Chapter 128. She Squeezed My Hand for Ten Full Seconds, and I Cried Without Saying

Chapter 128: 128. She Squeezed My Hand for Ten Full Seconds, and I Cried Without Saying

She didn’t answer... A muscle jumped in her jaw.

Slowly, she transferred the axe to her other hand... She reached out, and closed her fingers around mine.

She squeezed.

I’d like to say I bore it with dignity, but I didn’t.

She squeezed so hard that I felt the bones in my hand grind together, and I clenched my teeth so that I wouldn’t cry out, and a tear squeezed out of the corner of my eye.

She held on for ten full seconds. Her whole arm was trembling, and her horns hummed with a high, thin, wavering note.

Then she let go.

She stood there, breathing hard, and staring at the door.

Finally, she lowered her head, and I heard her let out a long, ragged breath.

"Very well," she said.

I flexed my hand. It hurt like FUCKING HELL, but I didn’t say so.

Velora took over the planning, because nobody else could have, and she did it in about four minutes flat.

"A vanguard," she said.

She stood at the head of the long table with a map pinned under her palm, and her voice cut through the room like a wire. "Fast... Light... Leaving within the hour."

"Nightclaw, twenty riders... Redhorn infantry, a hundred, the best you have, mounted on whatever can be found."

"Leon. Magnara. Elsbeth. Sylvara. Myself."

"And the rest?" said Ysolde.

"The main column follows at its own pace... You will command it, Warden." She nodded. "Half a day behind us... No faster."

"It will be done."

Elysandra had come to stand at the end of the table. She had folded her hands in front of her gown, and her pearly horn caught the lamplight, and she looked very tired.

"One thing," she said. "You will remember the moon."

"We will."

"You must return to the pillar before it falls... The sixteenth night." She looked at each of us in turn. "Redhorn lies on the road to Hearthfang..."

’It is on your way... I do not ask you to hurry, but I ask you to remember."

She put something into Sylvara’s hands. It was a small leather case, and when Sylvara opened it, I saw another silver bell, identical to the first, resting in a nest of velvet.

Beneath it lay a roll of heavy gray cloth.

"Lead-lined," Elysandra said. "For the horns... I do not know whether it will serve."

"It is the only thing I could think of."

Sylvara bowed her head. "It will serve."

We rode out of Elarune within the hour.

I’d like to describe the departure in a dramatic way. The truth is, it was mostly confusing. Nightclaw riders were shouting at each other.

Redhorn soldiers, big, grim women with scarred faces and shaggy horses, clattered into the yard in a long line.

Somebody dropped a pot of arrows. I got my foot stuck in a stirrup and had to be rescued by a very patient Velora, who said nothing at all, but whose ears twitched.

At the gate, a crowd had gathered... Not a big one.

A few dozen citizens had come to see us off, and a couple of them held out their hands, palms up, as I passed. I held out mine in return.

Pip was standing on top of a barrel. She’d climbed it to get a better view, and she was waving a small, grubby fist over her head.

Seraphine stood beside it with her arms folded, and a very slight smile.

"Bring back the big cow lady!" Pip shrieked.

I almost fell off my horse. And I know damn well minotaur and a cow are somehow looked identitcal.

Magnara, who had been riding in silence, with her eyes fixed forward, went rigid. Her ears flattened.

For a split second, I thought she’d turn and glare.

Instead, to my great surprise, she raised one hand, clumsily, awkwardly, and held it up in a stiff, wooden wave.

Pip let out a shriek of pure joy.

"I’m so sorry," I wheezed. "She’s... uh... she’s a very honest child."

"It is acceptable," said Magnara, staring straight ahead.

Her ears were dark. "She’s a child."

I laughed so hard that I had to hold on to the saddle horn. Behind me, I heard Velora make a faint, strangled noise, and Sylvara’s quiet laughter.

’Don’t die,’ I thought, as the gate fell away behind us. ’All of you... Just don’t die.’

[Lust Energy: 100/100]

...

Magnara ran.

I hadn’t expected it.

We were about two hours out of the city, on a long white road winding down through the foothills, and I’d been drowsing in the saddle with my mare plodding along at a steady walk.

Then I noticed that the rhythm of the hooves had changed.

The column had picked up speed. And alongside the horses, on foot, loping easily at a distance of about ten yards, came a very large woman with an axe over her shoulder.

She wasn’t winded. And she wasn’t even breathing hard.

She ran with long, smooth, tireless strides, her horns lowered and her eyes fixed on the horizon, as if she’d been born to it.

The Nightclaw riders, who were no slouches themselves, glanced at her sideways with expressions that ranged from awe to open horror.

"She’s not human," one of them muttered.

"She is a minotaur," another said.

"That’s what I said."

I watched her for a while. She was running to keep from thinking.

I knew it as clearly as I knew my own name. And a stupid, reckless, delightful idea occurred to me, one that I really should have thought through a bit more.

"Hey, Magnara!" I yelled.

She didn’t turn her head.

"Bet I can keep up with you!"

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then, very slightly, her head tilted. Her ears twitched.

She glanced at me out of the corner of her amber eye, and I saw her lips press together, as if she were deciding whether I was worth the bother.

She picked up her pace.

It wasn’t dramatic. She just lengthened her stride, a fraction, and suddenly she was ten yards ahead of the lead rider.

The ground blurred under her boots. I dug my heels into my mare’s ribs, and the poor creature, who had no idea what was happening, bolted.

Then I stepped.

I’d been practicing... I’d had a full day with Velora, and I was pretty sure I had it figured out.

I chose a point, a little rise in the road, some forty paces ahead. I fixed my eyes on it... I reached for the cold, silver thing at the base of my spine.

The world went thin.

I flickered out of the saddle, trailing a faint blur of afterimage, and landed lightly on the rise, on both feet, a good ten yards ahead of Magnara.

I turned around, grinning, and threw out my arms.

"Boom!" I yelled. "Pure style! Did you see that?!"

She was gaining on me. And she hadn’t slowed.

I hadn’t thought of that... I whirled around, picked another point, a stone by the roadside, and stepped again

And again. Each step took me about ten paces, in a flash of silver.

I felt like a god. Or maybe... I felt like a comet because a god is just too exaggerating.

But still, though... I was doing the coolest thing anyone had ever done.

On the fifth step, I landed on a frozen river.

I should have noticed it.

There was a wide, flat stretch of white ahead, between two stands of leafless birch, and it hadn’t occurred to me that it wasn’t a field. I hit it dead center.

There was a loud, sharp crack, like a pistol shot.

For one long, silent second, I stood there in the middle of the ice with my arms still outstretched.

Then the world dropped out from under me.

I went through backward. I flew through the air in a perfect arc, with my legs in the air and my arms windmilling, and plunged into the black water with a splash that sent a column of spray ten feet into the air.

I screamed. It was an undignified scream, a high, desperate, howling sound that echoed off the hills like a dog that had lost its mind.

The water was so cold that it didn’t feel like water. It felt like being hit by a hammer.

I came up gasping, spitting, with ice in my eyebrows and my hair plastered over my face, and clawed my way onto a floating plate of ice.

I looked up.

Magnara had stopped.

She stood at the edge of the river with her axe over her shoulder and her feet planted in the snow. She was looking down at me.

Her face was perfectly blank.

For a long moment, nothing moved.

Then her shoulders began to shake.

It started small. A tremor, a shudder, which she tried to stifle by pressing her lips together. It didn’t work.

She put the back of her hand to her mouth. She bent over, and her whole body heaved.

And then it came out.

She laughed.

"AHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!"