We're moving so fast the cart threatens to tip, lurching and sliding in the mud, but we areout. The dark, oppressive walls of Eelry are behind us, swallowed by the night. We are in the wild.
We are alive. He did it. He got me out.
But the shouting behind us is not fading. It is changing. The sound of running feet is being replaced by the rhythmic, terrifying thunder of hoofbeats.
"They are coming!" I scream, scrambling to my knees.
I look back. Through the darkness, I can see them—four, no,fivedark shapes on horseback, easily gaining on our clumsy, heavy cart. Krell. He is in the lead, his pale elven hair a banner in the moonlight.
"Faster!" I beg, but Othic does not answer.
He is slumping.
His massive body sways in the driver's seat, his grip on the reins slackening. The poison. The blood loss. It is too much. The taura pulling us is panicked, but it is tiring, and his one-armed whipping is not enough.
"Othic!" I cry, crawling forward, grabbing his arm. His skin is cold, clammy, despite the heat of his exertion.
An arrow hisses past my ear and slams into the rump of the taura. The beast screams, a high, terrified sound, and bolts, but it is a lurch of panic, not a burst of speed.
Krell and his men are laughing. I can hear it now, a faint, cruel sound carried on the wind. They are toying with us. They know he is wounded. They are just running the beast to ground before they move in for the kill.
He is dying. He is bleeding out, and I am watching.
"Hold on," Othic growls, his voice a low rasp.
He yanks the reins hard, not slowing, butturningthe cart sharply off the main road. The cart slams into a ditch, tilting at a horrifying angle, but Othic’s weight keeps it from flipping. We crash through a line of brittle trees and into the swampy, sucking mire of the Worg Bog.
The horses behind us balk, whinnying in panic as their hooves sink into the mud.
"He is taking us into the bog!" Krell’s voice is a distant, furious shriek. "Spread out! Find the ridge line! Head him off!"
The taura strains, its hooves finding purchase in the mud where the horses cannot. The cart slows to a grinding, sucking crawl, but it is still moving. He is a genius. The horses cannot follow us here.
But the ground is changing. The soft mud gives way to hard, slick stone. The trees are thinning. I can smell... nothing. Just cold, empty air. Mist.
Othic raises his head, his senses, even dulled by poison, screaming a warning. He yanks on the reins, pulling the taura to a skidding, terrible halt.
The beast digs in its hooves, its panicked eyes rolling as the cart slides, the front wheels stoppinginchesfrom a sheer, black void.
A cliff.
The bog path is a dead end.
My breath seizes in my chest. It is over. He is trapped. They will kill him, and then they will drag me back to Privis.
No. I will not go back.I look down into the misty, bottomless canyon.I will jump. I will jump before I let them touch me.
Hoofbeats, slow and confident, sound behind us. Krell and his four mercenaries emerge from the trees, fanning out in a relaxed semi-circle, cutting off all escape. The trap is sprung.
"It is over, Tusk!" Krell’s voice is smug, victorious. He dismounts, his boots clicking on the stone as he approaches, his sword drawn. "Nowhere to run. Give us the girl, and I will make your death clean. My personal promise."
Othic is slumped over the reins, his breathing a wet, ragged sound. He is done. He is finished.
He lifts his head. He looks at Krell, at the line of mercenaries. Then he looks at me.
His amber eyes are glazed with pain, a dark, muddy film covering the fire. But beneath it, a spark ignites. A new, desperate,insaneidea.
He does not look over at Krell again. He just looks at me. His bloody lips pull back from his tusks, not in a snarl, but in something else. A grimace of a pure, final gamble.
