Samantha Henderson - Dawnbringer

They both knew with a dull certainty that one of them must die. The paraffin lantern, hanging on an abandoned watchman’s pole, flickered and spurted a gout of strong-smelling smoke. Up the passage echoed the voices of people shouting in desperation, anger, and grief, and there was the sharp staccato sound of a woman sobbing.

Lusk swung again, and she lifted her blade sideways, catching his weapon on her hilt. She pushed as hard as she could. He had the advantage of weight and height, but she was more stable, closer to the ground. The force of her thrust flung him up, and he staggered against the rock wall. Taking advantage, she charged, her sword aimed at his midsection. He regained his footing and jumped sideways, bringing the hilt of his sword down hard on her back. She cried out in pain and slashed at his ribs, slicing through his tunic. They circled each other, breathing heavily. A slow flow of blood stained the edges of his damaged clothing.

Dull pain pulsed where he’d hit her. Something was injured inside, muscle torn and bleeding internally. She didn’t have time to worry about that now. Without lowering her guard, she inhaled, forcing the pain into a place down and away. That she would deal with later, if she lived.

Again he struck and again she parried, and she struck in her turn, until both their arms trembled with the strain. Then he snarled and struck fast, blows like the strike of an axe, faster than she could return them. Her grip weakened and with a final blow her sword clattered to the ground. She leaped back while he paused, too exhausted by the effort to push his advantage.

“Lakini!”

The deva spared a quick glance behind her. The slight figure of Brioni Jadaren was framed in front of the flickering light of the torches that still ranged around the perimeter of the roof. Her skirt was kirtled almost to her waist, and she clutched a pole inexpertly in her hands, as if she’d been using it as a staff.

There wasn’t time to apologize for not teaching her sword play, as Lakini had promised.

Brioni turned and shouted, and figures assembled behind her, dressed in sage green. She’d managed to rally some of the guards.

Brioni pointed at her. Lusk shouted something, and two of the guards started toward them, bloodied weapons raised.

Lakini turned to look at Lusk. There was her opportunity-he was distracted by the guards and his shoulder was open. Lakini feinted left, then right, then lunged at him, dagger in hand.

But at the last instant, her knife turned in her hand. She struck him in the shoulder with the fist that was wrapped around the hilt. She felt him stagger.

They grappled at the edge and wrestled their way back. Breathless, she drew back and saw that he didn’t realize how close to the edge he was. Finding a second wind, she shoved against him again, and Lusk began to topple.

He wrapped his arms around her as he went backward, pulling her against his chest in a deadly embrace. She felt a sting in the back of her shoulder. There was a despairing shout behind her, from Brioni or one of the guards.

As they went over the edge together, it occurred to Lakini that never, never in this incarnation had she ever been so close to him, flesh to blood-slicked flesh, the hard muscles in his arms locked around her, the curves of her body fitting so intimately against his. They would both die, clasped breast to breast.

Then Lusk uttered something in a language she hadn’t heard for years, but recognized-Astral, the tongue they had known with every rebirth.

Something that burned with a cold flame surrounded them as they fell-wings, enormous wings of ice-cold flame, feathers that burned faint yellow. Their velocity slowed.

They had no soft landing. Both were stunned with the impact. Lakini was on top, but Lusk beneath her took the brunt of the landing. Still, the air was driven from her lungs and she gasped, trying to suck it back in. She was aware of two of her ribs cracking like dry sticks; pain blossomed white-hot in her side.

She drew back, gasping, stumbling away from him while she still could. He lay prone on the ground. Again she could have killed him. Again she did not.

Staggering like a ghoul, she limped away from him, clutching her dagger in her blood-wet hand, fire in her side and shoulder. She headed over the road to the woods, where she had a chance of hiding from him. It took a thousand years to walk that mile. She was doubled over when she passed the wide-spreading branches of Jandi’s Oak and the fringe of the shadowy forest.

NEAR JADAREN HOLD

1600 DR-THE YEAR OF UNSEEN ENEMIES

Lakini leaned against the trunk of a tree and tore a strip of fabric from her tunic. Folding it into a pad, she pushed it against the wound in her shoulder. The dull, pulsing pain grew sharper and deeper. She steeled herself and pushed it harder against her flesh, fighting the urge to cry out. The pain was ferocious, but she couldn’t risk the wound’s bleeding any more and leaving a trail to follow. The tracks she’s left behind her were obvious enough. No matter how she tried to focus, her injuries distracted her and she stepped clumsily, breaking twigs and disturbing leaf-fall to show where she had passed.

She wondered why Lusk hadn’t tracked her down yet. Perhaps he was hurt as badly as she was.

She felt the prickle of fallen pine needles beneath her, and she smelled the balsam as her weight crushed them. She should tear apart more fabric to tie the improvised bandage to her shoulder, but she didn’t have the strength to do anything but hold it in place.

Her head fell back against the bark, and she looked up through the branches at the night sky. Pockets of black, spangled with distant stars, peeked between the dark gray of the close-twined tree limbs. Her vision blurred, and the dim specks of light shifted. She blinked in a futile attempt to focus.

She felt something stir within her tunic against the skin of her unwounded shoulder, something sinuous and cold. A snake, she thought, with a dull flare of alarm that soon faded into indifference. A snake has crawled beneath my clothes, seeking warmth. Poor worm. Soon I’ll be as cold as it is.

As if thinking about the cold had summoned it, an icy chill gripped her legs and passed up through her body, through her leg bones, her gut, her torso. The broken places inside her sparked with pain as the cold passed through them. The skin of her shoulders and neck prickled as if in response to the winter wind on Shadrun’s mountain. She breathed as deeply as she could, half expecting to smell the sharp scent of new-fallen snow, but instead she smelled the mingled scents of decaying leaf mold, crushed pine, and the dull copper of her own blood.

There were the stars, then nothing, then the stars, then an ever-greater nothing as her eyes closed and didn’t open.

She woke to a deeper night and a dull pain that penetrated every inch of her flesh. Her arm was locked into place across her body, still clutching the wad of fabric to her shoulder. As she became able to distinguish one sensation from another, she realized her improvised bandage was completely drenched, and that a small, steady trickle pulsed from beneath it with the rhythm of her heart.

Lakini let her right hand fall away, and the sodden fabric fell. There was something around her wrist, something metallic that glinted in the faint light of the stars that still shone down from between the tangle of branches.

Her arm seemed to weigh a ton. With great effort she shifted it, blinking at the object that coiled there. It was a bracelet, wound round her wrist several times, made of small flat links.

She didn’t have the strength to be curious about it.

She needed to find more cloth, find a way to stop the bleeding, find help and healing. She needed to regain her strength, get back to Jadaren Hold, and stop Lusk from his mad descent.