The shackles around her wrists suddenly felt heavy, and Vhalla blinked at them bleary eyed. What if it hadn’t been as normal as she thought? What if she had been hidden?
The thought echoed in her mind through the long ride the next day, sobering her to a withdrawn silence. The Knights made jokes about clipping the Windwalkers wings and how easy she’d been to break. Schnurr made it a ritual to impart knowledge of the twisted practices of the Knights of Jadar. He told her of the experiments conducted on Windwalkers with such detail that it soured her stomach and stilled its growling.
They never untied her from the saddle, never removed her cuffs. Someone could cut off her feet and Vhalla doubted she’d be able to tell. Her lower body had gone numb from the ropes long ago.
The Knights had the arrogance to think they were breaking her, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. Every waking hour, she plotted. She wiggled, tugged, and worked at her ropes. She watched as Schnurr checked his saddlebag every morning and night, leaving Vhalla no need to guess where the axe and key to her shackles were hidden. If she could remove her shackles, she would have her wind and her Bond with Aldrik—she could make them suffer.
But how to get the key?
Vhalla settled on biding her time. The only plan she could think of was trying to launch an attack during one of his brags—if she could get her ropes loose enough. But she suspected he kept the key in the same saddlebag as the axe, and he never let it go far from his side.
The smell of the Southern forest nearly overwhelmed her with nostalgia when they’d crossed into it from the Western Waste. They made headway into the mountains without roads and pushed onward and upward until dusk began to settle. The nights were already cooling, and it made a stark contrast with the heat of the desert.
A year had passed, Vhalla realized with the changing seasons, since she had met Aldrik and everything began. A year that felt like a lifetime.
“We’ll stay there tonight.” Major Schnurr pointed to a windmill fashioned of stone and wood.
It sat high on the edge of a small town. She suspected the cluster of homes to be the town of Mosant or one of its outskirts. If Vhalla and her captors had progressed as the crow flew from the Crossroads straight for the Crystal Caverns, it would put them right in Mosant’s path.
A generally noteworthy town, Vhalla stared at the houses down the mountainside from the windmill as they made their way toward it. If she screamed, would her voice carry far enough? Could she slip away in the night? Even if she could slip away, it didn’t solve the issue of the cuffs. Vhalla had a suspicion that a blacksmith couldn’t just break off magically enhanced shackles. If she drew attention to herself, the Knights would certainly overwhelm any villagers who came looking, forcing them to flee before more could follow.
That much was proven true as they arrived at the windmill. A tired-looking village woman came out to greet them, and Schnurr wasted no time putting his sword through her eye. Vhalla stared at the gaping hole the blade left behind in the woman’s face as the Knights untied their prisoner. War had taken its toll, and she was beginning to struggle to feel anything toward the death of innocents.
The windmill had one entrance up a short flight of stairs, a place horses couldn’t go. Schnurr decreed that she was too valuable to leave outside, so Vhalla was finally untied and carried inside. She tried to find her legs, to stand on her own, but after nearly a week of being stuck in a saddle, they were useless from stiffness and sores.
They threw her unceremoniously atop bags of grain. The dust sent her dry throat into a coughing fit. But when she could breathe again, Vhalla took solace in the smell of the wheat. It reminded her of home in the fall, when the barn was full; it gave her some measure of comfort in spite of her newly conflicting feelings about her upbringing.
She waited in silence as the men settled. They relaxed, talking and laughing. Schnurr had forbidden a fire given the dry contents of the windmill, and Vhalla knew that meant they would not stay up late and instead tuck underneath blankets to fight off the mountain chill.
Vhalla lay unmoving as the last of them began to settle. She counted to a thousand and listened for any indication that any were still awake before sliding off her sacks of grain. Vhalla kept her wrists close so that the shackles wouldn’t clank together.
She crept through the dim moonlight, holding her breath. She’d get one chance. Schnurr had made it quite clear that while he wouldn’t kill her, he could do a laundry list of other horrible things that would make her wish she was dead. If this attempt failed, Vhalla had no doubt he would be starting at the top of that list.
Vhalla stood over the sleeping man, debating if she should try for the saddlebag he clutched in his sleep—for the key she knew would be in there alongside the axe, or if she should take his sword and slit his throat first. Vhalla glanced at his weapon. Drawing it was likely to make enough sound that someone would wake. She crouched down and reached out slowly.
The man shifted and Vhalla stiffened, but he didn’t waken. Her fingers wormed their way through the flap of the saddlebag, feeling within. The crystals on the shackles almost burned her skin as her fingers brushed against the axe, and Vhalla winced. It was as if they waged a magical war with each other and her flesh was caught in-between.
Reaching forward, Vhalla continued her slow rummage. She was about to give up when she touched something iron and distinctly key-like. Her breath wavered with the rush of anticipation of removing the cuffs. Like a viper, fingers closed suddenly around her elbow, tight enough to pop bones, and Vhalla met Schnurr’s wide eyes.
“You are a bold little cur,” he growled.
Vhalla gripped the key and tugged herself free. Schnurr was moving as well, and Vhalla fumbled with her hoped-for salvation, but she couldn’t quite get the right angle of the key and lock while shackled. He lunged for her—sending the saddlebag sliding across the room—and their tumbling woke the other Knights.
Schnurr grabbed for his sword and Vhalla tried to wrestle it from his hands. She leaned forward, biting one of his wrists hard enough that blood exploded into her mouth. Cursing, Schnurr instinctively pulled away, and Vhalla won the weapon.
Still sheathed, she drew it back and twisted her body—just as Daniel had once shown her—to put all her momentum in the thrust. The tip of the scabbard sunk into Schnurr’s neck and Vhalla watched his eyes bulge as he gasped for air. It was blunted, but the force crushed his windpipe.
The other Knights were nearly upon her. Vhalla looked around desperately, trying to reason if it made more sense to try to fight them off or spend the seconds she had left trying to get the shackles unlocked. She dropped the sword and scrambled for the key.
“Wind scum!” one of the Knights shouted as he kicked her, the heel of his boot digging into her shoulder.
Vhalla was sent rolling, but she clutched the key so tightly her nails left bloody arcs in her hand. She was back to trying to unlock the shackles. Her magic would mean her freedom, her longevity. The axe was already in the hand of one of her assailants.
“We should just kill you,” one snarled as he looked at the corpse of the bushy-mustached major.
“Kill her! Take the axe,” another said, brandishing the weapon. “We can find another Windwalker in time. We have the axe and that is more important.”