have you horsewhipped!” She pulled them close for another breathless hug, then pushed them toward the keep. “Move!”
They did. Tobin straightened up, near to fainting with anger and relief. And then she caught sight of Sioned. Myrdal was supporting her, for Sioned was only half-conscious. Tobin forgot her own dizziness and hurried over, wedging her shoulder beneath Sioned’s other arm.
“Get her inside,” Myrdal said. “Can you manage by yourself?”
“I can walk,” Sioned whispered with no voice at all.
Tobin looked her over. Sioned’s face, neck, and bare arms were blistered and bloodied. Even her hands, ringless now and without even white circles where those rings should have been, were sun-ravaged. And the body Tobin circled with her arm was nothing but bones.
“I can manage,” she told Myrdal. “She can’t weigh any more than I do. Sioned, come with me now, dearest. It’s all right. You’re home.”
“Tobin?”
“Yes, it’s me. You’re safe. You’re at Stronghold. Hang on to me.” She kept up the soothing words as they made their slow way into the castle. The coolness within revived Sioned a little, and she was able to support herself as Tobin helped her up the stairs.
“Where’s Rohan?”
“Gone to join Ostvel and the other troops come from Remagev.” She hoped so, at any rate, but there was no use worrying about that now.
Sioned nodded slowly. “I told him Maeta’s plan. Fool. He’ll want to lead the battle.”
“We’re, almost there. Just down this hallway and then you can rest.”
Tobin got her onto the great bed and stripped the torn clothes from her. The shirt had once been a beautiful garment, made of fine material and laced through with tiny violet ribbons. The color made Tobin’s jaw clench. Drawing a basin of water from the next room, she took up a soft towel and began washing Sioned’s feet.
“We had to walk, you see,” the younger woman said, her voice clear and colorless. “The dragons bolted the horses that first day. We couldn’t stop at Skybowl. The Merida left men there to watch for us. Oh, Tobin, that feels so good. Thank you.”
She ripped a pillowcase into strips and bound Sioned’s blistered feet. “Hush now. You just rest.”
“I wonder if I killed any of them with Fire,” Sioned went on in that strange voice. “Andrade would not approve. But it wouldn’t be the first time—or the last.” She stared up at Tobin, her green eyes hazy. “I’m a faradhi and a princess. What else did she expect of me?”
“She’s ordered the Sunrunners to support us against Roelstra.”
A thin smile curved the cracked lips. “Tobin, she did that the instant she ordered me to come to Stronghold.”
Tobin finished washing her. Later she would salve that burned, parched skin, wrap her in sheets soaked with herbs. But at this moment sleep was more important. She stroked back tangled red hair and placed a tender kiss on Sioned’s forehead. “Sleep now, my dear. You’re home.”
“Tobin. . . .” Her voice was dreamy, her eyelids drifting closed. “You must tell everyone . . . there’s going to be a son.”
The Merida, galloping back down the canyon, ran smack into the middle of another battle. Ostvel’s forces had come from Remagev, marching all night after riders hidden in the hills around Stronghold had reported the Merida arrival. Ostvel’s force fanned out into a half-circle and was engaged in closing it tight when Rohan and a few others who’d jumped on Merida horses rode into view. The sight of the prince brought two groups from either side of the arc to join in a rear assault. By noonday it was over.
The ten who were still in their saddles were relieved of their horses and armor, but not their lives. Rohan sat his horse with his borrowed sword across his thighs, watching the ten Merida haul their dead and wounded into the sand. He was sick with exhaustion and the battle just concluded, and he had no idea what was keeping him upright. But upright he stayed, with Ostvel silently at his side. When all the Merida had been accounted for, Rohan had the survivors line up before him.
“I will spare your lives,” he told them. “For I have a message for you to deliver. It requires that you sever the right hand of each of your comrades—dead or not.”
Ostvel caught his breath. Rohan cared not at all. When the grisly task was accomplished and the dying had been given a swift knife to the heart, he ordered the hands placed in saddlebags, one for