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“There’s a pulley system we can leverage that’ll drop us in the courtyard,” Garanthian explains as we run. I notice a few dead sentinels they clearly had to kill on the way. They must have been as silent as a night’s breeze because we never heard any sign of violence or struggle.
“And what about the security measures in the courtyard? I heard there are foul beasts down there. I was going to throw one of the sentinels down to distract them,” I say through a few deep breaths.
“Swamp dawpers.” Garanthian nods his head, then smiles down at his trotting wolves. “My pack took them out. But there may be more coming. We’ll have to be swift.”
As we turn a corner, one of the smaller wolves rubs against me. I grit my teeth, missing DaiSzek terribly. I’m always confident in my ability to dominate in a fight, but with him…we become the epitome of violence and terror.
I hope Skylenna has found him.
“Niles.” Warrose dips his head in Ruth’s direction. “I’ll take her for now.”
Niles’s upper body is shaking a little, and his forehead is shiny with perspiration. He smiles at Warrose and places Ruth in his arms gently. “Just for a little while.”
We open the door to a tar-black sky with a blurring wall of rain. The clouds are the boisterous size of krakens and slopping wet sea monsters, carrying a cataclysmic amount of rain. The kind of rain in biblical tragedies with flooding rivers, uprooted trees, and fat drops of water that hold the weight of falling rocks. Yellow lightning forks across the sky, crackling and popping, booming into the earth with its shrieking thunder.
It takes several minutes to be lowered on a wooden pulley in the blustering winds carrying the scent of dirty rain and landfills full of manure and rotting fruit. We’re drenched as we hold on for dear life, braving the mighty storm like a small boat in a hurricane. The platform we stand on quakes and rumbles, making Ruth bury her face in Warrose’s shoulder. We’re so high up, but the view doesn’t frighten me. What’s bothering me is the thought of failing. Especially since the Stormsages have come all this way with their pack of wolves to help us escape.
Do you think when all of this is over, Skylenna will help us recover those memories? And maybe we won’t have such conflicting feelings about her anymore? Kane paces near the front, filling me with anxiety and a feeling of loss.
I shake my head. I can’t think about that right now.
But I do anyway. I remember the taste of her lips, the smell of her hair, even the musical notes of her laugh. Though…I don’t know how I can remember something I’ve never heard.
I want to know her.
I want to stop obsessing over the thought of being with her.
“My men have already taken out the archers, but once we hit ground, we need to stay low and exit quickly. I have two men holding the gate, but we attracted the sights of a few spine-toothed eagles on the way in.” Garanthian watches the bizarre skies carefully. “I suspect they’ve gone back to their nests by now to take shelter from this apocalyptic weather.”
“Okay.”
The wooden platform thuds against the rocky terrain, slanting at an angle to which we hop off, scrambling toward a slippery stone path that leads toward the iron gate. I squint my eyes through the soft fog filling the night air, focusing on the two young men squatting and gritting their teeth as they keep the gate from coming down.
“Holy shit. We’re really getting out,” Warrose whispers.
My heart radiates with longing and joy and throbbing anticipation. I get to see my boy again. I get to ask Skylenna all of the questions I’ve had since we kissed. But I steady my breathing as we crouch low, jogging lightly toward that rusting exit. The wolves are even more quiet next to me. They’re in a predatory stance, surrounding us in a circle they’ve formed to protect the humans.
“When we drop the gate, it’ll likely be loud enough to wake up the ranks on standby. We’ll have to run like hell through Foul Falcon Forest!” Garanthian hisses loudly to the rest of us.
“Come on, ya cock hairs! This thing is bloody heavy, and we’re practically drownin’!” the young man holding the right side of the gate whisper-shouts.
We’re cautious enough not to slip as we thump through puddles that go ankle-deep. And if it was not for the whooshing sounds overhead that aren’t quite the same as the murderous, incessant winds, I might not have noticed the giant flapping wings swooping down above us.
“CAAAH!” An eagle the size of a small lion whirrs past us, snapping its sharp beak at Ruth’s hair. She slams her hands over her mouth to muffle her yelp just as Warrose ducks out of its line of sight.
“The hell?!” Warrose grumbles to the sky.
And that’s when we all see them. So many of these large birds circling us, they could be mistaken for a trembling roof over the courtyard.
“That’s them!” Garanthian doesn’t bother whispering anymore. He pushes me in the back, shoving the rest of us along to forget about the notion of being quiet. We run like hell.
The squawking acts as an organic alarm system, sending reverberating echoes against the brimstone walls, and it happens too fast. There isn’t enough time to process how they managed to react with the right weapons or fill the courtyard with both Blood Mammoths and new swamp dawpers.
They appear in the yellow flashes of the splintering lightning. Archers taking their positions along the tops of the walls that surround the courtyard. The crazed, rabid beasts come from all angles, and we’re now left with a choice. It’s fight here or die running.
Warrose passes Ruth off to Niles, and we form a protective wall around them. The fight breaks out like a collision of two apex predators sprinting in the same direction. The wolves attack the beasts without an ounce of fear, soaked from the rain, and smeared in blood from their earlier wins. They are the first line of defense.
And as I fight four sentinels at once, my stomach is punctured with a blast of fury and heartbreak as one of the wolves gets shot down with three flaming arrows, whining at high frequency.
