Forcing myself to get out of the carriage, my ribbons dragging behind me in the snow, a knowing resignation fills me. I know what I have to do. I need to figure out a way to warn my king.
I just hope it doesn’t cost me my life.
Chapter 4
AUREN
You’d think that after weeks of traveling, I’d be used to using a latrine dug in the ground to relieve myself. But nope. There’s something about having to lift your skirts and squat in the snow that really drags a girl down.
I do my business as quickly as I can. Bright side, I manage to do it without splashing on my own boots or falling ass-first into the snow. It’s all about the small victories right now.
Luckily, I get done before anyone else walks up to use the latrine, so I don’t have to worry about being watched. Scooping up some powdery snow, I use it to rinse my hands before I straighten and run my palms over my wrinkled skirts.
Now that my most pressing need is out of the way, I cross my arms around myself to ward off the chill that’s easily cutting through my wool dress and the pirate captain’s feather coat.
I take a moment to look around and get my bearings, but all I can see is the same landscape more or less that I’ve seen for days. Snow and ice and nothing.
The flat expanse of the Barrens seems to go on forever, the dark outline of the mountains far in the distance, the gentle sloping snow drifts never ending.
Commander Rip is right. I could run right now, and maybe I could even evade him and his soldiers for a while, but then what? I have no provisions of my own, no shelter, no true sense of direction. I would freeze to death out there.
Still, the empty horizon taunts me, a bitter temptress that mocks me with her open freedom. It’s a lie, one that would wrap me in its freeze and shatter my brittle body like ice.
With a hardened jaw, I turn and walk away, heading back into camp. The soldiers made quick work of setting it up. It’s nothing fancy, just crude leather tents speckled every few feet and campfires peppered throughout, but even so, this army doesn’t seem to shirk from the cold, doesn’t seem to be breaking down from the harsh elements.
As I breach the first of the tents, I glance around warily, keeping a look out for the commander or any of his soldiers who might slink out of the shadows and try to hurt me or force me into my tent.
But no one comes.
I don’t trust this fake freedom, not for a second.
Completely on my own, I wander the grounds, my eyes peeled. I don’t see any of the saddles or Midas’s guards, but the sheer numbers in this army make it hard to spot much of anything.
Even though I’m tired and aching, I force myself to push past it for a little while longer, to take advantage of this time alone while I have it, because I might not get this opportunity again.
Back on the pirate ship, a messenger hawk was sent to Captain Fane, alerting him of Commander Rip’s impending arrival. Which means that the commander has at least one hawk, if not more. I need to find them.
As I skirt tents and groups of soldiers eating around their fires, I stay quiet, keeping my head down but my eyes up, searching and watching, my ribbons dragging in the snow behind me, leaving feather-light tracks in my wake.
The scent of food makes my angry stomach pitch a petulant fit, but I can’t succumb to my hunger or my dragging body. Not yet.
I don’t think messenger hawks would be kept in a tent, so I ignore those. If I had to guess, I’d say the animals are being transported in covered carts, so that’s what I look for, though I try to seem like I’m just walking around aimlessly. It’s not difficult, considering I am aimless, unsure where to go.
The sounds of the army surround me. Soldiers talking, campfires burning, horses whinnying. Every gruff laugh or cracking spark from the wet logs makes me jump, my entire body anticipating someone grabbing me at any moment.
Soldiers watch me as I go. My body stays tense, but aside from their distrustful eyes following me, no one approaches me. It’s disconcerting, unexpected, and I don’t know what to think of it.
What is Commander Rip’s game?
Finally, when my boots are soaked from trudging through the slush and I’m shivering with cold, I spot several wooden carts covered in leather tarps across the way, on the outskirts of the camp.
My stomach leaps, and I get a sense of urgency, but I don’t dare head straight for them. I don’t dare rush.
Instead, I circle around, forcing my shaky steps to go unhurried, making sure to keep my face timid, my eyes desultory.
After being as careful as I can possibly be, I make it to the carts, the full dark of night helping to hide me in the shadows.
There’s a campfire thirty feet away, but only four men are sitting there, and they’re in deep discussion about something, though I can’t hear what they’re saying.
I carefully walk down the line of carts, peeking beneath tarps as I go, trying to be quick because I don’t want to be caught.
The first four carts aren’t covered, and they’re empty and smelling of leather, probably where the tents were stored. The next several are filled with bales of hay and barrels of oats for the horses, and after that, I come upon cart after cart of provisions for the soldiers. I’m running out of hope.
When I get to the last one, I see the square shape of some kind of crates—animal crates?
I duck behind it, praying to the great Divines that this is it. With a deep breath, I glance around before flipping the tarp back to check it, but as soon as I do, my hope drops straight through my sodden boots. Not crates. Just a cart full of tightly folded furs.
I stare at it in defeat, though I try to keep my emotions in check. I know I’m exhausted and emotionally bombarded, but this failure makes my shoulders slump and my eyes prick with panic.
Where the Divine hell are they? If I can’t warn Midas…
“You lost?”
I jerk at the voice, my hand dropping the tarp as I whirl around. I look up and up and up, finding a bear of a man towering over me.
I recognize him immediately, based on the mass of his body alone. Back on the pirate ship, Rip was flanked by two soldiers, and even though they had their helmets on at the time, I just know that this huge man was one of them, that he led Rissa and me off the ship.
Now, without his armor or his helmet, I see his round face, bottom lip pierced through with a short, twisted piece of wood resembling the sigil of Fourth Kingdom’s gnarled tree. He has brown leather straps wrapped around his thick biceps and black leather covering the rest of him.
Somehow, he seems even larger than before—a good three heads taller than me, legs as thick as tree trunks and fists as big as my face.
Great. I had to be discovered by this big bastard?
Honestly, I don’t know what I did to piss off the goddesses so much.
I tilt my chin up at the brown-haired brute, suddenly very glad that I visited the latrine, because he’s scary enough to make someone pee their frozen pants.
I clear my throat. “No.”
He lifts a bushy brow, brown eyes filled with a scowling suspicion, long hair hanging around his face and flattened at the top from its time in a helmet. “No? Then what are you doing over here, so far away from your tent?”