Immediately the warriors moved toward their horses. Maddek took the roll of linens Yvenne pulled from her satchel and cast her a hard look. “Ask Fassad to have his hounds round up your gelding.”
Swallowing hard, she nodded and limped away, leaving Maddek to tend to the mare. Chest tight, he smoothed his hand down her sleek neck, then crouched beside her bleeding legs.
Softly Kelir said, “Will you saddle her?”
Maddek shook his head. With her great heart, she would carry him to the next village, but he would not ask her to. They’d had their last ride—to save Maddek’s bride, who had claimed she would make his life a misery.
Already she was doing a better job of it.
CHAPTER 13
YVENNE
A grim pall hung over the riders as they left the ruins, and it grew heavier as the day wore on. No longer did Yvenne have a riding companion. Instead she was protected and boxed in. Maddek still took the lead. Then came Kelir and Banek, with Yvenne behind. A few paces farther were Fassad and Danoh, and after their return from warning the soldiers behind them, Ardyl and Toric brought up the rear.
Maddek’s mare was the only lighthearted member of their party, though her legs were wrapped in bloodstained linens and her death lay ahead. Maddek did not ride her now; instead he ran along at her side, and the mare was as playful as the wolves sometimes were, nickering and butting her head against his shoulder, prancing and flicking her tail as if bored by the pace they’d set and challenging him to a faster race.
The mare’s joy and the warriors’ silence seemed an unbearable weight. A hot leaden lump lodged in Yvenne’s throat, choking into nothing every word she might have spoken—and blocking the scream of rage building in her chest.
The scream had not started as rage. First it had been mortal terror, when she’d turned to see the blood wraiths writhing in the fog. Although fear still lingered, her skin clammy despite the heat of the sun and the warmth of her cloak, it was her helplessness that had given birth to the anger.
For the warriors had shouted at her to run. But Yvenne could not.
Three years past, her father and older brothers had seen to that.
And how she hated them. With every breath and every beat of her heart, she hated them. Hated them and hated relying upon others for her protection. Hated the very silence that choked her, for what could she say to the warriors now?
Her explanation would seem a pitiful excuse, no matter how true.
But Yvenne had never thought to tell the warriors that her knee had been shattered. Her limp and the pain seemed ever-present, so it never occurred to her that they believed saddle soreness was the only reason for her stiffness and hobbling. Unlike the pain of riding, however, her limp would never go away—and although on good days Yvenne could move quickly and smoothly, never would she be able to run again. At such a pace, her leg would buckle after the third or fourth step.
And Banek—who had shown her such kindness and upon whose guidance she had come to rely—had not spoken to her since they had left the ruins. None of the warriors had.
Because she had not run and Maddek’s mare would die for it.
If they learned now that she was crippled, what would they do? When Banek had spoken of Queen Venys’s moonstone eyes, he’d looked upon Yvenne’s eyes with admiration. Would he still after learning the truth? For even if Yvenne ate heartily and learned to ride well, never would she be a warrior-queen. Before her knee had been shattered, every day her mother made Yvenne race back and forth across their tower chamber until her lungs were completely spent. It was the strongest she’d ever been. Yet if she’d attempted then to do what Maddek did now—run beside his mare without once stopping—she’d have collapsed breathless at the side of the road before they’d even passed out of sight of the ruins.
And when Maddek had spoken of the uselessness of a lame horse, she’d believed he already knew about her knee and was simply thoughtless. But perhaps he would leave her at the next village as he would her gelding, so she would not be called upon to do anything more strenuous than her body could tolerate.
If so, they could soon be rid of her. Around them stretched verdant fields of cultivated grain. Ahead lay a village ringed by a stone wall.
It was larger than any of the other settlements they’d passed through. At each village, Yvenne never seemed to see enough—she was fascinated by everything that she’d only known from her mother’s descriptions. The clay-walled homes with their thatched roofs were just as her mother had said, but Yvenne had not known the rich scent of plowed earth or baking bread. She had not known the sound of children laughing as they’d run beside the Parsathean horses, or their delighted screams when the warriors teased them with mock growls and bared teeth. She’d never imagined that everyone would come out of their homes and to the edges of their fields to watch the warriors pass, or how even the most welcoming and curious villagers regarded them with wary faces. And her mother had never told her about the fear and hope and disbelief in the gazes of those who met her moonstone eyes.
But upon entering this village, Yvenne’s heart was too heavy and her throat too painfully constricted for her to find any joy or muster any interest. The sun had begun its slow slide toward the western horizon, and Maddek’s mare no longer had a spring in her step. With her hood up and head down, Yvenne looked no farther ahead than the hindquarters of Banek’s mount until they reached the inn at the center of the settlement.
The stables were at the back of the inn. Yvenne took some comfort in the new routine of caring for her gelding. It mattered not that he had steep shoulders and a short back and unsound legs; still he needed to be fed and watered, and the rhythmic brushing of his coat soothed Yvenne as much as it seemed to soothe him.
But the silence between the warriors did not end. It seemed even heavier within the stables, as if all the words unspoken were trapped between the thick clay walls, a deeper echo of the scream trapped within Yvenne’s chest.
So she brushed her gelding and waited for the sound that would break the silence. A thud of steel against bone, or the plunge of a blade through flesh.
Yet the silence broke instead with a rustle of straw beneath leather boots. With Kelir’s battle axe in hand, Maddek stood at the entrance to her gelding’s stall.
His hardened gaze met hers, his features carved from stone. “Come.”
Yvenne did not need to ask where. With halting steps, she followed him to the stable yard, where his mare was tied to a stout post. The horse trembled uncontrollably, eyes reddened and foamy sweat lathering her coat. Her great chest labored with each wheezing breath. A blood wraith’s poison would transform a human into a wraith, but animals were corrupted in a different manner—changed into revenants, undead creatures whose only purpose was to consume living flesh.
So she was to witness the mare’s death. Perhaps Maddek meant to punish her, but to Yvenne this was a duty willingly performed. The mare’s life had been sacrificed for hers. That debt could never be repaid, but Yvenne would never pretend that it wasn’t owed.