The River Road

By midafternoon, the road had changed.

The broad imperial highway narrowed between a wooded rise on the north side and a steep, broken slope falling toward a fast river on the south. The wagons drew closer together. Wheels rattled over patched stone. Harness leather creaked. Somewhere ahead, one of the caravan drivers called something back to the rest of the column.

Kame barely heard him.

The birds had stopped.

He slowed by half a step.

Not silence. Nature was never truly silent. The river still moved below them. Hooves still struck the road. Wagon axles complained. Somewhere under the rear canvas, Fen was saying something too quickly for Ellis to answer.

But the birds and insects had gone quiet on the ridge.

Kame looked uphill.

Nothing.

He looked toward the road shoulder.

Tracks.

Wolf.

Several.

Too many crossings.

Wrong direction.

A hunting pack moved with purpose. Downwind if it could. Concealed if possible. It did not wander back and forth across an exposed road as though waiting for something.

One of the horses on the middle wagon tossed its head.

Then again.

Its nostrils flared.

Kame's hand was already moving toward his bow.

“Contact!”

The brush erupted.

The first wolf came low and fast, gray fur blurring through green leaves.

Kame had the bow in his hand before its forepaws touched the road.

Draw.

Loose.

The arrow entered behind the animal's shoulder and drove nearly to the fletching.

The wolf folded in a tumble of fur and dust.

Four more came behind it.

Not at Kame.

Not at Sandore.

Not at the teamster standing almost directly in their path.

The horses.

“Middle wagon!” Kame shouted.

The wolves split around the first dead animal and went straight for the team.

The horses screamed.

One reared, wrenching the traces. The middle wagon lurched hard enough that someone inside shouted.

Sandore's wand came up.

Fire snapped across the road.

A white-orange line cut between a wolf and the horses, scorching fur and forcing the animal sideways. Another wolf lunged through the heat anyway, snapping at a horse's foreleg.

“Pell!” Sandore shouted. “Middle wagon! Keep that team under control!”

Private Pell did not hesitate.

With Tern taking the reins, Pell climbed onto the side rail of the detachment wagon, jumped the gap between moving wagons, caught the middle wagon's rear frame with both hands, and hauled himself aboard.

Kame would admire the move later.

For now, there were more wolves.

Another group burst from the brush farther up the road, near the front wagon.

Leon met them.

He did not draw a weapon.

He didn’t need one.

The first wolf leapt.

Leon stepped inside the bite, caught it across the neck and shoulder, twisted, and used the animal's own momentum to drive it into the road.

Something cracked.

He pivoted before the second reached him and kicked it hard enough to send it skidding beneath the edge of the front wagon.

The third got through.

Its jaws closed on Leon's forearm.

Leon swore.

The wolf shook its head violently.

Leon hit it.

Once.

Twice.

The second blow broke its grip.

Kame drew again.

He had a shot.

He did not take it.

Something was wrong.

Not merely with the attack.

With the wolves.

The one nearest the middle wagon had food within reach. A sack had torn when the wagon lurched, spilling rations across the road. The wolf ignored it.

Another could have escaped into the trees after Sandore's fire scorched its flank.

It did not.

It circled back toward the horses.

Kame lowered the bow.

“Stop!”

The nearest wolf turned its head toward him.

For anyone else, it would have been nothing.

A frightened animal responding to a voice.

Kame heard words.

Broken.

Small.

Painful.

“Cannot.”

He stepped closer.

A wolf snapped at one of the horses.

“Why?”

Its head jerked toward him again.

“Pain.”

Kame's grip tightened on the bow.

“What pain?”

The wolf's ears flattened.

Its entire body trembled.

“Sound hurts us.”

Another wolf answered from near the front wagon.

“Sound. Must move. Must bite.”

Kame took another step.

“You can stop.”

The first wolf whined.

“Cannot.”

“You can run.”

“No.”

“You can.”

“Pain comes.”

Kame had seen trapped animals chew through their own legs.

He had seen wounded deer run until their lungs failed because the thing behind them was worse than the injury ahead.

This was not hunger.

It was not rage.

It was training written through suffering.

“Listen to me,” he said. “The pain is not here. Run away from the road. Go into the trees.”

The wolf shuddered.

For one instant, Kame thought it might.

Then its eyes went wide.

A sound carried from the ridge.

One sharp note.

Then another.

The wolves recoiled as though struck.

Not metaphorically.

One dropped flat to the ground, claws scraping stone.

Another yelped.

Then every head turned toward the north slope.

Kame looked with them.

There.

Somewhere in the trees.

A horn.

Something tuned.

Something commanding.

The wolves moved towards the horses again.

Faster.

Harder.

Kame's jaw clenched.

“The sound,” he said.

The nearest wolf snarled, foam stringing between its teeth.

“Hurts.”

Then the hill exploded.

Brush snapped apart ahead of the front wagon.

Something enormous came crashing down the slope.

For half a heartbeat, Kame's mind tried to call it a boar.

Then scale made the word ridiculous.

The creature was larger than a rhinoceros, all scarred hide, muscle, and froth. Two tusks thrust from its mouth, each close to two feet long. Its eyes were bloodshot. Foam covered its jaws. A leather-and-metal harness bit deep into its shoulders.

The sound came again from the ridge.

The beast screamed.

Not rage.

Pain.

Then it lowered its head and charged the front wagon.

Kame's stomach went cold.

Someone had done this.

To all of them.

And somewhere above the road, that someone was still holding the leash.

• • •

Leon had been bitten by wolves before.

Not often.

Once was enough to establish a professional opinion.

He did not care for it.

The wolf in front of him made another attempt for his leg.

Leon kicked it in the jaw.

“Try somebody else.”

It did.

That was almost worse.

The animal twisted away from him immediately and lunged toward the wagon team again, as though Leon had stopped existing the moment he ceased blocking its path.

Then the horn sounded.

Every wolf on the road flinched.

Leon saw it.

And then something the size of a small house came out of the trees.

“Oh, come on.”

The bristleback hit the road with enough force to shake dust from the wagon boards.

Horses screamed.

Civilians shouted.

Sandore spun toward the front of the column.

“Miuki!”

The rear wagon canvas flew open.

Miuki appeared at the opening.

For one second Leon remembered the Broken Pike.

A small woman across an arm-wrestling table.

A green flicker in her eyes.

His hand being driven into wood hard enough to swell the knuckles.

He had known she was strong.

That had not prepared him for this.

Wind detonated beneath her.

Miuki launched from the wagon.

Not jumped.

Launched.

Translucent green wings opened behind her in a burst of light, vast and delicate and impossible. Luminous leaves and tiny flowers flashed across her shoulders and arms. A sword formed in one hand, bright as spring sunlight through the trees. A shield appeared in the other.

Leon stopped moving.

Just for a second.

The battlefield disappeared.

There was only Miuki crossing the length of the caravan on a column of wind.

“Right,” Leon said softly.

He understood now.

The butterfly thing had not been metaphorical either.

Miuki landed between the bristleback and the front wagon.

Green light gathered along her blade then blasted forth, covering the remaining ground to the bristleback in an instant.

It struck.

Energy burst across the beast's shoulder and exploded in a spray of glowing leaves.

The bristleback staggered half a step.

Half.

Then it lowered its head.

Leon stared.

“That usually works better, I’m guessing?”

The boar charged.

Not Miuki.

The horses.

Miuki moved sideways.

Fast.

She put herself directly in front of the tusks.

Leon understood what she was doing a fraction before impact.

“No—”

The bristleback hit her shield.

The sound was like a battering ram striking a gate.

The green shield flared.

Miuki's boots left the ground.

For one terrible instant Leon thought she was going under the beast.

She came down three feet back.

Still upright.

The horses behind her were untouched.

Leon forgot about his wolves again.

One bit him in the side.

“SON OF A—”

He drove an elbow down into its skull and shoved it away.

Across the road, the middle wagon had become its own disaster.

Two surviving wolves were snapping at the team. The driver hauled uselessly on the reins while Pell had climbed forward beside him, trying to keep one panicked horse from climbing over the other.

The front canvas of the rear wagon snapped open.

Pixal leaned out.

She had been playful five minutes ago.

Teasing.

Bright smile.

Girls' club.

She did not look playful now.

Her hands moved.

Steel flashed.

Not one knife.

Many.

A rain of blades crossed the road.

One wolf jerked sideways as two knives struck almost together.

A second made it three steps before another blade buried itself behind its foreleg and sent it rolling beneath the wagon.

Pixal hung from the wagon opening with one hand and watched them fall.

Then she smiled.

Leon decided he preferred when she was playful.

Sandore finished the rest.

Fire erupted around the middle wagon in two controlled bursts.

One wolf collapsed.

Another fled three steps, fur burning, before Sandore's second strike caught it.

The wolves near the second wagon were gone.

The horses were not calmer.

Flame reflected in their eyes.

One reared.

The other bolted.

The middle wagon lurched.

The driver lost the reins.

The entire team broke into a run.

Straight down the road.

Straight toward the bend where the road narrowed beside the river drop.

Sandore's face changed.

Leon saw it even from twenty yards away.

Not panic.

Recognition.

His fire had solved one problem and created another.

The young captain looked at the runaway wagon.

For half a second, Leon could almost see the self-recrimination arrive.

Then Sandore killed it.

Later.

That was something Leon respected.

Some people made mistakes and spent the next minute defending them.

Sandore made one, understood it, and went back to work.

“Leon!” he shouted.

Leon was already moving.

The wagon thundered toward him.

Pell had abandoned the driver's bench and was clinging to the forward rail, reaching for the reins.

The driver had both hands on one line and none on the other.

The horses were beyond listening.

Leon ran.

A wolf came at him from the side.

He hit it without breaking stride.

One fist caught the animal below the jaw.

The wolf spun away and collapsed.

Leon grabbed the wagon.

Bad idea.

His shoulder nearly left its socket.

He was yanked off his feet, boots skidding across the road.

“Pell!”

“I KNOW!”

The private hauled himself farther forward.

Leon caught the side rail with his second hand.

The wagon pulled him with it.

Ahead, the road bent left.

Beyond the right edge—

Nothing.

Then river.

Leon dug his heels in.

No effect.

“Pell!”

“I am trying, sir!”

“Don't call me sir!”

“This seems like a bad time to correct me!”

Fair.

Leon planted one foot against a wheel brace and hauled himself up alongside the moving wagon.

Pell had reached the reins.

Both horses were white-eyed and foaming.

“Take the left!”

Pell grabbed the left line.

Leon climbed onto the forward frame and tossed the panicked driver into the back.

The front wheel hit a rut.

The wagon bounced.

Leon nearly went with it.

The river flashed through the trees below.

Too close.

Much too close.

“Pull!”

They pulled.

Nothing.

The horses ran harder.

Leon could hear the wagon load shifting behind them.

The driver shouted something incoherent.

The left wheels were under a yard from the road edge.

Then less.

Leon wrapped the reins around both forearms.

“Pell!”

The private understood.

They hauled together.

The left horse fought the bit.

The right horse's footing slipped.

For one sick instant the wagon tilted toward the drop.

Leon saw sky.

River.

Broken trees down the slope.

Then Pell got one boot against the bench frame and pulled with everything he had.

Leon roared and did the same.

The horses turned.

Not much.

Enough.

The wagon's left wheels carved a line through loose gravel inches from the edge.

The rear swung wide.

Something inside shattered.

The driver screamed.

Then the team crossed its own angle, lost momentum, and stopped in a snarl of harness and blowing horses, the left rear wheel dangling out over the abyss.

Leon remained wrapped around the reins for several breaths.

Pell did too.

Neither spoke.

A stone broke loose under the right rear wheel.

Leon watched it tumble over the edge.

It bounced twice before disappearing toward the river.

Pell looked at him.

Leon looked back.

“That,” Leon said, “was close.”

Pell nodded rapidly.

“Yes.”

“Very close.”

“Yes.”

“Let's never do that again.”

“Yes.”

Leon unwrapped the reins from his arms and evaluated their position. They were stopped, but still dangling off the road. They needed to get the team straightened out and return all four wheels to the path, before they could really call themselves safe.

Then he heard the bristleback charge Miuki again.

He turned.

She was still fighting it alone.

Blood ran down one side of her face.

Her shield was cracked with lines of green-white light.

The boar drove at her twice.

She avoided the first tusk.

The second tore across her side.

Leon took a step.

Miuki looked at him.

Just looked.

The message was perfectly clear.

The wagon.

Do your job.

Leon stopped.

Miuki did not have to say anything.

He hated that he respected that.

“All right,” he muttered.

He turned back to Pell.

“Get these horses calm.”

Behind him, another horn note cut across the road.

On the ridge, Kame was already moving.

Leon saw him disappear uphill through the brush.

Then an arrow flashed between the trees.

A man dropped.

There were people up there.

Of course there were.

The horn sounded again.

The last two wolves broke away from the road and went after Kame.

He vanished into the undergrowth with them.

Leon clenched his jaw.

There were too many things happening.

Always too many.

Pell's hands were shaking.

“Breathe,” said Leon.

The horse tried to climb the other one.

“Not you,” Leon said to the misbehaving horse. “Him.”

Pell stared.

“What?”

“Breathe.”

The private did.

Once.

Again.

“Good. Now shorten that line.”

Together they got the team turned away from the drop.

A few steps later the wagon settled fully back onto the road.

Only then did Leon let himself look uphill again.

The wolves had found Kame.

One had blood on its muzzle.

Kame’s.

But he was not shooting them.

He was talking.

“Go!”

The wolves circled him.

“The sound is leaving. You can run.”

One snapped.

Kame did not flinch.

“Safe now. Run away from the sound.”

The horn answered from farther up the ridge.

Then farther still.

Retreating.

The wolves hesitated.

Leon had no idea what they said back.

Kame apparently did.

He lowered the bow.

“Other way,” he told them. “Downhill. River. Go.”

The first wolf turned.

The second followed.

They ran down the slope away from the horn.

Kame watched them until the brush swallowed them.

Then he looked toward the ridge.

His face changed.

The one with the horn was getting away.

• • •

Miuki's shield was failing.

She could feel it in her arm.

Volanthes's gift had never felt like ordinary metal, but it obeyed some of the same truths. Enough force, applied often enough, broke things.

The bristleback had applied enough force.

Its next charge came with blood already running down both tusks.

Most of it was hers.

Miuki set her feet.

Sandore arrived at her left side.

His breathing was hard.

His hat was gone.

She noticed that despite everything.

Pixal would be devastated.

“Lieutenant.”

“Captain.”

The bristleback pawed at the road.

Sandore raised his wand.

Miuki shifted her grip.

They did not plan it.

They did not need to.

“Now.”

Sandore fired.

A concentrated lance of white-orange flame struck the beast high in the shoulder.

The bristleback screamed and turned into the force of it.

Miuki moved at the same instant.

Green light swept from Lumen in a cutting arc.

Fire and fey energy crossed.

The impact lifted the beast's front half from the road.

For one moment Miuki thought they had killed it.

Then it landed.

Still standing.

Hide burned black.

Blood pouring.

Foam pink around its mouth.

Still standing.

The horn sounded somewhere distant.

The bristleback jerked as though stabbed.

Then its eyes fixed on Sandore and Miuki.

Revenge was too human a word for it.

Pain had taught it simpler things.

Threat.

Attack.

End.

It came for them both.

Miuki took the hit meant for her on her shield.

The impact drove her backward.

Pain flashed through her shoulder.

The charge continued, angled toward Sandore.

He had nowhere to go.

Miuki moved.

Her shield came up between captain and tusk.

The bristleback struck.

For a heartbeat, the world became green light.

Her shield shattered.

Not cracked.

Shattered.

Fragments of luminous energy burst around Miuki like glass made from spring sunlight.

The tusk drove through what remained and caught her across the ribs.

Air vanished from her lungs.

She hit the road on one knee.

Something warm ran down beneath her armor.

Sandore shouted her name.

Miuki heard him as though from far away.

The bristleback turned again.

Miuki stood.

Her left arm only moved with difficulty.

Blood marked her uniform in too many places to count.

Her breath came shallow.

There was no shield.

So she put both hands on Lumen.

The blade brightened.

The beast lowered its head.

Miuki waited.

One step.

Two.

Three.

At the last instant she moved inside the line of the right tusk.

Lumen came down.

The blade struck at the base of the tusk.

Bone broke.

The tusk spun away.

The bristleback's head jerked sideways.

Miuki reversed the cut.

The second strike opened the side of its neck.

Deep.

Too deep.

Blood came in a hot sheet.

The beast took two more steps.

Then its front legs folded.

Its weight hit the road hard enough to shake the stones.

It tried to rise.

Could not.

The huge body shuddered once.

Twice.

Then stopped.

Miuki remained standing over it.

Barely.

Lumen was red almost to the hilt.

Her wings flickered.

Sandore stared at her.

Not at the dead creature.

At her.

Miuki knew what she must look like.

Blood across her face.

Armor torn.

One side soaked dark.

Shield gone.

Hair loose from its bindings.

Still standing.

Sandore's expression held the same thing Leon's had after she manifested her wings.

Disbelief.

She could see the concern alongside it, though.

Miuki disliked both.

“Captain,” she said.

Sandore seemed to remember himself.

“Are you hurt?”

Miuki looked down at herself.

“Yes.”

That was difficult to dispute.

• • •

Pixal hated losing people.

Not in the sentimental sense.

People left.

People died.

People betrayed you.

Those were just facts.

She hated losing people she was chasing.

That was different.

The handler had been there.

Kame's arrow had dropped one of the dark-coated figures on the ridge, and that had been enough to make the rest break.

Pixal had seen movement through the trees.

Three shapes.

Maybe four.

One with something metallic in one hand.

The horn.

She had launched herself from the wagon before anyone could tell her not to.

Her pale wings had caught the air.

For a few glorious seconds she had them.

Then a branch whipped past her face.

Another forced her higher.

Then the ridge folded into broken ground, thorn brush, old stone, and dense trees.

The figures separated.

Pixal dove after the one she thought carried the horn.

Nothing.

A flicker of dark cloth.

Gone.

She landed on a rock shelf and listened.

Footsteps.

Left.

No.

Water over stone.

She ran uphill.

Found a broken branch.

Mud.

A partial boot print.

Then nothing.

“Come on.”

She climbed another ten feet.

Silence.

“Come on.”

No answer.

Pixal's smile had disappeared completely.

She hated prepared escape routes.

They were cheating.

She stood motionless for several seconds, listening until the battlefield below began to return to her awareness.

No horn.

No screaming horses.

No giant pig trying to turn Butterfly Girl into paste.

Just voices.

The fight was over.

The handler was gone.

Pixal looked at the trees.

“You suck.”

The trees declined to apologize.

She returned to the road in a bad mood.

Kame stood near the slope, looking downhill rather than up.

Two surviving wolves were disappearing through the brush on the far side of the river, having made it safely across.

He watched them go with the expression of a man who had won something and lost something at the same time.

Pixal understood that better than she wanted to.

Leon and Pell stood beside the wagon they had saved. Loose gravel still trickled down the slope where they had nearly gone over.

Leon had blood on his sleeve and bite marks in his clothes.

Kame had his own smaller collection of scratches and torn armor.

Neither looked especially concerned about it.

Then Pixal saw Miuki.

“Oh.”

The lieutenant looked terrible.

Her shield was gone.

Blood covered one side of her face and ran from beneath the edge of her armor. Her uniform was torn in several places. Her sword remained in her hand, bright green beneath a layer of dark red.

The bristleback lay at her feet with one tusk missing and its throat opened nearly to the spine.

Sandore stood close beside her.

Not touching her.

Close enough to catch her if she fell.

Smart.

Pixal landed.

“Did I miss anything?”

Leon looked at her.

“Only the part where Butterfly Girl fought a rhinoceros.”

Miuki gave him a flat look.

“A boar.”

“That was not a boar.”

“It was shaped like one.”

“It was shaped like a building.”

Pell laughed once, mostly from nerves.

Sandore looked toward Pixal.

“The handler?”

Her expression soured.

“Gone.”

“How many?”

“The one with the horn and at least two others. Maybe more. They had escape routes prepared.”

Kame turned back from the slope.

“I killed one.”

Pixal glanced uphill.

“One is not very many.”

“No.”

That irritated her further.

Sandore looked as though he might pursue.

Then he looked at Miuki.

At Leon.

At Kame.

At the civilians.

At the wagon still sitting inches from disaster.

Command won.

“Enough,” he said. “We secure the caravan first.”

Pixal hated that he was right.

She respected it because he did not sound pleased about being right.

Fen and Ellis were already climbing down from the rear wagon.

Fen saw Miuki.

Her face changed.

“Lieutenant.”

“I am functional.”

Fen pointed at the blood.

“You won’t be for long, unless we keep that on the inside.”

Miuki looked as though she might argue.

Fen did not give her the opportunity.

“Sit.”

For a moment Pixal expected the lieutenant to refuse.

Then Miuki looked at Sandore.

He gave a small nod.

She moved over to a stump at the roadside and sat.

Carefully.

Her wings and sword disappeared back into nothingness as she did so. The luminous flowers dotting her skin fell into petals. Then the petals became glowing dust and were gone.

That was when the damage became obvious.

Standing had hidden some of it. So had the flowers.

Her breathing was shallow. One arm moved reluctantly. The side of her uniform was soaked in a deep crimson.

Leon stopped smiling.

Sandore had already known.

Fen approached her with the med kit and began to work.

Kame walked toward the fallen wolves.

His face hardened as he knelt beside one.

Up close, the signs were impossible to miss.

Raw skin beneath the collar.

A clean puncture behind the shoulder.

Old parallel scars along the foreleg.

Not battle wounds.

Repeated wounds.

Training.

Kame touched the dead wolf's fur.

“I am sorry.”

No one made fun of him.

A few feet away, Sandore stared at the dead bristleback.

Then up toward the ridge.

The captain's face had gone very still.

The mission had changed.

That was as obvious to him as it was to Pixal.

These were not wild attacks.

The animals had not chosen this.

Someone had put pain into them until obedience became easier than resistance.

Someone had been standing on the ridge, giving commands.

And that someone had escaped.

Pixal looked toward the trees again.

Her smile returned.

It was not a pleasant one.

Fine.

Let him run.

Now she knew there was someone to chase.