Not fast enough.
“Ya! Ya!” Lu bellowed, urging Yaksun on with her heels. The forest became a green smear around them, but still the hounds gained.
She heard the Ashina boy gasp in her ear as the elk leaped over a fallen log. A moment later she thought she heard him do it again, but—no. This time it was the hiss of a crossbow bolt flying past, a finger’s width from her head. Behind her came the yelling of men and the crash of horses through the brush.
“They’re here!” the boy cried, his fingers digging into her waist.
Shin Yuri’s voice rang in her ears. I know you think you’re invincible, but you can’t fight them all on your own.
“Time to find out, Shin,” she muttered, reining up hard with one hand, using the other to yank her sword loose from its sheath. The elk let out a bellow as a blur of dusky gray hounds laced between his legs, nipping and baying. He kicked one in the head, breaking its neck with an audible snap, The hound’s body sprawled across the grass. The rest backed away, bristling but newly cautious.
“What are you doing?” the Ashina boy hissed urgently in her ear. “Keep going!”
“Take the dagger from my hip,” she ordered. They would both be killed, but she could grant him the chance to go down fighting. He tensed at her back for a moment, as though he were considering fleeing, but then his hand slid down her waist and she felt the dagger slip from its sleeve.
“Stop!” her voice boomed out.
Caught off guard, their pursuers reined up hard: two figures wearing hoods, so she could not make out their faces. One of them jerked a crossbow up and leveled it at her. She hardly noticed; she was staring at their mounts. Not horses. Two shaggy brown war elk.
Hu soldiers.
Trust no one, not even your own men.
“Is this how you cowards would dispatch of your future empress?” Lu demanded, forcing the quaver from her voice. “With a crossbow bolt to the back? If you wish to kill me, show me your faces and come fight me as men.”
“I told you not to shoot,” hissed the soldier without the crossbow. “Idiot! It’s supposed to look like an accident, remember?”
His voice was that of a boy’s, cracking like a hinge in want of greasing. They were both boys, she realized with a start—young and slight upon their massive elk.
The one with the crossbow hesitated, his weapon dipping. He quickly drew it back up. “They can messy her up afterward—maybe a boulder fell on her, who’s to say?” There was the lilt of a smile in his excited voice.
“We shouldn’t do anything without the others.”
“Well, where are the others?” the one with the crossbow demanded, glancing behind them.
“They split off at the ridge,” responded the other, sounding very much as though he regretted the fact. “I don’t know what happened, but half the dogs broke off . . . I can’t hear them anymore. Wait, I know! I’ll blow my horn.”
“Do that,” said the one with the crossbow, sounding a little nervous now, the thrill of the moment worn thin. He turned back toward Lu. “You need to come with us, Princess. Dismount your elk and drop your weapons to the ground.”
He saw the Ashina boy at her back for the first time. His weapon dipped. “Who the—”
It was enough; Lu seized Yaksun’s reins and the bull elk charged. She raised her sword.
There was a twang as the boy with the crossbow fired. Panic shattered his concentration and the bolt flew low, whizzing past her thigh and planting itself deep in Yaksun’s flank. The elk screamed, rearing into the air.
The Ashina boy’s hands slipped from about her waist. Lu reached out instinctively to grab him, and then they were both falling. She caught a glimpse of tangled black tree branches overhead, the sun peeking bright white from between them. Motes of pollen and dust drifted in the light, lazy and scintillating.
They landed hard, in a tangle. The ground punched the breath from both their bodies. Everything was upside down, and the air rung with a cold, dead, gray sound, as if she were trapped in some great metal drum. In this strange new world, Yaksun thundered away from her through the trees.
Lu sat up and a hound lunged at her—only to fall limp, impaled on the end of the sword she had thrust forth in sheer instinct.
She pulled the blade free, wiping the dog’s blood upon the grass. The smell of it drove the others back in a frenzy.
There was a twang and a flitting sound; another crossbow bolt flew at her, but this time she merely tilted her head away to avoid the clumsy shot. She felt calm, her heartbeat steady and even. The world seemed to slow, as though each moment were awaiting her permission before it passed.
Lu stood and advanced, the edges of her world pulled tight around the boy rider upon his elk, and the weapon in his grip. Three steps; the Hu boy was loading a new bolt and cranking, cranking . . .
The crossbow was on the ground and he was screaming. There was blood upon her blade and blood spraying from the end of his arm where his hand had been, drenching his tunic, his saddle, his elk. The animal caught the scent, reared, and the boy fell, clawing at the air as though to call back the fleeing beast. He was screaming still, high-pitched and unrestrained, but he went quiet when she put her blade through his chest.
The other boy reined up and charged his elk at her, his sword raised. She leaped to the side easily and met his blade with a crashing blow of her own. His sword flew from inexperienced hands and speared itself somewhere deep in the brush.
He reined up and came back at her, pulling his bow from his back and nocking an arrow.
He should have run.
She could see his fear—in his halting approach, the way he clenched his knees tighter around his mount. He was not without skill, and he was brave—she would give him that much.
It would not save him.
She thrust her sword back into its scabbard and grabbed the throwing ax from her hip. The boy scarcely had time to register the movement before she had drawn back her arm and flung the ax in a horizontal arc across his path.
The elk realized its doom first and shrieked—an awful sound that shattered the air around them. A sheet of blood like red silk poured from the slash her ax had opened. The rider tumbled from the creature’s back, tried to roll. Too slow. The elk’s front knees crumpled, and it went down with all the weight in the world, crushing the boy beneath it.
He threw his arms out instinctively, pointlessly, and as he did so, his hood fell back. Lu saw his face for the first time: wide-set, honest eyes that were now filled with fear. A brown birthmark on his chin.
Her mind froze as Wonin of Family Cui let out an awful cry that rose over the crunching of his bones, his bravery finally broken.
The wood fell eerily still, as though the whole of the world were sucking in a breath. The quiet was punctuated by the violence of Wonin’s terrible sobbing.
Lu stared at his face, trying to understand the horror before her. Wonin’s legs were surely broken beyond repair, but he might still live if—no. She felt the flame of hope in her heart die as a bubble of shockingly red blood emerged from between his lips.
Unthinking, she stepped toward him. He had been writhing without aim, but at her approach, he thrust out a grasping hand. She raised her bow, fitting it with an arrow in a single motion, quick and soft as a gasp.
Blood burbled up between Wonin’s graying lips as he mouthed wordlessly at her.
But then she heard it. “Please . . . ,” the boy whispered.
She lowered her bow just a hair’s breadth, uncertain.
“Do it.”
Lu whipped toward the sound, her bow instantly raised. She had nearly forgotten the Ashina boy. He was on his feet. “What did you say?”
He snarled and leaped back. “Don’t point that thing at me!”
She frowned, but quickly lowered her bow. “What did you say to me?”
“The boy—he’s going to die,” Nokhai said, softer now. “He’s already dead; he just doesn’t know it yet. He’s got a gut wound, and internal bleeding, too, most like. He could be dying for hours. I’ve seen—it’s ugly, that kind of dying.”
She looked back at Wonin. He had ceased writhing and stared at them with the frantic stare of a wounded animal.
“Do it,” the Ashina boy repeated grimly. “Straight between the eyes; he won’t feel a thing.”
Lu raised her bow instinctively, then lowered it. When she looked in Wonin’s face, all she could see was Hyacinth. She couldn’t possibly have something to do with this, could she? She had wanted to make that visit home . . . No. Lu couldn’t even allow herself to think it. Not her best friend. The one closer to her than her own sister, her own skin.
“I-I cannot,” she said aloud.
“You can,” the Ashina boy assured her. “I saw you shoot just now.”
“It’s not that,” she said. “I . . . I can’t kill this boy. Not like this.”
“Why not?” He seemed annoyed. “You killed the other one without hesitation.”
“That was different. I was—it was his life or mine. This one is . . . I know him. I know his family . . .”
The baying of hounds cut through her words. From the sound of it they were close, just over the ridge. They had the high ground; they would be riding downhill, toward where she stood.
She looked up at Nokhai. His face reflected the same terse realization.
“Kill the boy,” he whispered, and she was surprised to see something like regret in his eyes. “Do it now. If he’s still alive when they reach him, he will give away your position. Our position.”
Lu raised her bow again. But whereas before the weapon had been a natural extension of her body, now her hands shook so badly she could scarcely keep the arrow nocked. Hot tears seared at the corners of her vision. She drew back, but her arms fell, and the arrow speared the ground.
She raised the bow again, the fletchings of her arrow bristling against her cheek. She took a deep breath and felt her heart slow, as clearly as she felt the dappled sunlight on her face, or the firm earth beneath her feet. The blood moved in her, steady and calm and sure.
Wonin’s eyes widened, his indistinct gaze struggling to focus on her. He grasped at the air, still fighting what was already inevitable, what was as good as done.
There was the gasp of her bow. The fletchings of the arrow sprouted like a dark flower from between Wonin’s eyes. He stared skyward, unmoving. He looked oddly at peace.