There were scattered remains—full corpses still wearing their armor, though their bones showed through, flesh picked clean—at the base of the blockage, while the occasional limb or torso stuck out between pieces of the felled buildings. I even spotted a hoof or two from where the enemies’ mounts were crushed by quickly falling debris.
“I’d hazard a guess that this is the way Samyr came through, but our Mages collapsed the buildings, hoping to slow their advance,” I said, pointing to the blockage.
Faylinn was silently chewing her lip before she nodded once.
“How do we get around?”
“You don’t. This is the only way in and out of the central courtyard. They must have climbed the rocks,” I said, already swinging my leg off of Balios.
“Wait!” Faylinn called, stilling my movements. I turned my head back toward her, cocking my brow in question. Her hand was outstretched, worry and uncertainty shining in her hazel orbs.
“Yes?”
“This . . . isn’t the only way into the courtyard.”
“How did you know of this?”I bent to examine a break in the northern edge of the wall. If Faylinn hadn’t shown me, I would never have known its existence. It was a weak point that could have easily been exploited by our enemies. Covered by loose brush and plant growth, the gap was just large enough for a man to slip through sideways.
I scratched my beard in thought as I felt down the Bond, waiting for her reply. Faylinn was hesitant and a bit embarrassed, if I caught that emotion correctly.
“Torin created it,” she mumbled, my eyebrows rising significantly at her admission.
She sighed, shaking her head so her curls bounced. “We had a . . . discussion a few weeks before the attack on Vespera. It’s when I discovered the Bondsmith was my mother and that he had rescued her before she joined their ranks.” Her hands twined together as she spoke, betraying the feelings she tried to muffle in the Bond. “We scoped out a place that could easily be hidden by brush and explained away by erosion. It’s how they entered Vespera without being seen in the lower quadrants.”
I sat back on my heels, brushing my hands against my pants with a bemused chuckle.
“Clever,” I admitted, pushing to a stand with a groan. My knees cracked with the movement, and I stretched to keep the stiffness out of my muscles.
“You’re not . . . mad?” Faylinn asked tentatively, hope ringing through her voice.
“Oh no, I’m livid,” I admitted calmly, causing her eyes to widen to the size of dinner plates. “But there is nothing I can do about it now except to patch it once Vespera is . . . righted.”
Faylinn hummed with a sharp nod as I crunched over twigs and dried leaves to press a kiss to her forehead.
“After you,” I mumbled against her skin, gesturing to the hole in the wall. Faylinn squeezed me tightly for a moment before extracting herself from my embrace and slinking through the wall with practiced ease.
Before following her through, I checked behind me to make sure the horses were as we had left them. Balios and Faylinn’s mare were loosely tied to a tree near the edge of the river, happily munching on grass in the shade.
Balios turned and snorted at me, as if to say they weren’t going anywhere.
I smiled at my uncannily intelligent horse before scraping through the small opening into what I could only describe as hell.
Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Five
Rohak
There were no words for the destruction and devastation that laid waste to the courtyard that once teemed with life. Now, instead of swelling with vendors hawking wares with the smell of cooking meats and fresh pastries, it was a mass graveyard. Bones and bodies in various states of decay littered the grey cobblestones that were stained black with dried blood. The scent of human decomposition hung heavy in the warm spring air, causing both Faylinn and me to gag and retch against the wall.
Coyotes yipped and scampered back over the piled stone as carrion birds squawked loudly and took flight once Faylinn and I made our presence known.
Any hope I once held for survivors was quickly and thoroughly squashed—the sheer number of bodies that littered the courtyard left little room for any other conclusion. The dead were so thick in some places that the stone below was impossible to see.
I jumped when Faylinn’s finger gently touched the bridge of my nose, a wet feeling left behind as she muttered some indecipherable words under her breath. Immediately, the smell dissipated, clean air filling my lungs once more as I watched her repeat the same action on her face.
“A rune to filter the smell,”she explained down the Bond.
I grunted my thanks before clasping her hand in mine, cautiously pulling her away from the wall and into the courtyard beyond.
We were silent as we picked our way through bodies bloated beyond recognition and teeming with maggots and flies that lined our path. Though I was no stranger to death, more than once, I had to avert my gaze.
