Korrak left the road before the dust had settled behind him.

  He ran hard for twenty strides, then veered into the fields where thorn and scrub would tangle the legs of mounted men. Shouts carried faintly on the night wind, but each step took him farther from the glow of Veyra’s burning square. City guards did not relish hunting ghosts beyond their walls. They would wait until they had numbers. He had some time on his hand.

  An arrow hissed from the dark. No doubt from the tower archers.

  It struck his thigh and tore through flesh in a line of white-hot pain. His leg faltered. He dropped to one knee, breath ripping from his chest.

  He broke the shaft with one hand and wrenched the head free with the other. Blood ran warm down his leg, soaking into his boot.

  He rose anyway.

  The night air cooled the sweat on his skin. The sword at his side hung heavy now—no hum, no cold light. Only steel.

  He angled toward a stand of trees that loomed black against the low sky. An ancient oak rose at their center, its trunk broad and twisted, roots coiling above the earth.

  There he paused.

  “Hollick,” he called, voice low but steady.

  Only wind answered.

  No small feet. No hurried whisper.

  They had gone ahead.

  Good.

  His vision blurred at the edges. The wound throbbed in time with his pulse. He pressed a hand against it and felt the heat beneath torn flesh.

  He would not fall within sight of the city.

  He turned from the oak and limped toward the sound of moving water. The river lay not far, its murmur soft and constant in the dark.

  He reached its bank and sank to his knees. The water was cold when he cupped it to his lips. It tasted of stone and leaf and distant hills. He drank, then washed the blood from his leg. The cold bit deep and steadied him.

  The cut was clean. Deep, but not mortal.

  He tore a strip from his cloak and bound it tight around the wound. His fingers moved with habit born of long survival.

  When he finished, he sat back against the damp earth and laid the sword across his lap. In the starlight it was nothing more than tempered steel. The breath within it lay silent, spent for now. He could feel the emptiness where power had burned—a hollow ache beneath the skin.

  He understood.

  Power always demanded its due. He required rest. As long as the blade rested, he could draw Cinderbreath and heal the wound. But both he and the blade need time.

  The shouting had faded. The fields lay quiet. Crickets stirred in the reeds. The river ran on as it had before men built cities and would after they were ash.

  Korrak leaned his head back against the bank.

  The stars wheeled slowly overhead.

  His breathing steadied.

  When darkness took him, he did not fight it.

  Outside, the sound of searching men drifted nearer on the wind.

  Cold fingers struck his cheek.

  “Korrak. Korrak.”

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  He surged up from darkness with a growl, hand flying to his sword. Steel rasped half from the scabbard before he knew the voice.

  “It is I,” Hollick whispered harshly. “Would you gut the only man who dragged you from the riverbank?”

  Korrak blinked hard. The world swam, then steadied. Dawn had not yet broken. The sky between the trees was a thin, bruised grey.

  He pushed himself onto one elbow. Pain flared hot and immediate through his thigh.

  “I require rest, as does the blade.” he said, voice thick.

  “And you shall have it when we are not about to decorate Veyra’s walls,” Hollick shot back. He crouched low, peering through the trees toward the distant road. “They scour the banks. I saw torches not a quarter league from here.”

  Korrak stilled.

  There it was, faint but certain. The murmur of men moving in number. The careless snap of brush beneath boots unused to the wild.

  “The girl?” he asked.

  “Safe,” Hollick replied. “Hidden in stone and shadow. I took her ahead when you chose to bleed into the dirt like a dying ox.”

  Korrak grunted and forced himself upright.

  His leg buckled.

  Hollick swore under his breath and slipped beneath Korrak’s arm. “You are heavier than you look,” he muttered. “And you look quite heavy.”

  They moved through the undergrowth in silence, Korrak leaning more than he wished to show. Each step jarred the wound. The bandage was stiff with drying blood.

  The sword at his side was cold iron.

  He could feel the absence where Cinderbreath had burned before—an emptiness that left him only flesh and will.

  That would have to suffice.

  “I told you,” Korrak muttered as they pushed through thorn and brush, “I require rest.”

  “And I require coin,” Hollick replied without missing a step. “Coin is most useful to a man who continues breathing.”

  They reached a low rise of stone half-consumed by creeping roots and moss. At its base yawned a narrow cleft, scarcely visible unless one knew where to look.

  Hollick guided him inside.

  The passage widened into a shallow hollow hidden from the trees beyond. The girl sat there with her knees drawn to her chest. When she saw Korrak, she straightened at once, fear replaced with fierce watchfulness.

  He eased himself down against the cool stone wall.

  Hollick threw up his hands in silent exasperation. “I had imagined this venture differently,” he whispered. “Swift. Profitable. Instead we flee across fields while priests howl for our heads.”

  Korrak closed his eyes briefly.

  “Complain softly,” he said.

  Outside, voices drifted on the wind.

  Men searching.

  Boots scraping stone.

  Korrak’s hand tightened on the hilt at his side.

  Let them come closer, he thought.

  Not too close.

  Korrak woke to damp stone and the faint grey of morning at the mouth of the hollow.

  For a moment he did not move.

  He breathed in slowly. The fever heat that had clawed at him in the night was gone. Only a dull ache lingered in his thigh. When he shifted, the flesh held. The wound had closed to a pale seam, tender but knit.

  Skarnblood endured.

  The sword lay across his knees.

  In the thin light it looked like any other blade—scarred, worn, honest steel. Yet as his fingers brushed the flat, he felt it: a faint stirring, like heat returning to embers long banked. The breath within it was not dead. Only resting.

  He closed his hand and let the power seep out. Just enough. Within an hour his leg would feel new.

  Across the hollow, the girl slept beneath Hollick’s cloak. Her face was clean now. Her breathing even.

  “She has not wept,” Hollick said quietly from the mouth of the cleft. He stood with arms folded, watching the tree line. “Not once.”

  Korrak inclined his head. “She is stronger than those who bound her.”

  Hollick glanced back at him. “Ash-Blood,” he said after a moment. “That is what they called you in the square. They knew as I knew. The stories run deep.” He nodded at the sword. “Tell me more.”

  Korrak looked down at the blade.

  “There are seven such swords in the world,” he said. “So the old tales claim. Forged in the First Furnace when the world was young. Each quenched in a different sacred breath. Each bound to the will of the one who bears it.”

  Hollick’s brows lifted. “And you believe that?”

  Korrak turned the blade slightly. A faint ripple of cold light stirred along its edge and was gone.

  “I believe what it does.”

  He lifted his gaze.

  “It drinks Cinderbreath and answers to my will. It burns what it strikes. It leaves ash where men once stood.”

  Hollick’s eyes flicked to the seam on Korrak’s thigh. “And yet you bleed.”

  Korrak gave the faintest smile.

  “The sword grants no immortality,” he said. “It grants strength. Endurance. A measure of sight. Power to heal.”

  “And when the breath within it fails?”

  “Then I am only a man with steel.”

  Hollick held his gaze. “So the Ash-Blood may fall.”

  “All men may fall,” Korrak said.

  He rose, testing his weight. The leg held.

  “Come,” he said. “We return the child before Veyra gathers its courage.”