Ashes of Snow

Chapter 7

MY WHOLE BODY coils like a tightly wound spring as I rush back toward the horse pen. In the dark I can barely make out the five shapes moving around our horses, throwing saddles and bridles and cursing at each other to hurry.

"Aerin!"

Sir's voice slams into me, warped with panic, and a small part of me leaps with desperation, wanting to hide until whatever is scaring the adults goes away. He tears past me, and to keep up I have to pump every bit of energy into my legs as I sprint over the grass. Everyone else is close behind —Selene, Bran, Robin, Lucien, and Pete. Doreah is the only one not among us, the only nonfighter in our group.

The scouts don't pause as we draw near, don't whip out weapons or try to slow us down; they just hurl themselves with renewed vigor into freeing the horses. The Spring soldier nearest to me uses a knife to saw at the rope tying a mount to the fence. I lurch to a stop and my new chakram flies from my palm, slicing through the soldier's neck in a quick, smooth hiss of motion before rebounding into my hand. The soldier jerks back like he smacked into a wall, the knife slipping from his fingers as he falls, knees clunking into the grass, mouth agape at the starry sky above him.

I leap over the fence and into the horse pen alongside everyone else, a wave of Winterian death.

The soldier I killed lies in a heap next to where I land, and I can't stop myself from looking at his face. He's young. Of course he'd be young. Not all soldiers are withered in years, covered in the blood of all the people they've killed, ready to die themselves.

I swallow. There's no room for emotion in war—another saying of Sir's.

Two of the men turn to form a makeshift barrier between one of their comrades, almost mounted on a horse, and us. Expressions murderous, they take in the soldier I killed and reach for the swords at their waists. But Sir is running, gaining on them, and they don't know it, but they're already dead.

Sir kicks off the fence and hurls himself into the air, curved knives in each hand. His blades flash in the night, graceful and deadly, and he arches like a snake preparing to strike. The armed soldiers haven't even fully swung to face him when Sir lands on the first, sliding the knives through the soldier's neck and into his torso. The force of the landing throws that soldier into the next one, and when Sir rips the knives free from the body, he uses the motion to slice the other soldier's throat. The two men fall, gurgling as blood pulses out of the wounds in their necks, while Sir pivots to the soldier they tried to protect, the one still fumbling to free the horse.

The man scrambles to face Sir, his eyes dropping to the bodies at his feet. "Please," he whimpers and grabs at the horse, misses, falls to the ground between the two men Sir killed. "Please—I beg you—"

Sir towers over him. "Where is your weapon?" His voice sends tremors of warning across my skin, the first sensation I've felt since I killed the soldier.

The soldier cowers. "I don't—"

Sir grabs a sword from the hand of a nearby dead man and thrusts it hilt first at the blubbering soldier, who hesitates. "Take it," Sir growls.

The soldier takes the sword. The moment the blade is fully in his grip, Sir lunges, slamming his knives into the soldier's chest. Cloudy eyes stare at me as the man's mouth bobs up and down, begging for one last breath, just one—One final dying moan, and he drops weightless alongside the other Spring soldiers.

Night makes the dead men look like nothing more than glistening bodies curled in sleep. When the sun comes, it will reveal the blood, the gore, streaks of red covering the grass inside the horse pen. A tangy iron stench hovers over the area, making my lungs burn. It should rain, a thundering, screaming storm, to wash all this away. The remnants of five lives— I stop.