When he and the other Bathyr had split from their birth tribe, their anger had destroyed all ties to their past. It was the only way to push on.
Aldora moved and he looked back at her.
“Would you cut someone down so viciously?” she asked.
He paused. “Yes.”
“Even me? Once my usefulness to you runs out?”
He would never abandon a human. He slid his hand under her chin. “The uses for humans are many. To abandon a war prize so sought after is unheard of.”
“Even if I break my leg, my arms, my body?” she asked quietly.
“I would break them back into place.”
She flinched. Vedikus turned away, listening to the approaching horses, guessing their distance. Whether they were on this side of the hedge wall or on the other, he was not yet sure, but the fresh smell of tainted blood permeated the air.
Telner and the two other stallions the horsebeast had been with came to mind. Vedikus could take on several centaurs at once, but more than three would be risky, and the path they were on was just wide enough to allow one to maneuver around him... if they kept him distracted.
“What if I fight you every single step of the way and every moment with me becomes a trial? What if I betray you at the first opportunity, regardless of what would happen to me? Would you leave me for dead?”
“Do you plan on betraying me?” he snarled.
Her eyes widened, large and leafy brown, searching his gaze and trying to read something in him he wasn’t sure was there. His nostrils flared.
“I don’t know,” she answered.
His lips twitched.The female is not entirely afraid of me.“I will not leave you to the monsters. If you’re trying to compare me to those of your kind, go ahead, but I’ll never prove you right. If you’re looking for a reason to run, you’ll find many but you’ll find more to stay.”
Vedikus slammed his hand back over her mouth and twisted away, swinging one of his axes in an arch. Plants fell in strings around his arm as his blade cleaved the head straight off the scout sprinting past. Blood gushed outward as the creature crumpled to the ground, its head rolling away.
He pulled the body of the corpse into the shadows as Aldora shifted from the wall. He pulled on her leash in reminder.Several feet is all you get.
“It’s dead,” she murmured, bewildered. “I didn’t even know it was there.”
“A goblin scout.” He didn’t bother consoling her as he kneeled and picked up a crude whistle tied to the goblin’s hand. “The piece that warns of a human entering the labyrinth.” Vedikus lifted it to show her. When she took it from his grasp, he stood. “Blow through this hole,” he pointed at the whistle’s end, “in three short bursts if we ever get separated. I’ll know it’s you.”
She turned it around and looked at the whistle mutely then tucked it into a fold on her shirt. “I’ll remember.”
“We’re not going back,” he reminded her.
“Even at the chance of another human?”
Inhuman screams arose in the distance.
“I won’t risk the first.”
The female glanced up at him through her messy hair. He reached up and pulled the vines and half-dead leaves from it.
“Will... they survive?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
She nodded, brow furrowed, and folded hands around the rope at her hips, nodding again but didn’t speak.
His ear twitched and Vedikus adjusted the grip on his axe. The sound of hooves neared. It was time to go.
“You’re no longer a sacrifice,” he told her, stepping away.
