Clanless (Nameless #2)(63)
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.”
Chapter 25
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.
He dropped the shard and realized his lips tingled with numbness, a residue from the glass.
Gryphon went back to Boar’s body and, fighting the rising nausea in his stomach, bent down to smell near Boar’s mouth.
He gagged and stumbled over to the river to clear the rancid smell from his head. Poison.
Joshua knelt beside him at the river’s edge. “I think I found a new set of tracks.”
Gryphon dipped his hands into the river and splashed water on his face. It was cold and shocking enough to command his thoughts to plot their next move.
“She fought back, kid.” He gestured to the men lying dead in the rocky soil. “She poisoned Boar. I found one of her vials.”
“But all that blood. Those other men didn’t die from poison.”
Gryphon had to agree with the boy’s logic, even though it forced him to admit that someone must have killed those men, and, judging by the gore, it most definitely wasn’t Zo. She wasn’t fond of killing or watching others fight. Gryphon remembered the first day he’d met her. She had been forced by Gate Master Leon to watch a prize fight and afterward vomited in an abandoned alleyway.
It wasn’t hard to confirm Joshua’s suspicion that the victors of this small massacre left as a group. It seemed the men gathered out in the forest, away from where the fight took place. Gryphon dropped to his hands and knees and pressed his fingers into a set of tracks. The ground was damp here and the impressions easy to read, the walls of the track intact. A fresh trail.
“What if they did something to her when they found out she poisoned Boar? What if she’s in trouble? What if—”
“Slow down, Joshua.” Gryphon rested a hand on his shoulder. “Zo has been in trouble since the moment I met her. She’ll get out of this. She’ll find a way to survive.” She had to, for Joshua’s sake as much as his own.
How could one person have such a powerful impact on them in such a short amount of time? As a warrior, it was tactical to explore every outcome of a mission. To have a back-up plan in case things went south.