Clanless (28 page)

Gryphon drank from the stream but couldn’t slow his breathing enough to suck in the water. The ice-cold liquid numbed his chin. Blood rushed to his head as he leaned forward, causing his heart to beat in his temples.

“Be honest,” Joshua said. “How much am I slowing you down?”

Gryphon choked out a laugh and grabbed his cramped side. “I don’t know if I’ve ever covered so much ground in so little time. Even when I ran with the Raven.”

Joshua gave him a pointed look.

“Really, kid. At this rate we might actually catch them before sundown.” Gryphon hoped he wasn’t being too optimistic. He hated the idea of Zo spending one more night alone with those animals.

After drinking all their stomachs could handle, they set off at a slow jog to give the water time to settle. They covered another mile before Joshua broke the silence.

“What are you going to say to Zo when we find her?”

Until now, Gryphon hadn’t thought about anything beyond just getting her back. “I’ll think of something,” he mumbled, suddenly consumed with thought.

What would he say to her? How would she react to seeing him after all they’d survived over the past few weeks? He knew she cared for him to some degree. Joshua and Tess said she’d missed him and mourned him, but he didn’t even want to consider the possibility that she still might have feelings for Gabe.

“What about a song?” Joshua snickered.

Gryphon stopped running. “Not funny. Ram don’t sing, kid.”

Joshua continued at his usual pace down the trail. Gryphon had to stretch his legs to catch up to the boy. “I’ve heard you humming when you think no one is listening. Zo has too.”

“She has?” Gryphon’s heart beat faster. “When did she hear me?”

Gryphon could almost sense the cocky smile plastered to Joshua’s smug face. “She told me you used to sing in the Medica when I was asleep and you thought you were alone.” They ran another hundred yards before he added, “She said you have a soothing tone.”

Gryphon chewed on the inside of his lip.
A song
. The unsung melodies that had so often flitted through his mind—taking shape on the tip of his tongue—had disappeared of late. It was as though Zo’s presumed death had killed that part of him. Even now, with her life in so much in peril, the music existed just beyond his mental grasp.

It didn’t matter. Sharing his music with Zo seemed grossly embarrassing and entirely too honest. He’d look the fool while exposing his most naked thoughts. Never.

“It was just a suggestion,” said Joshua. “Relax.”

Zo spent the night using the sharp end of a rock to slice the monkshood into a pulpy mound. When finished, she coaxed the liquid into a bottle and firmly secured the wooden stopper.

Her fingers tingled with numbness from the residue of the plant as she rose to her feet.

Boar fell fast asleep after dinner, but his men watched her every movement—some watched in a way that made her uncomfortable. When Zo stood to rinse her hands in the nearby river, a man in Boar’s inner circle asked, “What are you doing?” He carried himself like a Ram and Zo had to wonder if he had been banished from the city-dwelling warriors like Boar.

“Just wanted to wash my hands,” said Zo.

The man gave her a quick nod, but kept his eyes fastened to her every movement, like a starving predator ready to devour his next meal.

Zo plunged her hands in the river and scrubbed. Boar’s guard approached her from the side, either to be certain she wouldn’t run or for some darker purpose. Both options seemed probable.

Zo pulled her hands from the icy water and practically ran back to her place by the fire and Boar. As dangerous as the Clanless leader was, Zo had no doubt he served as a sort of protection to her among this camp of wild men.

The following morning, while most of the men were packing up camp, Zo slipped the vial of monkshood in her pocket before rolling up her bed. One of the men at each of the three campfires tended a cook pot. Aside from Boar’s, one fire was shared by Boar’s inner circle, and the other by Ikatou and the rest of the Kodiak. Mostly they ate a stew-like concoction of broth and meat, with the occasional diced and boiled tuber. From the bland smell coming from the cook pots, this morning appeared no different.

When she thought no one was looking, Zo uncorked the vial and poured some of the monkshood into her and Boar’s pot. When she looked up, she met Ikatou’s questioning face. Zo didn’t dare keep eye contact, but purposefully stared at the other cook pot. The one shared by Boar’s inner circle.

How would they get the rest of the monkshood into that pot? How could she communicate her need for Ikatou’s help?

Ikatou turned away from her and went about his business. Clearly, he hadn’t understood her need. Zo would have to find a way to poison the other pot without his help and without drawing the attention of the rest of the camp.

Boar nudged her with a steaming bowl of stew, a ladle still dripping in his other hand. “Eat. We have to leave soon.”

Zo tried to hide a tremor of fear as she accepted the bowl of deadly stew. Killing Boar wouldn’t be enough. She needed to kill his inner circle as well if she wanted any hope of escaping this motley clan with her life.

Boar ladled his own food and together they sat on their folded bedrolls to eat. Steam curled off Boar’s stew as he blew across its surface. “The swelling on my forehead is down, but I still have a bad headache,” he said, conversationally. Then he took his first bite.

“That’s natural. You lost a lot of blood. Fluids will help.” She held her own bowl to her lips and pretended to drink.

The instant the broth touched her lips, the skin around her mouth tingled with a hint of numbness. She didn’t let a drop in her mouth.

If Boar felt the effects of his stew too quickly—before the other men had a chance to eat—she was dead.

Behind them, someone shouted a curse and the camp turned to pandemonium.

Zo spun around to see Ikatou and a member of Boar’s inner circle shoving each other. Ikatou ducked to avoid the other man’s fist and answered with an uppercut of his own.

Boar set down his bowl, and as if he were excusing rowdy children said, “They get like this from time to time.” He stumbled a little as he stood, and cleared his throat a few times as he moved toward what had become a full-fledged battle between Ikatou and his opponent. The other men formed a ring around the combatants and Zo didn’t squander the opportunity.

She inched toward the other fire and fumbled with the vial of monkshood. She twisted the cork while it was still in her pocket, careful to keep it upright when the cork came free of the bottle.

Boar shouted, “That’s enough,” and a few of the men helped to pull the two apart.

But Zo still hadn’t reached the other cook fire. She sprinted the rest of the way to the fire and instead of pouring the uncorked vial into the cook pot, she threw it into the stew, vial and all.

“We leave in five minutes if we want to reach the Gate and your new clan by nightfall,” Boar ordered. He cleared his throat a few times, shook his head, and staggered toward Zo. “You look like you’ve never seen two men fight before,” he said. He put his hand to his head and moaned, but didn’t complain further as they sat back down on their bedrolls and picked up their bowls again. He lifted a shaking spoon to his lips.

Around them, other bowls were filled and the camp divided back to their own fires. The men of Boar’s inner circle ate their stew as they talked while at Ikatou’s fire, the men ate with shifting glances.

Zo looked back to find Boar lying on his side, the bowl of stew spilled and forgotten. He tried to clear his throat a few times. “What’s … wrong with … me?”

Across the camp, one of Boar’s men shouted, “What’s this?” as he held up the empty vial. He examined it for a moment then looked directly at Zo. A few men cleared their throats; some scratched at their necks, as if that would bring some feeling to the numbness spreading throughout their bodies.

Boar tried to crawl toward Zo, but didn’t seem to have the strength to push his body off the ground. “You … ” A gargling gasp escaped his swollen lips. Drool rolled down the side of his face.

Boar’s eyes rolled back and with a sickening thud, his head connected with the earth. A sound she knew would haunt her dreams for the rest of her life.

She snatched up her medical kit and bedroll as the man holding her vial threw it into the fire. “Poison,” the Clanless man wailed.

Bowls clattered to the rocky ground and every wild and haggard man from Boar’s inner circle turned to Zo. She could tell they were feeling the initial effects of the monkshood, but it would take another minute or two to circulate through their bloodstream. Too much time.

Zo dove at Boar, pulling a long knife from the dead man’s belt. Rolling onto her back, she fumbled with the blade as one of Boar’s men ran toward her, his face twisted in rage.

Zo backed into Boar’s corpse, her hand unwittingly planted against his lifeless face, and she screamed.
It was as though time decelerated and hours passed in the moments that led up to her impending death by the hands of Boar’s men. How could she let this happen? To come so achingly close to freedom just to have it ripped from her fingertips. Tess. Joshua. Her arms throbbed with the need to hold them, almost as much as they ached to hold Gryphon one last time.

Just as Zo’s attacker lunged—his weapon arm raised above his head to kill—large Kodiak arms wrapped around his chest.

Ikatou growled, pulling the Clanless man away from Zo. The wild man stabbed at the air in front of her face. Zo rolled and ducked behind Boar’s corpse. She hid for two breaths before doubling her grip on Boar’s knife and peeking up over the body.

The Clanless attacker lay motionless on the ground with Ikatou standing over him, panting. Behind Ikatou, men cried out in agony as the Kodiak engaged Boar’s inner circle.

“Get out of here,” Ikatou pointed toward the trees then ran back to join in the fight.

Zo, still clutching the knife, climbed to her feet. She retrieved her medical kit and stumbled backward, unwilling to turn her back to the slaughter.

Even though it was the last thing she wanted to see, even though these images would haunt her for the rest of her life, she couldn’t look away. This minor massacre was her doing, and she needed to witness it, to claim it and carry the burden of her actions.

The last two fighters dropped to their knees, each clutching their throats. One fell forward, onto his face. The last man, Zo’s final victim, looked beyond the Kodiak surrounding him and met Zo’s gaze. He might have begged if he had any command of his lungs and throat. Instead, he stared until his eyes rolled up into his head and he too collapsed into the mud and gore surrounding them.

Zo tried to swallow but gagged. She couldn’t stay there, not a moment longer. She stepped over Boar’s dead body and sprinted into the cover of the forest. She tripped and fell on a dead branch, cutting a line of skin along her forearm. She stayed on the ground and watched the blood seep to the surface of her skin, shocked by what she’d done. She’d never killed a man before, let alone ten.

Ikatou, bruised and bloodied, stomped toward Zo, his chest heaving. “My portion of our agreement is complete,” he said. “It’s time to fulfill your promise of a blood oath.”

Three fires smoked, masking some of the stench of dead bodies scattered around them. Ten men. Clanless. “Check the forest. She might be nearby. Look for tracks. Whoever killed these men has Zo.” Gryphon bent down next to a man matching Stone’s description of Boar.

Was it possible?

Gryphon held his sleeve to his nose and circled the camp to look for clues that might help him find Zo. It seemed impossible that he could come so close to finding her only to have her slip through his fingers again.

Something crunched under his foot. Glass. He reached down and picked up a shard of what had been a glass vial. He’d seen something similar in Zo’s medical kit. Unthinking, he brought the broken glass to his lips and closed his eyes, imagining Zo here now.