Bracken’s saddle strap began slapping against his flank.
It made a sharp little crack with every step, until Bracken began blaming me for it. I leaned down and caught the loose end while keeping my other hand on the reins. The leather had worked free where the buckle sat, and Bracken turned his white ear back as if the noise offended him personally.
“You’re welcome,” I told him.
Jak glanced over. “Fix it.”
“I’m giving it a stern warning first.”
He’d already turned toward the ground ahead. That was Jak’s answer to most things, including conversation. I tightened the strap, and the gelding settled into his long, patient stride. A thorn from the hedge dragged across my sleeve. Then a loose scatter of stones came ticking down from the bank beside us, harmless little taps against the road.
Isolde looked toward the ridge and lifted her arm to point, and the silver at her wrist caught the flat morning light, and I lost track of the stones entirely. I got my eyes back on the bank a moment before she'd have caught me at it, which counts for nothing and I did it anyway.
“The hill’s shedding,” I said.
“Hills don’t shed uphill,” Isolde said.
“This one’s ambitious.”
Her rings gave a dry tick as she turned her hand into the breeze. The air moved across her palm, then slipped away toward the higher ground. She watched the ridge without explaining what she found there, which made me suspect she’d found something worth keeping to herself.
The strap was fixed. The stones stopped. I began humming under my breath, then raised it until the others could hear. It was the Marchgate work refrain, the one the laborers sang when they hauled stone under the watch of the condenser yards. I remembered the first three lines, all hammer rhythm and bad promises, but the last line had never survived the evening.
“Raise the beam, bind the chain,” I sang. “Turn the wheel and curse the rain.”
Elowen joined in on the next line, slightly too high, startling crows. Her silver-blond hair had escaped its ribbon again, and her loose white-and-gold vestments fluttered around her small shoulders as she rode. She reached for the waterskin while singing, checked the stopper, then pressed two fingers to the sun disk at her throat before passing it back. The water inside shivered with a brief gold warmth. Bracken snorted, and she checked his eyes and gums with the same calm attention she gave a patient.
“You missed the second verse,” I said.
“There isn’t a second verse.”
“That’s why it needs me.”
Jak made his dry clicking sound, though he kept watching the road. Isolde’s voice came in for the final line, precise and beautifully indifferent.
“And when the foreman asks who broke it,” she sang, “blame the rain.”
Elowen laughed. A real laugh, surprised out of her, and it made the morning easier to carry. I tried the missing line again with three different endings. One blamed the foreman, one blamed Marchgate, and the last blamed me. The last one got the best response, which told me my companions possessed a cruel but healthy sense of justice.
Then Jak pulled his horse short.
“Center’s wrong.”
The words cut through the last of our laughter. He dismounted and crouched at the road’s edge, two fingers touching the mud. I followed his gaze. The broad track had narrowed between the hedge and a fresh line of cut branches laid across the firmer ground. Their pale ends still bled sap. Beyond them, hidden under torn grass, ran a shallow ditch angled across the path.
Jak scraped mud from one branch with his thumb. “Horse steps here, leg drops.”
Bracken shifted beneath me. I felt the question travel through the reins.
“Can we go around?” I asked.
“Left. The bank holds.” Jak pointed toward a strip of gravel beside the hedge. “Right sinks.”
He led his horse onto the gravel, testing each step before committing his weight. Elowen dismounted and checked the animals in turn, running her hands down fetlocks and lifting hooves clear of the mud. When Bracken stamped, she tightened the girth, checked the water, and looked at me.
“No one rides over that.”
“I was considering jumping it.”
“You were considering making me treat a horse with a broken leg.”
“I’ve reconsidered.”
“Good.”
Isolde had moved beyond us. She faced the ridge with her chin lifted. No birds called from the hedge now. The road seemed to have swallowed its own noise. Even the distant axes had gone quiet.
Three notes sounded far ahead, thin and separated, then vanished.
Jak’s hand went to his crossbow. Isolde turned her horse sideways, placing the ridge beyond her shoulder. Elowen gathered the reins of the nearest mount and stepped off the road.
My fingers closed around Duskfang’s hilt. We had started with loose leather and falling stones. Now Jak put himself in front, Elowen behind him with the animals, and Isolde took the high side while I moved between them, no longer riding shoulder to shoulder.
The silence held long enough for Bracken to breathe against my knees. His one white ear turned toward the ridge, then back to me, undecided about which danger deserved his attention.
Jak moved along the horses, checking girths, hooves, and the straps beneath each saddle. He touched two fingers to the ground beside the ditch, rubbed the mud between them, and studied the smear on his skin.
“Fresh work,” he said. “Branches cut this morning. Ditch made after the rain.”
“You say that as if the ditch has a schedule.”
“It has a shovel mark.”
That ended my contribution to the investigation. Jak found the firmest strip beside the hedge and led the first horse across it. Elowen followed close behind, one hand on the reins, the other resting briefly against the sun disk at her throat. A thin warmth gathered around her fingers, gold enough to catch beneath the gray morning, and the nervous mare stopped tossing her head.
“Easy,” Elowen murmured. “Put your weight there.”
The horse stepped where she guided it. Elowen’s shoulders stayed square until all four hooves reached the gravel. Then she handed the reins back to Jak and began with the next animal.
Isolde pointed toward the hedge. “You and I clear the branches.”
“At last, a task suited to my delicate nature.”
She’d come out of my blanket roll before Jak was up, which is her habit on the road and not a courtesy to me. Four days of it now and nobody had said a word, and I’d begun to suspect Elowen counted bedrolls the way she counts everything else and had ruled it wasn’t a medical matter.
She turned her violet eyes on me. “You’re holding a sword.”
“A delicate sword.”
“Move.” She got a hand flat on my back and shoved, and left it there half a second after the shove had finished, which she does, and which I’ve stopped reading anything into. She told me on the second night that she wasn’t promising me anything and wasn’t asking for anything either, and then she went to sleep with her knee against mine, and I’ve never known which half of that to believe.
“Use your hands.”
I slid Duskfang into its sheath and stepped toward the hedge. The cut branches had been dragged across the road in a rough fan, their twigs snagging at boots and stirrups. I crouched and pulled one free. A thorn caught the edge of my collar and scraped grit beneath it. I jerked back, lost my balance, and caught the branch against my shoulder.
“Graceful,” Isolde said.
“I was testing the hedge’s commitment.”
She came close before I could answer. Her fingers found the strap at my shoulder, drew it flat, and retied the loose end where it twisted beneath the collar. The work should’ve taken a breath. She took two.
Her knuckles brushed my throat. My whole body tightened around the touch, which was humiliating because she could see it. She smelled faintly of rain, though the morning had given us none, and the air near her carried that small prickling charge that made my skin remember her before my mind caught up.
I stayed still.
Isolde’s hand remained at my shoulder. She looked past me toward the ridge, not at my face, which gave me room to lie to myself. Perhaps she wanted the same thing I did. Perhaps she simply disliked badly fastened straps.
“You’re watching my judgment,” she said.
“I’m watching you tie a knot. There’s a difference.”
“Not with you.”
Her thumb pressed once against the leather. Deliberate. Small. I felt the mark in my palm warm under my glove, a quiet pulse from the pact, and kept my hand away from it.
“You keep looking at me as if my staying near you proves something,” Isolde said. “It proves I’m here. Don’t make it prove more.”
The joke I reached for arrived wearing no clothes. “I was hoping it proved you had excellent taste.”
“That’s the flattering version.”
“I have several.”
“I know.”
She withdrew her hand, but not immediately. The warmth left my shoulder last. I wanted that delay to mean more than it did. I nearly asked. Then she looked toward the ridge, and the moment went with her.
Isolde turned toward the ridge. The wind shifted across her cheek, carrying the cold promise of rain from somewhere beyond the hills. She lifted two fingers, felt the change, and watched the grass bend in a direction the road didn’t take.
“The storm will come from behind us,” she said. “Not yet.”
Jak had reached the bend ahead. He stood with one hand on his crossbow and the other raised toward us.
“It continues,” he called. “Branches all the way to the rise. We move on foot until the ground opens.”
Elowen gathered the next horse’s reins. “Then we move.”
Isolde stepped away first. I picked up the branch she had freed from my strap and tossed it clear of the path, then followed her toward the narrowing trail while the mark in my palm cooled beneath the leather.
The first stone struck Bracken behind the jaw.
The gelding screamed and lurched toward the hedge. I hauled his head around before the thorns took his eye. A second stone smashed against the road where his hoof had been.
“Down!” Jak shouted.
Arrows came through the alder branches.
One punched into the mud. Another tore across the flank of the horse behind me, and the animal kicked hard enough to throw its rider. Small shapes moved beyond the hedge without yelling or rushing.
I drew Duskfang and dropped from Bracken. “Take the horses back!”
“They’ll run into the line,” Jak said.
He was already beneath the low branches with his crossbow raised. Isolde planted one boot in the road. Her rings gave a dry tick, and the air tightened around her.
A goblin rose behind a fallen trunk, spear across its chest. Another stood behind it. Then another. Nine in two ranks, with a larger one at the rear wearing red cloth around its throat. Crude paint crossed its face.
It lifted one hand. The front rank lowered their spears together.
My first thought was that the little bastards had learned to stand still. My second was that one hard strike would fix that.
Isolde thrust out her hand. Blue-white force hit the first shield and burst it into splinters. The goblin went over backward. Before it landed, the fighter behind it stepped into the opening.
Jak fired. His bolt entered beneath a raised arm and came out red behind the neck.
One dead. Eight still standing.
No one shouted. The line became whole again.
The dead goblin lay across the roots with Jak’s bolt still through it. One of its companions stepped over the body. Another hooked the fallen shield aside so nobody tripped. It was quick, ugly work, the sort of thing Kade used to make us practice with sacks of grain in the yard: clear the obstacle, close the space, don’t stare at what fell.
Seeing goblins do it made the back of my neck prickle.
Jak reached for another bolt. The captain saw the movement and pointed. Three shields turned toward the sound of his crossbow. They hadn’t just learned to stand. They were watching for what hurt them.
My palm warmed beneath the glove.
Now.
I ran.
Duskfang drank the color from the morning. Dusk gathered along its edge as the first goblin thrust for my stomach. I knocked the spear aside, stepped inside its reach, and cut.
The blade went through shield rim, leather, and the ribs beneath. Pact force followed it with a crack I felt through my wrist. The goblin collapsed around the sword.
Two dead. Seven.
I ripped Duskfang free and turned for the next one. It wasn’t there.
A spear shaft slammed into my ribs from the side. The enchanted leather spread the blow, but one of the seven drove forward behind it. I caught its spear with my left hand and pulled. It released the weapon before I could drag it close, and the fighter behind it stabbed through the space.
Something unseen struck my shoulder like a slab of air. The point slid away from my face.
Armor of Shadows. The protection came before I could ask for it, Astarra’s gift drawn tight around me.
I cut through the spear shaft and opened the goblin’s forearm. It retreated. The wounded fighter behind it took the shield while a third came around my right.
I went after the wounded one. Against Kade, I’d once spent an entire morning trying to get past a wooden sword. This goblin’s guard looked slow enough to insult me. I struck high, turned the parry aside, and hit its shield with my shoulder. It flew backward into the second rank.
The gap put the captain six strides away.
I covered two before the line reacted. One spear crossed another at my chest. I sheared the first head away and let the second scrape the shadow wrapped around my ribs. A hooked blade came low for my ankle. Duskfang caught it, twisted, and tore it from the goblin’s hands.
For a few glorious heartbeats, none of them could touch me.
The captain stepped back.
I grinned. I couldn’t help it. The thing behind their shields was supposed to be fear, and I wanted to see it.
Then the disarmed goblin threw itself at my knees. Not to beat me. To hold me there.
I drove an elbow into its face and kicked free, but the captain was behind another shield by then. Two fighters had stopped looking at me altogether.
The captain barked once.
They stopped fighting me.
Two went wide around the alder roots. One crouched behind a hooked shield. The rest pressed toward the gaps behind me, where Jak had moved to get a clear shot and Elowen held the horses.
“Jak, back!”
He saw the trap. Going straight back would put him in the hedge, so he cut across their front instead. His knife flashed and left blood along one goblin’s cheek.
Isolde lifted both hands. Wind folded above the trail and struck from the side. Leaves spun. Spears bent. Two goblins went into the thorns.
For one breath, the formation opened.
I drove Duskfang into the nearest shield. Night gathered on the edge, and wood split from rim to grip. The goblin behind it staggered with a cut across its arm.
“Move through!” I shouted.
The captain stamped twice.
The two Isolde had thrown aside recovered together. One seized Jak’s crossbow arm. The other struck his thigh with a spear butt. He dropped to one knee.
I started toward him.
A spearhead tore across my back.
The point found the gap beneath my shoulder and ripped down through leather and flesh. Heat opened behind me. My sword arm jerked, and the next breath wouldn’t come.
The goblin raised its spear again. I drove Duskfang backward without looking. The point punched through its shield and buried in the meat of its thigh. It screamed and fell away, alive and dragging one leg.
Elowen reached Jak first.
A goblin swung at her as she knelt. She caught the shaft against her forearm, but the butt struck her right leg below the knee. Her leg buckled. She stayed upright long enough to seize the broken spear lodged through Jak’s upper arm.
“Don’t pull it,” she said.
Jak’s hand closed around the shaft. Blood spilled between his fingers in bright pulses. “I can shoot.”
“No.”
“One arm works.”
“Not the useful one.”
Gold light gathered around her fingers and sank into his shoulder. The bleeding slowed, then began again around the barbs.
“That keeps you standing,” she said. “It doesn’t close the hole.”
The captain turned its painted face toward her.
“No.”
Night gathered on Duskfang. I hit the nearest shield hard enough to split it and drove the goblin behind it into the mud. Another spear came in low. I cut it away. A third struck where my back no longer wanted to turn, and the line forced me sideways instead of forward.
I could ruin any one of them I reached. They’d arranged the fight so reaching one exposed somebody else.
Isolde caught the next spear before it reached Elowen. Lightning ran from her ring into the shaft. The goblin convulsed, and the smell of burned hair filled the trail.
“Take Jak,” she said.
“I’m taking him.”
Isolde stepped closer to the line. “Then do it faster.”
Elowen hooked Jak’s good arm across her shoulders. His wounded arm hung uselessly, the spear fixed through it. Blood marked the white and gold of her vestments.
A shield struck Isolde in the right side and drove her into an alder trunk. Her breath left her. She put one hand to her ribs, straightened, and released the storm.
Wind slammed down the trail. Mud and loose stones whipped past my face. The goblins bent into it with shields braced.
The front rank gave ground.
For half a heartbeat I thought we had them.
Then the second rank stepped forward.
Their formation hadn’t broken. The second rank merely replaced the first.
The captain struck a shield with the flat of its blade. Seven spears drove forward at once, toward our legs, our hands, the places armor didn’t cover. One hooked at Isolde’s ankle. Another went for Elowen’s bruised leg. A third aimed at Jak, who couldn’t raise his crossbow.
I cut the last spear away and took the next on Duskfang. The impact jolted through my wrist. My back seized when I tried to turn.
“We leave,” Jak said.
It was the first thing he’d said without arguing.
One more push tempted me. Break the captain. Break the line. Make the rest run.
The captain watched me from behind its fighters. It didn’t charge. It didn’t need to.
Leave.
I hated Astarra for saying it because I wanted her to be wrong.
“Isolde, cover the road. Elowen, take Jak back.”
“Don’t command my retreat.” Isolde slammed her palm toward the ground. A ring of wind knocked the front rank off balance, and she moved backward with her own spell. “I’m making one.”
Elowen dragged Jak toward the bend. His boots left dark tracks in the mud. I followed backward, Duskfang between us and the line.
The goblins didn’t chase. They replaced the broken shields, pulled their wounded behind them, and held the rise.
At the bend, a spear came through the leaves and buried itself beside my boot. Another struck a saddle. The horse reared. Isolde threw herself clear, and the landing drove a sharp sound from her.
The captain appeared between the trees.
It stood over the two dead. Seven living goblins gathered behind it, two bleeding, one unable to put weight on its leg, every weapon still pointed down the road. The red cloth at its throat had darkened with rain or blood.
It raised its blade in warning.
We went down the slope.
Jak’s crossbow hung useless against his back. Isolde kept one hand against her side. Elowen limped beneath his weight. Blood ran warm beneath my shirt.
Above us, seven goblins watched from the road we’d abandoned.
Bracken lurched forward before I gathered the reins. Behind us, one sharp call passed through the alders. Another answered farther off.
Jak’s hand slipped from his arm. Blood pattered onto the horse’s flank.
“Keep moving,” he said.
“The horse has opinions.”
Bracken’s white ear twitched back at me, offended. The joke went nowhere.
Isolde caught the reins of the riderless horse and pulled its head down before it could bolt. Her first attempt brought a wince she pretended not to have. She changed hands and kept walking.
Elowen’s eyes dropped to her hand. “Can you breathe fully?”
“Yes.”
“Do it.”
Isolde inhaled until the leather at her ribs tightened. The last inch hurt. I saw it in the way her grip whitened on the bridle.
“Bruised,” Elowen said. “Possibly cracked.”
“Bruised.”
“You don’t get to choose the bone.”
“It knows better than to inconvenience me.”
That one almost found a laugh. Jak’s boot slipped before it could.
Elowen stayed beside Jak, one hand clamped above the wound and the other keeping the shaft still. His crossbow knocked against his back with every step. He couldn’t reach it.
“They aren’t following,” he said.
“Not yet,” Isolde answered.
“They had the rise. We left it.”
Her bruised side put a careful stiffness into her stride. “They replaced their front rank while we were still hitting it. That wasn’t panic.”
“Good ground makes bad fighters look clever.”
“Does it teach them to change ranks?”
Jak looked toward the next turn. “It teaches them where to stand.”
“Something taught them when.”
I glanced back. Branches, rain-dark bark, no movement. “They tried not to die. We should avoid making them mysterious before breakfast.”
Isolde looked at me. “You felt the line close.”
I had. Duskfang could split their shields. Nightblade could make a clean opening where steel alone would stick. Armor of Shadows had turned a spear from my face. Yet the spear still found Jak while I was somewhere else.
“I felt it,” I said.
“Then stop making it smaller because you dislike it.”
“And stop making it an army because you do.”
Her eyes sharpened. The heat between us had been pleasant beside the ditch. Here it had teeth.
Jak saved neither of us. “Nine isn’t an army.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Nine was plenty.”
I liked him less immediately.
Elowen didn’t look up from the wound. “They kept him in the middle because helping him made us slower. They didn’t need our bodies. They needed the road.”
Jak’s knees softened. I swung down and caught him beneath his good arm. The landing pulled at my back.
“Don’t carry me,” he said.
“Then walk without becoming a corpse,” Elowen said.
“Working on it.”
We moved as one awkward knot along the muddy shelf. Above us, the calls stopped. The silence made every buckle and wet footfall sound too loud.
The horses had caught our fear. Bracken crowded against my shoulder, and the mare Isolde led kept trying to turn back toward the rider she’d thrown. There wasn’t time to find him. I told myself he’d run when the arrows started. I didn’t look hard at the lie.
Maybe the goblins had what they wanted. Maybe they wanted us east with a wounded man. The thought arrived neat and complete, which made me distrust it. Fear liked pretending it had solved things.
Jak stumbled again.
“How much blood?” Elowen asked.
“Less than a bucket.”
“Jak.”
“Still moving.”
She pressed two fingers to his throat. “Your pulse is thin. If we keep you upright, the wound opens farther.”
“We need distance,” I said.
“We need him alive.”
We reached a hollow beneath exposed roots, shielded on three sides by wet stone. Elowen pointed without releasing him.
“There. Stop.”
I looked at the trees above us, then at Jak’s gray face.
“How long?”
“As long as my hands say.”
I led Bracken into the hollow. Jak sank against the bank, and Elowen’s sun disk flashed warm gold.
“Sleeve,” Elowen said.
I drew my knife. She held out her hand.
“Not that blade. Tear the seam.”
I pulled the leather apart while she cut the cloth with her shears. The barbed spear had passed through Jak’s upper arm and broken. Its head was gone, but the torn track opened whenever he moved.
Jak watched the trees. “Front rank had hooked shields. Second carried short spears. Bows behind.”
“You watched that while bleeding?”
“Still have eyes.”
Elowen gave him a flat look. Isolde let out a breath that might’ve been a laugh, and the hollow held the small warmth of it.
“Move your fingers,” Elowen said.
Jak obeyed. Slowly.
She probed the wound with two glowing fingertips. Jak’s jaw tightened, but he held still.
“Nothing remains inside,” she said. “You’re fortunate.”
“I’ll celebrate when I can draw.”
“Then stop talking and let me work.”
Elowen rinsed the blood away. Gold gathered beneath her palm, brighter than the thread of light she’d used while we were retreating. Her sun disk rose from her chest as if caught on an invisible current. She spoke a prayer too quietly for me to follow.
Heat entered Jak’s arm.
The torn edges drew together first. Beneath them, severed muscle shifted in slow, visible pulls. The puncture narrowed, closed, and left a red seam that faded while I watched. Jak’s breath broke into a gasp. His fingers clenched against his knee, then opened.
Elowen kept her hand in place until the last gold sank beneath his skin.
“Now,” she said.
Jak lifted the arm above his head. He rolled the shoulder, flexed his hand, and reached for the bow beside him. The first pull brought the string all the way to his cheek. He held it there, steady, before easing it forward.
His arm worked. The rest of him looked as if he’d carried a millstone up the rise.
“The wound is healed,” Elowen said. “You’re not rested.”
Jak considered that. “Rest is less useful.”
“Rest doesn’t care.”
He set the bow across his knees with both hands on it. Relief changed his face so little I might’ve missed it if I hadn’t been watching for the complaint that never came.
“They moved before the bolt struck,” he said. “The captain pointed, and three shields turned toward me. They were reading the weapon, not only the ground.”
Elowen sat back on her heels. Sweat brightened her temple.
“Your back,” she told me.
“Manageable.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
I knelt. Her healing came as warm pressure beneath the cut, drawing its edges closed. Relief moved through me so quickly that my arms felt heavy afterward. When I bent, the sharp pull was gone.
I touched the mended leather and found blood but no open flesh beneath it. A potion had knitted skin in front of my eyes once. This felt stranger. Elowen had reached into the damage and told my body to be whole.
“Thank you,” I said.
She blinked, perhaps because I hadn’t made her drag it out of me. “Hold Jak’s reins when we move. Healing doesn’t replace the blood he lost.”
Isolde crouched beside us with one hand on her ribs. “Mine’s a bruise.”
Elowen checked her breathing and pressed carefully along her side. “Painful, not broken. I’m saving what remains.”
“Sensibly.”
“You dislike most sensible instructions.”
“Only the ones directed at me.”
This time the laugh belonged to all of us, even Jak. It lasted one breath. That was still more than the goblins had taken.
Elowen sat against the roots. Gold no longer shone at her throat. Her hands rested open on her knees, small and bloodstained.
“You kept us alive,” I said.
She looked at the blood as if it belonged to a problem, not a triumph. “Help me clean this.”
So I did.
We mounted after the horses drank. Jak carried his own bow and reins. We continued east at a careful walk, tired and intact.
Behind us, the goblins still held the rise.
At the next shelf, Jak dismounted without help and laid his bow across his knees.
He drew the string to his cheek.
The bow creaked. His arm held.
“Satisfied?” Elowen asked.
“No.”
“Good. I’d worry if healing also changed your personality.”
Jak eased the string forward. His hand was steady, though the effort left him breathing harder than one bow draw should have.
“The arm is sound,” Elowen said. “The blood you lost is still gone. So is the strength your body spent closing the wound.”
“But I can shoot.”
“You can shoot once. Whether you can shoot ten times is a question I’d rather the next goblins didn’t answer.”
He accepted that by checking the string.
The shelf gave us a view of nearly a mile. The road descended through gray-green hills toward a thread of water, then vanished between two dark stands of pine. No smoke marked Harrows Turn. No cart moved below us. Under any other sky, it would’ve been beautiful.
Bracken cropped grass beside the stone as if the morning had been perfectly reasonable. I rubbed the swelling behind his white ear.
“You were right,” I told him. “It was my fault.”
Jak glanced over. “What was?”
“Private apology.”
“Horse won’t forgive you.”
“He has a generous nature.”
Bracken tried to bite my sleeve.
Jak settled the bow across both knees. “They left the best footing open. Every safe step put me where the next rank could see me.”
Isolde stood at the shelf’s edge, testing the wind with one raised hand. “The front line gave ground without breaking. The second closed it while moving uphill.”
“Good ground,” Jak said.
“Good timing.”
“You keep adding intention to what the dirt explains.”
“You keep asking the dirt to absolve them.”
Jak’s gaze narrowed. “Dirt doesn’t absolve.”
“Neither do I.”
Elowen wiped dried blood from the skin above Jak’s elbow. Nothing beneath it opened. “You’re both describing pieces of the same fight.”
“That doesn’t make both conclusions true,” Isolde said.
“No. It makes the arguing premature.”
Isolde’s rings ticked once. Jak looked toward the rise. Elowen had ended the exchange without raising her voice, which was becoming one of my favorite things about her.
Jak saw a trap built from dirt and patience. Isolde saw discipline. Elowen saw a wound chosen instead of a body. I saw seven goblins still standing after I’d hit their line with everything I knew how to use.
The last thought sat badly. It sounded too much like defeat asking to become a lesson.
I could’ve asked Astarra. She’d shown me tunnels older than kingdoms and wards built to imprison things people had stopped naming. If some hidden hand stood behind nine goblins on a muddy road, she might smell it.
But the bond remained quiet. I wasn’t sure whether she had nothing to offer or wanted me to reach for her first.
Isolde came to stand beside me. Her shoulder touched mine, lightly enough to deny if either of us mentioned it.
“You wanted to go back,” she said.
“I wanted them to run.”
“That isn’t what I said.”
I watched the empty rise. “For a moment.”
“So did I.”
That surprised me more than it should have. Isolde looked built for refusal. Hearing that she’d felt the same stupid pull made mine easier to admit and no wiser.
“Next time?” I asked.
“Next time we don’t give them the ground.”
Not comfort. Better.
I tightened Bracken’s reins. “We keep moving. No one goes ahead alone.”
Jak gathered his reins with the hand Elowen had restored. “Harrows Turn before dark, if the road holds.”
“Then we let it hold.”
We started down at a cautious pace. Jak’s bow lay ready across his knees, both hands resting on it. Isolde watched the high ground. I watched the road behind us.
The three-note signal sounded once from the rise.
Jak looked at Isolde. She’d already turned toward him. Elowen wiped the last dried blood from an arm that no longer bore a hole, and none of us said what the sound had made plain.