I spun.
He stood in the gap where the wall used to be. Blood covered the left side of his jacket. His face was gray beneath the naturalgray of his skin, and his sigils looked flat. Wrong. But he was standing. He was here.
“I said north door,” he said. “You went for the right one.”
“You look terrible.”
“Nice of you to say.” He limped toward me. Knelt beside Turnip. Ran his hands over the boar’s side, gentler than I expected from those scarred fingers. “Can he move at all?”
“Front legs. His back is. I don’t know. Maybe paralysis. Maybe just pain.”
“We need something with wheels.”
“The cart.” I pointed. “In the barn. If it hasn’t burned yet.”
Kallum nodded. Started to rise. Swayed.
I caught him. His weight against me, solid and warm and wrong. He shouldn’t be this heavy. He shouldn’t be leaning on me this much.
“You’re worse than you’re saying.”
“I’m vertical.”
“You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”
His mouth twitched. Almost a smile. “The cart. Stay with Turnip.”
He was gone before I could argue. Slipping through the gap in the wall and into the smoke and the dawn light and the burning world.
I crouched beside Turnip and stroked his snout and waited.
The smoke got thicker.
The flames got closer.
And somewhere in the distance, I heard more gunfire.
KALLUM
The barn was still standing.
Barely. The eastern wall had caught, flames eating up the old wood, but the western side held. I found the cart where Anhara had said it would be. Two wheels. Rusted axle. Built for hauling feed, not evacuating wounded animals.
It would have to do.
I dragged it out through the smoke. My side was bleeding again. Not the steady trickle from before. Something worse. Something that made my vision blur at the edges. The case pressed against my ribs where I’d tucked it, the Sovereign’s seal digging into my skin with every step.
Later. Deal with it later.
Three hostiles between me and the farmhouse.
They didn’t see me coming.
The first one died before he knew I was there. Blade across the throat.
The second turned. His rifle swung toward me, but my blade found his ribs before the barrel came level.
The third got one shot off. It went wide, burning through air where I’d been standing a half-second before.
