Side by side with Amris, she sprinted away from the bridge on legs that felt like wet bread. The ground below them shook with the impact of more rocks, and when Darya briefly glanced behind her, she saw bits of the bank crumbling and falling as well. She didn’t witness the bridge’s collapse, but the thunderstorm roar of it deafened her. It kept going well until they reached solid ground and she collapsed beneath a tree, too exhausted for relief.
Chapter 16
“How did you know to do that?” Darya asked.
They’d gotten enough of their breath back to sit up and were drinking water in shallow sips. It seemed a good time to eat, so they’d gotten more bread and meat out of Darya’s pack, but neither of them had the appetite to do more than nibble just then.
Between the sweat, the strain, and the panic, Amris’s whole body felt raw. All he wished in the world was to lie down where they were, in the shade of a large pine tree, and sleep for another hundred years or so. There was a certain peace in that feeling, too, though duty kept him from succumbing to it. He’d pushed his body too far for his mind and heart to keep bothering him.
“There are—were—many stonemasons in my homeland,” he said, “and many of my friends were so apprenticed when I was young. And then I learned a great deal when I was in command. It is, after all, far easier to defeat the army that can’t reach you, or that’s just had half a hillside collapse on it. I was no engineer—but I listened to mine. Well enough, it seems.”
“Willthey be able to reach us?”
He sighed, wishing he could give her the news she would have most liked. “Eventually. Thyran’s troops had winged creatures among them—I cannot believe the cockatrice was the only one left—and they can carry the others over the gap. They may have magic too, and if need be, there is likely a route around, though it will take them far out of their path.”
“Yeah,” she said, regretful but resigned. “I halfway guessed that. If they were the sort to cut their losses and go home, they’d have done that a hundred years ago. Grudge-holding sons of bitches.”
Not that vengeance isn’t holy, in its way.
“Persistence is unholy in my enemies,” said Darya. “Oh well. We bought ourselves more time, and I won’t complain about that. It was a good idea.”
They didn’t only put him in command for his pretty face.
“Notonly,” said Amris. Darya’s praise, and then Gerant’s, brought a smile to his face and gave him a surprising amount of new strength. He took a bite of his dried meat with more enthusiasm than before, and this time he savored the taste, or what taste there was.
A bird was calling steadily in the forest beyond them, a high-pitched and slightly aggrieved sound:What? What? What? What? What?Other, more melodious songs joined in, but that querulous note was dominant. It was unfamiliar, too, though that didn’t mean a great deal. Amris had never been the sort to learn birdcalls.
“How long, do you think?” Darya asked.
Amris calculated, wishing again for terrain maps and scouting reports—well, theywerethe scouts now, even if they hadn’t been sent out as such. “It depends a great deal on their forces,” he said finally, “but I’d wager we’ve gained two or three days. More if they can’t fly and must go around to an alternate path. Fewer if they have a mage who can simply make another bridge.”
Probably not. Such a spell would take a day or two itself, and that’s assuming they fuel it with sacrifice. A week, otherwise. Gizath’s powers wouldn’t be of any assistance, unless—Gerant’s mental voice fell into a speculation Amris knew well, tinged only slightly with horror—that is, a tree might be warped against itself to make a bridge, by one who truly had both skill and power in that kind of art. Or several creatures.
Both Darya and Amris made disgusted noises at the thought. Darya didn’t stop there, but went on to invoke the anatomy of two different gods. Some of the sergeants Amris had served with could have taken lessons from her in profanity.
That was a more pleasant memory than the next to arise. “They were beginning to do that,” Amris said slowly. “Nothing so large as a bridge, and I know not how long it took, but there was a battering ram at one of the last battles. Living, I suppose, though I hate to think of such life. Three or four men from the look of it, but…reshaped.”
The creature had kept all of its eyes: two on the front, but the others dotted over it like knots on a log. It had walked on eight hands. Other details had gone unseen in battle, and Amris didn’t want to speak even of those he was sure of. He thought the words would foul the air.
There was silence for a while, save for the birds.
“Well,” Darya finally said, “even if theycando that for a bridge, I bet they can’t do it instantly, and it’ll cost them men. So to speak. Which means we’ve still hurt them, and that’s the important thing.”
You mentioned grudge-holding sons of bitches, I recall?
“Technically, I’m a grudge-holding bitch, and I don’t think I should speculate about my mother.” Darya brushed crumbs off her hands. “And now, if you’re ready,” she said to Amris, “I think we should get walking.”
* * *
A few hours later, Darya thought they’d covered about half the distance back to Oakford. Along the way, they’d also had to duck under low-hanging branches—Amris more often than she, and more arduously, given the armor—and fight past a small legion of brambles without the small consolation of berries, for all the ripe ones had been eaten by birds. Twice, Darya’s gift had guided them away from danger: a well-concealed badger hole in which one of them could easily have broken an ankle and a patch of grass hiding a mud pit that could swallow an unsuspecting person.
That would have been an ordinary journey for her, though it’d been three or four years since she’d gone that long on foot, and hers were aching properly before sunset. She was used to not talking, too, though mostly because she’d been alone save for Gerant, and they knew each other well enough to spend long periods silent.
She didn’t have to keep looking back to check on Amris, which was another benefit of the spell. Otherwise, she would have been glancing over her shoulder every few steps. As able as he was to take care of himself, there were spiders in the forest with venom that could disable instantly and a few creatures that could soundlessly drag a man off into the woods if they struck at the right time and in the right manner. But he was there and well, and that sense became a constant for Darya, like the weight of the sword on her hip and the presence of Gerant in the back of her mind.
He felt more thoughtful than usual, though Darya had neither leisure, concentration, nor privacy to inquire more until they’d made camp for the evening and Amris was answering a call of nature. Then she seized the opportunity, but didn’t speak loudly. The man was still within the wards, though far enough away and trying hard enough for privacy that she didn’t get much sense of him through the spell.
“Holding up?”
