The guards’ faces are shuttered. Uneasy. Their stances, as they all keep sentry on top of the hill, hold tension, from the line of their shoulders to the poise of their feet.
On top of the unnamed hill over the last stretch of plain in Sixth Kingdom, I suddenly feel exposed, like a tree stripped of its bark.
For a moment, no one speaks. All faces are turned toward the mountain in the distance, to where the scout ventured off. Lone footprints leading away from the group, snowfall already starting to cover them.
Long minutes pass, and though we wait, all eyes peeled, no sign of the scout comes. Beside me, Digby’s lips press together in a firm line, as if making up his mind. He looks over a few of the men. “You three with me to track the scout. The rest of you, stay with the carriages. Be ready to move.”
The three men nod and walk off to mount their horses, while Digby turns to Sail. “Guard her,” he says gruffly.
Sail salutes him by hitting his right fist against his left shoulder plate. “Yes, sir.”
Digby gives me a look that says, Behave yourself.
To reassure him, I attempt to mimic the same salute motion that Sail gave him, except I overshoot and end up punching myself in the arm way too hard. “Ouch,” I mutter, rubbing the spot on my shoulder with a wince.
Digby sighs at me and looks at Sail again. “Guard her a lot.”
“Hey!” I say indignantly.
Sail barely stops his snort of amusement. “Will do, sir.”
Digby places his foot in the stirrup of his horse and hauls himself into the saddle while I clutch my coat tightly around me.
With a whistle, he and the three others go galloping down the hill in the same direction that the missing scout went. One of them carries a lantern pole, leading the way.
I don’t know how in the Divine hell they’re going to be able to see anything out there to find the scout, but I hope they find him and return quickly. Waiting here leaves an uneasy seed to fester beneath the ground I’m standing on, filling me with trepidation. Staying here, dormant, like stagnant water left to spoil.
“You think they’ll find him?”
Sail nods with confidence. “They’ll pick up his trail.”
“Even in the dark?” I ask dubiously.
“Don’t worry.” Sail sends me a comforting look. “Digby is the best guard I’ve ever met. He’s smart and he’s got good instincts. I’m sure the Scout just got turned around. It’s easy to do out here.”
I nod, swallowing down the rest of my worries so they don’t creep off my tongue and find voice.
“Come on, Miss Auren, let’s get you back to the carriage. You’ll be out of the cold at least,” Sail tells me.
I hesitate, still watching the bobbing lantern of the search party, the light getting smaller with the distance. Soon, it’s the only thing I can see, the riders’ shadows totally swallowed up with the night.
I watch that light like it’s one of the fireflies of southern Orea, where it’s rumored that they appear on dark, lonely roads to lead the lost back home with their ultraviolet glow.
Ever since that night, when a blade was pressed against my neck, I’ve depended on Digby’s steady presence. We’ve never spoken about it—that’s not his way—but at night in my cage, I’d roll over from a nightmare and see him there, already standing watch against the wall, even though his shift wouldn’t start for hours.
It was as if he knew I needed him near, like he knew I’d keep seeing that blade, that blood, that line between death and life. He knew, and he came to protect me, every night, even if it was just against phantom dreams.
It’s foolish, but watching him disappear out of sight leaves a raking claw to draw over my back, making the base of my ribbons recoil.
“Don’t worry,” Sail tells me again, obviously picking up on my thoughts. “They’ll be back soon.”
“And if the mountain breaks loose?”
Sail begins to lead me down the hill. “A little thing like an avalanche wouldn’t be enough to stop him. He’s too stubborn.” He smiles over at me. “Too good of a soldier.”
“Is he? He must hate having babysitting duty all the time, then,” I reply with a dry chuckle, an attempt to pretend, to smother the worry.
Sail shakes his head. “I heard he requested it.”
My eyes cut over. “Really?”
“Really.”
A slow smile pulls at my cold lips. I knew he liked me. “I’ll get him to play a drinking game with me yet.”
Sail chuckles. “You have your work cut out for you. I’ve never seen him relax or let loose. But if anyone can do it, it’s you.”
“Did you find out why we stopped?”
I look up at Rissa and the other saddles who are now outside of their carriages, standing around in a circle in the snow.
“The scout went missing. They went to go find him.”
Her pretty face pinches with worry. “Are we stopping here for the night?”
Sail shakes his head, one hand resting on the pommel of his sword. “No, as soon as they get back, we’ll need to keep moving.” He turns to me. “Come on, you’re shaking like a leaf. Let’s get you in the carriage.”
I don’t argue as he leads me past the saddles. Just as we make it to my carriage, thunder cracks. I turn to the sky and groan. “Another storm?” The thought of being stuck in a torrent of wind and freezing rain again does not sound appealing.
Sail frowns, but he’s not looking at the sky. He’s looking at the mountain ahead. “I don’t think that was thunder.”
“Hey, what’s that?” a saddle behind us asks, pointing forward.
Everyone converges, abandoning the carriages to skirt around the bottom of the hill to look into the valley. Sail and I join them, scanning the landscape, but my eyes catch onto something far away, far and glowing like a beacon.
“Is that…fire?” Polly asks.
The warm light hovers in the distance, an orange glow that streaks against the black, like a smear on glass.
“Maybe it’s the lantern from the scout?” someone offers.
“No,” Sail says, shaking his head. “At this distance…that’s way too big to be from a lantern.”
But as soon as he says it, the “way too big” glowing fire breaks off, into dozens of little fires. The blazes spread out, weaving and shifting, until they form a line far across the snow plain, stretched out so that my eyes have to flicker left and right to take them both in.
“What in Divine’s hell…” I trail off.
Then there’s that noise again. A boom of thunder in the distance. The kind of sound that’s so low, it’s barely heard, more felt. Except it’s not coming from the clouds.
Behind the row of strange firelight, at the base of the mountain, snow shifts. Falls. Like smoke rising, a plume of white blooms, smothering the balls of light for a moment, as the snow at the base of the mountain moves.
“Oh, Divine, it’s an avalanche!” one of the women shrills. Two more screams tear out from panicked throats as some of them turn to run.
But I watch, enraptured, as the shadows that I mistook for the base of the mountain break off. Break off and begin to follow the dots of flame. And those dark forms, those lights, they all move so fast, heading right in our direction. The noise rumbles through the air again, and my whole body tenses.
“That’s not an avalanche,” Sail breathes beside me.
Dread thickens, like a pinching fog, gripping the breath from my lungs.
“Holy Divine fuck,” a guard curses. “Snow pirates!”
One blink. One breath. One solitary moment for the words to sink down, down, down. And then chaos erupts.
Before I can even fathom the implications of what’s happening, Sail has me by the arm and he’s hauling me away, my steps tripping through the thick snow, but he doesn’t let me go. Doesn’t let me slow. His face is blanched and pale, panicked. So, so panicked.
“Come on!”
He starts sprinting toward the carriages, pulling me along with him. My feet try to keep up, my legs pushing through shin-deep snowfall, the bottom of my skirts growing heavy and wet.
Slow, it feels like we’re going too slow, though I’m moving as fast as I can.
Men are shouting orders, words barked back and forth that I can’t concentrate on long enough to comprehend. Sail continues to haul me forward, while the other women run alongside us, tripping and screaming as they go.
Snow pirates. We’re about to be attacked by snow pirates.
I’ve heard of them, but they were always a distant story, nothing I’d ever actually think to see for myself. They roam here in the Barrens, and they stalk the Breakwater Port, pillaging imports, stalking trade routes, stealing whatever they can.
They call themselves the Red Raids, their faces always covered in blood-red balaclavas. I’ve heard Midas grumble about stolen shipments, no doubt their doing. But no one ever spoke about the danger of the snow pirates tracking us. They go for the ships and the large hauls. Not traveling caravans.
Sail and I run as fast as we can, and by the time we reach my carriage, more thunderous noise erupts in the air. Though this time, it’s accompanied by a new sound as well. Sail and I both stop to listen, breaths panting as we crane our heads and strain our ears.
It’s loud. Low. Unsteady.
“What is that?” a saddle asks, more of them piling into their carriages, shoving past each other as they go.
The noise builds, uneven yet constant, a collection rather than a single source. A split second later, I realize that it’s voices. Hundreds of voices, raised together in a battle cry. And it’s getting louder, louder and nearer.
“We need to go! Now!” Sail shouts at the others, the others who are already atop horses, yanking on reins or helping more saddles into the carriages, hurrying them along.
“Go, go!” Sail says, practically yanking off the door as I rush inside. He slams the door behind me, and I toss the lock over, my heart pounding in time with the battle cry that’s echoing across the barren land.
“Where’s the fucking driver?” I hear Sail shout. More yelling, more saddles racing by. More guards piling on their horses.
“Shit!”
Through the window, I see Sail abandon his own horse to race for my carriage instead, his body disappearing from view as he hops onto the driver’s seat.
“Move out! Head for the pass! Protect the king’s favored!”
A second later, the snap of the reins cracks through the air like a tree splintering down the center of its trunk. The carriage lurches forward, nearly sending me flying as it begins to barrel over the snow, Sail making the horses run as fast as they can.
I get tossed around the inside, my body careening from one side to the other. All I can hear is the pounding of the horses’ hooves as we race away, but the wheels are groaning from the deep snow.
Guards on horseback converge around my carriage, racing beside us on either side to defend it—to defend me. Their golden cloaks billow behind them, hoods flown back, their faces fearful shadows I can barely make out. Through the window to the left, I can see one of the saddles’ carriages racing right alongside us, though the others are out of view as we race on, race fast.
I strain to look ahead, to see how far the mountain pass is and if we have any hope of reaching it, but my stomach plummets at the truth of the distance. Too far. We’re too far.
Shouts sound. My head whips left and right, from one window to the other, but every time I turn to look, it seems like another guard is gone, plucked from the night.
Snowflakes race past the window, making it harder to see, even worse when the carriage jolts, sending the outside lantern smashing against the wall, its flame extinguishing in the blink of an eye.
Now bathed in horrible darkness, racing at a breakneck speed, the noises of those battle cries get loud enough to drown out the hooves, the wheels, the snapped reins. It grows louder, no matter which direction Sail steers us, no matter how fast our horses race.
They’re coming for us. As if they were waiting. As if they knew.
Sharp fear consumes me. My vision growing tunneled, my breathing erratic.
I feel my ribbons unbind from around my waist. All two dozen of them loosen and slither over my lap like serpents, coiling and defensive. When my hands tremble, they slip between my fingers, threading over my palms, wrapping around my thumbs. Their silken lengths clasp and twine, like a friend squeezing my hand for comfort.
I squeeze back.
Loud. Everything is loud. Close. The entire carriage begins to rattle from the speed, the wind, the sound. Outside, something crashes. Someone shouts. A horse screams. The wind balks.
Out the window, those balls of light are upon us. Fast—they got to us so impossibly fast.
There are hulking shadows behind them that I can barely see, but those lights burn red, a flare of warning, an omen that I can’t look away from.
One of the wheels of the carriage suddenly hits something hard, tossing me up into the air. It’s only my ribbons lashing out, bracing my body against all four walls that keeps me from falling.
Sail shouts something that’s lost to my ears, and then a second later, the carriage takes a sharp left turn. The wheels go up, the ground stays down. A shriek skids off my tongue as we hit the ground hard, and then we start to roll.
The pull of the ground disappears for a split second. A pause in the fall, where no gravity exists, where my entire body is weightless, floating, hanging by invisible threads.
And then that gentle hover, that pillowed air, it abandons me with a violent turn. The carriage flips, end over end, and this time, not even my ribbons can brace for impact.
I’m tumbling, I’m tossed, I’m rolling like a ball of snow down a slick hill, gathering weight, picking up speed, no hope of stopping softly, no chance of control. Just the grim realization that I’m in this fall’s clutches, and only a crash can stop it.
Like a ragdoll, I’m flung, blows landing to every part of my body. For a moment, I worry that the flipping will never stop, that I’ll be trapped in the fall, forever spinning in the dark, no hope of an end.
Glass flies, wood splinters, gilded edges snap. And then with one final flip, the carriage groans and slams against a mound of snow on its side, where my head smacks against the wall in a sickening crack.
I feel an explosion of pain, a flare of that red, red fire burning behind dimming eyes. And then I black out, the sound of those voices still there, like a turbid presence infecting the air and engulfing me completely.
