23
It took three seconds for Fern’s brain to register that her understanding of an already bad situation had been woefully wrong, and that it was significantly worse in every respect.
“What’re you waiting for?” cried Breadlee. “That lady with the bow back there is gonna needle you like a pincushion if you just hang around!”
A frantic glance confirmed that the stone-fey did have an arrow nocked, but she hadn’t fully drawn her bow yet. She only watched as the other two advanced, Zyll and Fern their obvious quarry, which was plenty of encouragement for Fern to get a move on.
Bucket moved first, though, and instead, she had to scrabble for a better handhold to keep from tumbling off. He surged forward, curving wide and then drawing the cart perpendicular to the bridge, blocking most of it and leaving several feet of room on either side before a laughably shallow lip of stone prevented travelers from accidentally stumbling over the edge.
“Thank-ly, Buckley-boy!” cried Zyll, and it dawned on Fern what he’d done.
Bucket had separated the two groups, giving Fern and Zyll something to hide behind.
“Good horse!” she fervently agreed.
They both scrambled to the side of the cart facing Astryx and leapt down to huddle behind the wheel.
Fern heard a peculiar whistling, distinct from the wind, and then the cart rocked as something thumped into the tarpaulin.
An arrow.
Peering around the wheel, she saw the red-haired man and the orc drawing ever nearer, still without any apparent urgency, as the stone-fey fitted another arrow to her bow.
She wasn’t trying to kill them, Fern realized.
She was just keeping them in one place until the others arrived, so thattheycould kill them.
Fern ducked back behind the wheel, her eyes locking with Zyll’s.
The goblin’s sharp grin was nowhere to be found, and there was something in her eyes that Fern had never seen there before. Shrewdness.Seriousness.
Fear?
Zyll reached out, grasped her paw, and squeezed it once.
“Zu-kenda.”
A buzzing in Fern’s ears ascended into a high whine. She hadn’t been this terrified since her encounter with Varine the Pale, when she’d been absolutely certain she was going to die.
Her blood thumping at her temples, Fern put her back to the wheel and stared ahead, her mind whiting out, dimly aware that Zyll was rummaging in her pockets again.
Which is when she saw Astryx and Tullah.
Fern realized that this battle was nothing at all like the ones she’d witnessed prior.
Because Tullah looked like she waswinning.
Astryx moved with the same liquid speed and unerring precision, but where before Nigel had flashed in blinding arcs of white steel, slipping past defenses and shedding parries, now he was deployed to different effect.
Tullah pressed her with brutal strikes, hacking with her axe in fierce and unpredictable chops that rang on Elder steel and flung blue sparks to mix with the flakes of snow, her dozens of braids snapping behind her like coachwhips. Fern could almost feel the impacts in her own bones, her fingers shivering with sympathetic vibration. Even as she watched, the orc heaved her weapon around in a diagonal cut that raked down the longblade with a scream of metal, catching between the steel and crosspiece—and then Tullah pushed her right hand all the way up to the axe-head and continued driving through with the left, smashing the haft into Astryx’s sternum with a dull crack.
The Oathmaiden staggered back with a deep grunt, but her blade stayed steady.
“My lady!” cried Nigel.
At his pained voice, Tullah grinned even wider, lips skinning back to bare her tusks entirely. “Always wondered what it’d be like to handle an Elder Blade. Guess I’ll find out.”
She didn’t even look winded.
