The Triumphant (The Valiant #3)(53)

And froze.

A pair of wide yellow eyes, glowing in the moonlight, stared down at us from less than three arms’ lengths away.

“Cai . . .” I whispered.

He didn’t seem to hear me.

“Cai . . .”

“Fallon? What—”

“Shh!”

I nodded my chin up, without taking my eyes off the large gray wolf that stared back at me and huffed out a breath of blue mist through quivering nostrils. I could feel Cai’s arm muscles tense and heard the scrape of stone on stone as he picked up a rock. The wolf tilted his head and let out a low warning whine. Cai tossed the rock—not even attempting to hit the creature, more just to send a warning back—and the beast huffed again and backed up on shifting paws. Then he yawned, as if bored by a pair of silly lovestruck humans, and loped away with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.

Cai sat up, frowning. “I think he was laughing at us.”

“If he was, he had every right to do so,” I said ruefully, sitting up on my elbows and trying to catch back some of the breath Cai had stolen from me. “Some night watch we are. If a wolf can get that close . . .”

Cai picked up the fletched end of Tanis’s arrow shaft from where it lay in the ground and held it up between us.

“Then a jackal might too.”

I shifted up onto my knees, plucking the broken arrow from Cai’s fingers and sighing. “I swear . . . if I even spot a jackal at a distance when we get to Alexandria . . .” I threw the shaft into the weeds.

“I wouldn’t worry,” Cai said, standing and stretching and holding out a hand to help me do the same. “All the jackals there are in the temples, guarding the gates to the underworld. All we have to do is stay alive, and they won’t bother with us.”

“Why does that sound like a task easier said than done?” I asked.

In the near distance, the wolf howled. But if it was in answer to my question, I couldn’t understand what he was trying to tell me.





XIV


WE WERE MORE than half a day out from Tarquinii without any further trouble and only fifteen or so miles away from Cosa when Charon, driving the lead wagon, called a brief halt before we reached our destination. I kept glancing at him surreptitiously as we stopped and dismounted to ease our cramped muscles and water the horses. He was a bit on the pale side, but his features weren’t drawn in pain, and—more to the point—Sorcha didn’t seem to think there was anything amiss. And she’d been sitting up beside him on the driver’s bench the whole time we’d been on the move.

I breathed a sigh of relief that, in light of the conversation—not to say argument—Cai and I’d had in the night that I wouldn’t have another guilty bruise to add to my tender conscience.

I wiped the sweat from my brow and nodded thanks to Acheron, dismounting as he came to take my horse over to picket with the others while we rested. There was a flat, scrubby patch of ground at the edge of the road and a little tumbling brook running through the field beyond. It was clearly a place that had been used as a way station by countless travelers before us and a good spot to check the horses’ hooves for any stones or bruising, as well as to feed and water them. A cluster of elm trees offered a welcome bit of shelter—a windbreak for Cleopatra to rest out of the reach of an incessant chill breeze that had dogged our journey all morning and into the afternoon. But the queen refused to take her ease until she’d helped Damya and Gratia set out a small feast of meat and cheese and bread from the Achillea larders for everyone to refresh themselves. I shook my head in wonder as Sorcha came to stand beside me.

“Look at her,” I said, nodding my chin in the queen’s direction.

“Still fresh as a lily.” Sorcha grinned wryly. “I know.”

“How does she do that?”

Sorcha shrugged. “She’s a daughter of the gods. How else?”

I shook my head in wonder, gazing around at the rest of our company, who were uniformly road-dusty and bedraggled . . . and, unfortunately, destined to stay that way.

“Sorcha . . .”

She turned sharply at the tone of my voice.

I lifted an arm and pointed wordlessly in the direction we’d just come from. At the cluster of black dots on the horizon to the south of us. Moving fast.

“Pack everything back up,” she said.

I didn’t even need the warning the Morrigan whispered in my ear. I knew what was coming. Sorcha knew too. Without another word, we both took off sprinting, Sorcha toward Cleopatra and me toward Antonia and Neferet, who’d flopped down on the ground not far from me, resting tired backs and legs.

“We have to go,” I said, reaching down to pull Neferet to her feet. “Now.”

Antonia frowned up at me, and I hooked a thumb over my shoulder. “Riders approaching,” I said. “Fast.”

“How do we know they’re after us?” Neferet asked, squinting into the distance. “This is the main road north—”

“They are. Believe me.” There was, of course, every chance that the riders were simply fellow travelers on the road. Merchants or citizens, maybe traveling fast—as we were—to get away from the turmoil in the capital. But I wasn’t willing to take the risk.

“But how would they have known which direction we went in the first place?” Antonia wondered, shading her eyes from the sun. “We could have gone anywhere—”