Ice Country(69)

“I’m not freezin’ leaving,” he says, and I know he won’t.

The sound of death burns near the gate, but it seems miles away, the cold windless night becoming eerily calm around us, like we’re in a normal place, doing normal things. But my erratic heartbeat and ragged breaths tell me everything I need to know about the desperateness of our situation.

We’re out of time. More than out. If we’re going to escape, it has to be now.

“We have to go,” Buff says.

“I can’t leave him,” I say.

“We’ll come back for him.”

“When?!” I shout. “He’s already got my sister. I can’t let him take Wes too.”

And Buff nods grimly because he knows. He knows I can’t. He was just saying what he had to as my friend.

We keep looking while someone dies at the gates.

But we’ve looked everywhere—there’s nowhere else to look. Every body’s been turned, examined. Nothing. No Wes. It’s like he disappeared.

We look around us helplessly, trying to find somewhere we’ve forgotten to look.

That’s when we hear it. A groan. Amidst the cacophony of battle noises, it’s faint, and I think I mighta imagined it until I see Buff’s head tilt to one side. He hears it too.

“Hurry,” I say.

We fan out, listening intently, moving toward where we think it might be. We close in on the opposite sides of a pillar near the palace entrance, which is full of shadows.

“Uhhhh,” the voice says.

I run toward the sound, circle the pillar, find him, find Wes, back against the stone, clutching his blood-soaked side, streams of red running between his fingers and down his leg, more blood than I’ve ever seen.

“Nay,” I say.

“I’m dying,” Wes says.

“Nay,” I say.

“Leave me.”

“Nay.”

Buff grabs his feet and I pick him up under his arms and he screams louder than I’ve ever heard him scream, even louder than when we were kids and I pegged him with an iceball and he fell offa a wall and broke his leg. And he screamed plenny loud then.

But we have no choice. No choice. We leave him, he dies. We take him, there’s a chance. Slim, yah, but a chance nonetheless.

We run sort of sideways, sort of front ways, Buff on one side, me on the other, my brother airborne between us. In front of us is carnage.

Bodies are strewn every which way, but by the looks of it, we’ve won the night. Several weaponless guards are staggering and stumbling away from the gates, holding bloody arms or putting pressure on blood-spouting stomach wounds. Skye’s waving to us to hurry the chill up, or the scorch up, or however they say it in fire country.

We run, hobble, stumble across the flat area outside the castle walls, reaching the White District a minute later. We duck behind a tall, snow-covered wall to catch our breaths and assess our injuries.

Although I’m sure everyone contributed to the fight, it’s clear that Hightower, despite being stuck with more arrows than a shooting range target, did more than his fair share. He’s down on one knee, panting heavily and loudly, soaked in blood that’s surely equal parts his own and his enemies’. Abe’s standing over him, a broken arrow sticking from his leg. “Can you walk, Tower? Can you?”

He grunts and pushes to his feet. I think every single one of us just stares. He’s a sight to behold, what with half a dozen arrows sticking from him and more slash and cut wounds than the rest of us combined, he looks like the magnificent warrior that he is. The hero that he is.

“Is yer brother alright?” Skye says, looking right at me.

“He’s not good,” I say. “We need to get help fast. Hightower’ll need it too.”

“Circ too,” she says, motioning to where Siena and Feve are holding Circ up, his arms draped over their shoulders, hobbling on one leg.

“My people say the cold helps heal,” Feve says.

“And what do you know about it?” I say sharply.

“I know of healing,” is all Feve replies. He leaves Circ to Siena and bends to grab a handful of snow. “Pack this in your brother’s wound,” he says. “It might help with the bleeding.”

I don’t know if I can trust him, but I’ll try anything that might help Wes, so I only watch as Buff grabs the snow and pats it on Wes’s stomach.

“We gotta get to the Red District,” I say. “There are healers there who know how to be discrete.”

“We can’t,” Skye says. “This ain’t our country. We hafta git back to the desert.”

“Trust me,” I say. “Healers first. Desert after. We’ll go together.”