Chapter 3: The Road North

Raina's pov

We left the mill the next morning while the sun was still struggling to rise over the eastern horizon.

Magistrate Corvin had decided that waiting longer would serve no purpose, and that the psychological weight of remaining in the destroyed town would only get worse with each passing day.

I wasn't sure I agreed, but I also didn't have any better ideas, and survival, I was learning, meant following people who at least seemed to have some kind of plan.

There were thirty-eight of us that set out from Millbrook, down from the forty-odd who had gathered at the mill. Two of the wounded had died during the night—an elderly man whose injuries were simply too severe, and a child who'd stopped breathing sometime in the pre-dawn darkness.

Their bodies had been wrapped in cloth and left behind with nothing more than a few words spoken by Corvin about peace and rest.

I tried not to think about how I should have been saying words like that for my mother and stepfather.

The north road was familiar enough—I'd traveled it a handful of times with my family, though never with such grim purpose or such a large group.

What had been a simple two-day journey in normal circumstances felt like something far more ominous now. We made our way in a rough column, the strongest and most mobile members of our group at the front and rear, with the wounded, the children, and the elderly clustered in the middle where they could be protected if necessary.

Though protected from what, we all knew perfectly well. If the Scourge decided to come after us, nothing we could do would matter much.

My arm throbbed in a constant, dull rhythm that I eventually just accepted as part of my existence. Mira had given me something for the pain—some kind of herbal mixture that took the edge off without quite making me useless—but it wore off as the day went on.

By late afternoon, when we finally stopped to make camp, I felt like I'd been beaten and left in the road.

"You're doing well," a voice said beside me.

I looked up to find a girl settling down next to me. She was taller than me, with dark hair pulled back in a practical braid and eyes that suggested she'd seen more of the world than her age would suggest. Her left leg was bandaged heavily from ankle to knee.

"I haven't heard much complaining," she continued, offering me a bowl of stew. "My name's Dovette, by the way. I was training to be a scout before all this happened."

I accepted the bowl gratefully. My stomach had been empty enough to echo all day. "Raina. I was just... someone's daughter, I suppose."

"And what are you now?" Dovette asked.

I thought about that. "I have no idea."

She laughed, and there was something both sad and genuine in that laugh. "That's honest, at least. Most people would have some story prepared about who they are now, what they're supposed to be doing. But you're just admitting you don't know. I like that."

Over the next few days, Dovette became my constant companion. While Marten had been the one to bring me to the mill, Dovette was the one who seemed to understand what I was experiencing.

She has also lost her parents and both of her siblings in the attack. But instead of being catatonic about it, she seemed to have channeled her grief into a kind of grim determination to keep moving forward.

"Where were you from?" I asked her on the second day of travel.

"The eastern side of town. My family ran a trading post. We were doing well enough, had good connections with the northern towns, and were planning to expand to Karenthel." Dovette smiled bitterly. "I guess that's still happening, just not the way any of us expected."

"Do you think we'll make it?to the fort" I asked.

"I think some of us will. I think others won't. I think once we get there, everything will just be the same problem in a different place, with thicker walls and maybe a little more time before the next disaster. But yes, I think we'll make it." She looked at me. "You don't think we will?"

"I think I'm not used to hoping for anything," I said. "My life wasn't the kind that made you practice hope. So asking me whether I think we'll survive is maybe not fair to the people who are trying."

"That might be the most honest thing I've heard anyone say since the attack," Corvin said, appearing seemingly out of nowhere to sit beside us. She had a way of moving quietly for someone so tall. "The fact that we're surviving at all is something of a miracle, and miracles have a way of running out. But I do intend to keep trying until they do."

"How long until we reach the fort?" I asked.

"Four, maybe five days, if we keep to a good pace and the weather holds. If it rains, or if we lose more people to injuries and have to slow down, it could be longer.

The Reaching Mountains are still three days' walk north of here, and the keep itself is another day higher into the peaks." She paused. "I've never been there myself. Some of the older people in our group remember hearing about it, but it's been years. We're not even sure the fort is still occupied."

"Then we're walking toward a maybe," Dovette said.

"Better than a certain death here," Corvin replied. "That's what I keep telling myself, anyway."

The next three days were a blur of walking, brief rests, and careful rationing of the supplies we carried. People started to break—not physically, though there was enough of that, but mentally.

I watched as the shock that had carried us through the first night gradually gave way to grief, to the full weight of loss settling onto people's shoulders like stones they'd been carrying for weeks instead of hours.

There were arguments. A man accused another of taking more than his share of food. A woman broke down during one of the rest stops and had to be carried for the rest of the day. An elderly man simply lay down one morning and refused to get back up, saying he was tired, he was just so tired, and he wasn't going to make it to the fort anyway, so why bother?

But we kept moving. Because that's what you do when the only alternative is death, you keep moving, and you try not to think too hard about why you're bothering.

It was on the fourth day that we saw the smoke.

I spotted it first, a dark plume rising from somewhere to the northeast, in the direction of the mountains. My first thought was hope—could there be a settlement there, someone who could help us? But then I realized what I was looking at.

"That's the keep," one of the older men said, his face gone gray. "That's Stronghold Keep burning."

No one wanted to accept it at first. Corvin even suggested it might be something else, some other fire, some other town burning. But deep down, we all knew. We'd felt the presence of the Scourge, that psychic pressure that had never quite gone away. And now it had moved north, and had reached our destination before we could.

That night, Corvin called a meeting. We huddled around the fire like survivors of a shipwreck, and she made her announcement.

"We keep going," she said simply. "The fort might still be defensible. Even if the main structure is burning, the walls might hold. We press on."

"And if it doesn't hold?" someone asked.

"Then we figure out what comes next when we get there," Corvin said. "But I do know that turning back doesn't make sense. Behind us is dead. Ahead of us, there's at least the possibility of something more than that."

It was a terrible pep talk. It was hopeless and grim and honest. Which is probably why most of us accepted it, and we set out again the next morning.

On the morning of the fifth day, the mountains were close enough to touch. Stronghold Keep lay somewhere beyond the next ridge, still burning.