Page 72 of The Shadowed Oracle
Alkaleese started into a gallop, those thunderous steps leaving divots in the grass. Ingrid held on tight as the horse took her down the path they’d been traveling, her hair whipping in the wind, eyes watering, and enduring the hard smack against her most intimate of areas as she strained to keep her balance.
She hadn’t expected it to be easy.
Alkaleese leapt and landed hard on a patch of dry grass circling a heavily scourge-affected plant that resembled a maple shrub, causing Ingrid to bite her lip. She could taste blood. Thespeed disoriented her, but she dug in with her feet, activating her abdominal muscles, relaxing her shoulders and arms so she wouldn’t spook Alkaleese.
Slowly, Viator and animal synced up.
“I am your rider,” Ingrid whispered. “And you are my friend.”
The words were just as much for her as they were for the beast. The pain and fear in Ingrid’s body dissipated with each utterance.
“I am your rider. And you are my friend,” she said again, and again, repeating the mantra until Alkaleese trotted lazily back to Dean and Raidinn.
The two of them only gawked.
“I don’t care if she bucks me back across the border,” Ingrid declared. “And I don’t care if there aren’t enough magic plants to cloak her. I’m not walking another step through this hell.”
There was no argument.
Dean and Raidinn just turned their attention to the other two riderless horses, sizing them up.
Chapter Twenty-Two
There wasno time to wait for Tyla to regain consciousness before they rode off. They strapped her to Raidinn’s mount using a rope one of the Viator soldiers kept in a satchel hanging off his saddle, then took off at maximum speed.
Ingrid quickly learned that riding a horse could be more exhausting than walking in some ways. Her arms, legs and core were on fire within minutes. She wondered if there was some trick to it, but screaming over the sound of the hooves to ask didn’t seem like the best way to stay inconspicuous.
The details she’d gathered in the few moments before they left were strictly about the destination and how they’d get there. Dean had handed her the map and retraced the same path he’d shown her the night before. He explained why riding with the Banebrook sigils, which had been sewn into the wool blankets worn by the horses, might have been just as effective as Spectis Weed. Variann horses, the rare breed that Alkaleese belonged to, were only found near the shores of Banebrook, at the foot of the Variann mountains. Seeing as these animals were precious tools of war, the generals and breeders kept the beasts for themselves for thousands of years. Only Banebrook soldiers rode them, flying Banebrook banners and wearing the Banebrook sigil.
Their enemies wouldn’t blink at a small group of what appeared to be their ally soldiers riding through at a full gallop.
They dashed through the night, only stopping to rest the horses and feed themselves. Tyla was awake by the first interval, apologizing for being so slow when evading the first soldier. She’d gone left, she lamented, while the horse had gone right, its massive shoulder clipping her leg and sending her spinning like a top to the ground, and hitting her head on a stone lying beneath the tempest bush.
Raidinn made a few jokes to mask how emotional he was now that his sister was okay. Tyla apologized to him, gripping his hand, causing her brother’s mouth to go tight. Then the foursome briefly discussed sleep before deciding to continue on. They were eager to continue and weren’t sure they’d be able to shut off their minds anyway.
All the vibrant colors of this new world meshed together to form a traveling abstract painting as they passed through Banebrook and finally Nockspring at fifty-plus miles per hour. They rode through towns with glowing pyres lighting their paths. Families walked through the outdoor markets full of freshly picked produce. Massive gardens of tall, oddly shaped stalks, colorful fruit trees and bushes, as well as hundreds of purple and blue root leaves sprawling out for miles.
Ingrid was experiencing Ealis for the first time. Or, what Ealis appeared to be when you travelled so fast that it was easy to miss the signs of war and disease. What Ealisshouldbe. A sacred haven for those who took only what they needed, and were grateful enough to give back in equal measures to their home. This was what Dean’s mother had spent her life fighting for. A chance at a better life. A place for her son to live among Viator like him. She was willing to die for it. For this.
They beat on, backs to the wind, until they reached another line of thick brush.
“At the foot of those trees!” Dean called out.
Ingrid snapped away from her pleasant dream to guardedly search for what lay ahead.
“What is it?” Tyla said. “I can’t see!”
Dean only pointed, waiting for the rest of them to make sense of the carnage. In the darkness, they looked like small hills or bunkers, scattered throughout the war-torn battlefields.
“Bloody hell,” Raidinn cursed.
“Are those…?”
They weren’t bricks or stones stacked high ahead. They were bodies. A mess of limbs and mutilated corpses stained a sickly red-brown.
They drew closer, stopping out of necessity once it became clear how littered the ground was. The terrain was unsafe even for Variann hooves. Soldiers were stacked like roadblocks. Like they’d charged from the north and met an impenetrable wall, piling atop each other as they tried and failed to climb their own brothers in arms to make it to the other side.
As they tiptoed through the macabre scene, more and more rotting bodies seemed to sprout from the ground. They were everywhere, hundreds and hundreds of them, peppering the entrance to the forest separating Nockspring and Maradenn, all stinking and ridden with vulturous insects.
