BELATEDLY, LEONOR REALIZED THAT MUN'S SPELL OF SILENCE HAD broken the moment the Altanese girl had seen her own bullet wound.
"Ahmed!" Heinrik breathed despite the encroaching Solnayans and the bullets that burst through the trees. "Get Mun further into the trees. We'll hold them off."
Ahmed winced, but did as he was told, springing up, trying not to drag his frozen feet. He rushed past Leonor to Mun, who was lying oddly still in the snow, picked her up, and in a swirl of shadows they promptly disappeared.
Heinrik dashed to the tree beside Leonor and tossed her the rifle on his shoulder. She caught it with her arms, her hands still full of her throwing knives.
"You stay back, Leonor," commanded Heinrik over the thunder of the guns beyond the trees. "Hassan, you're coming with me."
"Yes, boss."
Leonor planted the rifle in the snow, tucking her knives into her wrist sheathes with a flourish. "Ammunition, Heinrik."
He put a hand into his pocket, standing, and drew out a clip's worth of brass bullets. He tossed them her way. Leonor plucked them from the air when they neared her.
Heinrik nodded at her, pleased. "Make them count, mäuschen."
She glanced at her hands, the bullets heavy in her palms. There were five.
"Don't shoot!" Heinrik called. "I'm coming out!"
Mercifully, a single shot sounded, and then no more.
When she looked up again, Heinrik and Hassan had already moved from their positions, having ditched their rucksacks in the trees. Her hands shook when she grabbed the rifle, but her fingers knew what to do, loading the bullets into the clip in double time. Near the trunk of the tree a few steps to her left, the snow was stained with Mun's blood.
She propped the rifle up in her arms, staring down its sights. She spotted Hassan right before he blinked out of existence close to the end of the treeline. Heinrik, meanwhile, was taking his time exiting the forest, shuffling through the snow. At the clearing, he put up his hands—Leonor leaned slightly to keep her eyes on him—and said, "Hello."
Still staring down her rifle's sights, she tuned in to the weave, blinking away reality. In the strings, she could see Hassan again, encroaching on the five twitches she'd spotted earlier. Unlike his brother, Ahmed, who could stride through the empty spaces in the weave—shadow walking, as he liked to call it—Hassan was a master of disappearing and reappearing, rendering himself invisible to anyone who looked. Leonor had seen this tactic a hundred times in training: Heinrik would approach head-on like an angry bull, while Hassan would creep in from behind for support. But they'd never done it like this before; Mun was always there to muffle any noise, and Ahmed would mirror his twin in a deadly dance while Leonor picked their aggressors off from afar. They'd always been five, save for the days when it had just been Leonor and Heinrik and the Adlerauge had only been King Wilhelm's fever dream.
Three would have to do.
In heavily accented Leis, one of the Solnayans asked, "You were in trees. Why?"
"I was hunting," replied Heinrik.
"Citizens are not allowed to leave city," snarled the Solnayan.
Heinrik faltered a second too long. "I was just looking to feed my family. Now that supply lines have been cut off, things are getting scarce. Did you know that my wife was just recently attacked on the streets after buying a loaf of bread from the baker?" At the Solnayans' silence, Heinrik added, "I have some snares in the trees if you need proof. Would like to see them?"
YOU ARE READING
The Immortal Calls
Fantasy❝YOU HAVE SUCH BEAUTIFUL EYES,❞ CROONED THE MANY-FACED MONSTER. ❝SO TELL ME, LITTLE ONE... WHAT IS YOUR GIFT?❞ It had chased her a thousand times in her dreams, grabbing her with hands as frigid as the ice that had been meant to be her grave. It cha...
