Somewhere out there were landmarks—the Hand, standing as high as the tallest juniper tree in Ardenia, its stone fingers reaching for the stars. The Warlord, pulling strings from his caravan. Great fire pits dotting the landscape, littered with the bones of the defiant.
These were the things Amarande was certain to find in the Torrent, along with Luca. As for anything resembling sustenance and hydration? Even if metered by the Warlord, they were necessities. They existed, too.
But where?
Luca had once told her horses could go ten days without food. Without water that span dropped to three days—the same time frame for a human. But all those estimates considered ideal conditions, not the Torrent, with its heat and open spaces and unrelenting sun.
More than a half day, gone.
“I’m coming, Luca,” she whispered as she tapped Mira into motion, and pulled her handkerchief up over her nose and throat. “I just hope I won’t be near collapse and dragging a dead horse when I find you.”
Amarande pointed Mira’s sand-dusted nose to the north and west, back along the dragon’s spine, which was now splitting the sun’s rays in equal measure.Noon.
Accounting for the fight and the cleanup after, she’d likely lost all of the time she’d gained over the course of the night and into the morning. Fifteen hours riding, yet still three hours behind. Maybe more.
But she’d get that time back.
As the sheer umber face of the long spine of plateaus neared, Amarande searched the ground for any hint of the three horses of the bandits carrying her love. The winds had whipped the trail clear, fresh red dirt blanketing what was there only an hour earlier. It became obvious to the princess after about a mile of combing along the rock wall as she’d done previously that the trail was gone. There was nothing now, not even an oat.
For the first time, panic clawed at Amarande’s throat.
The princess swallowed and shut her eyes for a moment. She was not helpless. It was not hopeless.
Again, her father came to her.A warrior made is a warrior alive.
The tenet was an obtuse one, but said plain, the meaning was: Use what you have to your advantage to survive.
The princess’s eyes sprang open.
She had herself. She had Mira. She had the terrain.
Cobble them into an advantage, Ama.
She blinked again at the tail of the dragon’s spine.Yes.That was it.
She would guide Mira up the narrow rock ledges until they either reached the plateau or could go no farther and search the horizon. Whatever she saw there had to be more informative than what was left down below.
Amarande and Mira made the turn to climb, angling for the first ledge leading up the mass of rock, the heavy light casting the path in little relief. Which was when Amarande realized there wasn’t enough room for them to safely maneuver. The ledges grew increasingly thin toward the top, a true path crumbling into a careful hop and skip.
There was no way they were making it together.
Amarande peered at their surroundings. She didn’t have the perspective she craved, but she had enough of a view to see they were alone.
“Don’t worry, I’ll only be a moment.”
She looped Mira’s reins around a craggy thumb of burnished rock and edged her way around the filly, to the first gap between ledges. It was just short of a full split leap’s distance, and the princess leaned hard against the rock face as she tested the weight of a single foot against it—a fall would be another disaster.
But her weight held, and she hugged the rock face, skirting around, picking one ridge and then another, boot tips freeing fresh red dust with every side step and balance check.
The fourth ledge was the leanest—the width of an Itspi windowsill, and at the height of three of Luca’s best stallions placed one atop another. Her fingernails clawed at porous stone, combing for every available groove. Her grip wasn’t the best, bruised knuckles smarting, functional but cranky. But she was spry and had plenty of childhood moments spent in trees—most of them with Luca, of course. Picking lemons to deliver to the kitchens along with a heavy-handed suggestion that they’d go to rot if someone didn’t make cake. Rescuing a gray tabby who’d chased a bird too far. Spying on Koldo’s meticulous methods of reducing new recruits to tears.
By the sixth ledge, she had the top of the plateau within literal reach. Sweat slid down her temples; her hands were wet, too. She dried her palms one by one on her dress, the coating of russet dust adding much needed grit to the slick. She shoved her kerchief up from her nose almost to her hairline, blotting sweat before it could sting her eyes.
She wiped her palms one more time, hooked her hands at the wrists above, and dug her grip into the windblown rock of the top.Amarande closed her eyes. Her breath came in puffs. She could do this.
To the top or not at all.
Her father had never said such a thing, not to her, but the sentiment fit with everything he taught her.
