“We can’t take them all, Alwyn! Where would we bring them? And these rebels will notice if all their captured elves are missing,” Krujha protested, worry now burrowing deep into his chest. He couldn’t let Alwyn endanger their mission like this, sympathetic as he was to the elf’s obvious conflict.
“I’m not leaving,” Alwyn said.
“We don’t have time.”
“Just one more minute,” the elf growled, brows furrowing. “Stop distracting me. I can do it.”
Krujha sighed, resigning himself. He straightened up and glanced around, eyes darting through the darkness. Luckily, the guard had not returned, and he didn’t see anyone else nearby either. But their luck was going to run out before long.
A faint groan pulled his attention back to Alwyn and the other elves—Fionia was stirring, her face pinched in discomfort.
“I know, I’m sorry,” Alwyn whispered, and Krujha realized with a start that blood was oozing from where he’d been touching her neck. “I didn’t know how else to get it out.”
Krujha bit back a protest. Far be it from him to tell a group of mages how to do their job. He’d seen healers at work before, and sometimes bloodletting was part of the job; but it still unsettled him to see it now pouring from her throat after witnessing how Alwyn had killed the other guard—not to mention the arrow that had punched through Torlag’s throat, just as fresh in his memory.
Finally, she seemed roused enough to lift her hand and slap it to her neck. There was a faint shimmer of magic, and Alwyn pulled away from her. Her eyes opened in the darkness, darting all around.
“Torlag is dead,” Alwyn said in a low voice. “He was followed. We have to flee the camp. Can you help me get anyone else up? I don’t want to leave any of these elves behind, if we can help it.”
Fionia was quiet for a long moment, her rapid breath relaxing to a deep, slow pace. Finally, she sat all the way up, wiping her hand on her robe and leaving behind a red smear of blood.
“Yes,” she said, her voice rough. “I felt what you did. I can do the same.”
The two elves quickly set to work, each kneeling beside another sleeping prisoner. Despite Krujha’s doubt, Alwyn had been right about Fionia: in the time it took Alwyn to get one more elf on their feet, she had woken two.
“Don’t speak. We’re High Sorcerers,” Fionia intoned in a low voice when each of them woke, trying to keep them quiet. “We’re going to get you out of here, but you have to listen to us. The orc there is our ally. You can trust him. He’s going to help us flee.”
The three woken elves eyed Krujha uncertainly, huddling together and shivering in the cold. When he finally saw a stream of orcs on horseback galloping into the night—in the direction of their ruined camp, and one of them casting some kind of magic—he turned back to Alwyn and Fionia.
“There’s no more time,” he said, urgency filling his voice. “We have to go,now.”
“Just one more,” Alwyn protested, still kneeling beside a sleeping elf.
“Alwyn, we don’t have time. If they find us, we’ll all die,” Krujha hissed, leaning down. “The rest of them will be okay. The rebels will keep them sedated, but they won’t kill them. The best way we can help them is to put an end toallof this, once and for all.”
In truth, he had no idea how safe these elves were, remaining captive in the rebel camp—and he was sure Alwyn knew that. But Krujha could see the acceptance dawning behind the elf’s eyes, followed by a cold determination.
After a beat, he removed his hand from the sleeping elf and stood. “Okay,” he said, his voice small. “You’re right. Let’s go.”
Chapter Thirteen
Alwyn
Alwyn followed Krujha past the perimeter of the camp and out into the night with the other elves in tow. They circled back so Krujha could retrieve the horses that he, Alwyn, and Fionia had left behind; but instead of pursuing Galred and the rest of their companions, they turned and headed south away from the commotion. Alwyn wanted to protest; but the sounds of a horn and galloping hoofbeats in the distance made him reconsider.
Once night had truly taken hold of the sky, and they could only see a handful of lights against a black landscape, they stopped to take a breath and arrange themselves so that everyone was on a horse. Krujha had the two shortest squeeze onto his own horse’s broad back, while Alwyn and the third elf shared his gelding, leaving Fionia alone on her small mare. The man clinging to Alwyn as they rode was an older elf, who shivered silently and kept his eyes closed. Alwyn tried to ignore his presence as much as he could.
Krujha drove them further and further south for nearly two hours, until Alwyn could barely keep his eyes open with sheer exhaustion. When they stopped, they couldn’t risk lighting a fire,so the elves huddled together in a pile of blankets, using their magic to keep warm. Meanwhile, Krujha tethered their horses, then took a seat with a clear view to the north and watched.
Alwyn stared at him a moment—he couldn’t try to stay awake all night, could he?
After a beat, he pulled a blanket from the pile and warmed it with a spell. It smelled distinctly of horse, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. He staggered to his feet and closed the few steps between him and Krujha, pressing the warm blanket into the orc’s hands.
“You should keep it,” Krujha said softly, though he didn’t try to hand it back to Alwyn.
“You need to sleep,” Alwyn muttered, returning to the sleeping pile. His mind was racing, but despite all his worries about Krujha and the orcs and Galred and the others, exhaustion took over quickly.
He closed his eyes for only a second, but was woken hours later by the first rays of sunlight spreading across the sky. Krujha had fallen asleep sitting up, the blanket pulled over his torso. Fionia started to stir, the light waking her as well; but the other elves were still resting. The sedation had not exactly been restful, Alwyn remembered. When Korik, the orc healer, had roused him from his magical sleep, he’d felt drained, as if his disquiet dreams had been really happening.
