Page 21 of Swords of Soul and Shadow (Gate Chronicles #3)

NOT HIGHER THAN A GRASSHOPPER

Kase

“YOU’RE STARTING TO DRIFT A little, son.”

The words jolted Kase out of his thoughts. He winced, steadying the craft with a brush of his palm over the wheel.

So many hours flying at top speed in this strange hover had taken its toll. His head ached like someone had taken a hammer to the inside of his skull and attempted to crack the bone.

No Cerls on the horizon behind or ahead of them. At the height and speed they were flying, Kase doubted anyone could match them.

Pain spiked in his head, and blackness spread across his vision.

“Steady, steady!” Stowe yelled as Kase’s eyesight came back.

Towering trees appeared out of nowhere. They’d lost altitude.

Kase whipped the steering control up. His stomach followed. Déjà vu made his head swirl even worse; at least he hadn’t hit any Yalven columns that time.

“I’m going to land, ” Kase gritted out. The pressure in his head ground his teeth against each other. His stomach rebelled, but it’d have to wait. He could throw up when they were on the ground.

Faster than he would’ve thought possible, Kase landed at the edge of a meadow, the trees he almost crashed into standing unscathed behind him.

Stomach in his throat, he shut down the craft, and the ship went dark. He popped the windshield and pushed it up.

He unbuckled himself with shaking fingers.

Stowe was talking, but Kase couldn’t hear a word.

If he didn’t get out of the machine soon, anything he’d eaten in the last day would be all over the dashboard.

Finally, freed of his safety restraints, he scrambled out of the cockpit and down the hover wing—

And then he promptly heaved up the contents of his stomach onto the mottled brown and green grass.

He put his hand on the side of the hover to steady himself as he dry-heaved. The metal warmed under his fingers.

Stowe came up behind him, his footfalls crunching. “Let’s sit you against one of those trees there once you finish up.”

Kase couldn’t answer. Nothing was left in his stomach. His bones ached. It was like he had the latest strain of influenza that had passed through the capital a year back. Kase had been laid out for a week.

This time, he didn’t have soup to settle his stomach or books to read while he convalesced. Shocks, just thinking of it now brought on a whole new wave of nostalgia…and a little shame.

Maybe Bookshop Attendant Hallie had been correct about him. He’d been rather pampered, sure…but if he had the chance, he would go back to that in a heartbeat.

He tried to relax his muscles, but even as exhausted as he was, he couldn’t get the tension to release.

Was this his punishment for what happened in Nar? Was his body finally catching up with his actions? He’d shot Ossie. He didn’t think he’d killed him or the Cerl pilot, but he’d never know for sure.

Another wave of sick washed over him, and a third left his throat burning. He wiped his mouth, though nothing but spit and acid had come up.

If I hadn’t done anything, I would be dead. Stowe would be dead. I did what I had to do.

His heart skittered weakly. He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing himself to keep using Zeke’s method of dealing with Battle Fright.

If they’d figured out who I was, they would have imprisoned me and used me as leverage. They would’ve killed Stowe. I had no choice.

There was no Hallie to save with his name now.

An arm went around his shoulder. “Come on.”

A few beads of sweat dripped down the back of Kase’s neck and into his already damp collar. He steadied himself and tried pushing off from the older man. “Thanks.”

“Stop wriggling, boy, I got you.” Stowe didn’t let go of his upper arm until he’d walked Kase over to one of the trees and eased him down to the ground.

Kase’s body felt like it was about to fall apart at the seams. He leaned his head back against the tree, the bark scratching at his head and catching on his hair. He didn’t care. It was nice to just be, if only for a few moments. His eyelids scraped like sandpaper as he shut his eyes.

Stowe climbed back up into the hover. After a few minutes of shuffling, the man said, “I got something that’ll perk you right up, but I’d rather you rest a spell first.”

Kase didn’t even bother opening his eyes. “I’ll be okay.”

A few more moments with only a light breeze and the sounds of shuffling for company, Stowe’s footfalls crunched closer. “Drink some water.”

Kase could barely lift his head off the tree trunk. “I don’t think…I don’t think I can even swallow.”

If he hadn’t been so tired, that might have scared him more. What in the blazes was happening to him?

A hand supported the back of his neck. Wincing, he cracked open his eyes to see a canteen being brought to his lips and Hallie’s father looming above him. “Hydrate first. Then sleep. I’ll help.”

Kase let him, because he didn’t have enough energy to argue.

For the next hour, Stowe took the time and care to make sure he drank the entire canteen. He also supported him as he heaved one more time, then gave him more water.

The next thing he knew, a sharp, stabbing neck pain woke him from a dreamless sleep.

His eyes flew open, but they no longer hurt. He reached for his pistol, ready to fire.

But he let his hand fall when he found only the outline of his stolen Cerl hover and Stowe propped up against his packs, using the scarce moonlight to read some book with a leafy plant on the cover. A small, soft voice inside him wanted to ask if he could borrow it when the other man finished.

He didn’t. Mostly because he wasn’t sure if he could hold the book long enough to read without his arms giving out.

Kase grumbled as he brought his hand up to rub his neck, but it caught on a thick blanket over his legs. He couldn’t see much in the waning gold of Secondmoon’s light, but the wool blanket glittered a soft blue color where the moonlight hit it. Like something had been woven into it.

Setting aside his read, Stowe looked up. Kase winced as the book met the ground. If Hallie had gotten her love of reading from her father, she must have gotten her respect for books from someone else; she would never commit such a heinous act as placing a perfectly good book on damp grass.

“Found blankets in that tiny cargo hold.” Stowe opened his pack and pulled out a few items. “Not real good with maps, but I figure we’re probably ‘bout halfway to the capital.”

Kase shook his head, wincing at the crick in his neck.

He rubbed it harder and gritted his teeth against the sharp pain.

When he slept next, he dearly hoped it wasn’t sitting upright against a tree.

However, the rest had taken the edge off his exhaustion.

Parts of his bones still felt like they’d been formed from mazelberry jam, but he felt fit enough to fly again.

He no longer felt like emptying the contents of his stomach, at least.

“There’s no way we’re halfway to the capital.

That kind of trip would take us nearly a week.

” Kase couldn’t tell exactly what Stowe was mixing inside the small vial he held, but he didn’t think it would help whatever ailed him.

There was something wrong with that ship.

Unfortunately, it was their only way to get anywhere without having to walk unless they could commandeer something else, and he didn’t feel like risking another hover-jacking like that.

Stowe stood with his vial and grabbed a folded sheet of parchment. “I never even left the mountains before this, but I’m pretty sure we passed Settler’s Barrows. Looked mighty like the little picture on the map.”

Kase extricated himself from the blanket and forced himself to stand, using the burly maple trunk for support.

Without the blanket covering him, the crisp early morning air penetrated every exposed bit of skin and worked its way into his bones.

He glanced back down at the blanket and its glittering fibers.

“You said you found those on the hover?”

Stowe handed him the vial he’d been carrying. Kase took it, but he didn’t drink. Stowe didn’t comment further, only retrieved the blanket. He folded it over one arm and shrugged. “Felt warm, and you looked awful cold.”

Kase tapped the stopper on the vial. “What’s in this?”

“Pick Up tonic with coffee shavings. Gotta be careful with ‘em; I could only get a bag of roasted beans from Rubikan traders once a year. Coffee don’t grow up in the mountains.”

Kase threw back the contents. He didn’t think it’d help his predicament, but it wouldn’t hurt either. He grimaced at the chilled concoction. “Definitely better hot.”

Stowe let out a barking laugh and handed Kase the map. “Would’ve warmed it if I thought banking a fire was wise.”

Kase handed back the empty vial and opened the map. It had to be an older version, because it still featured a unified Tev Rubika, but it was better than nothing. “Where’d you get this from?”

Stowe tied up his pack. “We’ve had it a while. Still has Ravenhelm on it.”

“Niels said something about that place. Not sure what it is, though.”

Stowe grabbed both packs and the strange blanket.

“Ruins, mainly. Before this last winter’s attack, Ravenhelm’s was the worst in mountain history.

Leveled the whole place. Killed everyone except a little boy not higher than a grasshopper.

Killed the commander with a well-placed crossbolt, some stories say.

Heard some crazier ones, but fifty years will grow a story good, and I wasn’t but a wee lad myself. ”

Something about the story tickled at the back of Kase’s mind, but with so much else whirling through it, he couldn’t quite get his hands around the thought.

He looked back at the map instead, trying to ignore the odd feeling about the ruined town.

Stowe stuck a finger at Settlers’ Barrows. “Passed that a little ways back, I tell ya.”

Kase rubbed his jaw. The short beard that had begun growing in the last few weeks or so prickled his fingers. He briefly wondered if Hallie would approve of the longer style. Would she like it if Niels grew one?

Blast it.

He shook his head to clear the thought of the two of them together on the other side of the mountains.

He needed to concentrate. He squinted at the map once more and traced a finger along the route he was sure they’d taken.

He hadn’t thought much of concealing their route—his only worry had been to get away as quickly as possible, and the Cerl hover had certainly delivered.

But if all Cerl hovers were like this one, why hadn’t anyone caught up to them? How hadn’t they caught up or overtaken the Eudora Jayde back in the autumn?

Unless they were purposefully following them for some reason.

Ben. He was the reason.

“You’re right,” Kase admitted, tamping down the knife twist of betrayal he felt at that thought.

He remembered passing the Barrows, vaguely.

He didn’t know for sure how far they’d gotten after, but no matter what, they had made excellent time.

If they kept on the same pace, they could possibly hit the capital in the next day or so, depending on just how far they’d gone past the Barrows, how long Kase was willing to fly for the day… and if their fuel held out.

He peeked over at the strange hover once more. What was fueling it, anyway?

He folded up the map and handed it back to Stowe before scrambling up the hover wing.

Stowe followed close behind, throwing up the packs and blanket.

Kase caught them. Warmth spread from where his fingers and palms met the rough-spun blanket fibers.

Kase stuffed the thing down beside his chair.

Might come in handy. Whatever the Cerls had done with it, Kase wished he’d had it back in the mountain cavern with Hallie in the Pass, though he wasn’t sure he would have traded her sleeping snuggled against his back for warmth instead.

The engine hummed faintly when Kase revved it up. Dried blood smeared the label on the button; it flaked off when Kase scratched it with a fingernail. He rubbed at the other stain on the steering control before gripping it.

A deep chill filled his veins and arteries. He eyed the blanket. Maybe he should lay it over his knees.

No; he would be fine. The blanket would only make it awkward to fly, and doubly difficult to evade any who wished them harm. He had a job to do.

With a breath in and out, Kase pulled up on the steering control and eased his foot onto the accelerator. Gritting his teeth against the lingering cold, he flew into the early dawn light crawling over the horizon.