Chapter 2

He smirked, trying to lighten his mood. “Maybe it’s referring to the number of days it will take before your sister and her shields find our bodies, frozen to our saddles and covered in frost.”

Gretta chuckled. “If you’re cold, Mage Tarquin, I’d be happy to trade places with you.”

Ainya grinned and then reached over and gave Tarquin a few friendly thumps on the shoulder. “We’ll be there soon.”

“Did you hear that?” Gretta asked suddenly.

Ainya nodded, all humor buried under her role as Shield of the Crown. That ability to focus so quickly and completely was one of the many reasons she’d earned the honor of leading the elite royal bodyguards. All shields were excellent soldiers, but the Shields of the Crown were exceptional. “Something’s following us.”

Tarquin couldn’t hear anything beyond the creak of leather, the horses’ hooves on the stones of the road, and the occasional hushed whisper of the wind. Even straining his ears, there wasn’t a sound that didn’t make sense in a forest at night, including the quickening thudof his heart.

He drew his mage knife, but Ainya saw it and gave him a shake of her head as she eased her bow off her shoulder. “Don’t bleed ‘til you need to.” She nocked an arrow. “Fall behind,” she said to Gretta. “On my signal, we run.”

The other shield nodded and dropped back.

“Stay close,” Ainya said to Tarquin, and then pressed her heels into Southwind’s flanks, trotting ahead. Tarquin was left in the middle. He could see the back of Ainya’s head, and how she shifted her body in readiness.

Tarquin’s brother was often called the “Gold Bear,” for his fair, handsome features and his strength. But if Faladir was a bear, then their cousin Ainya was a wolf: dark-skinned and lean and densely muscled, fiercely beautiful and dangerous. At twenty-five, she was just five years older than Tarquin, but she still seemed infinitely more sober and far wiser. He felt less terrified just knowing she was there.

He looked right and left and got ready to put his heels to Hop on Ainya’s signal. Then Gretta’s horse screamed.

Something wet and shockingly warm splashed the back of his head. One of the hearth lights went out.

Tarquin wheeled Hop around so fast, she reared up onto her back hooves. He stayed on only through luck and years of forced riding lessons.

Gretta’s horse was fountaining blood from its jugular, which something had gouged like a shovel through snow. The poor, doomed animal dropped to its knees, dying almost faster than Tarquin could take in what was happening. The thing that had killed the horse grabbed Gretta by her face as she tried to leap away from her dead mount. Its claws pierced her skull, and then the haldur drove the back of Gretta’s head into the trunk of the nearest tree.

Tarquin sat rooted to his saddle, so shocked he could barely register what he saw. “But, they’re gone,” he said, as if the words would somehow change what was happening. “The haldurs are gone. Burned. The dragons—”

The haldur tossed what was left of Gretta aside, then came at Tarquin. He had time to catch a glimpse of wide-set snake’s eyes in a face like a rotting prune, something amber on its stone gray back, and a mouth full of teeth like serrated knives. Then an arrow was sticking out of its chest, and Southwind shouldered Hop aside so Ainya was between Tarquin and the certain death coming at them.

“Run!” she shouted and let fly another arrow. This one hit the haldur in the arm. It half spun with the impact before it howled in rage and leaped right at her. Ainya loosed her third arrow into the haldur’s stomach. At that range, it would have gone through a human’s belly and out their spine, but the haldur didn’t even pause. It swiped its claws across Ainya’s face, pulling her right out of the saddle. She hit the stone of the highway with the haldur on top of her and Tarquin automatically made a mage warding for her, despite how he hadn’t bled at all to pay for it.

The haldur’s next strike snapped its claws on the cobbles next to Ainya’s head instead of going through her half-open eyes, and Tarquin silently begged Gretta’s forgiveness before he asked the gods to take the dead shield’s blood as payment. Magery didn’t work like that, but if he were lucky, maybe the gods would be kind and allow it anyway.

He hadn’t been very lucky of late.

Tarquin couldn’t tell if Ainya was still breathing, but then the snarling haldur snapped its head up and came after him, and he could only worry for himself. He kicked his terrified mare and yanked the reins so that Hop whipped around again. They galloped off with the haldur right behind.