Chapter 674: No. 76
The wagons pulled to the side of the road and lined up while the Chom Brothers worked quickly to lash them together — one driver could manage all five from a single seat.
After a sharp argument, Annie relented. She led the witches into the forest with Clown as their guide.
Now it was the rest of them. And Yorko.
Rockhill slung a food pack over his shoulder and passed him without slowing. “My lord, we have to move. If they see us, everything we’ve done means nothing.”
“Give me a moment. I want to speak with her.”
He had thought it would take time to decide. It took less than fifteen minutes.
No. 76 stepped forward on her own.
Rockhill had volunteered. Annie had too, before she was redirected to the witches. But Yorko was the one who made the call, and the one he chose was No. 76.
“I trained for five years in combat at Black Money,” she said. “I’m fast. Don’t worry about me.” Her tone was the tone of a simple farewell — no flourish, no weight placed on it. “There’s a village not far from here, isn’t there? I’ll drive the wagons to the village, slip into the crowd, and they’ll lose me. Once this is over, I’ll find you at the border. Wait for me there.”
The magician, hovering at Yorko’s shoulder, murmured that the village was more than ten miles away. With the time lost tying the wagons together, reaching it before the knights caught up was nearly impossible.
If those knights had not been specifically ordered to hunt witches, the worry was smaller — they might simply check the wagons and move on. But if the magician’s read was right, and the knights traced back to Glow with nothing to show for their pursuit, the frustration they’d carry would be punishing. Yorko could imagine easily how that frustration would find its target.
He turned it over. He could volunteer himself. If Appen Moya’s men caught the Ambassador of Graycastle, the king would hold him for ransom — make him a laughingstock among the nobility, perhaps, but would not execute him. Roland would pay and the insult would pass. For anyone else, capture meant death. No. 76 had calculated this, same as he had. She’d made her choice with open eyes.
He wanted to step forward. The words were halfway there each time and each time his throat closed on them.
An ambassador represents his king. If they catch me and mock me, they mock Graycastle.
He told himself this. He was aware that he was telling himself this.
She’s just a bought slave.
Yorko walked over to her. Before he could open his mouth she spoke.
“My lord, this is my decision. It has nothing to do with Black Money — even though Silvermask always taught us to sacrifice ourselves for it when necessary, I never liked that lesson.” She looked at him without flinching, without accusation. “I thought I’d spend my whole life underground, flattering customers until I aged into a new Silvermask. Or I’d be sent off as a handmaid and never see daylight again. You took me out of that place. You showed me how wide the world is.” A small breath. “I have no regrets. Please go. You’re running out of time.”
“But—”
“Thank you, my lord.” She smiled. “If you hadn’t spoken up, I would have been beaten to death in that limestone cave. My life belongs to you. I may survive this — and if I do, let’s meet in Graycastle.”
The Chom Brothers pressed in behind him. “My lord. Now.”
He breathed in. He turned around. He walked into the forest.
She’s just a slave.
This is the best option.
He believed it. The discomfort in his chest remained anyway, formless and stubborn, declining to be reasoned away.
At the tree line he stopped and looked back. The wagons had begun to move, No. 76 at the reins. She didn’t hesitate. Didn’t look over her shoulder. She moved with the same matter-of-fact calm with which she had volunteered — as though this were an ordinary departure, a routine errand.
The forest swallowed the view.
No. 76 did not drive the wagons to the village.
After about three hundred feet, she reined the horses in and stopped. Another few steps and she would lose sight of the forest entrance entirely; she had no intention of going that far. She climbed down from the box and settled on the tailgate of the last wagon, her back to the road, waiting.
She had spent a great deal of her life waiting. The underground hours of training, the slow years in service, the longer years before that — waiting had shaped itself around her until she could wear it like a coat. So the time passed without pressing on her, and it felt both very long and very short.
The sun was going down when the knights appeared at the far end of the road.
No emblem. No banner. But the armor was fine work and the horses were tall — not village knights, not border garrison. Someone’s household cavalry, well-funded and well-drilled.
She counted thirty-five. Half of those were squires, and their movements were crisp. Whoever led them had not drawn from the dregs.
The leader’s face creased when he spotted the wagons sitting alone at the roadside. He snapped his reins and the column surged forward, surrounding the convoy in a smooth half-circle.
“Sir Lougan — there’s no one in the wagons!”
“Interesting.” Lougan’s smile was thin and contemptuous. “The Ambassador of Graycastle deployed scouts, apparently.” He turned in his saddle. “Caro, Jester — double back and check for tracks on both sides of the road. They’ve abandoned the vehicles and gone on foot, which means there are traces.”
His intent was plain enough.
“Sir — what about the woman?”
“Cut off her hands and feet, then question her. Though if she was willing to stay behind, she probably knows nothing useful.” Lougan flicked his gaze at her with the detachment of a man pricing livestock.
No. 76 rose from the tailgate.
“There’s no need to interrogate me,” she said. “They went into that forest — just back the way you came. But—”
“But what?” A knight drew his sword with one hand and reached for her arm with the other.
They would not spare her regardless of what she told them. That was already settled.
“But you won’t be getting to those witches.”
Her hand moved first. She caught the reaching knight’s wrist, used his own momentum to take him airborne, and slid his head under her arm before he completed the arc. A controlled squeeze — she felt armor compress, then bone, then the wet finality of it. He went limp. She held him upright a half-second longer before letting him fall.
The remaining knights stared.
“Let go of Charlie!”
“Kill her — kill her!”
Swords came out in a chorus. She threw the dead man into the tightest cluster of them, forcing a scramble, and in the gap she snatched his sword from the ground and swung.
The blade opened armor clean. The struck knight grabbed her sword hand — a grip meant to buy his companions a few seconds — and misjudged the difference in their strength entirely. She pulled free, kicked him square, and the impact caved his breastplate. He hit the earth and lay still.
The sword was already dull. She dropped it.
Fists, then.
She went up — literally, leaping onto the nearest knight’s pauldron and using his mass as a pivot point. Each landing placed her at a new angle: she dropped her heels onto helmets, felt the cervical snap through her boots, was already moving before the body registered what had happened. When a clear landing wasn’t available she worked the joints instead — elbows, knees, the gap between gorget and breastplate — and drove men off-balance until they stumbled into one another’s weapons.
“This is impossible!”
“What in God’s name is she—”
Lougan drove his horse into the melee with a shout, the other knights closing behind him to pen her in. She didn’t retreat. She caught both the horse’s front legs and stopped it mid-stride. What happened next — she lifted horse and rider together, pivoted, and threw them into the men behind — nobody in that road, none of the knights who survived and fled, would describe without qualifications. The ones who bore the impact directly were either dead or broken. Lougan himself, pitched from the saddle, landed at an angle that left him very still.
The survivors scattered. They ran for their horses and did not look back.
She did not give them the chance to reach their horses.
The sun was down by the time she finished.
She dragged the bodies into the field and covered them with wheat straw. Someone would find them eventually — but by then the witches would be across the border.
She climbed into Yorko’s wagon, the one with the best cushions, and peeled back the mattress. Beneath it, just where it had been placed: a ring set with a magic stone, its crystal holding a tiny cyclone that swirled even in the dark. She turned it over once, studying it, then tucked it inside her robe and smoothed the mattress back into place.
She lay down and looked at the ceiling.
The next step was simple: reach the nearest village, hire a driver, ride to Graycastle. They wouldn’t wait long at the border — possibly not even a full day. But Neverwinter was her destination, and if they moved on before she arrived, she would find them eventually. The Western Region was where they were going, and the Western Region was where the witches were, and she would reach it.
Through the window, the moon had risen. Clean and cold and very far away.
Four hundred years. The Union that had commanded the world had turned to ash and scattered. The stars were unchanged. They were the one fixed thing, and when she looked up at them she felt — almost — as though she were still herself. Still the woman who had lived in the Holy City of Taquila before everything ended. Not the self that had existed underground for four centuries, waiting, drifting, waking and sleeping, but the one who had walked in daylight.
That city had been beautiful.
The road since had not been living. It had been endurance.
What kept her moving was a last, faint, particular hope.
“So — how does it feel, having a female body again?”
She flexed her wrists, settled her heels. “The reach is shorter.”
“Of course. This shell was designed for service, not combat. Too large and they’d become suspicious.” Laughter, warm and without mockery. “Female God’s Punishment Soldiers are already so rare. Don’t be precious about it.”
“Appearance matters,” another voice said. “The tastes of common people haven’t changed much. They don’t want shells that look like men — ask Elena. She’d rather have a defective male body than what she ended up with. Yours, though, is the best of what we had.”
She shook her head, studying the great sarcoma before her — its tentacles moving slowly in the heat. “That’s not what I meant, Pasha. I have to relearn everything with this body. Every motion from sewing to drawing a blade. It will take time.”
“We have time,” Pasha said, and one tentacle descended to touch her forehead with the gentleness one might offer a child. “All the time we need.”
“Why do we need to deal with common people at all?” Alethea, reclining in the magma, blew a chain of bubbles that expressed her displeasure better than words. “Can’t we bring the witches here directly to assess their talent?”
“Has the long sleep addled you?” Pasha answered her without heat. “It isn’t four hundred years ago. Bringing one or two witches here — acceptable. A hundred? We would be remembered as monsters by the next generation of our own kind.”
“Even so, couldn’t a witch carry out this work for us? These shells were all enemies of our people.”
“The witch we choose must trust us completely and be able to protect herself without our help. Where do we find such a person? Common people control the world now. Dealing with them is unavoidable — the same as it was in the Land of Dawn at the first Battle of Divine Will.” Pasha’s tentacle swung toward her. “What do you think?”
She tossed her sword upward, let it turn once in the air, and slid her body just slightly aside so the blade dropped back into the scabbard on its own.
“I have no preference,” she said. “As long as I can see Taquila’s glory restored.”