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Mathias and his guard had been moving with us, wading along the edge of the Mazekhstani bank to keep pace as the water carried us away. He was so close – enough that his concerned yell easily reached my ears – and yet with the boat sinking beneath us, too damn far. There was no way they could cross without it, and I couldn’t see any other craft in either direction, although the fog blocked everything beyond a few dozen yards.
“Time to swim,” Velichkov said bluntly as the water reached our laps, tossing the oars aside and reaching for me and Starling. I pushed Dima into his arms instead, knowing the older man would need the assistance more than me, and threw myself into the river towards the Quarehian shore despite my heart being pulled in the opposite direction.
The icy shock of it made me gasp.
Cold water assaulted my nose and mouth, and I desperately thrashed against the force that threatened to tear me away, bracing my boots against the rocks beneath my feet. The water was only neck height here but fiercely strong, and I flailed for a long moment, hearing Mathias’ alarmed shouts but unable to look his way.
All I could do was press forward, throwing all of my weight and strength into it, and slowly, ever soslowly,beginning to inch towards shallower water.
Velichkov waded closer and heaved at my arm, having already helped the others to make it safely and returned for me because he was apparently recklessly sweet like his brother that way – or hereallydidn’t like the idea of having to explain my death – and between the two of us, we made it up the incline and onto dry ground.
I didn’t bother taking a breath before I was spinning around, finding Mathias’ own arm snagged by Parvan as he paced anxiously on the opposite bank. Considering my northerner looked like he wanted to throw himself into the heaving waters after us, I could only be glad that someone had sensibly taken hold of him, although it made me uncomfortable that it was a man who had once wanted him dead. Yet now would have been a perfect time to get rid of Mat if that was what Parvan really wanted – simply by letting go and allowing the brash fool to drown himself.
“Stay the fuck there!” I yelled back at Mathias, unable to believe I had to voice such an order when he’d had a perfect view of how the four of us had almost been swept away.
“We’ll find another place to cross and catch up!” Parvan shouted in Temarian, and Velichkov raised a weary hand in acknowledgement, water dripping from his elbow.
Mathias’ face darkened. “Don’t go getting yourselves killed,svolochi!”
Then Velichkov’s arm dipped into a sudden, slicing motion, a gesture I was unfamiliar with but which made Parvan stiffen on the opposite shore. The guard nodded, muttered something to Mat which made him similarly flinch, and then with a final lingering look our way – and an awkward little half-wave from my lover – fled into the fog.
“Soldiers coming, Aratorre,” Velichkov hissed in my ear before I could ask, jerking me away. I stumbled, my clothes and boots heavy with water, and he barely bothered to let me right myself before pulling harder. “Stay silent and stay low. As nice as the peace and quiet would be if you were to lose your head, it would make all of this rather pointless.”
A chill ran through me which wasn’t entirely the result of my wet clothes.
Drenched, exhausted, scared, and most devastatingly without my northerner by my side, it wasn’t exactly how I’d envisioned returning to Quareh.
*
Chapter Thirty-Three
The bridge and its occupants were silent and still, an anticipatory and foreboding air hanging over it all that felt as heavy as the thickening fog. We were only a dozen yards from the closest of the soldiers and couldn’t even see those who waited further across the bridge, but no eyes wandered our way. We were behind them, after all, on their home side of the border, and the danger for these Mazekhstani soldiers lay to the south.
A danger they must have felt more keenly than usual, for I was sure that the border guards did not always hold themselves this tense, with their hands clutching drawn swords and their chests heaving out terrified breaths.
Leather creaked. Metal clinked. And then a cry cut through the air, muffled by the fog but still piercing and haunting, and chaos was unleashed.
I stared in dread as figures emerged from the gloom, hacking and slicing indiscriminately. The northern soldiers leapt forward, throwing themselves into the melee with courage or desperation or something indiscernible between the two, and what had been silent a moment ago was now an unbelievable amount of noise. The fog gave the scene a surreal quality, washing out both colour and sound, but nothing could disguise the sheer amount of death that the seconds delivered.
Seconds.
That’s all it took to transform the bridge into a slaughter ground, bodies not even having time to fall before more were tumbling down on top of them. Some Quarehians, mostly Mazekhstani, but what did the colour of their skin or the language of their dying screams matter when the corpses of friend and foe lay together in death?
Horror had frozen me in place, but as the Quarehians surged from the bridge onto solid ground on our side of the river, I looked to Parvan. The man was crouched next to me, watching the carnage with a sorrowful sobriety, and only shifted his grip on my shoulder to push me lower behind the hedge we were using for cover.
“We can’t justwatch,” I hissed. “They’re dying out there!”
“And what do you propose to do about it, Your Highness?” His voice was calm, only a note or two from unaffected, and I envied the way people like him and Jiron could keep themselves removed from such sights even as I pitied them for it at the same time.
I gave the sword at his hip a meaningful look. It may have been Mazekhstani in design as his old Temarian one had been forfeited with his resignation from service, but it still had a sharp edge and a pointy tip, did it not?
“I am a guard, my prince, not a soldier.” Parvan’s voice was unnecessarily quiet: I doubted anyone would hear us whispering over here past the sounds of dozens of peoplescreaming. “My job is to keep you safe, and I cannot do that if you send me into a battle I have no place being. Nor any purpose, for my presence would not achieve anything but my death...and yours. You know this.”
Oh, how I’d missed the man’s condescending remarks and indirect reminders of how shit I was at acting like a royal. I knew he was right, damn it, but that didn’t make keeping ourselves hidden any easier. Not when the last of the northerners fell, and the Quarehians took a moment to plunge their blades into the hearts and heads of the dead to ensure they really were. Not when the wounded were treated the same, no mercy offered to those who weren’t their kin despite their anguished pleas. Not when the southern force pushed forward, swelling past where we hid, and disappearing into the fog.
“Cera.Now,” Parvan said, and we darted onto the bridge. There was a terrible stench of piss and blood and something else that maybe wasn’t even tangible but just the scent of pointless fucking death, and I held my breath as we picked our way through – and twice, where the fighting had been thickest,over– the piles of corpses. My boots skidded in a puddle of slick blood and Parvan caught my arm to keep me upright, but my fingers still touched warm, sticky flesh before I snatched them away.
Bile rose in my stomach and up my throat. I swallowed it back down, diverting my eyes from the nauseating mess around us.
