Page 80 of Winter's Echo
“You let hergo?” I hissed at him.
“They were holding her against her will.”
“She wastraded,” I corrected him with a fierce growl. “You don’t interfere with the system when they outnumber us, and they could have traps and lookouts all around us!”
“Their system is flawed.” Baxley looked me over from head to foot. “You condone what they do?”
I pushed the hood of my cloak back to glare at him. “Ofcoursenot, but I know when to pick a fight and when to walk away.”
Baxley shrugged. “Haven’t learned that yet.”
The soldiers also had their weapons drawn, and I had no idea how to get them out of this bloodbath.
“You let her go with no resources, no means of transport other than her feet, and I assume in the clothes she was wearing?” I asked Baxley. When he nodded, I tilted my head back and looked at the sky. “She’s already dead.”
Baxley scowled at me.
“She was amerchant’swife, Baxley. They’re not usually adept at navigating the wilds of Crystallese. It’s unlikely the merchant was from here, so she would have been both a foreigner and ignorant of our conditions, and have absolutely no idea where the next town is.”
The snow cloud was drawing closer. There was no point in running. They’d only chase us and pick us off one by one.
“Flatten the snow around you,” I ordered the others. “Give yourself sure footing. I won’t be able to talk you out of this.” I shot a glare at Baxley.
“I wouldn’t object if you wanted to try,” one of the soldiers told me.
“I can’t,” I told him flatly. “My word has been broken. I told Vorn I wouldn’t interfere. A trailfinder’s worth is measured by the weight of their word. The moment he released her, my worth became nothing.”
Baxley glanced at me, and seeing the truth in my stare, he had the decency to look guilty.
“You three better be worthyourword on how good you can fight,” I said, standing apart from them. “No stranger’s life is worth the death that is coming.”
They came at us the same way they'd appeared before: bold, unafraid, and sure they were right.
In this, they might have been.
I counted to eight before I stopped counting and started moving backward. This was the mercenaries' fight. If I had my way, Captain Marson and his men would be standing back as well.
“Tight formation.” Captain Marson didn’t shout it. He just said it in the tone that he expected to be obeyed. “Now.”
To their credit, the soldiers responded faster than I expected. Captain Marson had them closing ranks before the first of Vorn's men had covered half the distance between us.
Vorn was not among them. That was the first thing I noticed. The second was that, as I suspected, they weren't moving like men who wanted to talk.
The first blade came from the left, fast and low, aimed at the nearest soldier's legs. He got his sword up in time, deflecting rather than blocking, and even from here, I could see the impact jarred all the way to his shoulders.
“Left flank,” Marson snapped.
Nicco was already there.
He moved the way I knew he would, without announcement, without wasted effort, with the economy of someone who had done this so many times it no longer required thought. He put himself between the advancing men and the soldiers' left flank, and the first man to reach him was stopped abruptly and didn't get up again.
Larana was on the right, moving quietly and with purpose. Her blade was drawn, and she fought the way she watched, with deliberate intent, as if she'd already decided exactly what she was going to do before the fight even began.
Baxley said nothing. He simply stepped forward, and the two men coming at him adjusted their approach, as people do when they realize the obstacle in their path is larger and more dangerous than it had first appeared.
I stayed at the back, where I was most useful and least likely to be accidentally killed by one of my own companions. I used my staff and my sword on anyone who got past the others, which wasn't many, but it wasn't none either.
A man charged at me low and fast, aiming for my knees, but I sidestepped and brought my sword down flat across his back. He fell face-first into the snow, and I stepped back from him. He wasn’t wounded, and when he looked up at me, I held his gaze, hoping he understood my non-attack for what it was. A wish not to draw blood.
