“Rest, Quinlan. I’ll be back later.”
“Off to see Andrithur?” There was a hint of jealousy in his tone.
I knew what Quinlan saw, what all the nomads saw—a girl known for bedding invaders, who spent more time with her enemy than her own kind. They didn’t understand that being with Andrithur made me feel closer to Reyker, that speaking of Iseneld with another Dragonman helped keep him alive in my memory.
“Rest,” I said again. I didn’t owe Quinlan, or anyone else, an explanation.
When I got to the stake Andrithur was always tied to, there were no guards, no invader, nothing but cut lengths of rope. No one in camp was distressed, as they would be if the prisoner had escaped. I closed my eyes, concentrating, and over the drone of insects, the swish of wind, came sounds that made my stomach clench.
The pounding of fists against flesh. The moans of a man in pain.
Garreth called my name, but I ran for the horses. Jumping onto Wraith, I headed toward the noises coming from the other side of a hill, a short distance from the camp.
Andrithur was on the ground, bleeding. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and the fingers of his right hand were bent at odd angles. Four nomad warriors surrounded him.
I slid off Wraith’s back and unsheathed my sword. “Get away from him.”
“Lira!” Garreth rode up behind us, dismounting, moving between me and the other warriors. “Put down your sword.”
My sword stayed where it was. “You ordered this? How could you?”
“We need him to tell us what he knows. This is what we do to enemies. This is what they do to us, and worse. Remember what happened to Rhys.”
“Of course I remember.” The sword trembled in my hand. “Rhys died in my arms, not yours. But Andrithur is not Draki.”
“He’s not Reyker either.”
“Don’t.” Hearing Reyker spoken of so casually was like a kick to the gut. “You know nothing about Reyker. You know nothing about Andrithur, or any of the warriors of Iseneld.”
“I know the only way to get information from a savage is to treat him like a savage.” Garreth nodded at the nomads. “Keep at him until he tells us something useful.”
Distantly, I heard the flapping of wings, the shiver of wind sliding through feathers. “No one touches Andrithur again,” I said, stepping forward.
“Lira. Go back to the camp or, gods help me, I’ll have you tied up next to the invader.”
His words struck a painful chord deep within me, dredging up memories of being locked inside Torin’s manor. The scars on my back prickled. “Try it.”
The flapping grew louder, and a din of squawks and caws drew our attention upward, to the birds circling above us. Black crows. Tiny sparrows. Vultures. All of them flying together, in chaotic formations, as if we were a carcass they hungered to pick apart.
A buzzing filled my head. It sounded like an unspoken question, repeating, beating as rhythmically as wings—Yes, yes, yes?
The men looked from the birds to me.
I’d called these birds, as I’d once called the lammergeiers, the forest demons, the Brine Beasts. But those times I’d done it at Veronis’s insistence, when my life was at risk, and only by speaking in the old language. This time I’d brought them on my own, unintentionally, without saying a word.
The flock hovered, their flaps and shrieks impatient. Soldiers, awaiting their orders. I could use them to stop Garreth and the others, to hurt them. I was heady with power, with rage, enough to frighten me. Enough to startle me back to my senses.
“Go,” I told the birds. They dispersed, scattering through the sky, gone as quickly as they’d appeared. I met Garreth’s wary gaze. “Fetch a healer. Take your men with you.”
My brother balked. “I’m not leaving you—”
“With an unarmed man your warriors just beat half to death? Worry less about my safety, Garreth, and more about your own conscience.”
“This is not who you are, sister.”
“It’s who I’ve become.” Though I didn’t say it, it hung there between us—this was who I turned into after the invasion, after the Culling. After Garreth left me in Stony Harbor, at the mercy of Torin and Madoc. “You don’t know me so well as you think, Garreth. Not anymore.”
For a moment, I could tell Garreth considered springing at me, wresting the sword from my hands. Wraith pulled his lips back from his teeth, hissing at Garreth, whom he’d belonged to since he was a foal. It was clear where the stallion’s loyalties now lay, and this, more than anything else, seemed to shake Garreth. He led the nomads away.
I knelt beside Andrithur, helping him sit up.
“Is it your turn to torture me, witch?” The bite had gone out of his tone. He sounded weary, accepting of death.
No, Andrithur was not Reyker. But there was honor in him. I’d seen it. I couldn’t stand by and watch another Iseneldish warrior be so cruelly abused.
I whistled for a horse. We were a ways from camp, but I knew one would come. “I’m going to give you a horse, and you’re going to head for the coast, steal a boat, and sail home.”
Andrithur laughed, and blood oozed from his split lips. “Draki will kill me if I desert.”
“I will kill you if you don’t.”
A bay horse trotted over the hill. With effort, Andrithur hauled himself onto its back, and I handed him the knife sheathed to my thigh, the one Garreth had given me years ago.
The Westlander stared at the knife. “Why would you help me?” he asked.
It was hard to look at him, hunched over, bruised and bloody, blue eyes regarding me through strands of gold hair. “What your people have done to mine is wrong. What my people do to yours in return is also wrong. Those who lead our armies will never admit this. It’s up to us, the soldiers and warriors, to show mercy. To remind our clans, our tribes, that winning a war isn’t worth losing our souls.”
Andrithur shook his head. “A witch and a fool. I will tell my people about you, though I doubt they will believe it.”
“Farewell, Andrithur. You are a Dragonman no more.”
He considered this, thinking, debating. Nodding. “As you say, witch. A Dragonman no more.”
Andrithur spurred the horse, and I watched him go, until the invader disappeared over the hills.
One life saved. One mind changed.
It wasn’t much, but it was something.
CHAPTER 6
LIRA
The nomad host crossed the moorlands by horse and cart and on foot. Heading toward the Boglands to build a new camp on land as harsh as the Green Desert, though not nearly as vast. The mercenary Bog Men had abandoned their settlements at promises from the Dragon of more fruitful places to call home. Places like Houndsford and Stony Harbor, according to Garreth’s scouts. Since the mercenaries had taken our villages, Garreth aimed to take theirs.