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Anne immediately shoved one pistol back through her brace and drew her cutlass. The other pistol she flipped, holding it back along her forearm as a shield. Then she threw herself into the fray.
She met our attackers with a witch’s feral scream and a flurry of deft slashes. The wind came with her, an extension of her ownflesh—throwingicy snow into the faces of our enemies as she blocked, cut and thrust with tight, rapid movements.
I had no time for awe, no time to watch her and the wind and their uncanny union or envy her skill. I had my own part in this plan.
It took all my strength to turn my back onher—onthe mother I’d lost and found and might lose again. But I did, turning with purpose towards the distantHarpy, and I ran.
The Ghistwold folded in around me, snow crunching and cold burning. My breath rasped as I pelted in the direction of the western shore, leading any pursuers straight through the heart of the Wold and a corridor of death.
A muzzle flashed behind me. I instinctively plunged sideways into a snowbank, only to find my foot snared on the icy crust beneath the powder.
I crawled free with a curse, but I’d lost time. Pirates closed in. Lirr stalked out of the trees in the midst of them, illuminated by the horizontal light of the Second Sun. He wasn’talone—threepeople fled before him, Demery’s or Samuel’s crews, I couldn’t tell.
Whoever they were, they weren’tghiseau. They fell so easily. Lirr shot one in the belly, and I was close enough to see the horror in her eyes. The second buckled under his companion’s weight, and Lirr kicked them both down. He left them on the ground as he stabbed the third, slashing their knees with brutal efficiency.
I felt a moment of baffled dread. He wasn’t killing them, though he easily could. Yes, the belly shot was a mortal wound, but not one that would kill with any speed. Why?
My thoughts fled as a pistol flared. The second victim pointed his smoking pistol towards Lirr’s head, elation in his eyes. There was no way the shot could have missed, not at that range, but Lirr barely flinched. Instead, he rested his sword below the shooter’s eye, and twisted its tip into his skull. His scream rang loud through the trees, rising and falling in unfettered horror.
It still echoed as Demery’s folk loosed another volley from the treetops. Lirr’s oncoming pirates scattered, plunging into the shelter of trees.
Lirr left his dying victims and advanced on me just as I freed my foot. I took off in a stumbling run, but the snow was so deep. I hit a drift and sank in again, cursing and panting in my panic.
Lirr grabbed the back of my coat and hauled me around. There was blood in his hair, smeared across his face, but he seemed unaware of it.
“Mary,” he grunted in a perfunctory greeting and started to drag me back the way I’d come. I shrieked like a feral cat and beat at him until he shook me so hard my neck cracked and my vision blackened. Magni power flooded into me at the sametime—dizzyingand stifling.
“Stop. Fighting,” he growled.
A musket cracked. I blinked blearily, and Lirr jerked as the shot buried itself in hiscollarbone—joiningthe bloody blossoms of more than one other lead ball. He didn’t fall, but his power wavered.
I slammed my elbow into his and knocked his grasping arm wide. His attention snapped back to me and his cutlass flashed in his free hand, aiming for my legs, but I’d already pulled my knife.
Charles Grant would have been proud. We hadn’t often fought knife against cutlass, but I was already inside Lirr’s guard, driving the blade through his heavy coat into histhigh—once,twice, three times. Then I moved to his arm, slashing it open as I jerked free. He roared and I felt Magni power lance after meagain—butit shuddered, weakened by his pain.
I fled into the trees, sprinting in the direction that felt like the shore, struggling through drifts, my breath ragged in my lungs. Sweat caked my face and cold seared every inch of my exposed skin.
Two cannon shots rang out, one on the heels of the other. They echoed all around me, distorted by trees and ice and muffling snow, but I recognized the signal to retreat.
I almost stopped running, shock coursing through me and muscles quaking with urgency. Something must have gone wrong at the beach, but what? I was the crux of the plan and here I was, waylaid but still heading towards my goal, Lirr in close pursuit.
Unless something had happened toHarpy.
I forced myself to start running again. Get to the shore. Get to theship—that’swhere my mother would be headed. Even if everythinghadgone to hell, Athe must still have our retreat and I could escape Lirr.
I glanced over my shoulder. I couldn’t see thepirate—theforest was still, the only movement distant andfleeting—butthat was no comfort. My skin crawled.
“Mary? Mary!”
I spun at the sound of Grant’s voice, slipped, and hit the ground with a painful thud. I wheezed and tried to stand up, but I’d wandered onto a frozen river, hidden beneath the fresh snow. I went back down.
Grant skidded into sight. He poised for an instant on the ice to find his balance, arms outstretched, then gave a hoarse laugh and skated towards me.
Relief made me wobbly. I shifted onto my knees and, finding a knot of roots on the riverbank, managed to pull myself upright.
“There you are! You’re going the wrong way.” He spoke with forced cheer. His face was deathly pale, making his scarred cheeks stand out even more amid his blond stubble. His cutlass was still at his belt but he’d lost his gun.
His crew of makeshift highwayfolk were nowhere in sight, but I didn’t let myself think of what had happened to them, or my mother, or Rosser, or Demery or anyone else. If I did I’d lose all nerve, and we had to get toHarpy.
