*
“Ouch! Are you trying to kill me?” Niam protested as the world faded back into view and a pair of hands tugged at his armpits tightly enough to wring all of his blood down into his toes. The ground slid beneath his heels as he struggled back to consciousness. Someone was dragging him across the ground.
“You’re welcome,” that someone said between coughing fits.
Niam felt himself being carefully lowered to the snow, and he turned to lift himself up, but the world spun and he realized that he was coughing hard enough to rupture something. As he reached behind himself to lay his head back down, his wrist screamed at him in pain.
Maybe I already ruptured something, he thought humorlessly, and began laughing between furious bouts of choking.
“Only you would laugh at a time like this.”
Niam looked up as everything finally began to resolve itself into a sensible whole. Davin stood above him half bent over, trying to force the soot and smoke out of his throat.
“My Hero,” Niam rasped.
While they both collected themselves, Niam finally managed enough clean air to clear the thinking in his head. “Help me up,” he groaned.
Davin knelt down at his side to look him over. The blazing house lit up the surrounding woods brighter than the noonday sun. “You look awful,” he said.
Niam moved himself carefully, testing all of his moving parts to see if they still worked. “I thought I was dead,” he said, finally taking a good look at the fire. The home he grew up in burned furiously.
Niam’s hands went up to his mouth as another painful bout of coughing and retching overtook him. When he withdrew his hands to wipe them, he saw that what came out of his lungs was black. “Think I’ll live,” Niam croaked as he watched his life’s memories waft up in sparks and embers into the cold winter air. “My door was locked, Davin. Somebody did this on purpose.”
Davin’s voice was filled with anger. “I know. Mine was, too,”
Niam looked back at him. It took some time for that information to set in.
“When I heard that one of Joachim’s horses had gone missing, I knew you had been bellyaching about not having a good coat to wear, so I put two and two together. I stopped by home on my way here to make sure everything was okay. Someone must have followed me. Wasn’t there long before we smelled smoke. Someone jammed our door, too. I got us out, but everything burned.”
Niam didn’t know what to say. A sense of guilt began to burn within him. “If I had just listened and stayed put—” he said shamefully.
“If you had done that, somebody might have burned my house without me there to get my family out,” Davin told him.
“Maybe,” he said. “But we’ve got to get to Maerillus. If someone tried to kill us, they might be after him now.
Lucky for Niam the horse was still in the small pasture behind the house. Davin had one of his own, an old draftie named Brindle, who moved like a boulder through the snow once they left the road and cut though fields making a bee line for the Sartor estate. Niam followed, taking advantage of the furrow made in the snow by Davin’s large mount.
As they drew closer, they crested a hill with a commanding view of the surrounding countryside. The Sartor manor glowed like a jewel where it sat atop its own hill like a crown. “There are an awful lot of lights burning down there,” Davin muttered nervously.
Niam peered into the dark and was able to make out shapes of people moving rapidly among the buildings closest to Maerillus’s home. “Something’s up. There are people with lanterns all over the place.
“Look at that!” Davin exclaimed, pointing to where the fields gave way to woods and the western edge of the property. It only took Niam a moment to see what Davin was pointing at.
Orange light illuminated the uppermost branches of treetops in the distance. Something was burning, and it took Niam only a heartbeat to realize what lay in that direction.
“Great Lord,” Niam groaned. “That’s where Bug lives!”
“Wait!” Davin shouted as Niam kicked his stolen mount and shot away across the snow toward the woods.
Niam ignored his friend’s pleas to slow down. The horse snorted nervously as the wood line drew closer. There was no telling what lay beneath the crusty blanket of white, and as the animal tensed and attempted to slow its gait, Niam urged it onward.
“Niam!” Davin called out.
Niam paid him no heed. His lungs burned, but he didn’t care. The trail leading from the gorge to the edge of the Sartor estate where the beekeeper’s family lived lay just a short distance through the forest.
Branches and limbs lashed at Niam’s face as he drove his horse into the gloom. He kept his head down and ignored the smaller limbs slapping his forehead and cheeks. Large trees and branches loomed out of the gloom, and the horse shied away from them with more agility than Niam would have expected. All he had to do was keep moving toward the trail. When the dense shroud of trees abruptly ended, Niam pulled the reins hard to the left and onto the path that clove the woods in two.
Behind him, Davin’s mount noisily crashed through the forest while he swore loudly each time a limb lashed across his exposed skin. All Niam was able to think about was Bug. Images of his young friend trapped, choking, and burning to death played out in his mind in merciless detail. He continued to cough up blackened phlegm from his lungs. Ahead, the flickering glow cast by hungry flames licked at the trail’s edge, and as it drew closer with the drumming beat of hooves cracking through the icy crust, he prayed that one of the barns was ablaze instead of the house.
When Niam burst into the clearing his worst fears grew into fruition. Ahead, just beyond the low swell of the hill, everything was lit by his young friend’s house. The guard’s shack and a barn beyond were illuminated by the firelight, while Bug’s neighbors and a smattering of estate staff looked on with resignation. Niam angled his galloping mount toward Bug’s father and pulled the animal to a stop in front of the sooty man. Before the animal was completely still, he swung his leg over the saddle and leapt off. Pain flared in his leg, but Niam hurried to the man.
“Where is she?”
Mr. Marie wiped the sweat from his face with a dirty sleeve and met Niam’s gaze. His eyes were bloodshot from the smoke, and his face and hands were noticeably red. “She made it out with the rest of us in time, thank the Creator.”
“Did you see who did this?” Niam blurted out.
Bug’s father shook his head. His face was creased with fatigue and his eyes held the same far-away look Niam knew his own might hold if it were not for greater concerns worming their way through his mind.
Davin galloped up to where they stood. Brindle sounded like a bellows and Davin breathed just as hard. “Is she okay?” he asked, coming to a halt.
“Yes, she’s alright . . . scared as a filly, but she’s okay.”
Niam looked around, frustrated that no one seemed to be doing much. Bug’s father saw the look on his face and said tiredly, “Don’t be angry with them. They did all they could. We’ve been running around putting out fires since late this afternoon.”
“There have been more fires?” Davin asked, shocked.
“Oh aye . . . that there have. Mr. Sartor lost two barns, and several servants’ houses are gone, too. The entire garrison has been mobilized. Joachim’s got them pulled away from that black sorcerer’s property and hopping about looking for the bastards doing this,” the man spat.
Niam looked at Davin, and the uncertainty and confusion in his friend’s eyes echoed his own. “Where did Bug get off to, sir?”
“A young man your age came shortly after we got out of the house. He said Joachim needed her. He’s probably looking for her now,” he responded absently, watching his home
wasting away to ashes. “With all that’s going on, I’ll be glad to have her up at the Count’s manor.”
A wave of relief momentarily swept through Niam, but something about what her father said didn’t sit right with him. The timing was wrong. Why would someone show up looking for her right after they had all managed to get out of the house?
“Was it Maerillus, sir?”
“No, lad. This boy seemed more of a commoner. His hair was all lank—“
Niam felt a sudden dropping sensation and interrupted the man, finishing his sentence for him. “Long hair, loose, and kind of greasy?”
Her father nodded his head. “He was sort of tall . . . not quite as big as Hapwell or Maerillus,” he said.
Niam felt as if Davin’s horse had just kicked him. “Your daughter is in danger. Which way did she run?” he demanded.
Bug’s father looked taken aback. “What’s going on?”
“Which way did she go?” Niam shouted.
“Back toward the hives,” he responded quickly.
Before he could go on, Niam flashed, “Did you tell the guy that came looking for her?”
Worry now creased his brows. “Um . . . no . . . now what is happening with my daughter? I thought all of this business with the trall was over.” The irritation in his voice was clear.
“The boy that came for her was Salb,” Niam said in disgust.
Mr. Marie’s eyes narrowed. “The boy who killed Corey.”
“Yes. And he is probably one of the people behind this madness. Our homes burned too.”
Mr. Marie’s face clouded over in multiple shades of red, and he began bellowing for someone to find him a sword.