Chapter 104: Escape Into the Black Pines

Down in the muddy side alley, the last of the street vanguard slammed his broadsword against Kōya’s guard.

Kōya angled the Hero Sword to shed the dense blow into the dirt and drove his shoulder square into the demon’s breastplate. Both of them crashed backward into the inn’s wooden delivery cart.

Iron-rimmed wheels groaned as the wagon lurched sideways, dumping a stacked pyramid of grain crates off the tailgate. Pine boards split on the cobblestones, burying their boots ankle-deep in spilled oats and barley.

Finding himself overmatched in close quarters, the demon wrenched back to flee down the lane toward the main road.

Kōya clamped his left hand onto the creature’s leather bracer. "You’re coming with me."

He hauled the assassin off balance and buried a right hook up under its ribcage. The demon jackknifed with a strangled wheeze. Kōya pivoted on his heel and drove an uppercut squarely through its chin, lifting its boots two inches off the spilled grain before letting go.

The demon crashed spine-first through the slatted side panel of the wagon. Seasoned oak cracked, the rear iron axle pin sheared off, and the entire bed of the cart collapsed onto its side in a cloud of chaff.

Tethered to the hitching post three paces away, the two draft horses went wild, whites showing around their eyes as they reared against the hemp ropes. The thick oak post groaned in the mud, tilting at a sharp angle.

Kōya spared half a beat for the rearing hooves—and tracked the rustle of dry grain behind his heel.

He spun back inside the demon’s low lunge. The creature had pulled a six-inch skinning knife from its boot sheath, driving the point straight for the gap in Kōya’s coat over his liver.

Kōya slapped the inside of the demon’s wrist to redirect the point, rotated his hip to lock the elbow joint, and smashed the assassin’s knuckles downward across the jagged iron rim of the broken wagon wheel. Bone splintered. The knife dropped into the oats, and Kōya drove the heel of his palm upward into the bridge of its nose, dropping the body limp into the shattered crates.

Breathing slowly through his nose, Kōya stepped clear of the wreckage as the hitching rope parted with a loud twang.

The lead draft horse bolted down the dark lane, iron shoes striking sparks off the slick cobbles, with the second bay mare galloping close behind. Kōya flattened his back against the alley brickwork to let the trailing ropes whip past his shins.

Up on the third floor, Lyra’s voice tore through the broken window above the clatter of retreating hooves.

"Kōya! Come here! Please!"

His eyes flicked once to the motionless heap of dark leather buried beneath the collapsed cart axle. He sheathed the Hero Sword and sprinted for the back door.

Ten seconds after his boots vanished inside the inn, a bruised finger twitched beneath the broken wagon wheel.

The assassin opened one bloodshot eye. Dark blood trickled from a split temple into the spilled barley against his cheek. Pressing one palm flat against the mud, he held his breath and tracked Kōya’s footsteps pounding up the interior stairs.

Challenging the swordsman a second time alone was suicide. The demon stayed flat under the splintered oak and waited.

***

Kōya cleared the top landing in two bounds and vaulted the unconscious body blocking the bedroom threshold. "Lyra?"

"Here!"

He crunched across the glass-littered floorboards. Splintered lath, ceramic shards, and the wreckage of the writing table covered half the room, with a massive demon lying out cold in the ruins of the oak furniture. The smell of ozone lingered in the corner, faint but unmistakable.

Lyra knelt in the far corner beside Kaela. Stormfront lay half-unsheathed across the beastwoman’s lap, its exposed steel dark again.

Kōya dropped to one knee beside them. "What happened?"

"She defended herself." Lyra lifted her face, pale beneath a smear of plaster dust, her left wrist swelling purple where she braced her hand against Kaela’s shoulder. "She stood up and fought them."

Kōya pressed two fingers below the angle of Kaela’s jaw, right above the dark slave crest. Her pulse beat thready against his calluses. Running his hands quickly over her collarbones and ribs, he checked for puncture wounds or fresh bleeding, finding only the old auction bruises and the violent tremor in her exhausted forearms.

"She was on her feet," Lyra said. "That big one grabbed my wrist, and she drew the sword an inch and knocked him through the table. I thought..." She bit her lower lip, her eyes dropping to the silver ears flattened against Kaela’s tangled hair.

"What?"

"I thought she was back." Lyra’s voice dropped. "She moved the way you do when you parry. For three seconds, she was right here."

Kōya’s eyes dropped to the Lightning Sword. Kaela’s thumbs were hooked around the crossguard, her knuckles white against the dark metal.

"She isn’t answering me now," Lyra said. "I tried to get her to let go of the hilt so we could carry her out, and her hands locked up tighter."

"Let me try." Kōya slid his scarred palm gently beneath Kaela’s right hand. "Master, I’m going to take the sword for a moment."

The tendons in Kaela’s wrist corded like wire. Her fingernails dug into the rayskin wrap.

Kōya stopped pulling. He waited three seconds for her ragged breathing to settle, then tried to ease her thumb half an inch off the guard.

Kaela’s shoulders hunched inward, curling over the blade as a trapped tremor ran through her spine.

Kōya pulled his hand back.

"What are we going to do?" Lyra asked.

He stared at the woman who had knocked him into the courtyard dirt five times an hour until his back foot stayed grounded. The master who could correct a sloppy guard with a single tap of a hickory stick. Right now, the only thing anchoring her to the world was six pounds of steel that had once belonged to Yuna.

Kōya exhaled slowly. "Nothing."

Lyra blinked at him. "Nothing?"

"I’m not taking it away from her."

"Then how are you going to carry her down three flights of stairs?"

"Carefully."

He shifted closer on his knees, sliding his left arm behind Kaela’s shoulder blades and his right beneath the bend of her knees. "Master," he murmured near her ear, "I’m going to lift you now."

She gave no answer, though her spine didn’t fight the motion.

Kōya stood, taking her weight against his chest. Her head lolled against his collarbone while Stormfront remained clamped tightly against her ribs between both hands, the long lacquered scabbard sticking out past her hip. He shifted his grip an inch higher to keep the iron chape from banging against the broken doorframe.

Lyra pushed herself up, wincing as she favored her bruised left wrist. "Can you manage her weight like that?"

"Yes."

"You’re bleeding through your right sleeve."

"An old cut opened."

She gave him a flat stare. "Kōya."

"Later."

Her eyes flicked to Kaela’s pale face resting against his shoulder. She swallowed the rest of her lecture and slung her leather satchel over her good shoulder.

Hooking his chin down to check the balance, Kōya stepped over the demon sprawled in the threshold and turned down the dim hall.

Down on the first-floor landing, a pale night-watchman—hired by the innkeeper to board up the tavern before the evacuation—clutched the banister with both hands, staring at the two unconscious demons lying at the foot of the stairs.

"Are they gone?" the watchman stammered.

"For now," Kōya said without breaking stride.

The man’s eyes stretched past him toward the wrecked upstairs corridor. "Who were they?"

"People who made a mistake."

Kōya carried Kaela past him, easing his boots down each worn wooden tread so the drop wouldn’t jar her shoulders, while Lyra covered their rear with her wand leveled at the upper landing.

Cold night air hit his face as he shouldered the back door open. The alley smelled of crushed oats, damp earth, and the sour copper tang of demonic blood. The overturned delivery cart blocked half the lane, its rear wheel lying ten feet away in the mud.

Kōya adjusted Kaela in his arms. Her eyes stayed shut, her hands welded to Stormfront’s hilt.

"Where do we go?" Lyra asked, her eyes sweeping the dark rooftops across the street.

Kōya’s attention stretched past the outer district walls toward the black line of the forest rising against the night sky. "Out of Slane."

"And after the trees?"

"I don’t know yet."

Lyra stared at his profile for a beat—it was the first time since Zeref’s fortress he had admitted he didn’t have the next three miles mapped out—before stepping up beside his elbow.

"All right. I’ll follow you."

He gave a single nod and set off down the dark lane toward the tree line, keeping his stride smooth to spare the woman in his arms. Low pine branches scraped across his shoulders as they left the last row of stone warehouses behind and entered the deep timber.

Fifty yards back in the shadowed alley, the shattered oak boards of the delivery cart shifted.

The surviving assassin dragged himself out from beneath the broken axle, pressing two fingers against the clotted gash on his temple. His slit eyes tracked the three silhouettes vanishing into the dark pines beyond the boundary ditch.

Reporting failure to Lord Zarth empty-handed meant death. Waiting until the boy’s arms grew tired from carrying an unconscious weight was much smarter.

Wiping the blood from his eyelashes, the demon slipped into the brush and followed their trail into the trees.