The Gray Wolf Throne

How many of them were out there, she wondered. How many had died at the hands of her guard? Would they split up or stay together? Would some ride the trail, hoping to overtake or intercept her, while others lay hidden along the way?

Raisa scanned the forward trail, trying to spot likely ambushes, but the darkness hid them as well as it hid her. Ahead, the trail threaded through a narrow gorge, running alongside the frozen-over stream at the bottom. She could see tracks—evidence that horses had passed this way since the storm.

She told herself that just because horses had passed this way didn’t mean they were still here. Anyway, there was no other way through. Keeping close to the canyon wall, lying flat so she wouldn’t be silhouetted against the entrance, she walked the gelding into the gorge.

The element of surprise was what saved her. The men waiting in the canyon had likely been waiting for hours with nobody to kill, and so were less alert than they might have been.

Halfway through the gorge, Raisa saw a flicker of movement against the opposite canyon wall. A horse whinnied a greeting, and Gillen’s horse answered.

Boots scraped against rock as soldiers scrambled for the weapons they’d laid aside.

She drove her heels against the gelding’s sides, and he spurted forward. Behind her, somebody swore a Northern oath. A shout went up, clamoring against stone.

As they exploded from the mouth of the canyon, Raisa urged her horse to even greater speed. They flew down the narrow corridor between the trees, risking life and limb in the near-darkness. Behind her, she could hear the rattle of hooves on stone evolve into the thunder of pursuit.

The gelding seemed eager to run after his long night hobbled in one spot, and Raisa gave him his head. Trees blurred by, the wind of their passing fierce against her face. She might end up thrown over a precipice, but she’d be dead if they were overtaken anyway.

She considered her chances of making it all the way to Marisa Pines Camp ahead of her pursuers. Her gelding was fresh, and she was lightweight compared to those chasing her. But she didn’t know the trail, and she didn’t know whether they’d laid other traps for her. Anyone could hear them coming a mile away.

They broke out of the trees and crossed a broad meadow. Hearing crossbows behind her, she ripped back and forth across the meadow, something the Demonai had taught her. The bolts hissed past, none coming close. But her zigzag pattern slowed her down, and when she looked back, the assassins had gained on her.

Once again, she regained the shelter of the trees, but couldn’t seem to open more space between her and the riders behind her. At a rough count, there seemed to be a half dozen.

To either side she saw wolves loping through the woods, ears back, legs extending and bunching, easily keeping pace.

Couldn’t you cross in front of them, scare their horses or something? she thought.

Foam flew from the gelding’s mouth, and his pace dwindled a bit. How long could he keep going? The other horses had to be tiring as well. More so than hers.

They funneled between two great slabs of rock into another canyon.

Blood and bones! Up ahead, two riders on either side of the trail angled forward to block her way, crossbows dangling loosely in their hands, grinning.

Raisa looked wildly to either side. The canyon was narrow here, and there was no way to ride around them. She heard shouts of victory from the riders behind her when they saw that she was trapped between them.

Anger sparked within her. These were cowards and traitors, attacking her eight on one.

She wrestled Gillen’s heavy sword free of its scabbard. Extending it ahead of her like a pike, she drove her heels into the gelding’s sides.

“For Hanalea the Warrior!” she shouted, barreling forward, straight at the riders in her way. The grins fell from their faces, replaced by surprise and panic. They wrenched at their horses’ reins, trying to drag their mounts out of the way.

The sword point drove into the neck of one of the horses as Raisa thundered by. The horse screamed, and Raisa let go immediately to avoid being dragged from her own mount.

A crossbow sounded at close range, and something slammed into her upper back, pitching her to the ground. She landed flat on her face, and the gelding came and stood over her, dripping foam on her neck. She pushed to her feet, trying to ignore the pulsing pain in her back and the numbness and tingling in her left arm.

The other assassins were bottled up behind the two who’d ambushed her, but they’d be on top of her in no time. Reaching for the pommel of the saddle, Raisa tried to remount but found her arm nearly useless, the pain too stunning to manage it. Instead, she hooked down the crossbow and raced in among the tumble of rocks at one end of the canyon. She began to climb, her breath hissing between her teeth, tears running down her face. Whenever she stretched and moved and reached up, the bolt in her back shifted and the wound blazed with pain and her head swam.

She was putting off the inevitable, but she was too angry to care. To be taken so close to her destination by the traitors who’d murdered Edon Byrne was unacceptable. The only way to avenge his death was to survive, but just now that was looking less and less possible.

She climbed until she could climb no further, then wedged herself into a crevice. She set her crossbow next to her right side, her Lady dagger on her left. They could pry her out like a mollusk from the cliffs along the Indio. She’d make them pay a small price, at least.

Did they know she was wounded? Maybe not.

She felt blood trickling down her back from the entry point under her left shoulder blade. Oddly, the pain in her back was diminishing, replaced by a spreading numbness. Had the point damaged a nerve?

She heard someone shouting from below, someone she couldn’t see.

“Let’s not prolong this. You’ll never get away on foot. Surrender now, and you’ll not be harmed. Resist, and I make no guarantees.”

Right, Raisa thought. We do have our faults, but stupidity doesn’t run in the Gray Wolf line. She made no response.

After a long moment, she heard the officer shouting out orders. The men would be spreading out, searching the canyon. She heard rock clattering on rock, men swearing, the sound of them climbing all around her.

Then, across the canyon, one of the renegade soldiers came into view, hoisting himself onto a small ledge. Straightening, he looked around. When he saw Raisa, he grinned, crooking a finger at her.

“Merkle!” he shouted, looking back the way he’d come. “Up here! She’s—”

Raisa lifted the crossbow and shot him through the mid chest, as she’d been taught. He stumbled backward, disappearing from sight. She heard the others shouting when he hit the ground.

That might slow them down a bit, anyway, she thought. She felt peculiar, her thoughts tangled and slow. Her lips and tongue were numb, and she could no longer feel her fingers on her left hand.

She blinked away a double image, and then she knew. Poison. The arrow point was daubed with poison.

Eight on one isn’t enough, then, she thought. No. We have to use poison. So much for notions of fair play. If she’d had any to start with.

Her stubborn confidence drained away. How could she fight poison? It would be plant-based, likely of clan make. The clans produced some remarkable poisons.

She’d bled a lot at first, but she no longer felt blood trickling down her back. Was that good or bad? If she kept bleeding, might she bleed out some of the poison?

It was potent, all right. Her vision blurred and rippled, and her muscles twitched. The rocks around her shivered and quaked. Wolves moved like shadows through the darkness, whining, pressing their warm bodies against her as if somehow they could keep her in the world.

She could only hope she’d be dead before they found her.

Now she heard more commotion down below, men shouting at each other. What was that all about?

Time passed—in her muddled state, she wasn’t sure how much. She thought they would have found her by now. It had gone quiet in the canyon.

She fingered the Lady knife. When someone comes, you stick them. When someone comes, you stick them. Raisa repeated it over and over so she wouldn’t forget.

Amon always said that was the purpose of weapons practice—to train the muscles and nerves so that in a fight they do what they’re supposed to do without conscious thought.

She heard Amon’s voice in her head, low and desperate. Rai. Don’t you die. Don’t you die on me, Rai. Stay alive. Stay alive. Stay alive.

Her hand fluttered helplessly. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I did my best.

Most of all, she regretted her parting with Han. There was so much she’d wanted to say to him, confess to him. She’d wanted to create a truth between them to replace the lies. Now he’d likely never know what had happened to her. How she really felt about him. Who she really was.

She tried to fix on Han’s face, to hold it in her mind—the brilliant blue eyes under fair brows, the oddly aristocratic nose, the pale scar jagging down one side.

Tiny pebbles cascaded past her, pinging on rock. Someone was coming, climbing down from above. Her hand scrabbled through the dirt and closed on her dagger.

CHAPTER NINE

A HUNT INTERRUPTED

Sometimes a descent is trickier than the climb. Ragger wanted to move faster on the downhill side of the pass—not a good idea where snowdrifts concealed imperfections in the trail that ranged from small ravines to major boulders.

The beaten-down trail continued. The horsemen seemed to be traveling at a breakneck speed. Some of them split off into the surrounding woods, while others continued on. Were they still chasing someone? Or splitting up so they’d be harder to track themselves?

Finally the trail dropped below the tree line, and the relentless wind abated somewhat. Han was grateful and apprehensive at the same time. The pine forest closing in tight around him made him jumpy.

He came up on a small rise overlooking a series of ridges that sloped away to the Vale, like waves on a frozen sea. He’d have to find a camping place soon, despite his worries about weather. Clouds piled up to the north, but the sun still glittered over the horizon, streaming over the razor-sharp western peaks. The wrinkles in the landscape cast long blue shadows over the snow. It was already dark in the canyons. The firs had faded to black smudges in the shadows of the peaks.

Han heard the sounds of the chase before he saw the hunters. A trick of the landscape amplified sound so it reverberated up from below: the clatter of hooves over rock, men shouting to one another, even the thwack of crossbows.

It must be the raiding party whose tracks he’d been following all day—the ones who’d killed Captain Byrne and the other bluejackets. He’d guessed right—they’d been on the hunt, and now they must have flushed their quarry.

Was it one last surviving bluejacket? They couldn’t let even one win free?

Fighting off the voice that said, Not your business, Alister, Han edged Ragger forward until he could look down over the valley below. It was deep and bowl-shaped, dropping to an iced-over streambed at the bottom. It had burned over at some time in the recent past, so it was relatively clear of trees.

As he watched, a single horse and rider emerged from the trees and galloped across the clearing, the rider practically horizontal in the saddle. She was a woman, by the size of her, dressed like the dead soldiers and riding a similar horse. She stuck to its back like a burr, and horse and rider zigzagged across the clearing, confounding the aim of the archers behind.

Six more riders appeared, perhaps a hundred yards behind the girlie, baying like hounds on the scent of blood. The crossbows sounded again, and bolts arced overhead and slammed into the ground all around the girlie and her horse before they disappeared into the forest on the far side.

Han watched, transfixed, until they were lost in the trees. The sounds of the chase diminished until the clearing was once again quiet and empty, save the bolts that stood quivering, black against the snow, evidence that it hadn’t been a dream.

Ragger snorted impatiently and tossed his head. Han spoke to the gelding, absently soothing him as he tried to make sense of what he’d just seen.

Those in pursuit rode upland military horses with shaggy winter coats. They had the look of unbadged bluejackets, too—carefully nondescript. They’d be trying to prevent the girlie from reaching safety in Marisa Pines, just a few miles away.

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