24. Maddy

Chapter 24

Maddy

T he first rook up is Garda. She's repeatedly proven herself as one of the best of the twenty-one of us left, and I'm expecting her to do well. In fact, I'm rooting for her. I want her to do well.

She grabs her boulder and fires shadow magic at each of the bags. She does it so fast that all five drop quickly, creating a complete bridge over the shards of broken glass. We all cheer as she runs across it and slows to a halt at the start of the gauntlet.

It's divided into three, and from our stand, where the rest of us are watching and waiting, Dimec has been designated a bowman.

Garda takes a deep breath and runs as fast as she can, holding her shield up to one side of her. Dimec's arrows ping off the shield and Garda skids to a halt at the line that marks the next rook: the blade fae. She whips out her sword, still clutching the boulder in the same hand as her shield, and has the other rook on their back, blade out of hand within sixty seconds.

Once again, we all cheer. She's up against Henrik in glima , and I wonder how having to hold on to the boulder is going to affect her. She just closes her fist around it and smashes her arm hard into the side of Henrik's head. He's clearly not expecting it and falls to the ground with a yelp.

Laughter filters through the crowd as she picks her weapons back up and races on to the next obstacle: Fenrir's Leap. She skips up the foot-high step with no problem whatsoever and pauses to take a breath. Tentatively, she sets one foot on the log, and we all gasp as it starts to roll, bouncing in the steaming, sticky liquid. She pulls her foot back and takes another deep breath. She looks behind her, looks ahead, and then tosses her shield onto the sand. Presumably she doesn't believe she's going to need it again, and she'll have less weight.

"She should lose the sword too," I mutter. "She'll be able to balance better." She obviously has the same thought, because she unbuckles the weapon from her belt and tosses that, too. Holding nothing but the boulder, she spreads both her arms out either side and begins to move across the logs.

She moves swiftly and surely, and it's not until the end that she slips ever so slightly, one boot touching the tar before she makes a giant leap for the other side. She lands hard on the sand, slipping on the wet boot and bringing down her whole weight on one knee. She stumbles as she stands up, but as she starts to move again, another cheer goes up.

With a burst of speed, she runs to Serpents' Crawl and throws herself under the net, careful to avoid the barbs.

Everybody in the stand hears her cry of surprise as her body is engulfed by the green liquid. I see her wince even from here. She starts to move quickly, crawling, using the strength of her arms to drag her through the trench. Mud is churning up around her with the green goo, but she keeps pushing through. When she gets to the other end, she's a little too quick to get out, and we all see the barbed net catch the back of her leather armor and gouge out a chunk of the material.

It doesn't slow her down, and she runs back to the pile of boulders and sets hers back down on the top, throwing her arms up in success.

A roar goes up from the crowd.

"Garda sets a time of four minutes thirty," Sigrun calls. "Next!"

Harald steps up and randomly selects three more of us to man the gauntlet, and then the next rook goes—Niclas, a small-built male shadow-fae. He's not as fast as Garda, nor is he so good on the logs, slipping one leg in up to the knee.

When he returns, he's got an angry red burn on his shin.

"What do you think's in that green stuff?" Garda whispers to him.

"I don't know, but it stings like shit," he replies .

Navi leans over. "What do you mean it stings?"

"I don't know, it's like it's full of biting animals or something. It itches—it's horrible," Garda answers, rubbing her arms where the stuff still clings to her shirt.

Navi sits back, her face thoughtful.

Another fae takes so long to hit the first two targets that the crowd actually starts to chant at him. Once he's got them all down, though, using a bow and arrow, he's the fastest over the logs, moving so quickly he just skips across them. He takes a lot longer on the crawl, though, coming in last of the three so far.

The next up is Orgid. I'm annoyed that I haven't been selected to shoot arrows at him. I'm even more annoyed when he completes the course in record time, using his shadows consistently as he goes, even to help pull himself along the crawl.

"Orgid is our new leader at four minutes ten," Sigrun announces when he's finished, and I see his family cheering.

"Prick," I mutter.

"Agreed," Eldith says.

The next rook to go falls off the logs and into the tar completely. The audience falls quiet, especially those of us who've seen the angry red burn on Niclas' leg. She pulls herself out fast, and then she runs the Serpents' Crawl. The tar covering her body begins to mingle with the bright green liquid, causing the mud to thicken even further. It takes her a painfully long time to crawl through, and by the time she gets out, she looks like a lobster, her skin's so red. Erik pulls her to one side after she's dropped her boulder and Sigrun has announced her time, and I think everybody is relieved she's getting some help.

Henrik's up next, and I'm willing him to beat Orgid's time with everything I've got. He uses his vines to shoot down the targets incredibly fast, and he makes short work of all of the rooks manning the gauntlet. He copies the rook who cleared the logs quickly, moving so fast across them that they barely have time to roll, and then powers his way through the now tarry, bitey, sticky Serpents' Crawl.

"Four minutes fifteen," Sigrun announces.

"Loki's balls," I mutter.

Next is Eldith, and I'm selected to be on the bow and arrow. As she's running my part of the gauntlet, I halfheartedly shoot toward her, knowing perfectly well I'm going to miss. I know Sigrun said we had to play to win, but there's no way I'm going to sink an arrow into her.

She does well, but she doesn't come close to beating Henrik or Orgid's times. In fact, she doesn't beat Garda's time. But she comes out completely unscathed, and I'm pleased.

"Rook Madivia," Harald barks, and my stomach knots.

It's my turn.