, she saw Tric at full gallop, snatching Naev up and dragging the wounded woman over his pommel. Naev was drenched in blood, but Mia could see she was still moving. Still alive.
She turned Bastard north, galloping toward the caravan. The churchmen were no fools—their camel train was already tearing away across the dust. The kraken kept pace with Bastard, one slamming into the sand just thirty feet behind, the stallion stumbling as the ground shuddered. Great roars and the hiss of their bodies piercing the earth filled her ears. Wondering how they could sense her, Mia rode toward a stretch of rocky badlands, praying the ground was something approaching solid.
About forty eroded stone spires thrust up through the desert’s face; a small garden of rock in the endless nothing. Throwing aside her shadowcloak, Mia wove between them, heard frustrated roars behind. She gained a short lead, galloping out the other side as the kraken circled around. Slick with sweat. Heart pounding. She was closing on the camel train, inch by inch, foot by foot. Tric had reached it, one of the wagonmen reaching for Naev’s bloody body, another manning a pivot-mounted crossbow loaded with bolts as big as broom handles.
She could hear that same metallic song on the wind—realized some strange contraption was strapped to the rear wagon beside the crossbow. It looked like a large xylophone made from iron pipes. One of the wagonmen was hitting it like it had insulted his mother, filling the air with noise.
Ironsong, she realized.
But beneath the cacophony, she could hear the kraken behind, the earth being torn apart by horrors big as houses. Her thighs ached, muscles groaned, and she rode for all she was worth. The fear was swelling in her—a living, breathing thing, clawing at her insides and clouding thought and sight. Hand shaking, lips quivering, please Mother, take it away …
At last she drew alongside the rearmost wagon, wincing at the racket. Tric was yelling, holding out his hand. Her heart was thundering in her breast. Teeth chattering in her skull. And with Bastard’s reins in her fist, she drew herself up on unsteady legs and leapt toward him.
The boy caught her, pulled her against his chest, hard as mahogany and drenched in blood. Shaking in his arms, she looked up into hazel eyes, noted the way he was staring at her—relief and admiration and something yet besides. Something …
She felt Mister Kindly slink back into her shadow, overwhelmed for a moment by the terror in her veins. And then he drank, and sighed, and nothing of it remained but fading memory. Herself again. Strong again. Needing no one. Needing nothing.
Muttering thanks, she pushed herself from Tric’s grip and stooped to tie Bastard to the wagon’s flank. Tric knelt beside Naev’s bleeding body to check if she still lived. The churchman in the pilot’s chair roared over the xylophone.
“Black Mother, what did you—”
A tentacle burst from the earth in front of them, whistling as it came. It tore through the driver’s midriff, ripping him and one of his fellows clean in half, guts and blood spraying as the wagon roofs were torn away like paper. Mia dove to the deck, hooks sweeping mere inches over her head as the wagon rocked sideways, Tric roaring and Bastard screaming and the newly arrived kraken bellowing in fury. The crossbow and its marksmen were smashed loose from the tray, sailing off into the dust. The camels swerved in a panic, sending the wagon train up on four wheels. Mia lunged for the abandoned reins, bringing the train down with a shuddering jolt. She dragged herself into the pilot’s seat and cursed, glancing over her shoulder at the four beasts now pursuing them, shouting over the bedlam to Mister Kindly.
“Remind me never to call the Dark in this desert again!”
“… have no fear of that …”
The churchman manning the xylophone had been knocked clear when the kraken struck, now wailing as one of the monsters dragged him to his death. Tric snatched up the man’s fallen club and started beating on the contraption as Mia roared at Naev.
“Which way is the Red Church from here?”
The woman moaned in reply, clutching the ragged wounds in her chest and gut. Mia could see entrails glistening in the worst of it, Naev’s clothes soaked with gore.
“Naev, listen to me! Which way do we ride?”
“North,” the woman bubbled. “The mountains.”
“Which mountains? There are dozens!”
“Not the tallest … nor the shortest. Nor the … scowling face or the sad old man or the broken wall.” A ragged, spit-thick sigh. “The simplest mountain of them all.”