"Rymar!" I panted, rushing in to grasp his arm and interrupt them. "They have to be heading to Lorsa. Three blasts for 'not here.' If the Moles aren't coming here, then where else would they go?!"
"Blasts?" Eriska asked me.
I grabbed the whistle that now hung beside my signet ring and waved it at her. "Tobias, my Mole, has one of these. Two to sit if they come here so we'll know ahead of time. Three to lie down if they go somewhere else." And I thrust my arm back at Pepper. "They're going somewhere else!" Then I snapped my attention to Rymar. "Where's Holly?"
"Kanik has her," he assured me. "I sent him to get arrows.Allthe arrows."
I nodded. "Lansin said we need all the carts."
"What?" Eriska asked. "Why?"
But Rymar understood immediately and answered for me. "Because she's right, Eriska. If they aren't coming here, they must be going to Lorsa - and most of our defenses arehere!"
"Shit!" The woman who led this group of farmers didn't need anything else.
Like a dog obeying a command, she turned and got right to work. Yelling names of people I still didn't know, the Reaper chief made things happen. She also completely ignored us, but I heard something about carts, weapons, and leaving no one behind defenseless before Rymar caught my hand and began towing me toward the communal kitchen.
"Ayla, it's two days to Lorsa by foot," he told me. "It's just over a day by horse. Day and a half in a cart."
"Okay?"
"Which means," he said, "we can catch them. Go get dressed for a fight, Phoenix, because they can't have anyone else without coming throughallof us."
Sixty-Five
Ayla
Ihad never seen the Reapers like this before. The moment a decision was made, every single person got to work making it happen. Every cart, regardless of type, was hitched to a horse. Guardians and militia members piled in or held on to the back and sides with weapons covering our bodies.
The dogs blazed the path. I counted at least fifty, and I was sure there had to be more. Every shadow in the forest moved. Half the patches of moonlight were reflecting from white markings on an animal. Knives, daggers, krael, and even scythes had been strapped on. Bows were everywhere, in all different shapes, sizes, and styles.
Then there were the arrows.
Entire buckets of the things had been loaded into the carts. The bigger wagons had even more. And while we'd just become a fast-moving army, this mess was far from silent. From the yapping of the dogs and the snorts the horses let out, to the worried voices of the people piled into the carts, it was all drowned out by hooves. Large, powerful, thundering ones that left worrisome divots behind from the speed we were traveling.
I was tossed and jostled. Kanik shifted behind me, helping me to keep my balance. It was a learned skill, he assured me, butalso exhilarating. I hadn't realized it was possible to travel this fast - which was good, because it had taken far too long for all of this to start moving.
The sky had barely started to change into something a bit less black when dozens of dogs dropped to their bellies, lying down before they even stopped running. Immediately, people began yelling for a halt, and everyone piled out - just as the first Moles rushed us from the trees.
Arrows flew, dropping the closest, and the rest pulled back. Here, the trees were thick, giving them far too much cover, but we didn't have time to worry about that. I jumped over the side, trying to figure out if we'd just stumbled upon the men at the back, or if they were all here. Sadly, I knew the answer.
They'd heard us coming. Of course they had, but I'd been hoping for more light before we'd reached them. Moles couldn't see in the sun, and we couldn't at night. And yet every dog handler yelled the same command, one after the other.
"Disarm!"
The dogs were our first wave as we hit the ground and pulled our weapons. Eriska was screaming orders at the back. At the front, Zasen was doing the same, so I turned to head that way, but Kanik caught my arm.
"Rymar!" he snapped, looking over my shoulder. "You stay with Ayla. If she says to do it, you listen." Then his eyes found mine. "And find Tobias. I need to help Zasen keep these Reapers alive."
I nodded and called for Holly. It took her a bit to return, and when she did, her coat was muddy, but Pepper followed right after, dragging a gun by the strap.
"Good girls!" I praised, taking the weapon. Then I looked at Rymar. "How do you fight?"
"I usually don't," he said. "Yellow is a hard color to miss. I have good aim, though."
"What weapons!" I hissed, because that had been what I was really asking.
He lifted a krael. "Ayla, I don'towna bow."
