Page 10

The band of eight is outnumbered…three to one? Four to one?

Back-to-back, Malice and Wonder brawl with five of them.

Love and Andrew dodge targets, vaulting around one another and firing. With his marred leg and minimal training, he lags behind yet manages to stay on his feet.

Anger roars, nocks three iron arrows, and takes down a trio. The velocity of his strike blows them off their feet like bowling pins.

Merry combats another pair, each strike her own shooting star as she bounds across the glade, heading for a flat object isolated on the ground. Originally, Sorrow had questioned Merry bringing her skateboard on this crusade, even if it has been the goddess’s mode of transport since her youth, since her exile from the Peaks. But there’s no questioning now. Merry jumps onto the plum-colored board, its mauve wheels zooming across the grass as if on a smooth surface. Speeding and curbing around trees, she looses a series of neon projectiles, baffling her opponents and providing backup for her friends.

At one point, an attacker is so gobsmacked by the vision of a goddess on a skateboard that it’s effortless for Merry to kick the vessel into the air, spiral through an arc of arrows, and slam the board’s flat into the archer’s gut.

Sorrow gets flashes of this while battling her opponents, twirling her arrows and letting them fly, ducking a fist and ramming her elbow into a jaw.

At the whistle of another arrow, she freezes. Unbidden visions shred through her conscious.

A grenade soaring. Exploding fireworks. Helmeted mortals.

Howling. So much howling.

A soldier caught in a barbed net, his lifeless body contorted like a broken puppet. A vast and smoky field pitted with mines. Another boy wailing, his stomach shredded.

Sorrow’s pulse launches into her throat. It’s always the same, always the same, always the same.

Oxygen grates through her lungs. Her temple pounds. She wrenches her head from side to side until the memories dissipate, until the ethereal forest comes into sharp relief.

Her muscles scream, because this is too much, and there are too many of them. And in spite of a deity’s imperviousness to temperature, stress and exertion are exceptions, perspiration beading down her spine.

And Envy? He charges through a brook, his hair untethered and his clothes torn. He hollers for everyone to follow him. Otherwise at this rate, they’ll run out of steam.

Even Malice is sane enough to concur as he checks on Wonder, who scales another tree and hurdles through the woodland, racing parallel to him.

Love shoves Andrew on the back of Merry’s skateboard and then scampers bug-like up the same beech trunk. Through the branches, Love darts beside Wonder, both of them weaving in and out of the offshoots.

Anger is a tornado crashing through the brook behind Envy. The gods exchange a glance, which Sorrow interprets. They had plotted their course with diligence. Between those in the group who’d grown up in the Peaks, they’d hoarded everyone’s knowledge of the terrain, then mapped out a clandestine itinerary. The journey comprises of uncharted passages to their destination, which is close enough that it shouldn’t take ages to travel, but not too close that they can’t rearrange their plan in case of an emergency.

Yet none of them had foreseen a crisis this soon. Fates, they’d just gotten here!

From this woodland, the next segment of their quest is supposed to be the mineral caves. Anger knows that geography, which drills through the valley bluffs to the other side. But with chasers on their tails, it could get dicey. Anger would be able to lose them in the winding passages, but in the disarray, their group could easily get separated.

Anger nods at Envy, signaling a change of plans. Since this area is reachable from few anonymous trails, including the one from which they’d come, and the other to which they’d been heading, there’s not much of a chance their assailants had traveled via those outlets. They’d been out here with children, but only some of the older archers have the miens of Guides, while the rest appear to be Sorrow’s age.

Which means this mixed group had been frolicking merely for diversion rather than training. In any case, these attackers must have come from the only other option: the river. And if they came from the river, that means they’d cruised here.

Sorrow watches this possibility sweep from Anger’s visage to Envy’s. Whereas one god knows the mineral caves, the other knows the waterways.

“Follow the brook!” Envy growls.

Sorrow hops backward, taking up the rear while targeting their pursuers. She yelps when a hand snatches the back of her vest and hauls her around. She barely has time to glare at Envy as he pushes her ahead of him, and he takes her place.

What the fuck? She’d had backup under control!

There’s no point in arguing, unless she wants to slow them down. Their band sprints out of the woodland, away from the world of toadstools, willow and beech trees, and jade foliage tipped in amethyst. They track the brook into a misty passage, the eddies spilling into a canal. Walkways of scrolling woodwork thread around clusters of waterfalls, and the landscape darkens into burgundy fronds.

They’ve gained a few leagues from the pack of archers. Out of range, Envy breaks from the rear and bypasses everyone, leading them down a complex network of planks. At the end of one, the sky opens. The canal inflates into a river, its current reflecting the distant constellations and blooming cliffs.

Envy stalls at the edge. Love and Wonder drop from the branches. Merry skids her board to a halt, she and Andrew jumping off the platform. Anger, Malice, and Sorrow jog up beside them.

Knotted to the walkway, a boat bobs like a cork in the river. It’s shaped like a star, with a silver wood frame and a pole at its center that radiates light. On the floor, a door encases a cubicle for weapon storage, feasibly empty since their chasers presently brandish their archery.