The Silvered (16 page)

Up close, the girl’s scent was nearly overpowering. She was dirty and her hair was weird and her gray eyes had no mage marks in them at all, but she smelled like home and like safety and a little like Danika. He needed to tell Danika what had happened to Ryder! She had to hear it from him. They had to get moving.

Grabbing both the girl’s arms above the elbow, Tomas hauled her to her feet. Although her clothes were damp, her skin was warm where he buried his face against her neck. When he realized what he’d done, he jerked back, face burning.

She wasn’t even looking at him.

She was looking past him at…

“Where’d you come from, kid?”

Tomas spun around to see the Imperial who’d been asleep by the fire standing only a few feet away. He’d been so caught by the girl’s scent he hadn’t realized the man was awake and moving. He was Hunt Pack! Forgetting to keep part of his attention on the sentry was a stupid cub mistake.

“I don’t want to hurt you, kid, so just stay calm.” The Imperial
raised his left hand, palm out, musket loose in his right. How did the empire keep winning with idiots like this in the ranks? Had he forgotten he was at war? Who he was at war with?

Wool scratched against his side as the girl lunged past him to touch the Imperial’s forehead with two fingers.

“Sleep.” Her low voice had rough edges. She sounded like she’d been chewing twigs.

The Imperial blinked twice, opened his mouth, then slowly collapsed to the ground. He rolled up against Tomas’ legs, eyes closed, mouth open, chest rising and falling.

Before he could change to rip out the man’s throat, warm fingers wrapped around Tomas’ wrist and held on. Her breath hot against his ear, the girl whispered, “Change. I’ll hold your tail and follow you through the woods!”

“Wha…?” When he turned to face her, there were still no mage marks in her eyes.

“You can see in the dark. In fur.” She jerked her head toward the fire and the other three soldiers. Still asleep, Tomas noted, but that was luck alone. “I can’t.”

When she released him and spread her hands, her gesture said
get on with it
as clearly as if she’d spoken out loud.

She smelled amazing. But she was bossier than Danika, and his brother’s wife was Alpha.

His brother’s wife was a widow.

He changed and lunged for the throat of the mage-slept Imperial.

Only to come up short as two hands grabbed the scruff of his neck and yanked back. She’d taken him by surprise, or she wouldn’t have been able to stop him. That, and her fingers were dug in by the healing wound in his shoulder and were hurting him! He twisted free and turned to snap at her, catching the edge of her jacket in his teeth, tearing it free.

She stumbled back, arms flailing. When she’d regained her balance, she gave him a look he almost physically felt, turned on her heel, and ran for the woods.

“Armin?”

The captain was awake!

Fine. Not a problem. First, he’d kill the man at his feet and then…

The shot hit the ground by the Imperial’s head, spraying dirt over his face. Tomas could smell the heated silver pellets.

He turned and ran, his nose leading him along the path of the girl’s footsteps. Quickly catching up, he pushed past her, changed, and grabbed her arms to keep her from slamming into him.

“Fine! Hold my tail.” He tightened his grip. “But don’t pull it!”

“You’re hurting me!”

“I am not…Ow! You kicked me!”

“And I’ll kick you again if you don’t let me go.”

Tomas resisted the urge to shove her away as he released her, but only just. He opened his mouth to remind her that, if not for him, she’d still be tied to that tree at the mercy of the enemies of Aydori when he noticed her rub her arms, right where he’d been holding her.

He was Pack. Pack protected. He was more than Pack. Ryder was dead. He wasn’t the younger Lord Hagen any longer. He was Lord Hagen because Ryder was dead and Ryder’s son, if it was a son, hadn’t yet been born.

Lord Hagen would never hurt a girl he was trying to save.

He wanted to tell her he was sorry, but he couldn’t force the words out past the grief.

When she touched his chest, he started, unaware she’d moved.

“I won’t pull your tail. I promise. But we have to go now, Lor…”

He flinched.

“…Tomas. I can hear them shouting in the clearing.”

So could he. Better than she could, that was for sure. They were trying to wake the soldier she’d slept. They were distracted. Easy prey. Easy to kill. He needed to go back and kill them. Kill them all!

“Tomas! Tomas, listen to me, we have to run! They’re using silver! If you go back to kill them, they could kill you!” Her palm pressed warm against his chest. “Tomas! I can’t see in the dark. I can’t get to safety without you!”

The breeze shifted, blowing her scent into his face. He took a deep breath and felt the edges that had been pulling apart move back into place. When he met her eyes, she looked worried and frightened and confused, but she held his gaze until he nodded and looked away.

He changed. When he felt her hand close around his tail, he
moved as quickly as he could away from the Imperials. He used to lead his cousins in the Mage-pack like this. He moved more quickly as she grew confident in him. Then they were running.

“Armin! Come on…” Reiter slapped the sleeping soldier lightly on both cheeks. “…wake up!”

“Sir.” Best’s hand, holding a canteen of water, appeared in his peripheral vision.

After a moment’s hesitation, Reiter took it and dumped it over Armin’s face. Armin sputtered, sneezed, and slept on. In the spill of light from a hastily lit lantern, he looked peaceful. Wet, but peaceful.

“Has he been mage hit, Cap? Did the girl do it?”

Turning to answer Chard, Reiter saw a glint of gold and, using the mouth of the canteen, scooped the tangle out of the dirt. There were two sizable hanks of hair attached to it, sticky with evergreen sap and needles. It hadn’t come off easily, but it had come off. So much for Geurin’s belief that the mages would be unable to remove the tangle without another artifact.

He frowned as two sections of fine chain swung free of the pattern. The ends of both pieces were blackened, the gold links of the broken segments misshapen. Not melted though, so it hadn’t been heat…

“Wait! Where’s the dog?” Chard’s question snapped Reiter’s attention off the net. “She better not have hurt the dog!” Chard pursed his lips to whistle but before he could make a sound, Best punched him in the arm.

“It wasn’t a dog, you ass. It was one of the beastmen, and it freed her!”

Squint narrowing, Chard glowered at the older man. “Yeah, right. A beastman who let me scratch its belly.”

“So you’d believe it was a dog.”

“Because it was a dog!” Stepping closer to the tree where the girl had been tied, Chard scooped the leather straps up off the ground. “See these, not chewed. Untied!”

“You saw the women!” The dim light couldn’t hide Best’s incredulous expression.

The beast had gold hoops in its ears. Her ears.

“What women?” Chard demanded waving the ties. “There was one woman!”

“This one’s had pups.”

“Not here, idiot! On the road! The women looked like people before they became beasts!”

“That dog didn’t look a person.”

“You are too stupid to live.”

“Enough!” Reiter rocked back onto his heels and stood, leaving the lantern on the ground and Armin lying beside it. Mage hit yes, but only asleep. Given what the girl had been through, she’d shown considerable mercy. Of course, there was no proof Armin would ever wake. “Dog or beastman, the animal is not our concern. The girl is. Chard, watch Armin. Best, you’re with me.” Best wouldn’t hesitate to shoot a big black dog.

“A beastman would’ve killed us,” Chard muttered under his breath.

He’d spoken quietly enough the others could ignore him and let the argument die. Besides, Reiter acknowledged silently, he had a point. They’d all heard the stories of attacks in the night. Of sentries who’d found everyone in camp dead, throats ripped out so silently they hadn’t heard a thing. Of farmsteads emptied of people and livestock both. Of travelers who disappeared, their torn and bloody clothing found strewn over the road.

They’d all heard the stories, but Reiter couldn’t think of anyone who’d actually witnessed such a thing.

Some of the cloud cover had cleared, exposing brilliant swaths of stars and a crescent moon that shed light disproportionate to its size. Scientists at the observatory outside Karis had declared that the moon had no light of its own, that it was no more than a large orbital body—which Reiter had translated as “rock”—reflecting the light of the sun. The recently appointed Prelate had been quick to deny the teachings of the Sun-as-metaphor and claim the science as proof of His mercy, throwing light into the dark. Reiter was not a religious man, but right now he’d take what help he could get. That said, they were lucky the girl hadn’t tried to cover her tracks. If she’d had time to be more careful, they’d never be able to find her.

“Captain, what if she’s leading us into an ambush?” Best was close
behind his left shoulder, speaking so quietly Reiter barely heard him. “It’s said the beastmen run in packs.”

He also had a point. But if Chard’s dog
was
one of the beastmen, Reiter’d bet his life the…the
creature
was as lost as it had pretended to be. Soldiers’ pets roaming the battlefield after their master’s death quivered with the same barely contained sense of panic. Of not knowing where they belonged. If it wasn’t one of the beastmen, it might have gone with the girl because she was up and moving.

“If there’s a pack,” he told Best, “we’ll deal with it.”

“But, Captain…”

“I said we’ll deal with it. Our orders are to return with six mages. No one’s going to be happy to hear we had one in the tangle and she got away.”
One in six or six in one.
The Soothsayer’s prophecy brought to mind, Reiter suddenly realized the girl they hunted had to be pregnant.
Empires rise or empires fall; the unborn child begins it all.
Realized all the women under the tangles had to be pregnant.
When wild and mage together come.
They’d lain with beasts, but…

Was Chard’s creature the father? He was young, yes, but old enough for that. Remembering the girl’s reaction, Reiter would’ve sworn she’d never seen the beast before. Had she played them? He could have admired that had she not put his balls in the fire by escaping.

A surprisingly large part of him wanted to let her go. Bad enough to make civilians a part of a war, making war against the unborn was…

Empires rise or empires fall.

He was a soldier sworn to the protection of the empire. He was an
officer
sworn to the protection of the empire. He had his orders.

“Captain?”

“I hear it.”

She was moving faster than expected—although he should have expected it. With the tangle off, she had full access to her mage-craft again. And, she was determined. So far today, she’d survived an ambush planned by Imperial Soothsayers, a run to Bercarit, a river still dangerously swollen with spring runoff, and an ancient artifact specifically designed to stop her. Reiter remembered how annoyed she’d looked when she’d first been taken and couldn’t prevent a smile. She’d studied him, much as he’d studied her, her pale eyes
narrowed with disapproval as though four Imperial soldiers rated no higher than the wrong-colored gloves. The smile disappeared as he frowned. He admired her no more than any other competent enemy.

She
wasn’t
moving quietly. With no breeze stirring the leaves or rubbing branches together, she was making the only noise in the wood.

Because Mirian had promised not to pull, when she needed Tomas’ attention, she released her grip on his tail and waited for him to notice. Three steps and he turned.

“I can’t keep going.” Her grip on a branch was all that kept her upright. Her thighs trembled, her knees threatened to buckle, and the pain in her side felt as though someone had stuffed hot coals under her ribs. “You have to find us a place to hide.” She paused just long enough to check that the sounds of pursuit hadn’t stopped. If they’d already given up…