“Osprey,” I gasped, stumbling into camp.
“Where?” Ivo asked, leaping up and drawing his sword free. Would he really fight his friend? My heart lurched at the thought.
“I don’t know,” I gasped. “He gave me an armband. It tells me when he’s near.”
Zayana’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, but she kicked dirt over the fire with a delicate toe and shook out her blanket.
The thunder cracked again, rippling through the sky and as if it had torn a waterskin, rain descended in sheets, wiping out whatever was left of the fire. A horse whickered nervously, but the rain was so loud that it blocked out all other sound. Ivo was trying to say something, but I couldn’t hear him.
He leaned in, grabbed us both by the cloaks, dragging us in close and yelling into our faces.
“The storm may be our salvation.” He thrust something into my shaking hand. It felt like my short sword. “Try to stay together. If we are separated, meet me at the Dawn’s Forbidding Inn in Glorious Ingvar.”
He reached into a pocket and jammed something into Zayana’s hand and then something into mine as well. Coins, by the feel of them. I tucked them into my belt pouch and then tried to put my scabbard onto my belt but he shook me.
“No time for that! Mount up!”
He shoved us toward the horses as lightning stabbed down into the pasture, making everything seem to freeze for the split second that it rent the darkness with brilliant light. In the instant of brightness, I thought I saw a silhouette above us.
I scrambled for the horse, narrowly avoiding her stamping feet. She tossed her drenched head, eyes rolling with fear. I untied her from the picket, fitting her bridle on awkwardly. My fingers were clumsy and I’d jammed my sword scabbard into my belt in a way that made it hard to bend. The seconds raced and dragged at the same time as I tried to finish her buckles, fingers slipping as my pulse raced.
Ivo and Zayana were already mounted. They motioned to me to hurry.
I scrambled up into the saddle, still not sure that the bridle was fitted correctly. I’d just have to hope my horse could follow the others. They were already running before I’d sorted out my stirrups. I could barely see their horses’ rumps in the pouring rain.
Lightning streaked down again, followed by the crash of thunder almost instantly. The storm was right over us.
My horse followed the others and I thought we were following the road again, but in the heavy rain, I couldn’t tell. We could have been on farmer’s fields. And if we were, my horse could break a leg any second in a gopher hole or rut.
I reached into my cuff and singed my fingers. Was it possible that the feather was even hotter? Fear washed my careful approach away and I leaned over my saddle, hunched forward over my horse as she ran. Wind snatched my hood, pulling it off my head and I was instantly drenched, my bushy hair tamed for once by the fury of the storm. I caught a bare glimpse of Zayana’s horse ahead of me when lightning shot down, slicing the very air with its fury, and then nothing.
A faint cry came from behind me. It sounded like my name but though I looked behind me, I was too blinded by the rain. The wind snatched at the blanket wrapped loosely around me and it flew away. I thought I saw a blur of light behind me that went out as the blanket swallowed it up.
That was my imagination, that was all. That couldn’t have been Os right behind me, could it? I was seeing things.
I turned back to the horses. Forbidding take it!
I’d lost them completely. I sucked in a breath, scanning frantically through the sheets of rain around me.
A tree branch thwapped me in the face, stinging my cheek. I bit down a curse. Somehow, we’d turned off the road into the forest.
I tried to slow my horse with the reins, but she wouldn’t respond. The halter slipped off, falling loose. I pulled it up to me, hand over hand, trying not to lose it entirely. I knew what the problem was. I hadn’t snugged the bit tight enough. My horse didn’t understand what I was trying to communicate. There was no way to slow her terrified gallop and no way to stop.
I gritted my teeth, held on to the saddle, and ducked my head down to try to avoid the worst of the branches. The short sword dug into my belly, but I didn’t dare adjust it. I might need it very soon – to defend myself against Osprey or to put down this poor horse if she broke her legs in holes on the forest floor.
It felt like we ran for hours. When my horse finally slowed, the rain was still pouring down in such heavy sheets that I could see nothing at all. Reluctantly, I dropped from the saddle into ankle-deep streams running across the forest floor.
Her bridle hung in the reins wrapped around the saddle horn where I’d looped it. With a curse, I tried to feel her head and mouth to see if it had been damaged. She bit me – hard.
“Fine,” I spat. “Be that way.”
I shouldn’t be angry at her. She was as frightened as I was and who knew what damage I’d done by not fitting her bridle correctly. I corrected it now, fumbling in the darkness and rain. I was bitten a second time for my trouble.
I shouldn’t have leapt on her back until I knew the bit was right. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep in the field. This was all my fault. I tried not to sink into self-pity, but tears were close and it was all I could do to hold them back.
When I was done, exhausted and soaked, I led the horse to the bole of a large tree, leaned against it, and fell half-asleep standing up with her reins in my hand. I didn’t even care if I was soaked to the skin and holding the reins of a terrified horse. I was too tired to go on. Too tired to care.
I tucked my hand into the leather cuff. Please don’t find me, Osprey. It was still warm, but not like it had been.
The thunder and lightning ceased as I blinked in and out of short snatches of sleep. And then, slowly, the rain began to lessen. When dawn finally crept into the world, l shook myself to alertness.
I was in the middle of a forest of large trees. Large enough, fortunately, that the brush beneath them was thin. But the rain had erased my tracks and all other signs of how I’d arrived here or where my friends might be.
Anxiously, I reached into my cuff and sagged in relief. The feather was barely warm. The storm had saved us.
A twig snapped and I froze.
“Aella?”
Chapter Three
I SPUN, GASPING WITH relief at the sight of a bedraggled Zayana leading a limping horse.
“I thought I was alone,” I said.
“So did I,” she said, rubbing her arms as she tried to warm herself. Her brown eyes were wide, flitting from one point to the next across the forest floor.
“Did you see what happened to Wing Ivo?” I asked.
She shook her head. Her attention still skittered across the landscape, her bottom lip trembling.
“Ivo?” she called.
I threw my hand up, shaking my head urgently. “Don’t call! We’re not out of danger yet!”
She rolled her eyes but at least her disdain seemed to shake her out of her anxiety. “What’s worse? Being caught or being so lost that we never find our way out of this forest?”
“Being caught,” I said firmly. A shiver of fear rushed through me along with memories of Osprey’s agonized face and Juste’s delighted one. I mustn’t let him catch me. I mustn’t let them ever see me again. “You have no idea what they’ll do to me.”