Conor’s heart ached. His mother nodded at him. Just go!
All the other Greencloak supporters were watching Conor, Rollan, Abeke, and Meilin to see what their next move was. There were few enough guards that the supporters would have been able to take them on easily if the earl hadn’t had Finn hostage.
“If you go,” the earl warned with the familiar Trunswick jeer in his voice, “I won’t just kill him now. I’ll put him back where he belongs. In the Howling House! Don’t worry, Finn Cooley! We’ll burn that troubled bond out of you yet!”
Finn’s hands shook, just as they had inside the Howling House. But when he spoke it was with a steady voice. “Go. This is bigger than me!”
Meilin hissed, “We can’t leave him.”
The earl traced the edge of his sword against Finn’s skin. A shallow wound appeared, a few beads of blood drawing a line across his neck.
Finn pressed his lips together. He looked straight at Conor. “Take the rest of them out of here.”
Conor needed a plan, but there was no plan. Meilin’s agonized face meant that she didn’t have one either. Rollan and Abeke shook their heads. His mother’s eyebrows pulled together. She was in over her head.
Was this how it had to end? Handing Finn over to their enemy?
Suddenly a wall of flame appeared. It roared and spat and devoured as it hurtled across the cobblestones. Straight in the direction of the earl and Finn. It was so out of place that it took Conor a long second to realize what it was. A cart, piled high with burning straw. Smoke rolled off it in great, choking clouds.
Conor searched the courtyard’s edge to see who had set the cart in motion. A small figure caught his eye. Dawson Trunswick, Devin’s younger brother. When he saw that Conor had spotted him, he nodded in a nervous way and vanished into the blackness.
The cart blasted toward the auction block. The earl and his lynx leaped off the side to save their skins. Finn leaped the other way. He plunged through the blinding smoke toward the kids while the earl cursed on the other side of the cloud.
“Run!” Conor’s mother shouted as Finn reached them. She touched Conor’s face. “Now’s the time to run, my son! We’ll cover you. Take Finn and go!”
Blaring through the smoke, the earl roared furiously. There were words in it, but they were lost in his rage.
“Thank you . . .” Conor whispered to his mother. “Thank you!” he called louder, turning to the Greencloak supporters.
“Long live the true Great Beasts!” someone shouted.
The rest of the supporters echoed it. His mother’s smile was a proud thing indeed.
Conor’s heart swelled.
Then the supporters turned back to the smoke, weapons out, ready for the remaining guards.
The kids ran for it. In the back of Conor’s head was the thought that it was lucky, or strange, that Zerif and the other children hadn’t made an appearance to help the Trunswick guards, but he was too relieved to be making a getaway to think long on it. If they got out of Trunswick alive, he could devote more time to wondering if their absence was due to cowardice or strategy.
But for now: They ran.
The sounds of battle rose again in the courtyard, but no one emerged to follow them. Their allies were holding back the guards.
Soon there was no sound except for the noise of their footfalls slapping on the stones. Then the scuff of their boots on the bare ground beside the Trunswick wall. And then, as they ran into the surrounding pastures, there was no sound at all.
Finn made a wordless gesture, and they all followed him into the blackest of nights.
10: Glengavin
FINN CONTINUED TO SAVE THEIR LIVES. ROLLAN, HAVING considerable experience being chased, was fairly certain that the group’s escape from Trunswick was thrilling but temporary. After all, he’d seen the smug Earl of Trunswick. More important, he’d seen the Earl of Trunswick’s horse. Despite Rollan’s testy relationship with his former mount, he was well aware that most people were faster on horseback than on foot.
But the Trunswick guards didn’t catch up with them.
This was because Finn led them on an untraceable path. Close to Trunswick, he walked them through rivers to keep from leaving scent trails for hounds to track. After they’d put some distance between Trunswick and themselves, he led them into a strange, boulder-filled forest that no horse could enter. Tree branches hung as low as Rollan’s waist. The rocks were covered with perpetually damp moss that ripped free if he wasn’t careful as he climbed.
They walked and walked, over stranger and stranger trails. The more foreign the surroundings grew, the more comfortable Finn seemed to become. After he seemed satisfied that their path had been obscured enough, he scratched maps in the dirt with a stick and constructed shortcuts, mumbling to himself as he thought.
Which was how Rollan found himself hiking through deceptively friendly-looking green mountains, a rope around his waist connecting him to the next person in line, who also had a rope around their waist to the next person in line, and so on. The idea was that if Rollan fell, he’d have a safety catch. Rollan thought it was more likely that if he went down, they were all going down. But he guessed there was some comfort in the promise of company on the way down the mountainside.
As they traveled, Finn taught them an ancient Northern Euran method of sending coded messages.
“This is how you spell Abeke,” Finn explained. He’d tied a mysterious number of knots into a ribbon. It didn’t make much sense to Rollan, nor, Rollan noticed with some satisfaction, to Conor (who had been moping about since they left Trunswick anyway). Abeke and Meilin looked on very keenly, however. Finn continued, “You would just tie this ribbon onto the legs of a gilded pigeon from Trunswick and let it go. It will fly back to its home with your message.”
Rollan couldn’t think of anyone at the moment that he would send a message to. Possibly he could just write Dear Mother, thanks for nothing, and send that bird in the general direction of Amaya.
They also talked about what Zerif had said about the Bile. At the news that the spirit animal bond could be forced, Conor’s face became pensive, but Rollan wondered if it would really be such a bad thing if people could choose what sort of animal they had to live with for the rest of their lives. He didn’t say it out loud, though. He could tell by the others’ faces that it wouldn’t be a popular opinion.
They hiked for what felt like weeks, although it was really just days. Rollan ate all the interesting food in his pack, and then all the boring food, and had finally started in on the unappealing food. Meanwhile, the landscape grew harsher and more unforgiving. The mountains became more gray and less green, with savage rocks biting up through the grass. The fields that stretched below turned dry gold and purple, beautiful but unsatisfying for any livestock. They passed no towns, no farms, no houses, no people.