Rebecka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 21 of 66

The first shape stopped in the slot. It did not step through. Rebecka held her draw. The bow stayed warm but did not spike to the killing note. The raider was there, close enough to shoot, but he was not moving into her line. "He's waiting," Aiyana said. "For what." A second shape crowded behind the first. Then a third. Rebecka saw a long pole pass forward over their shoulders. Not a spear. Something wrapped in dark cloth, thick at one end. They set it against the standing crystal on the left side of the slot and stepped back. Rebecka eased the draw off. "They're setting something on the stone." "A charge?" Marcus said. He had come up behind her with his short blade drawn. "Maybe. Maybe a ward-breaker. I can't see it." She could not shoot the bundle. The crystals stood between her and it. If she guessed charge and it was a scrying anchor, she wasted an arrow and told them exactly where she stood. If she guessed anchor and it was a charge, the slot came open and forty men walked through. She pulled the compass from her belt and flipped it open. The needle swung once and settled hard on the bundle. Then the eye above the needle blinked. It had never done that before. She tilted the face toward Marcus. "Truth says it's alive," he said. "That's a caster, not a bomb." "Someone's hand is on the other end of it." She closed the compass. If a mage was feeding the thing through the cloth, killing the mage killed the bundle. But the mage was behind the wall of men, out of her sight. She whistled once, low. The crow dropped from the dark of the ceiling and landed on her wrist. Its eyes were lit. She spoke against its feathers. "Find the one who is casting. Mark him for me." The crow lifted and slid through the slot above the raiders' heads before they could turn. She counted four breaths. The crow's cry came back sharp from the middle of the war party. Rebecka nocked one of the red-fletched arrows Aiyana had given her. She could not see the target. She trusted the bow to read what the crow had marked. She drew, angled the shot high over the slot, and loosed. The arrow cleared the crystals and dropped out of sight. A man screamed on the far side. The bundle against the crystal went dark and slumped in its wrappings. The front raider flinched. He stepped into the slot to see what had happened. The bow sang the killing note. Rebecka put the next arrow through his throat. He fell in the slot and jammed it. The men behind him shouted and began to drag the body back. Fifteen arrows left. The mage was dead. The bottleneck was hers. Then a horn sounded from the ridge above the cave. Not the road. Above.