“Ben!”Samuel yelled.“Enough!”
Benedict wheeled his horse about but remained between us and our pursuers.
A light bloomed up ahead and took the shape of another mounted man, horse prancing nervously.Charles, lit with ghisten light and looking none too comforted by it.
“You are making yourself a fine target!”Benedict scolded as we closed in.
“I cannot make him stop!”the highwayman returned.A musket ball cracked off the wood of the bridge, just behind him, and he ducked.
Ben left us all behind, urging his horse onto the hefty wooden bridge, he and his mount shedding water as they went.“Then move!”
Charles followed the Magni, Samuel and I mere paces behind now.His ghisten light just illuminated the boiling river beneath, where chunks of ice thudded into the supports and the water frothed, dirty and hungry.Even the thick icicles that coated the low rails trembled.
A creaking, lamenting moan sounded as a fresh clot of ice began to build up.
“Stop!”a Mereish voice ripped through the night, so close I stifled a shriek.
Samuel and I lunged onto the bridge, slipping and sliding but somehow managing to stay upright.
Another moan and the whole bridge swayed.Tane prickled across my skin and launched into the wood of the structure, igniting it in the same way that Hart did when he strengthened his ship.
The bridge creaked dangerously, and the thud of hooves sounded behind us.
Samuel and I burst off the structure, passing Benedict and Charles and carrying on for a few paces until I realized Tane had not followed.I spied her light still riddling the wood of the bridge.I felt her strain, felt her intent, and retreated another step.
“Keep back!”I warned.
A great crack and a groan split the night, then the bridge began to move—not crumbling, not buckling, but shifting entirely.One end swung north while the other slid down the bank to the south, and the whole thing spun off into the center of the current.
Mereish soldiers screamed.A horse toppled into the current, and one woman made a wild leap for the eastern shore, only to land short and be immediately swallowed by the crush of ice.The rest toppled to the wood or seized the rails, holding on as the bridge became a tottering, sinking ship.
Tane swirled after me in a cloud of ghisten smoke and leapt back into my skin.
I realized I had the back of one cold-swollen hand clamped over my mouth to stop myself from crying out and shakingly lowered it.Drowning in a river of ice was no kind way to go.But they couldn’t cross.We had escaped.We were safe—
Muzzles flashed from the opposite shore.All of them went wide or struck the ground short, but it was enough to banish us farther into the deepening night.
“Time to go.”Charles leaned down to offer me one arm and an empty stirrup.Ghisten light still gilded his skin, though much paler than before.
I seized his hand and mounted behind him.Samuel joined Ben, and the four of us left the drowning bridge behind.
I glanced back once, as light flared on the western shore.A lantern had been unveiled, packed full of golden dragonflies, and the face of a man watched us go with an intensity that chilled me deeper than frigid water and sodden clothes.
“Is that him?”I asked Samuel, voice just loud enough to carry.“Inis Hae?”
His only response was a silent nod.
THIRTY-ONE
The Martyr
SAMUEL
Midnight found us wading into the yard of an inn up the coast, situated just above the submerged homes of a small fishing hamlet on an island of snowpack and ice.The courtyard lay under two feet of water, but the inn itself was raised on a stone foundation and appeared dry, as did the stables.
I leaned close to Benedict—we had been forced to dismount and lead the horses some time ago, exhausted as they were.
“Do not harm anyone here,” I warned.“We are monks on the road; they have no reason to be suspicious untilyougive them one.”
