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Though tears swam in his eyes, the serjeant stood straight and unyielding. “Your dismissal does not change my vow.”
Elina clenched her teeth in exasperation. “Then come and speak to my mother, and perhaps she will release you from it. Her ghost is likely in Aleron. So you may accompany us there, despite your vow to keep me away until Soren is dead. Or you can attempt to keep me here, but you can only accomplish that by harming me when you force me to stay. Either way, you break your vow. So which will it be?”
“Do not harm her, or I will kill you. For she is my queen.”
The serjeant looked again over her shoulder, and whatever he saw upon Warrick’s face made him stumble back a step.
A rumble of thunder filled the silence that fell between them. Elina cast her gaze at the sky. Gray sheets of rain were falling in the distance. “Oh, we are fools!” Distracted by the demon and the serjeant, she’d utterly forgotten the oncoming storm. “We must ride! Go!”
Grasping the shard and her axe, she hauled herself into her saddle and kicked the gelding into a gallop. She bent low over the horse’s neck, the wind whipping at her eyes as the first drops of rain began to splatter around them. Yet these drops mattered not at all. Only the sheets of rain dropping onto the hills behind them.
An ominous rumble sounded through the canyon. Not thunder, but continuous. And closing in.
Her frantic gaze swept the cliffs on either side of the river, which was already spilling over its banks. Worse was coming. They could not remain on the canyon floor. They had to get above the flood.
“There!” she shouted, pointing farther down the canyon. A narrow ledge of packed dirt that climbed the side of the cliff, with a path already worn upon its surface. Hardly more than a game trail, but it would take them up.
A monster surged out of the river ahead. Insectile. Huge. At a gallop Elina had barely a glimpse of it before she swerved her mount away from the overflowing banks and prayed the creature would not be fast enough to close the distance before they passed.
It skittered toward them like lightning.
“I have it!” Serjeant Iarthil shouted. “Get her onto the ledge! Go!”
The serjeant raced toward the monster. She had only a moment to see his crossbow bolt impale its dripping carapace and him leaping from his mount, blade in hand, before her horse carried her past.
She reached the trail—and oh gods, it was hardly worth the name. So narrow, with uncertain footing and disintegrating edges held in place by frail roots. They would all have a better chance on foot than riding. Quickly she dismounted, slapping her gelding’s rump to send him ahead. She went next, hurrying as quickly as she dared—feeling Warrick’s warmth that told her he was there.
The sprinkle of rain became a deluge. The soil at her feet began to tremble. She risked a glance back and her heart stopped.
The serjeant. Caught in the demon’s pincers. With a wall of water behind them.
“Iarthil!” she screamed as the surging water slammed into them both.
Man and monster disappeared.
“Elina! Go!”
The ground shook. The flood roared past them—they were high enough, but the packed dirt that formed the base of the ledge was crumbling, the surface soil shivering as rocks and clumps of grass tumbled into the water below.
Elina scrambled faster, using her hands where the trail was steep and slippery with mud, crying out each time her footing gave way. She felt Warrick’s warmth again and again, as if he kept trying to steady her—then the ledge abruptly collapsed under her feet. She screamed and lunged forward, the shard tumbling out of her grip and into the flood. The trail ahead was still firm, more rock than dirt. Her gelding trotted along without a care while Elina wildly snatched at bushes to anchor her weight and pulled herself onto a solid part of the ledge.
Warrick’s warmth was gone. So was every bit of the trail behind her.
Terror razed her heart. She whirled around. “Warrick!”
Her scream echoed over the roar of the flood and the pounding rain. Desperately she searched the water below. If he’d fallen in, she could throw him the axe and pull him in by the chain. She was strong enough. But she could not see him. She could only see what was hers.
But Warrick was hers.
“You cannot take him from me!” she shouted at the river, at the rain, at the heavens. “He’s mine! Mine! My husband, my heart, my life! Everything he is is mine! Everything I am is his! He is mine!”
A soft nicker from the trail just ahead. Troll.
She could see Troll.
But Warrick was where? Where? The water raced past, carrying trees and rocks but no barbarian.
