The blow from her staff ought to leave Torin puking out his guts for an hour, at least, but it was difficult to predict, given the resiliency of these bloody knights.She needed to be well on her way to Glascoed by the time he recovered.The sooner she solved the puzzle of the haunting, the sooner she could take Siwan back to the City, put an end to her four-year sojourn, andfinallymake some progress on her research.
She’d wasted enough time, and wasn’t about to waste more on this Anwe woman.She raised her left arm and encircled Anwe’s head with her fingers.She felt a needle of guilt as she braced herself for a flash of pain down her forearm.But Colm was hurt, and a fair fight was likely to end with either she or Colm—or both—wounded beyond the ability to make the journey to Glascoed.She gritted her teeth, swallowed the bizarre impulse to apologise, and slammed her middle finger down.
She gasped.It was like trying to crush an iron bar in her hand.Anwe’s wolfish smile widened.
‘Some magic trick?’Anwe said, and chuckled.‘You’ll find such things baffled, if not broken, against true knights.’
‘Colm,’ Fola said, a stone dropping into her stomach.‘We need to get out of here.’
‘I’m aware,’ he snarled.‘I’ve tried.’
Frog was hurt, his tail feathers torn.Little chance he would be able to make it back to the City.A Citizen’s bird bore a fragment of their soul, a needed component for the spell the City wove to resurrect the dead.Death here, with Frog crippled, might meanreal death.
Anwe’s chuckle broke into a laugh.She lunged.The air thrummed as she moved through it, her body blurring like the flicker of a dragonfly’s wings.Fola yelped and brought her staff into the path of Anwe’s sword, wincing, ready for the blade to split her skull.
Raw iron met silver.The force of the blow left Fola’s arm numb.Her staff spun away and clattered amid the wreckage of the trellis.
Colm roared and hurled a table leg.It flew as straight as a javelin, but too slow.Anwe’s sword whipped out and knocked it to the ground in an eruption of splinters.
Fola leapt back, nearly stumbling over broken trellis as she dug her notebook from her satchel.Anwe’s wards would stop magic from affecting her directly, but there were other avenues of attack.
Colm snatched up a spar of broken trellis and jabbed its splintered end at Anwe, forcing her towards the door of the inn.Fola flexed her right hand, trying to work the numbness from it, and flipped to a fresh page of spellpaper with her left.She needed a simple, fast spell that would slow Anwe down.
A thunder of hooves and a shout of surprise distracted her.Three horses stamped and snorted in the entryway to the courtyard.She recognised the troupers from the night before—and Llewyn, his already pale skin drawn and sallow as he slumped in front of Spil, the darkly complexioned tumbler.Siwan clung to the young actor Damon, her eyes wide with terror.The strongman Harwick, almost as broad of chest as Colm, led their desperate little party.He looked past Fola to where Colm was struggling to keep Anwe at bay.His expression danced from hope, to surprise, to defeat.
Torin must have sent someone after Siwan.
‘Shit,’ Fola muttered, her numb fingers fumbling with her pen.
‘The folk you visited last night, before this one tried to murder Orn?’Anwe said, batting aside a jab of Colm’s improvised spear.She tut-tutted, then, in a sudden blur, caught the broken length of trellis and tore it from his grasp.‘Sir Torin might like to speak with them.One or two of them, anyway.The others… Well, it’s a hassle to keep prisoners, isn’t it?’
‘Go, Fola!’Colm roared.His upper arms snapped off another spear of trellis and hurled it at Anwe.
‘Don’t be a bloody hero!’she shouted back.
‘Me?Never!’Whatever quip he had planned next broke against his teeth as Anwe charged across the courtyard, her sword flashing.Frog yelped.Colm’s dagger rang against Anwe’s sword.Fola’s heart lurched in her chest.
She worked feeling back into her hand, then drew a manic, half-nonsensical spell: a carving function, then split—one half into decay, the other into consumption and then back through destruction.Even to her eye, it seemed little more than a baffling net of squiggly lines and scrawled runes.But it didn’t have to work, exactly, just occupy Anwe for a few moments.
She drew the final line, then dropped the paper onto the shattered remnants of the trellis and, cradling Frog to keep him from bouncing free of the bundle across her chest, ducked and ran towards the troupers.
Spellpaper burst into silver flame.Splintered wood uncoiled and reared.Anwe whirled as wooden vipers lunged at her.Her sword arced out, splitting one in half.It exploded with a crack and flash like a magician’s firework, showering her with flame and splinters.
Fola caught Harwick’s arm and let him haul her into the saddle behind him.‘What’s going on?’he demanded.
‘What’s it look like?’Fola snapped, wrestling the fear for Colm that fluttered in her chest.He will be fine, she told herself.He was Warborn, made by the First Folk to fight far worse than Anwe.Thoughts that did little to quiet her heart.‘We need to get out of here!’
The strongman neither hesitated nor argued.He wheeled his mount around and dug in his knees.The other troupers followed.The houses of Parwys blurred past as they raced out of the old quarter into the piss and molten-metal reek of the trades.Shouts of alarm and calls for the guards heralded their mad gallop through the market square.
‘Not this way, Harwick!’Damon yelled over the clatter of hooves and shouting of the crowd as they turned towards the eastern gate.‘Away from the festival grounds!’
‘What bloody way, then?’Harwick shouted, and reined in.The three horses came to an uneasy stop, stamping the road, tossing their heads and chewing at their bits.‘Well?Sorceress?Where are we going?’
‘To Glascoed,’ Fola said.
‘No!’Llewyn cried, his voice a breathless rasp.Spil yelped as Llewyn came suddenly awake and agitated.‘Not the forest!’
‘If I’m to put an end to all of this nonsense, I need her,’ Fola said, pointing to Siwan, ‘and I need to speak with the count.He’s on his way to Glascoed.Therefore, so are we!Understand?’
