It wasn’t a ragtag patrol of barbarians. Or even a large organized platoon of them. It was a regiment riding ten wide and at least sixty deep.
Except for one.
She walked alone.
“That’s her?” Tavish asked.
I nodded, not trusting my voice. She was surrounded by an army. We weren’t just facing five barbarians. One after another, I heard them slowly exhale. These weren’t the barbarians we knew. Not the ones who had always been easily pushed back behind the Great River. There was no way we could take on that many men in a direct confrontation without all of us being killed and Lia too. I stared, watching each step she took. What was she carrying? A saddlebag? Was she limping? How long had she been walking? Sven put his hand on my shoulder, a gesture of comfort and defeat.
I whipped around. “No! It’s not over.”
“There’s nothing we can do. You have eyes. We can’t—”
“No!” I repeated. “I will not let her cross that bridge without me.” I paced over to the horses and back again, my fist grinding in my palm, searching for an answer. I shook my head. She wasn’t crossing without me. I looked at their grim faces. “We’re doing it,” I said. “Listen.” I laid out a rushed plan, because there wasn’t time to devise another one.
“It’s insanity,” Sven balked. “It will never work!”
“It has to,” I argued.
“Your father will have my neck!”
Orrin laughed. “I wouldn’t worry about the king. Rafe’s plan’s going to kill us all first.”
“We’ve done it before,” Tavish said to me with a knowing nod. “We can do it again.”
Jeb had already retrieved my horse and handed me the reins. “What are you waiting for?” he asked. “Go!”
“It’s half-assed!” Sven shouted as I slid my foot into the stirrup.
“I know,” I said. “That’s why I’m counting on you to figure out the other half.”
The Dragon will conspire,
Wearing his many faces,
Deceiving the oppressed, gathering the wicked,
Wielding might like a god, unstoppable,
Unforgiving in his judgment,
Unyielding in his rule,
A stealer of dreams,
A slayer of hope.
Until one comes who is mightier.
—Song of Venda
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
Fear was a curious thing.
I thought there was none left in me. What did I have left to fear? But as Venda came into view, I felt fear’s barbed chill at my neck. Framed between the jutting rocky hills that we passed through, a thing rose on the horizon in a hazy gray mist. I couldn’t quite call it a city. It breathed.
As we drew near, it grew and spread like an eyeless black monster rising from smoking ashes. Its haphazard turrets, scaled reptilian stone, and layers of convoluted walls spoke of something labyrinthine and twisted lurking behind them. This wasn’t just any faraway city. I felt the tremor of its pulse, the keen of its dark song. I saw Venda herself sitting high on the gray walls before me, a broken apparition singing a warning to those who listened from below.