“Easy,” came his voice again. “You’ll hurt yourself.”
Mallow stepped from the mist, sword still in hand. The canvas wrap that had once covered it was gone, the edge dark and wet. His coat hung open, one sleeve torn, his hair damp with sweat.
He crouched beside her, the motion slow, as if testing whether she’d panic.
“Saint’s sake,” he said again, quieter. “They really meant to do you in.”
She stared at him, trembling. The fog had made ghosts of everything; he seemed one more.
“How –”
“Later.” In a quick series of motions he flung the blood from the tip of his blade, wiped it clean in the snow, then sheathed it. He found the knots of her bindings, fiddled for a moment, then seemed to decide it wasn’t worth his time to untie her. He pulled a knife from his belt.
At the sight of the blade Lain froze again, felt the strange sensation of her heartbeat slowing to a trickle. All her body relaxed with the sense that nothing mattered. She recalled a fawn she’d seen one spring, curled up in a patch of deep grass, so still and quiet she nearly missed its presence just beside her, and even in her peace she recognized the animalness of her, and understood what Darrin might have seen, with his blade to her throat.
Mallow cut the cord with several quick, practiced slices.
The bindings fell away. Blood rushed back so quickly it burned. The world tilted. Cold, sound, and breath all rushed back at once, so sharp she almost wished for numbness again. Her legs cramped, the muscles locking in the shock of returning blood. She gasped, grabbing the earth to steady herself. The texture of the ground – frozen moss, bits of gravel pressing through the snow – it felt too real, too cruel after the muffled haze of terror.
She shook, and he hated that he saw it. Every motion of his, from the flick of his knife to the set of his jaw, spoke of control, so unlike the trembling of her own limbs.
Behind him, the mist was thick, but she could see the vague dark shape of someone lying near the shrine gate. Another beside it, stiller.
“Don’t look,” Mallow said. He offered her his hand. “Can you stand?”
She didn’t take it. Her mind struggled to catch up to the scent of blood, the cold air on her bare ears, the impossible fact of him here.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered.
“Aye, that’ll come later, I suspect.”
When she didn’t move, he stooped, and for a moment she was so disoriented that she thought he might strike her; instead, he slid an arm beneath her hips and another around her back, and lifted her with a grunt. The tenderness made her flinch more than a blow would have. His body was warm, trembling faintly from exertion.
Over his shoulder she glimpsed the sword-bells – the Brighthand’s – half buried in snow, their silver throats still and silent. The quiet felt like blasphemy.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Anywhere but here.”
“My bag,” she said, voice barely holding. “It’s by the gate.”
Mallow’s gaze cut toward the mist. “You don’t want to go near that gate again.”
“It has my medicine. Please.”
He sighed. “Saint’s mercy.” He set her on her hooves. “Alright, wait here.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
He vanished into the fog.
For a moment, she heard only the soft drip of thawing frost, the distant groan of wind through the trees. Then the air thickened, as though some large animal were breathing in. Her ears caught a low hum, almost too low for hearing. It vibrated from her ribs to the soles of her claws. The fog began to move differently, folding, drawing inward toward the shrine gate.
“Mallow?”
A shape was forming a stone’s throw away, dark against the pale. At first she thought it smoke, or shadow, until it moved. A long, low creature stepped through the mist, its body half-furred, half-scaled, the arch of its back feathered in black that shone like oil. Its head was catlike, muzzle short and mouth wide, but behind it stretched the curved and flexible form of a serpent. When it exhaled, frost plumed from between its fangs.
She had seen paintings of wyrms that were holy, radiant, benevolent; but this one had no sanctity in it. Its eyes were coals sunk deep in tar. Each breath carried the smell of iron and rot to her sensitive nose.
The sound it made was low and awful, a purr but deeper, resonant enough that her chest trembled.
Lain stumbled backward, her hoofcaps slipping on the icy ground. She knew, without knowing how, that this was why the Brighthand had chosen this shrine. It would have come for her body. It had come for theirs instead.
When it opened its mouth she saw the feathers around its neck flare like a mane, and along its fangs ran thin veins of red pulsing light.
Mallow broke from the fog, sword bared. “Run.”
“What –”
“Run!”
He caught her by the arm and pulled her with him, half-dragging her down the slope, but she slipped and slid so dangerously that Mallow paused to hold her steady before lifting the edge of her slacks with his boot to examine her hooves.
“Why are you wearing those caps?”
“Bare hooves are blasphe –”
“Take them off!”
When she didn’t move, he dropped to his knees and tugged them off her claws one at a time. Behind them came the sound of the creature’s movement, fast, silent, impossibly smooth – and then another one, not far off from the first. She caught a glimpse through the fog: a flash of black feathers, a jaw unhinging wider than should be possible.
The bells of the Brighthand’s swords jingled faintly in the distance, and then the sound was cut off by a heavy, wet crack.
Mallow stood and took her by the arm. “Don’t look back.”
She didn’t. She couldn’t. But she heard the hiss that followed, the sound of something tasting the air where they stood, as if deciding whether to give chase.
The hill dropped steeply. The mist thickened around them, the air still humming. Lain risked one glance over her shoulder and saw the creature at the edge of the fog, its black head raised, feathers flared, the gleam of its eyes fixed on them.
Then the mist closed over everything.
They ran until her lungs burned, until her hooves struck earth instead of snow. When at last they stopped, Mallow bent double, gasping, sword still in hand. “Can’t go back,” he said between breaths. “Not now.”
“What was that thing?”
“Bloodwyrm. They’re drawn to the scent of death.”
“My bag –”
“Leave it.” He spat into the snow. “Those things eat the dead, and I have no wish to join them.”
They didn’t stop long. Mallow urged her on, a hand at her elbow when she stumbled, muttering low to keep her moving, but she realized she was stumbling much less often now, the soles of her claws gripping with natural ease to the earth. The slope curved north and the ground hardened underhoof, the snow giving way to patches of frozen mud and rock. The fog thinned, leaving only the wind and the sound of their breathing.
Lain’s legs shook from the effort. “What are they?” she asked at last. “Those things – bloodwyrms. You said they feed on the dead.”
“They do. They follow the scent of it for miles. Fresh kills, battlefront rot, doesn’t matter. They’ve got a nose sharper than a hound’s.”
She swallowed. “Then that’s why the Brighthand stopped there.”
“Exactly. A clean kill and an easy meal for the beasts. No bodies to bury. No questions to answer.” He smiled grimly. “Neat work, in theory.”
She shuddered. “Have you seen bloodwyrms before?”
He nodded once. “Down in the foothills. Smaller than that one, but fast. We used to think they were half-cat, half-drake, but I’ve heard they share more with the Veinwright stock, some old experiment gone to ground, breeding in caves and feeding off what wanders too close.”
“So they’re made things.”
“Made long ago,” he said. “Or so they say. And meaner for having survived.” He spat in the snow. “Once they get a whiff of blood, you can’t shake them easy. That’s why we keep moving.”
They climbed in silence for a time, the cold biting through the wool at her collar. The air grew thin and sharp. Her throat burned with each breath. The fog had been replaced by a haze of ice crystals that caught the pale sun like shards of glass. Every step was harder than the one before.