Uprooted(94)
Author: Naomi Novik

“Stop!” someone far behind us shouted, and an arrow sailed down, clattering against the rocks over our heads. Kasia stopped, pushed Marisha into my arms when I caught up to her, and took the place at the rear. Stashek threw a frightened look back at me.

“Keep going!” I said. “Keep going until you see the tower!” Stashek pelted on and vanished with the trail around a wall of rock. I heaved Marisha up close against me, her arms wrapping tight around my neck and her legs around my waist, clinging, and ran after him. The horses were so close we could hear pebbles crunching under their hooves.

“I can see it!” Stashek was calling from up ahead.

“Hold on tight,” I told Marisha, and ran as fast as I could, her body bumping against me; she tucked her cheek down against my shoulder and didn’t speak. Stashek turned anxiously as I came panting around the curve: he was standing on a ledge jutting out from the mountainside, almost wide enough to be a meadow. My legs were spent: I spilled to the ground, just barely keeping my knees long enough to put Marisha down without falling on top of her. We’d come out onto the southern slopes. Below us the path continued to snake back and forth across the mountain all the way down to Olshanka.

And on the other side of the town, in front of the western mountains, the Dragon’s tower stood gleaming white in the sun, still small and far away. It was ringed around with soldiers, a small army of men in yellow surcoats. I stared at it desperately. Had they gotten inside? The great doors were still closed; there was no smoke coming from the windows. I didn’t want to believe the tower had fallen. I wanted to shout Sarkan’s name, I wanted to fling myself across the yawning air. I got back up on my feet.

Kasia had stopped in the narrow road behind us. She drew out the sword I’d given her even as the horses came around the curve. Marek was with them, leading; his spurs were wet with blood and he had his sword drawn, his teeth bared in a snarl. His bay came charging, and Kasia didn’t move. Her hair was flying loose, streaming in the wind. She planted her feet wide in the trail and held the sword out straight, and Marek had to yank aside the horse’s head or ride directly onto the blade.

He pulled up, but smashed his own sword down at her as he twisted the horse on the narrow path. Kasia caught the blow and whacked it aside with pure brute strength. She knocked the sword straight out of Marek’s hand. It struck the edge of the path and fell over, disappearing down the mountainside with a wash of pebbles and dust.

“A pike!” Marek shouted, and a soldier threw him one; he caught it easily even as he wheeled his horse around on the path. He brought the pike around in a long, low sweep that nearly caught Kasia at the waist. She had to jump back: if he could knock her off the path, it wouldn’t matter that she was stronger than he was. She tried to grab for the end of the pike, but Marek jerked it back too quickly; then he immediately nudged his horse forward and pulled it up into a crow-stepping rear, iron-shod hooves lashing towards her head. He was herding her back: as soon as he reached the place where the road widened, he and the other soldiers would spill out and surround her. They could come past her at us, at the children.

I groped for the Dragon’s spell, the transport spell. Valisu, and zokinezh—but even while I tried to fit the words together, I knew somehow that it wasn’t going to work. We weren’t in the valley yet; that path wasn’t open to us.

My head was light with thin air and desperation. Stashek had picked up Marisha and was holding her tight. I shut my eyes and spoke the illusion spell: I called up Sarkan’s library, shelves rising up out of bare rock around us, golden-lettered spines and the smell of leather; the clockwork bird in its cage, the window looking out on the whole green length of the valley and the winding river. I even saw us in the illusion: tiny ant-figures on the mountainside, moving. There was a line of twenty men strung out on the trail behind Marek: if he could only shove his way into the wider ground, they would be on us.

I knew the Dragon wasn’t there; he was in the east, in Zatochek, where the thin column of smoke rose from the edge of the Wood. But I put him in the library anyway, at the table, the hard angles of his face lit by the candles that never melted; looking at me with that annoyed, baffled expression: Now what are you doing?

“Help me!” I said to him, and gave Stashek a push. The Dragon put his hands out automatically and the children tumbled into them together; Stashek cried out, and I saw him stare up at the Dragon with wide eyes. Sarkan stared down at him.

I turned back, half in the library, half on the mountain. “Kasia!” I cried.

“Go!” she shouted at me. One of the soldiers behind Marek had a clear view of me and the library behind me; he slung a bow down and stretched an arrow, taking aim.

Kasia ducked under the pike and ran at Marek’s horse and shoved the animal bodily back, both hands on its chest. It squealed and reared up, hopping back on its rear legs and lashing at her. Marek kicked her, snapping back her chin, and shoved the shaft of the pike down between them, just behind her ankle. He had both hands on the pike now, he’d dropped his reins, but somehow he made the horse do what he wanted anyway. The animal turned, he twisted his body as it did, gripping the pike, and he tripped Kasia up. The horse’s hindquarters struck her and swept her stumbling to the edge of the path, and Marek gave a quick, massive heave. She fell over: she didn’t even have time to scream, just gave a startled “Oh!” and was gone, dragging a clump of grass loose as she grabbed at it.

“Kasia!” I screamed. Marek turned towards me. The bowman let the arrow loose; the string twanged.

Hands seized my shoulders, gripping with familiar, unexpected strength; they dragged me backwards. The walls of the library rushed forward around me and closed up just before the arrow would have passed through them. The whistle of the wind, the cold crisp air, faded from my skin. I whirled, staring: Sarkan was there; he was standing right behind me. He’d pulled me through.

His hands were still on my shoulders; I was braced on his chest. I was full of alarm and a thousand questions, but he dropped his hands and stepped back, and I realized we weren’t alone. A map of the valley lay unrolled on the table, and an enormous, broad-shouldered man with a beard longer than his head and a shirt of mail under a yellow surcoat stood at the far end of it, gawking at us, with four armored men behind him gripping the hilts of their swords.

“Kasia!” Marisha was crying in Stashek’s arms and struggling against his grip. “I want Kasia!”