Chapter 16 | Ravinica

Chapter 16

Ravinica

WE KEPT RUNNING. AND running. Past the end of the razed elven camp with smoke rising up like black fingers into the bruised night sky.

But we were tiring. At least I was tiring. We had already sprinted the entire way from Elayina's cave, through a treacherous path over swamp and forest.

Only to arrive a few minutes too late—the Huscarl shock troop already doing their slaughter of the Ljosalfar, who hadn't seen them coming.

Logaithn had been right to worry about Vikingrune Academy closing its gates. The elves hadn't taken him seriously, and he'd lost his head for it. I'd seen close to ten long-eared bodies on the ground in and around the camp, which meant a meager third of the elves from their faraway realm had made it away.

As we fled through the night, trying to avoid capture for the second time from the school I attended, I noticed the lock-jawed expression on Corym E'tar's face.

There was no time for mourning because we were still in danger. The Huscarls were fresh-footed, whereas we were exhausted.

I panted with every fall of my boots. My legs burned, my heart thundered. All I could think about was putting one foot in front of the other, or I'd collapse.

We came to a large piney tree, taller than the rest, and stooped for a few seconds to gather ourselves and listen for our pursuers.

"W-Why?" I croaked.

Corym looked at me, clearly understanding my question by the severe expression on his beautiful face.

"You could have left, b-been safe." Doubling over, I put my hands on my knees, forehead inches from the ground.

The forest floor looked so comfortable here. I could lay down, close my eyes, await oblivion . . . as the Huscarls swarmed me and brought me back to campus—their original intent.

I shook the silly notion aside, fighting against my intrusive thoughts.

"Don't." Corym shook his head, swallowing hard while he tried to gather himself. His chest puffed with heavy breaths under his tunic. He didn't even wear his golden armor, since we had taken off in the middle of the night, abruptly, to visit Lady Elayina. "Don't ask foolish questions, lunis'ai ," he finished.

"You already saved me once!"

His golden eyes fell on mine. "You think I'd let that day at the creek be for naught?"

"I was always going to return to Vikingrune, Corym. You know that—you allowed that!" I threw my arms up, frustrated and vexed by this strange, alien man. Why does he seem to care so much for me? He chose me over his own flesh and blood. Not even Arne Gornhodr did that!

Then again, those two couldn't be compared. They were both gorgeous men to look at, with similar builds, but they had completely different personalities.

Arne was an opportunist. He'd told me that directly. Corym was honorable. His sense of justice would confuse most humans. I wasn't sure if he was born that way, or if it was something about me that made him so gallant, vigilant.

"Aye, you are going to return," Corym said, his words echoing through the green. "On your own terms. Not in the arms of the soldiers."

His words melted my heart and gave me confidence, yet they sounded na?ve at a time like this. "Oh, Corym . . ." I said, choking out the words. "Do you truly believe they'll let me waltz back in now? After everything that's happened? I've been in the company of the enemy —the elves—for weeks now! Surely they think I've been compromised, or they wouldn't have sent Huscarls after me."

Corym shook his head. "Don't assume they came for you, Ravinica. As you said: We are the enemy. Not you."

Perhaps he was right. Maybe I was being selfish, thinking they had come for me. If that was the case . . . "Then why did they abduct me in the first place, at the creek?"

"You'll have to ask the academy that," he said, "or your golden-haired betrayer."

I frowned, bowing my head in shame. To think I had put so much trust into Arne, and he had purposefully led me into a trap—dragged me from my hospital bed in Eir Wing to do it.

I hoped my other friends had learned what a despicable bastard he was.

"My thinking is it has something to do with the Ancient One," Corym added a minute later.

Our chests heaved in slower intervals. He looked over my shoulder, went to a knee, touched the soil with his bare hand. When he stood, he took my arm. "Come on, we can't dally. I feel their boots not far behind."

Clenching my jaw, I nodded, and we pushed off the pine tree and into the thicker woods.

Nettles and brambles bit at me as we waded through thick foliage, running blindly through Delaveer Forest. The forest was dozens of miles long, and we seemed to be running aimlessly.

I knew, in my heart, it would only be a matter of time.

Corym, an optimist, said, "We'll cut south. Try to throw them off our trail through Guldan'tan River."

I had no idea what that was. If it was the same river that was fed from the Western Falls atop Academy Hill, then it would be leading us closer to the academy. My would-be prison.

What in Valhalla am I going to do if I return there? I can't see a way for things to continue as normal. Not after everything I've learned, everything I've seen.

The Huscarls of Vikingrune Academy had slaughtered people. Obviously, it must have been kept under wraps at the academy. No one could know what was happening out here beyond its walls, with the tyrannical way the academy was going about things.

Right? The students wouldn't stand for it. Hel below, I like to think the Hersirs wouldn't stand for it either!

How could I look at the professors the same way ever again? From what Elayina had shown me during our first meeting, with the lies of the legend about King Dannon and Lord Talasin. The King Who Saw and the Deceiver in Gold.

The roles were flipped. Dannon hadn't seen shit.

And now, with this new information from Elayina I haven't even had a chance to think about yet—prophecies and myths of old.

Was there a chance I could have somehow been related to such ancient stories?

It certainly gave the mind plenty to chew on.

My thoughts wandered as we ventured through the forest. I lost track of time, continuing to put one foot forward, over and over again.

Then I heard a voice, far off—"There! Bushes!"

"Martyrs and mavens," Corym hissed.

My heart elevated, lodging in my throat.

They'd found us. We'd gotten careless with our movements, not acting as stealthy because we'd thought they wouldn't follow us to the ends of the earth.

I could hear the heavy footfalls of our pursuers, hot on our trail again. Trees shivering in the night breeze. Birds cawing, scared from their nighttime nests from the invading Huscarls.

"What do we do?" I asked Corym.

It wasn't often I asked for advice. I was at a loss—too tired to go on, too tired to give up.

"We fight," he grunted.

"We'll die," I said hopelessly. "You saw how many there were at your camp, Corym. Easily two dozen."

We came to a clearing, dashed through it, and kept going. Being caught in such a glade—giving the Huscarls the ability to fan out, surround us—was not a sound strategy.

Not only did they outman us, they outgunned us. I only had a small hatchet for a weapon, besides my magic. Problem was, the Huscarls had runeshaping too. Corym was unarmored. At least he carried his curved blade, but it wouldn't be enough. We both knew it.

Stopping to fight was suicide.

He took one glance at me, jogging next to him, and I watched as the knot in his throat bobbed. "I will give myself up," he announced, his chivalry coming into full display. "For your safety."

I scoffed. Actually scoffed. I haven't had a man sacrifice himself for me my entire life . . . and I'm not about to start today.

"Like Hel you will," I growled back at him. My bullheaded aggravation came roaring through. Everything I had just thought about stopping—death, suicide—it all went by the wayside when I learned Corym's fatalistic plan.

They would murder him . . . and then they'd just do whatever they were going to do to me anyway .

It was worse than stopping. Worse than fighting.

"I like your first plan better," I said, then flashed him a wicked grin. "We use the trees to our advantage. Pick them off one by one. Keep it moving. You know this forest, Corym E'tar."

"Not this part of it."

His excuses wouldn't work on me. I could see the pity in his eyes, knowing how doomed we were, even as he tried to hide it.

I'd learned to read the Ljosalfar elf well in the weeks I'd been by his side. I wasn't about to give up on him yet.

"Bullshit," I grunted out. "Put the shame aside and let us dance, Corym."

When I put it that way, it woke something inside the elf. His ears flicked, body going tense. He swung his gaze my way, giving me a firm nod. I noticed the telltale way his hand tightened on the leather hilt of his brilliant sword, crafted from metals I'd never seen on this planet.

He returned my grin—a bedeviled expression that lit a fire inside me and heightened my blood.

"As you say, lunis'ai. "

We came up with a plan on the fly, through nonverbal expression. Nods, raised fists, and arm movements brought us from a jog to a crouch, then a prowl.

The hunted were becoming the hunters, and our prey didn't even realize the battlemap had shifted.

We quickly noticed that the Huscarls weren't keeping to their tight ranks—their shield wall—while giving chase. They had become slightly dispersed, eagerly trying to catch up to us and run us down.

They wanted to be heroes, each man and woman in the company; the one to slay the elf and bring back the prisoner.

I swore it would be their downfall.

They had seen the way the elves fell to their blades. Flatfooted or not, it showed the Ljosalfar were not immune to steel, or invincible, contrary to what the dead Huscarls from the creek, staring down at us from Valhalla, must have thought.

I wanted to use that overconfidence to our benefit.

Corym and I didn't split up, which was the surest way one of us would get caught and surrounded.

Instead, we stayed low in the thick trees, peering through wreaths and brambles and bushes as the first grouping of Huscarls passed us.

One of them muttered, "Where did they go?"

Another: "Read the tracks, rookie."

"They're everywhere."

Yes, our feet were everywhere. We'd made it that way by design, turning the six Huscarls in front of us in circles.

As they followed one track and veered off toward a glade further past us—an understandable direction to go, given that we were only two—we watched for the next gang to pass through the trees in front of us.

This one was only three strong. Two women and a man, their black helmets and cloaks nearly invisible in the dark. I only noticed them by the white dragonhead patches on their shoulders, their swords and spearheads glinting in the moonlight.

The trio slowed, looking around. Bending their knees, ready for anything.

Corym and I nodded at each other.

We rushed out of the trees silent, no battle cry, circling from the left and right—from opposite directions.

We didn't hope to get a jump on them, since they were ready for anything and they were trained warriors, but we got what we wanted anyway—

And turned them in opposing directions.

The man looked south, toward Corym, along with one of the women. She went back-to-back with the other woman, a strong mountain of a lass with thick shoulders and a wide, sturdy waist. Shorter than me, but stout and defensive with her shield up when I charged.

I Shaped a rune in the air in front of me, dancing silver marks of energy as I drew fire from Muspelheim and directed the blast on the ground next to the woman's feet.

She lowered her shield reflexively from the threat, stamping to her left to get out of its trajectory—

Right into the swing-path of my hatchet.

Shield raised, metal bit into wood and sent woodchips flying.

"Here!" cried the man Corym charged at.

The elf twisted his wrist, drew his sword, and flicked fingers to the sky.

A vine from an overhead branch draped down and curled around the man's leg as he slid it back for a defensive position. Corym flung his wrist in another direction— up —and the vine squeezed around the Huscarl and lifted at a breakneck speed. With a yelp, the Huscarl flipped, dropping his sword as the vine whip-snapped toward the canopy and brought him with it by the ankle.

It left him upside down, arms stretched down, unguarded, yelling curses—

Just as Corym charged in, blade slicing sidelong, and beheaded the Huscarl at the neck.

A gout of blood waterfalled and splashed onto the forest floor after the guard's head plopped on the soil.

The female Huscarl at his side screamed and shoved her shield at Corym.

The metal boss at the center smashed his shoulder and he bounced back, dancing around her with his deft blade.

I watched all of it play out in less than three seconds, then returned my gaze to the Huscarl I was fighting and kept hacking, keeping her on the defensive.

The two women fought well in tandem, their backs pressed against one another, while Corym and I sprightly jolted left and right to keep them off-balance.

I heard the rustling of trees nearby.

"Now!" I shouted at Corym.

We pushed off the Huscarls' respective shields, both of us Shaping and flinging acorns of fire magic at them.

By the time they'd lowered their shields, unharmed from the smoky blasts . . .

We were gone, vanished back into the dense trees.

Moving on, further down the tree line toward the next hapless soldiers.

One down. And in a particularly gruesome way, no less, I thought, wincing as I recalled the sudden onslaught of Corym E'tar's magic and sword combination.

I'd never known he could command the fucking trees to do his bidding. Damn the gods. I need to learn those runes.

The space we'd been in swarmed with Huscarls moments after we'd left the vicinity. I could hear one of the women babbling in a raised voice. "They're quick! The pointy-eared one took Torrance's head right off!"

"Which pointy-eared one?" another called out, his voice reverberating through the foliage.

"The man."

"He's no man. He's a fucking monster!"

"We'll avenge Torrance. Come on, this way."

They drew closer, picking the correct path to tail us.

I cursed under my breath.

Corym and I ran blindly. Weapons drawn, because we had no idea who we might run into around the next bend, over the next hill, or on the other side of the next tree.

We crested a slope, hopped across a scattering of mossy stones, and leapt over a narrow tendril of a creek running downhill.

Staying atop the hillock past the creek, we kept sloping, bending our knees to grind toward the top—

Except the top didn't lead to a sloping bottom, like we both imagined it would. The summit ended abruptly on a jagged cliff face dropping thirty feet onto hard, rough soil.

Possibly enough to kill if we jumped, easily enough to snap an ankle, which was as good as death in this situation.

"Fuck," I growled.

We spun around to look for another route.

A throng of Huscarls emerged from the trees at the bottom of the incline, from every direction like an alluvial fan of creeping spiders scuttling out of their webs.

Twelve of them. Gods only knew where the other half were.

"We don't have to jump," Corym said out the side of his mouth as we watched the Huscarls gain the hill toward us, trapping us. "We can slide."

I backpedaled a step, sending a strip of soil and loose rock crumbling behind me in dramatic fashion, rolling down the cliffside.

A slide was just as dangerous, I noted, with countless jagged rocks and branches down the side of the hundred-twenty-degree drop.

"No good," I said simply.

We were caught. Trapped by our own making—our own foolish path.

I'd expected our luck to run out sooner or later. Mother Nature gave life and took it away. If you spilled blood too often in her home, she would make you pay.

And now she was.

"Then we fight, as planned," Corym said with a sigh, throwing aside his bravado and gamesmanship.

"S'pose we die together, too," I said with a shrug.

Academy student or not, no one was going to let me live after seeing the man I fought beside behead a Huscarl right in front of them, and do nothing to stop it.

We were just as culpable and tyrannical as the academy's soldiers, if you wanted to look at it that way.

Corym and I took a step forward, together, so we wouldn't be forced backward over the cliff face; so we could choose the fight on our terms, since we had the high ground.

I counted the Huscarls off in my mind, planning out my strategy to take as many of them with me as I could.

My left hand shimmered with energy, magic drawn from my core to my fingertips as I Shaped the sky. My right hand held my hatchet. Corym worked in reverse: Shaping with his right, sword-wielding with his left.

An idea came to me, and I carved a rune, changing my source from my inner magic to the narrow creek the Huscarls passed over. I brought the creek to me, lifting tendrils of muddy riverwater in a double helix up the hill toward my outstretched palm.

From the base of the hill, Huscarls cast their runes and threw fiery magic at me to break my concentration.

Corym countered the spells with his own, smacking the fireballs aside with his magical sword, which seemed to absorb the fire. For the rest of them, I sponged up the flames in the vortex of water I cast in front of me.

My body sweated as I ordered the directive of the spell, drawing Shapes rapidly in the air, glistening the marks with burnished-gold outlines.

Three men were ten feet away, knees bent as they charged up the hill with roars of battle-fury.

I abruptly dropped my hatchet, kneeled, and put both hands to the soil. The vortex dropped with my hands and flooded down the hill, in a wave toward the enemies.

The Huscarls slipped on the sudden sleet of water, losing their footing. One rolled back downhill, his roar turned into a yelp. Another got his footing by going on all fours to catch himself, and the third stopped moving to let the water rush by her in a wave.

Corym let out a grunt and cast his magic by imitating my stance—knees down, hands to the ground.

The earth shook and rumbled. Cracks and crevices formed in jagged lines down the hillside, shaking us where we made our stand.

Then the earth opened , drawing in my wave of water with a yawn, bringing slipping Huscarls with it.

Two more fell into the gaping groove Corym created—dropping them four or five feet into the earth, enough to slow their approach and let us arm ourselves for the next cycle of enemies to come at us.

When Corym finished, he glanced at me and winked.

I'd thought my water display was impressive, but the elf's ability to control and bend the earth to his whims stunned me.

"Showoff," I hissed at him with a devious smile.

We both stood . . .

But the earth didn't stop trembling, even as the islands Corym had created began to merge back together, causing the fallen Huscarls to scramble and scream to get out of the divots before the landmasses closed on them.

Toward the back line of the Huscarls, at the base of the incline, the trees shivered.

I expected more Huscarls to emerge.

But then I saw a flash of white, and my heart stuttered in my chest. "Gods save me," I whispered to myself, blinking wide. "It can't be."

Black magic descended on the Huscarls at the backs of their ranks, formed in the shapes of shadowy, faceless men and women. Utter confusion and chaos followed.

Then a roar.

Sheer elation burgeoned inside me, starting dim and growing hotter by the second, until it was an inferno of excitement and adrenaline.

"They've come!" I shouted in stunned amazement, unable to help myself as I lifted my arms to the sky.

Through the trees, a bleached-white polar bear stampeded into the Huscarls, ridden by a shirtless, scarred, tattooed man with his arms raised, and a massive gray wolf beside them.

My mates had found us.