Reclamation(59)

The oxen were panicking now, all of them fighting through the surging, clamoring mob to try to find enough room to run. Cor gave them all the rein she could. Animal instinct and a ton of mindless fear might just clear the way for them. Another pair of hands snatched at her. She smacked flesh with her driving stick and heard a voice howl. More hands. She struck out again. More screams, more white eyes, more confused colors on earth brown skin. She lashed out again and again, the noise of battle fading fast behind a ringing in her ears and a sick swirling in her head.

Jay loosened his jerkin and pulled out the gun.

He hunched beside Cor, drew a bead on the thickest ranks of the First City soldiers, and squeezed the trigger.

The soldiers of both sides exploded. Blood and flesh sprayed everywhere with the sound of the shots echoing between the houses. The fray turned into a stampede as they screamed and fled. Cor urged the oxen forward and they tried hard to break into a run to get away from the noise and the blood.

“Brilliant!” she shouted hysterically. “Now you’ll have half of Narroways convinced we’re the Aunorante Sangh!”

Jay didn’t answer. He just leveled the gun toward the fleeing backs and fired again.

“Over their heads, you animal!” Cor shrieked, but she didn’t have the luxury of turning to see if he’d done it. The oxen had spotted the gates and they were barreling forward. It was all she could do to keep a grip on the reins. The maddened beasts were about to yank her arms out of their sockets. She couldn’t slow them, couldn’t steer them. A river of would-be refugees clogged the gateway in front of the wagon, but the oxen were beyond caring.

“Outta the way!” she screamed. “Runaway! Runaway! Get outta the way!”

The walls closed in too tight and her voice rode too high and thin over the incoherent crowd. Backs fell into the mud and more screams rang through the air. All she could do was keep her numb fingers wrapped around the reins and pray they’d get out of the crush soon.

They made it through the gates in a blur of light and shadow and burst out onto the open road. The oxen stampeded down the flattest path through the crowd that was surging out in all directions. Sleighs and sledges rocked and swung to get out of their way, people scattered as if a wind blew them apart. Pain began to creep up from Cor’s clenched hands and down from her clenched jaw.

They were ahead of the crowd now, with the worst of the noise and riot pounding at their backs. Cor could separate out the bellows of the oxen from the screams of people. The sledge lurched and jumped badly as it hit the unyielding ruts in the road. She gathered nerve and muscle, braced her feet against the slats on the floor, and threw all her weight backward, dragging the reins up against her chest.

The oxen bawled and the left lead tossed his head hard. Cor gritted her teeth until she was sure they’d crack and hung on. The sledge skipped across another series of ruts, but the team slowed down and stopped.

“What’re you doing!” shouted Jay, dropping into Standard.

“Shut up!” Cor snapped back. “Just sit down and shut up!” She ran her hands across the oxen’s sides, feeling the way they trembled and how their lungs heaved. She jerked on the harness, checking the knots and straps to make sure everything was tight. She closed her mind against the sight of the rust brown blotches that soaked up the layers of dust on the team’s bald, pale legs.

When she was satisfied the tack wouldn’t come undone, she resumed the driver’s stand and slapped the reins. The oxen obeyed the gesture and lumbered forward. The countryside was deserted. In the brush and trees Jay saw knots of oxen and people, fleeing from the city. Word must have spread that there was fighting in Narroways and they were all clearing the road. Cor set her teeth gingerly to avoid reawakening the ache that ran all the way down to her shoulders and pressed the oxen’s pace up the rise toward where the world bent. She tried to forget that Jay was sitting at her back with the gun resting on his knees. She tried to tell herself that he had just done what he had to. They had to get clear of the crowd. If she’d been dragged down, she would have been killed and he would have been trapped. She had to get out. It was her job. She had to get away. And they weren’t Family anyway and they weren’t ever going to be and whatever they did now was better than what the Vitae would do later.

She tried to pray that King Silver’s troops were mustered and giving the First City troops all the hell there was to hand out. They had to win so the Unifiers could win.

In the end, all she had the strength to try to do was not be sick.

Up ahead, the canyon had gone black. The oxen dragged them past the shadow line and Cor squeezed her eyes shut. She opened them and peered through the murky night. She didn’t look back. She’d never learned to enjoy watching the daylight get swallowed up.