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A few stones hit something soft. And then a low, slow drag and a dull, muffled thump.

Distantly, there was another clatter, but the pounding in Revni’s ears deadened everything. She edged closer until she could peer into the cleft. Every instinct wanted to call Eavus’ name, even just a whisper, but she resisted. She had invoked Hjen for a reason. Only fools gave themselves away.

Carefully, Revni hooked the ax to counter-balance and peered into the rift. Relief and worry washed equally over her. It was only Eavus’ pack, freshly fallen, dust still settling, his kit pole beside. It must have caught in the wedge of rock, or perhaps he set it down, and the weight of the pack, or the stones she’d sent tumbling, or both, had finally pulled it free.

But beside it⁠—

A line of blood.

Revni shrank back, breathing hard. The space beneath looked wide and clear, but who was to say?

Was she soti, or a coward?

Revni steeled her thudding heart. She skirted the steepest portion of the drop, working her way around to a more manageable crack. If he had simply fallen—perhaps he needed her. But the cut rope, the clacking, the howling voices…

There was a reason Hjen had locked her throat.

Revni focused on the flat patch beneath her, took a deep breath, and jumped.

The earth jolted through her bones, her body ready for a fight, but there was nothing but an empty valley. Steep cliffs edged both sides of the chasm, but it ran so long and smooth it could have been mistaken for an Aleterian road. To her right, the path rose and dropped into shadow; to the left it undulated before making a sharp turn she couldn’t see around. Perhaps it flattened out only a few fathoms away—or perhaps the fissure ran the whole length, a natural tunnel through the mountains, and that’s why she and Eavus had seemed so alone. Perhaps they’d been surrounded the whole time. Watched. Or maybe it was all just a terrible coincidence—Eavus dropping from the sky just as someone passed under. Someone else seeing him as a gift from their own gods. Revni’s vision narrowed to that spattered line of red. It continued in a long smear, slithering through the scuffed dirt all the way to the curve, a lizard’s spotted tail.

Something—Someone, bleeding—had been dragged.

Now, Revni.

Heart pounding, she raced to Eavus’ pack, as unsteady-keeled as when the steermaster shifted ballast. Sharp and strong. How many times had her father said those words? No wasted movements. Years of training flooded her senses—the practice in leaping over the edge of a ship, the clap of the shield, up, up, up, again. She discarded what they wouldn’t need—cookpot, bedroll, bowl, spoon—briefly examined the tweezers and a few spare hobnails wrapped in a scrap of leather. Too delicate to be of any use.

He was her shield sibling; she’d sworn an oath. But deep down, in that thrumming pulse she kept trying to smother, she knew it was more than that—the thought of Eavus, hurt, dragged, helpless. Alone. It carved a piece out of her she didn’t know she had. She didn’t understand it—this tie they had to each other. But that was the work of the gods, too, wasn’t it?

A promise to the gods. Veins, her father had shown her. Here, here. Cut. Again.

Traveler’s whetstone—keep. Helmet and leather greaves—Eavus had worn the greaves on his shins when she first saw him in Triconum, but he ran faster without them and had been storing them in his pack. Same with the helmet. The helmet, he’d want. Why the Aleterians wore skirts, leaving their legs bare in a fight, she’d never understand. She tied the greaves to her upper arms. The knots bit into her flesh as she pulled the strings with her teeth, but she gave each a knock when she was done. Better than nothing.

Again. Move.

It was the food and the leather ties she was after, and glee rushed through her when she discovered both, shoved to the bottom. Eavus carried emergency meal on the supply belt at his waist, but the dried meat and hard bread were in the pack. They’d need them. When they were together again.

A familiar rhythm pounded in her ears, and she swore she could hear the droning of the seer. Something sang in her bones. This wasn’t bjerluk, and it wasn’t whatever else she had been. This wasn’t Kyrianos.

Eavus’ kit pole was nothing more than a hard, sturdy branch, with a smaller one lashed as a cross-piece at the top. He’d told her that lironi, free soldiers, had spear points on the ends of theirs, and if they were surprised in battle they could simply cut the cross-piece and be ready to fight. Conri like himself were granted the pole but not the blade. A stupid, wasteful system, Revni thought, then and now, as she used the beard-edge of her ax to slice the lashings. A symbol, even as they marched, that conri were of lower status. Any weapons they used in battle were issued beforehand, and taken back at the end.

“If conri get caught by a surprise battle, our job is to be sabuli,” Eavus had explained.

“What is that?” she had asked, and his smile had been grim.

“Sandbags. Slow the enemy down.”

The small Aleterian ax was sharp and decently-made, but it was meant for firewood, a common tool.

If Revni was going into battle, she needed a proper weapon.

The blood trail went in one direction, and Revni went the other, following the sound of water. She brought the ax and leathers and whetstone with her. The rush echoed against the cavern walls, the path curving around a black pond fed by a flat, dripping fall.

Revni plunged forward, straight to one of the large boulders that lined the edge, sour mold filling her nostrils. She’d have to move fast if she wanted to follow. She bashed the flat of the ax head against the stone, the noise splintering her ears, her wrist aching with the impact, but she kept on, again, praying that Eavus’ captors wouldn’t hear and double back. But praying to who? Revni didn’t know. She was ten years old again, wrestling a goat to a block, telling the gods who she was.

Revni could taste the blood mud on her lips.

The ax head finally squeaked loose, and a few more blows reverberated the ache to the back of her armpits, before the heavy iron finally thudded to the ground. Revni plucked it up, then reversed the process, this time with the long, sturdy kit pole, fixing the eye of the ax onto the end. She slammed the butt repeatedly against the boulder until the head lodged onto the shaft.