Chapter Twelve
Ever After
The breather's head snapped up and its eyes locked on mine. Could he-or she-even understand what I'd just said? A flicker of comprehension flashed in the black eyes. Then, slowly, its mouth opened.
I tensed, at first thinking the creature meant to scream again, but instead of opening wider, its mouth pursed and a second later a puff of shimmery, icy, blue mist rushed over my face and lingered in the air like the prettiest smoke I'd ever seen.
Aranu roared, and abruptly I realized I was holding my breath. The breather mimicked my posture, gripping the top rail with fingers that looked scaly but otherwise remarkably similar to my own. I was going to have to breathe. Praise all, what had I done? Panic was a gray blur in my peripheral vision and dimly I acknowledged it was either breathe or pass out. Curling my fingers tight around the blue ones on the wood, I parted my lips and inhaled in one swift, half-sobbing gasp. Nothing happened.
Aranu and Mike both came to a skidding halt on either side of me. Each man was breathing hard and Aranu looked like he would gladly murder me on the spot. Mike just looked horrified. Seconds ticked by, then a full minute, and I heard Mike let out the breath he'd apparently been holding.
I was alive. My hands were still locked over the breather's. As soon as I let go, the creature reached out, tentative, and I felt the cool, rough fingers slide down the side of my face. It rubbed a lock of my black hair between its fingers, then let it slide across a lightly scaled blue palm.
"It's not hurting you." Aranu kept his voice calm and even, but from the corner of my eye, I could see his arms were loosely braced at his sides. He was ready for trouble. But I wasn't, at least not from the breathers.
"How do you feel right now?" Mike asked, resting one hand on my shoulder, then just as quickly backing off.
"I feel fine," I said, taking another deep breath and shrugging. I was able to breathe normally and nothing ached, or stung, or burned. "I didn't think the mist would have the same effect on us as it does the coatyl," I explained quickly. "If Kahn engineered these creatures to take out the coatyl, then he'd want them to do the job without posing such a threat to himself, right?"
"But he could have just as easily instructed his scientists to work with these guys only using special safety equipment, suits, and breathing masks. There was no guarantee whatever is in its breath wouldn't be toxic to you, too."
"True," I agreed readily enough. I couldn't argue that my actions had been safe. But it had been my choice to make, not Mike's or Aranu's or anyone else's to criticize.
"Don't mind me over here, I'm still recovering from the ten heart attacks I just had," Claire gasped from behind Aranu.
Of course that didn't mean they wouldn't.
"Mark, did you see that? The venom didn't kill her."
"I saw it."
I glanced over Claire's shoulder and saw Mark steadily watching the life breather across from me. "That was foolish, by the way, Aries," he said absently.
"Behind you!" Claire shouted.
I whirled in time to see a flash of white come up on the breather who was still at the fence, watching us as intently as we were watching him, the battle momentarily, foolishly, forgotten. But now everyone seemed to explode into activity.
Mark rushed forward and thrust his sword into the coatyl closest to the life breather. At the same moment, Aranu threw himself forward and to the left, gripping the breather by the shoulders and hauling him to the side and out of the immediate line of fire. A second coatyl broke away from the writhing crowd and ran at us. I whipped a fresh arrow from the leather-bound quiver, slipped it into place, and sent it flying. It wasn't a kill shot, only making it into the creature's shoulder, and shallowly at that, but it stopped him from reaching us.
The breather shook itself free of Aranu and turned, exhaling into the now slowed down, snarling coatyl's face. Watching the creature writhe, then fall, an idea took shape. Well, not so much an idea as the blunt edge of conscience. I winced as, in the distance, a breather's torso was ripped open.
"Mark." I raised my eyes to his and he lifted a brow. "We could stay back here safe behind the fence?or the illusion of it?but it's not right."
"No, it's not," he agreed, green eyes cutting to the violence raging mere feet from where we stood relatively safe and as far as the coatyl knew, untouchable. "But just because the life breather's venom didn't hurt you, because this particular breather didn't hurt you, doesn't mean the others won't try and attack us some other way. They may not realize we're trying to help."
"I can't stand here and watch them die."
Long moments passed where he regarded me in silence but finally he nodded and motioned to the men closest to us. "We're going in, guys. Everyone go quickly and tell a group of ten, then instruct them to do the same. We don't want to announce our intentions. Not that the coatyl won't know when we all jump the fence in about three minutes, but we don't want them going into a frenzy before we're on the other side with them."
"Right, sir," one of his men replied. "What's the plan?"
"Protect the life breathers. Everybody find a blue guy to pair up with and then shadow him," Mark instructed without wasting any more time. "This is very important men-and women," he added as if just now noticing the group of nymphs that had gathered around us. "The life breathers' lung and stomach areas are their weak spots. We have to guard their fronts and give them an opportunity to breathe their toxins onto the coatyl. Make sure everyone knows the gases are only harmful to the coatyl."
"Got it."
"One more thing, Raun, double up around the perimeter. I need at least a two-to-one ratio. No one escapes."
Raun and the rest of the soldiers nodded and moved swiftly into the crowd to carry out Mark's bidding.
Claire briefly touched her fingertips to my forearm. "Be safe," she said, wide-eyed.
I nodded and tried for a confident smile, knowing the gesture was a complete fail. My face felt stiff and frozen. Safe? I spun around and took up my previous place at the fence. The same breather that had touched my hair moved to stand across from me. With a small sigh, I inclined my head toward my unlikely ally. I'd be anything but safe, but I would try to be careful.
"Hold on," I murmured to the breather. "We're coming over to help you." The creature shifted its weight from one foot to the other. It's nervous. Once again I was struck by the level of comprehension it displayed. "Soon. It won't be long now." I forced my lips into another awkward smile and tried for reassuring. Despite the language gap, the breather seemed to have no trouble understanding what I was saying.
Were they capable of speech? And what had they been like before Kahn had mutated them? Granted, I wasn't familiar with every form of man and beast-and the many combinations in-between-in Terlain, but I had traveled extensively. That much came with the territory of search and rescue?and war. And true, I wasn't exactly at my best right now, but I was still pretty sure I'd never so much as heard of a scaly blue, hairless race of people with paper thin, nearly transparent midsections, no discernible gender, and amazing lung capacities. Hadn't someone said they were northern creatures?
"On ten, men!" Mark's baritone rang out, clear and coldly determined. It was time.
In spite of any misgivings I had-and there were only about a hundred of them-excitement roared through my veins as hundreds of soldiers rushed forward, flowing around me and leaping over the fence in a thunderous torrent. I let their battle cries wash over me and fill me with the familiar hum and flow of energy. The blade became lighter in my hand. I hardly felt the weight of the quiver and bow at my back. Gripping the rough, uneven wood, I braced my weight on one hand, twisted my hips, and overtook the fence in a graceful leap to land on my feet on the other side.
The breather took a hasty step back and I pointed my blade toward the ground. "I'll guard you," I said, pointing to the soft flesh of its midsection. "And you worry about breathing. Let's go!"
Around us,
the battle had erupted into complete and total mass chaos. Blood began to seep into the ground in astonishing amounts and I was relieved to see that most of it was thick and oily and dark. Most, but not all. I ducked around another soldier and narrowly avoided tripping over a man on the ground.
Long, deep lacerations cut a wicked-looking path across the man's chest. His breathing was shallow. Within a few seconds, the thready rise and fall of his torn chest stopped altogether. It always felt wrong to leave them, but obviously at the moment there was no other choice. My arm came up and I slashed the throat of a coatyl who moved too close to my breather. Later, we would collect our dead. Later, we would grieve for those lost. Right now, we would survive.
Harsh, maybe, but we had all known the risk when we'd hopped the fence. Screams and shouts from the men mingled with the snarls of a hundred coatyl, and I pressed on, dodging and weaving in time with my breather in the age-old dance of war. Slowly, the tables began to turn. The double guard at the perimeter meant the coatyl were hemmed into an ever-tightening circle.
The breathers continued to exhale their blue crystalline mist, over and over until the air was thick with it and the few coatyl that still lived were in the process of suffocating. Waving my hand in the blue fog, I moved and almost fell over a body that I couldn't even see clearly. My breather's hand shot out and righted me almost immediately.
"Thanks." I grinned, lungs burning from exertion. The steady thump of my heart signaled the battle was over-and won. My companion nodded briefly and I shoved my knife back into a faded leather sheath, then spun a slow circle, surveying the damage as the bulk of the mist dissipated.
The clearing was filled with bodies, many of which were on the ground. Most were coatyl, some were soldiers, still more were life breathers. But we'd managed to save most of them, and the coatyl were all dead. Taking hold of my breather's hand, we picked our way across the sea of white, to where Mark stood beside Claire and Mike and a larger group of decidedly worse-for-wear soldiers. I nodded in response to Claire's worried perusal and unspoken question. Yes, I was fine, in one piece anyway, which meant I'd at least fared better than those who were lying on the ground behind us.
"Which way did they go?" Mark asked, accepting one of several thick, coarse brown cloths that were being passed around the crowd. He made quick work of wiping the blade of his sword, sheathing his weapon and handing the cloth on to the next person.
A tall, muscular soldier shifted in the crowd and I saw Aranu. His eyes were cool and they held mine captive as he answered Mark's query. "They headed west. Seven of my men are already headed their way."
"Good." Mark nodded. "How many is a few?"
"Four." Aranu's gaze shifted to the western skies, then lower to that section of the forest. His smile was brittle and sent a chill along the back of my neck. "They won't escape."
Several men began a loud, rousing cheer until Mark raised one fist into the air and demanded silence. "Kahn still lives! He's still out there." His voice rose and fell over the crowd, a grim reminder of what lay ahead.
"Then let's end this now. Today!" someone shouted, causing another wave of cheering to erupt around the clearing. Here and there, the faint bluish glitter of the life breather's mist-venom still lingered.
"More blood will be shed before this day is over," Mark shouted, pulling no punches with the people who had pledged their support to him-to Terlain. "But, one way or another, it will be over today. This will end."
I watched Claire unobtrusively slip her hand into Mark's much larger one, and I wondered what this was costing him. Did he regret the crossroads he stood at today? That it had come to this, kill his own father or let him go free. Letting Kahn go would obviously be a mistake that would have deadly consequences.
"I'll follow where you lead." I spoke up, loud and clear, and leveled my gaze on the crowd, a simultaneous vow and a challenge. Men and women raised their voices in vibrant agreement and the noise level that swept through the clearing became a pulsing, living thing. The crowd was pumped and ready for action. We could do this. Together.
And so it was decided. We set out immediately to a place that, of the lot of us, only a handful had ever been. Kahn's Meadow was an innocuous enough sounding place, but no one who marched with us was fooled by the name. What lay beyond the gates at the end of the beautiful glen we were approaching housed the empire of a cold-blooded killer.