Fire - Kristin Cashore [30]
She rifled through her bags and found the herbs that prevented pregnancy. She swallowed them dry, tucked herself in beside Archer, and fell into a dreamless sleep.
IN THE MORNING, coming awake was like drowning. She heard Archer making a great clatter in the room. She fought her way to consciousness and pushed herself up, and stopped herself from groaning at the old pain in her arm and the new pain in her wrists.
‘You’re beautiful in the morning,’ Archer said, stopping before her, kissing her nose. ‘You’re impossibly sweet in my shirt.’
That might be, but she felt like death. She would gladly make the trade; how blissful it would be to feel impossibly sweet, and look like death.
He was dressed, aside from his shirt, and clearly on his way out the door.
‘What’s the hurry?’
‘A beacon fire is lit,’ he said.
Towns in the mountains lit beacon fires when they were under attack, to call on the aid of their neighbours. ‘Which town?’
‘Grey Haven, to the north. Nash and Brigan ride out immediately, but they’re sure to lose men to the raptor monsters before they get to the tunnels. I’ll shoot from the wall, along with anyone else who can.’
Like a dive into cold water, she was awake. ‘The Fourth has gone, then? How many soldiers do Nash and Brigan have?’
‘My eight, and Roen has another forty to offer from the fortress. ’
‘Only forty!’
‘She sent a good portion of her guard away with the Fourth,’ Archer said. ‘Soldiers from the Third are to replace them, but of course they’re not here yet.’
‘But fifty men total to two hundred raptors? Are they mad?’
‘The only other option is to ignore the call for help.’
‘You don’t ride with them?’
‘The commander believes my bow can do more damage from the wall.’
The commander. She froze. ‘Was he here?’
Archer glanced at her sidelong. ‘Of course not. When his men couldn’t find me, Roen came herself.’
It didn’t matter; already she’d forgotten it. Her mind spun with the other particular, the insanity of fifty men trying to pass through a swarm of two hundred raptor monsters. She climbed out of bed and searched for her clothes, went into her bathing room so that Archer wouldn’t see her wrists as she changed. When she came out he was gone.
She covered her hair and attached her arm guard. She grabbed her bow and quiver and ran after him.
INDESPERAT E MOMENTS Archer was not above threats. In the stables, with men shouting around them and horses fidgeting, he told her that he would tie her to Small’s door if he had to, to keep her off the wall.
It was bluster, and she ignored him and thought this through, step by step. She was a decent shot with a bow. Her arm was well enough to shoot as long as she could bear the pain. In the time it took the soldiers to thunder away into the tunnels she could kill two, maybe three of the monsters, and that was two or three fewer to tear into the men.
It only took one raptor to kill a man.
Some of these fifty men were going to die before they even reached whatever battle they faced at Grey Haven.
This was where panic set in and her mental reckoning fell apart. She wished they wouldn’t go. She wished they wouldn’t put themselves at this risk to save one mountain town. She hadn’t understood before what people meant when they’d said the prince and the king were brave. Why did they have to be so brave?
She whirled around looking for the brothers. Nash was on his horse, fired up, impatient to get started, transformed from the drunken no-head of last night into a figure that at least gave the impression of kingliness. Brigan was on his feet, moving among the soldiers, encouraging them, exchanging a word with his mother. Calm, reassuring, even laughing at a joke from one of Archer’s guards.
And then across the sea of clamouring armour and saddle leather he saw her, and the gladness dropped from him. His eyes went cold, his mouth hard, and he looked the way she remembered him.
The sight of her killed his joy.
Well. He