The Humbled (The Lost Words: Volume 4) (58 page)

The night came alive with the blare of a horn. First, a distant one, then one closer, and soon, the entire camp was alive with a screeching noise.

No, please
, she begged. But there was no escaping it. The Naum troops were attacking again.

She reached for her boots. Her knees were cold and would not bend easily. But she managed to bundle herself quickly enough and wormed toward the slit of silvery gray that was the outside world.

Something big and hot bowled into her, toppling her back into the tent, crushing her, squeezing the breath between her ribs. Amalia wheezed and flopped, but the heavy thing would not move. In fact, it squirmed, just like her. Even in the charcoal murk, she could never mistake those piggish eyes.

Xavier.

“You can scream now,” he said.

Her arms scrabbled, but he had her pinned down. He was much stronger. This was Roalas all over, but she was done crying and begging. Instead, she kept her mouth shut, kept what little air she had behind her teeth, and tried to wriggle herself free.

The warlord started tearing her clothes off. Luckily, she was plaited in several layers of good, stout wool, and the Caytorean struggled ripping them away. But then, there was the knife, and it cut, and it raked across her skin, and there was the smell of blood in the tiny tent.

Amalia began to whimper.
Must be the pain
, her mind confessed. So why was her vision blurred?

Her left hand flopped free, and almost instinctively, it jabbed at the swine’s face, clawing, pushing into the soft socket of his eye. The mercenary began to howl, and he tried to swat
her fingers away, but he had the knife in his hand, and he almost cut himself.

Her right hand was free now. It slithered out from below his bulk, swiped off the oily pool of blood on her stomach, and slapped into his neck. She didn’t really know what to do, but the soft spots were there, neck, eyes, every man the same.

“Bitch, I’m gonna fuck you bloody,” he rasped. The knife fell away, and he clouted her hard, once, twice. Tried to grab her chipped ear but missed, and she almost cackled with mad glee, even as her vision narrowed. Tears, darkness. Amalia flailed at his face, but her limbs were heavy now. Outside, the horns were howling.

She could hear him tearing more of her clothes. The icy earth kissed her back, her legs. She was naked now. And he was going to rape her. Best if she fainted, she figured. Best if she didn’t witness this shame. But no one would say Amalia hadn’t fought for her life. No one would say she just cowered there and wept like a little court girl. She was her father’s daughter, and she would die before she surrendered. She would—

The warlord flew off her, like a puppet yanked by its strings. He swallowed a curse and vanished through the tent’s narrow opening. Amalia rolled sideways, huffed, retched dryly. The knife was resting by her side. She hesitated for a second, grabbed the blade and her torn clothes, and rushed out.

Xavier was on his knees, gripping feebly at a chain round his neck, face purple and swollen. A Borei warrior was choking him, even as dozens of soldiers of all colors streamed past. Another mercenary was standing nearby, sword in hand, watching and grinning.

“Good work, Your Empress, you almost had us worried,” the one doing the killing chirped.

The second one touted, shaking his head, “Yes, would cost me a fortune if he’d done you in.”

The warlord was making gurgling noises, spit dribbling down the side of his mouth. His face was the color of a rotten plum now. His hands were touching his chin, as if feeling the whiskers there. Amalia was cold, terribly cold, but she didn’t care right now. All she wanted was to plunge the knife into the swine’s heart.

“Wanna do it, Empress?” the swordsman asked.

Amalia gathered her breath and lunged forward. She stabbed toward the chest, but the blade grazed sideways into his arm. The Caytorean hissed thinly. She aimed again. Belly. There, she couldn’t miss it. She touched the injury below her own ribs, leaking blood into the freezing night. Stabbed, stabbed again. Her fingers were on fire, and she realized she had cut herself.

“That’s enough.” The second warrior stepped forward, dragging her away. He had a bandage ready and was wrapping it round her middle. “Goose lard so the wound don’t stink up. Good work. I earned my coin back. I bet on you. Excellent.”

Amalia nodded dumbly. “You’re welcome.” She collapsed into the mud, retched again, and it was as if someone had kicked her in the guts.

The Borei laughed. “It’s fine. You will live, lass. Just a scratch there. Your fingers won’t be as delicate as you might like for a few weeks, but that’s what happens to all amateur knifers. Not your fault. You did well.”

Someone put a musty blanket round her shoulders.

Just as quickly, the two mercenaries vanished in the chaos. The warlord’s corpse remained there, strangled and stabbed through, already caked over with mud. No one paid him any heed. No one paid her any heed. The men and women were
running to meet the enemy. But she knew what was going to happen. Soon, they would be retreating once more, fleeing the northern force. It couldn’t be stopped.

Calemore was going to win.

The air was no longer black, she noticed. It was peppered white. Snow.

“Amalia!” She recognized that voice. The wizard. “Amalia!” He sounded like a frightened girl.

“What?” she bawled. He was standing above her, panting, looking worried.

“Oh no. Come here. Are you hurt? Lucas!”

Somehow, she stumbled up and let herself be dragged away. But then she realized she could walk. She was bruised and cold, but her legs obeyed, and the pull of pain round her abdomen was just a line of fire, nothing serious. She was stronger than that. Fuck them all. She wasn’t going to be a coward anymore.

“I will heal you with magic. Show me your hand.”

Amalia wanted to refuse his help, but what would be the point? She must use him, use all of them, and once she was done, she should discard them, abandon them, crush them pitilessly. They were all just tools, serving her.

She looked at the wizard, his hair dotted with silvery flakes.

Then, the world started spinning and went black.

She woke up in a carriage, a small lamp swaying above her head, painting the interior jaundiced. Agatha sat opposite her, face full of worry, her baby asleep in her lap. There was someone at her side. Jarman, wearing clean blue robes. He looked haggard, but his face lit up when he noticed her stir.

“Where are we?”

“Still fleeing the northern army, I’m afraid,” he admitted.

Amalia glanced down at her body. Clean, warm, no trace of pain. She stared at her right palm. There were pink lines where she expected to see gashes, across the bridge of her hand, down the side of her thumb. The Sirtai was wearing a solemn expression on his face. Was it humble self-satisfaction?

She pushed herself off the plush seat and moved the velvet curtain aside, just an inch. She couldn’t see much, just a gray swirl.

“We held as long as we could. But we were forced to begin retreating into the night. Luckily, the earth has frosted over, so the passage is much easier for us. Not so for the enemy, because they must tread in our mush. They are steadily falling behind. We could gain as much as a whole day if the weather continues like this.”

Amalia wanted to hear more details, but at the moment, she felt content not knowing. The snug, hot safety of the carriage was good for her. She felt protected. At the back of her mind, a lone thought was floating, like a piece of driftwood, trying to remind her that she had stabbed a man. A monster, a butcher, but still a human being. She hadn’t just ordered him hanged from the gallows or cut down with a sword; she had personally delivered the lethal blow. What did that make her?

She didn’t want to know just yet.

Agatha was crying, she noticed. Silent, hard tears. Jarman’s face wasn’t humble, as she first thought. It looked pained.

Amalia frowned. “I’m all right,” she whispered, reaching out toward her maid. “I’m fine.”

Jarman swallowed loudly, his whole head bobbing. “Amalia…”

The safety fluttered away like a startled bird, and dread settled in, cold like the night outside. Her muscles tensed, her body went rigid, and phantoms of pain arced through her gut
and arm. Something was very wrong. She worked her mouth to form words.

“What is it, Jarman?”

The wizard didn’t speak for a while. “King Sergei found out your mother was behind his son’s kidnapping and death. He…ordered Lady Lisa to be executed for treason. Amalia, your mother is dead. I’m truly sorry.”

Amalia let her head slump against the cushion. She closed her eyes so she couldn’t see her maid weeping. Numbness, there was nothing else in her soul. Her reasoning was telling her this was wrong. She should be sad. She should be furious. Something other than this stupor. But she couldn’t bring herself to feel anything. Not this night.

I will get them all
, she promised.
I will show them
.

CHAPTER 41

E
wan lurched forward as the wet rope snapped in his hand. He fell onto his knees, and his crippled left arm sank into the brown slush. He rose, feeling no pain, no weariness, no cold. His brief reacquaintance with humanity was gone again, and his senses deprived him of any weakness.

He stared at his left hand. Two fingers gone. He had heard soldiers talking about ghost feelings in missing limbs, as if they were still there. Nothing of that sort in his case. All he had was a hand that wriggled funny.

“I need another rope,” he declared loudly.

A teamster on his left reached into the back of his cart and tossed him a fresh coil. It was thin and frayed and eaten by weather and mites, so it would probably last only a few miles, like the last one, but it would have to do.

When Ewan was done tying the rope to the wagon, the other man and his ox were gone down the road, joining the slow, miserable exodus of the people of the realms.

He yanked on the rope to make sure his knot was sound, braced it over his shoulder, and started pulling again. The rope protested, the wagon protested, but then it groaned forward, freeing its wheels from the mire some would call snow. Well,
maybe it had been snow, but not after tens of thousands of feet, hooves, and paws had churned it into a brown-stained butter.

Ahead of him, the road twisted, wriggled through an abandoned village, and then loped over a hilltop. Most of the Athesians and pilgrims had already gone to the other side, but there were still a few hundred people struggling. A half-size contingent of Parusite cavalry was trampling through the sodden fields, keeping rear guard, eyes turning around nervously, seeking the enemy. But the forested stretch of the hills to the north was empty.

Ewan kept marching, sinking deep, sliding, but not giving up. He was hauling two wagons of injured soldiers, tied together, with twenty-seven men loaded into the tiny space. Amalia’s troops had even attached stretchers on the outside, strapped some wounded there, too, and then bundled them in blankets so they would not freeze.

The two oxen had been butchered for meat, so Ewan had volunteered to replace them. At the moment, no one was complaining about his superhuman strength. They were all glad there was someone moving them farther away from the Naum army.

He followed the half-frozen ruts, stepping around discarded gear. The bodies of those too weak to travel had been pushed away, some covered in snow and mud. The tail of the fleeing column consisted mostly of dwindling supplies and the wounded. Ewan had the moans of the dying and the caw of hungry birds for company.

The seven odd thatched houses that made the settlement in front of him should have been empty, he thought, frowning. But he saw pale smoke rising and a huddle of men standing at the roadside, not really bothered by the flow of dejected, demoralized countryfolk and soldiers streaming past.

The rope snapped again. He stumbled again, but did not lose his footing. He glanced around. There were no more wagons behind him. His was the last one. All the others were gone ahead, and he was certain they wouldn’t bother stopping. There was a lone, limping soldier in a long coat making stubborn progress south, using his sword as a prop, a raven hopping behind him, mocking him. Ewan thought about calling the man over so he could ride in one of the wagons, but they were already too crowded and too heavy.

“I will return shortly,” he told the delirious passengers and trotted toward the village, right hand holding the bloodstaff, tied over his back to keep it from wobbling. Several soldiers, it seemed, were warming their hands over a pitiful fire. Ewan thought he saw a child hiding behind someone’s leg.

If he were like any other man, Ewan would try to be cautious. But he couldn’t bother with that anymore. He didn’t care about discipline or danger.

“Fellows, I need some help. Do you have a spare rope or maybe a chain?”

One, with a face swathed in filthy rags, looked up from the tiny fire. “What for?”

Ewan pointed behind him. “Need something to lug those wagons. I’ve got wounded people there.”