She shot him a glare over her shoulder. “There is no going around the swamp if we want to find your men before they reach the fort. This is the quickest way through.”
He pulled his gaze away from the lightning streaking across the purple sky to the south and down to the murky water. “It’s not worth the shortcut if we die out here.”
She gritted her teeth. “I’ll get us across.”
Turning her attention back to the nonexistent path, she led Copper forward. She’d had to dismount a while ago when they’d hit a stretch of boggy ground. It was too hard to see where she was going from the saddle. She’d found a long branch and prodded the path ahead of her to find the firmest soil. It was slow going.
Her feet were freezing. She’d taken off her boots and rolled up her pants when she dismounted even though the captain had protested. His boots might have offered him some protection inthe swamp, but hers would not. They would, however, keep her feet warm tonight if they stayed dry and if she managed to get them out of the swamp before the storm hit.
She squelched through the sludge, the mud pulling at her feet as she led the way. She didn’t want to risk injuring the horses by riding them into mud that was too deep.
Her foot slipped and she stumbled. Foul water splashed onto her breeches. She caught her balance and pressed on.
With her next step, something cold locked around her ankle and jerked her down hard. She cried out, dropping to her knees.
“Rowan,” Casrian said sharply. “What is it?”
She couldn’t answer him. The thing that had her was pulling her off the firmer ground and into deeper water. Her hip wrenched as she tried to climb to her feet. She drove the end of her walking stick into the water near her foot. Something moved through the dark water, glossy as a fish, black as a serpent.
What the hell was it?
She struck something solid and hit it again, harder. Behind her, she heard the slick metallic sound of Casrian drawing his sword. Her knife was in her boot, tied to the saddle.
Fuck.
Her leg turned, forcing her body to rotate with it. She just kept her mouth out of the foul water as she twisted around. The grip on her ankle tightened, coiling around her calf to the knee.
There was a splash near her head. She looked up to find Casrian standing above her. “Use your leg to pull it closer, out of the water if you can. I can’t see shit.”
“It’s too strong,” she gasped out. It was all she could do to hold her ground, and she was losing that battle. One hand clung to the walking stick as her only weapon. The other was digging into the mud, clawing for purchase. She was elbow-deep in loose muck. Her entire body was soaked and she was slowly being pulled deeper into the water.
Casrian waded out to her extended leg. Whatever the hell he saw there had him cursing like a sailor. Not reassuring. The witch hunter liked to chide her about her language. He didn’t often curse himself. Anything that made him swear like that had to be scary as hell. The thing turned her leg again, sharply, and she was suddenly sitting in the muck. Before it could pull her under, she grabbed the stick with both hands and shoved it down to her ankle, wedged the tip between her leg and the thing and tried to pry herself free.
Casrian swung his blade down, far too close to her submerged foot for comfort. The thing holding her leg flinched but its grip didn’t loosen. She dug deeper with the stick. The wood scraped her skin raw but she decided the pain was worth it when she managed to slide some of her leg free before the thing clamped down on her again.
It had to be some kind of serpent. The river feeding the swamp came down from the mountains through doomed Caetris. Maybe this was something that had slithered out of a cave there and made itself a new home here in the spreading rot.
Like the bear and the wolves and the moths.
All of them creeping across the border, stretching dirty fingers into her woods.
For the first time, she understood something of what drove the witch hunter.Someonehad to stop this.
The witch hunter’s back was to her. He was slicing away at something beneath the water. His body blocked her view. His sword came down and the thing holding her leg thrashed. It twisted and her whole body flipped like it was nothing but dead weight attached to her leg. Her startled cry was cut off when her face splashed down into brackish water. She pressed her lips together and closed her eyes tight, not wanting any of it inside her.
She hadn’t had time to draw a breath before she went under. Her lungs started to burn. She pushed at the mud, trying to get enough leverage to break her head above the water. Her leg twisted again and then she was pulled fully under. She’d lost her walking stick. Her arms flailed, but there was nothing to grab.
She was going to drown. She was going to drown in less than three feet of foul water. For two hundred cord. All because she felt bad for the witch hunter and his men and the woods.
Just as she thought she couldn’t last another second without a breath, her leg slipped free. She dragged her feet under her and pushed against the muddy bottom of the swamp, breaking free of the water and dragging air into her lungs with great gulping gasps. A hard hand wrapped around her arm, and she began to struggle until she realized it was the witch hunter. He hauled her back to the horses, his blue eyes blazing with that bright light that kind of scared her. The violent ruthless part of him he usually kept tucked away behind the shiny uniform. It was probably the same expression witches saw right before he lopped off their heads.
He sheathed his sword and pushed her onto Copper’s back. He slapped the horse’s flank to get him moving and shouted at her, “Get out of the water.”
And it was all she could do to hold on as Copper valiantly pushed through the shoulder-high water on a direct path through the swamp. She clung to his neck as he reached firmer ground and from that vantage point she could just make out a dark shape against the fog. Trees. There were trees ahead. She could feel them again. Thank God.
She risked a glance over her shoulder to see the witch hunter already on Kenzi’s back, his sword back in his hand. He was close behind her, scanning the water as if he’d be able to see anything through the murk.
She directed Copper slightly off course, moving him to the left where the ground seemed firmer. There was a difference in the way the wind crossed deep water versus shallow, and she thought she could see the path through.
