Page 35 of Fate's Bane
I would, Father. I would.
I left Gurdhri dancing in the fog behind me and shouted for Hadhnri again.
The fog was so thick now that I knew it for the fates-bane’s doing. The full weight of its ill-balanced hand lay upon us. All around me, fighters struggled against our Makings. A man with Clan Elyin’s split-moon beneath his eye sat on the ground, his face long with despair, his axes forgotten at his side. A woman of Clan Pall knelt in the mud, clutching her hand to her ears and begging someone to be quiet, please,please. Another woman swatted at the bite-flies that swarmed to her leather helm.
Our Makings were working, but our plan had not succeeded. Not yet.
“Hadhnri!” I called again, willing the fog to part for me, as Gurdhri’s shoes had danced at my command, but I had not Made the fog, and it was not mine to command.
“Agnir!”
Gunni First-Born Pedhri Clan Aradoc emerged fromthe fog before me. Blood speckled his face and smeared his hands. His face was twisted in a rabid-dog sneer.
My knees went soft.
He swung at me and I fell to the side, narrowly missing a blow meant to cleave me from shoulder to hip.
Gunni has a daughter now.
“Brother! Please.”Please, please, please.How often I had said that word today, and how often it had been ignored. “You once called me sister. Will you listen to me? Where is Hadhnri?”
The fury in Gunni’s face faltered, and his sword slammed to the ground. Hope skipped in my chest. The hilt grip I had Made still wrapped his age-day gift. He snarled in frustration and yanked the sword up to point at me again, but I could see the effort it took to hold it in the strain of his forearms. The luck-hound was with me.
“‘Sister?’ You betrayed us. We fight today because ofyou.”
“You killed Onsgar at the clan moot,” I growled. “You knew what this would do to the clans!” I felt the crack of the dried ashes on my forehead as if it were only yesterday I had made my death-oath against Pedhri Clan Aradoc. Against Gunni Clan Aradoc.
A glimpse of anguish turned Gunni into the boy I’d seen at the dueling ground. His sword slammed back to the ground. He yanked in vain to raise it. “I asked him to yield,” he whispered.
“He was my brother. He was an heir of Clan Fein. Please, Gunni, tell me where she is.”
He shook his head. “You do not deserve her, Agnir Clan Fein. She is too brave, too loyal for a Fein snake like you. She will do her duty to our clan and unite us in peace with the Queen-Beyond-the-Fens.” His muscles bunched as he ripped his sword up again. It seemed lighter this time, and he brought it high.
His words cut. They would not have, if some part of me did not agree. I spoke anyway, through my sudden tears.
“Against her will? Though she is already wed to me?”
He hesitated, straining beneath the blade’s desire to plummet. “You should have known your place, Agnir.”
As Gunni’s blade swung down toward my head, I reached for the luck-hound’s cord, the cord binding me to Hadhnri.
I shut my eyes. I whispered her name.
THEEND
Poor girl. Oh, you silly child. Run you then to your true love’s side. She calls for you.
It is the fate of lovers. To call. To come.
But what can you do when fate’s terrible blade swings toward her throat?
How quickly can love carry you?
And when you are too late?
When you learn that even heroes cannot forsake their fates?
You will drown your grief in the River Ene, where we all began and where everything, even stories, even magic, even love, at last must end.
