Ellen's Arc

Chapter 33 of 45

The scorpion's dust still hung in the air when Ellen turned to the men on her road. Nyx was hunting the ledger she had hidden at the dry well. The god moved fast. She had to reach the well first. But the salt beds lay wide and open between here and there, and she owned no horse fast enough to cross them. She had lost her window before she had even started. "How far ahead is Nyx?" she asked. The Mandarin stood stiff, his broken hand bound to his chest. He did not flinch under Thorn's stare. "The god walks," he said. "But the god does not tire. You do." He looked at the flats. "You will not beat it on foot." Ellen's chest tightened. She had beaten men and beasts and even turned Nyx away once. But she could not outrun a god across open ground with only her own legs. Thorn slammed his hammer head against the dead scorpion's shell. The sound rang flat. "Then don't run," he said. "Ride." Dracula stood apart, pale and still. He had guarded her road one night against Nyx. He owed the land a debt, and he had paid it slow. Now he spoke, quiet and hard. "The god crosses the flats. Slow. It fears no one, so it does not hurry." His red eyes fixed on Ellen. "You have one thing it does not. A reason to run." Ellen looked at the raiders' loose horses, milling near the blast site. Two had survived. She grabbed the nearest rein. "That won't cross the salt," the Mandarin said. "The beds swallow hooves. Horses break their legs in the crust." Thorn walked to the ruined chokepoint. Under the fallen rock sat a low wagon the raiders had dragged in. Bolted to its bed was a pair of squat mortar barrels, black and scarred, set on a battle-worn frame. The raiders had meant to shell her walls. Thorn heaved the wreck off it. "Heavy," he said. "But the frame rides low. It floats on the crust where hooves sink." Ellen understood. A wide flat bed spread the weight. It would skim the salt where a horse would fall. They hitched both horses to the mortar wagon. Ellen climbed onto the bed between the cold barrels. Thorn cracked the reins. The wagon lurched, then slid onto the salt beds, riding fast and level over ground that would have broken any rider. The flats blurred past. Ahead, small and distant, a figure in dark robes walked steady toward the dry well. Blue hair caught the gray light. Nyx did not look back. Ellen gripped the mortar frame and leaned forward. "Faster," she said. The wagon closed the gap. She would reach the well ahead of the god now. But the wagon carried no shells, and the thing waiting at the well was not a beast she could kill. She had won the race. She had no idea how to win what came after it.