Chapter 77

Chapter 77: Ch. 77: Split Up

In between the panic of flying arrows, I marvel at the calculations Katya had to make to trap me like this. As we were entering the duchy of Avernall without any official paperwork or business, and are all young children, there was a high chance we would’ve been denied entrance into the thriving region. However, we were able to avoid this potential pitfall by taking scenic backroads near farmland and steering clear of main roads. Thus, Empress Katya was able to not only calculate where I would arrive, but when and clear out the town in advance.

If they taught me how to strategize like that in college classes, I can promise you I would’ve found a much more prestigious job than assisting the mayor’s campaign office.

But they didn’t and thus I am stuck in an open cart with deadly arrows aiming to take my life as a frenzied, frightened horse is my only mode of escape. Brilliant move, Winter. I’m playing chess while the empress is playing checkers. Although she was the final boss in the webnovel, Clara’s story was more focused on romance and as the main character, she never underwent much hardship. But as a measly side character courtesy of Peppermint, It’s clear I’m getting the real, uncensored version of all the characters.

An arrow thuds into the floor of the cart inches away from my twig-like ankle. I can’t hold back the yelp that comes out.

Tears are generously running down Tommen’s face, mixing with his snot. The rest of us try to hold up brave faces, but we are kids being hunted down by master assassins, there’s only so much fear one can hold back.

“Jack,” Tommen cries with his body curled into a fetal position, “A house ain’t worth our lives!”

Gears are turning in the boys’ heads, so clearly I can practically see the machinery. Me or them or their precious house? Jack’s trademark know-it-all grin is long gone along with our peaceful road trip and something dangerous glints in his eyes.

.....

I can practically see the line being drawn in the sand. 3 versus 2, the odds are definitely not in our favor. Especially when I know where they’ve come from and what they’re made out of. Seeing grown men get robbed and shanked in the middle of the streets by a beggar boy was a common ploy and allegiances mean nothing in the face of hunger and poverty.

And at the end of the day, despite all of us coming from the filthy streets of West Bend, they will never view me as their own. Distrust and shiftiness dance across all the boys’ faces, causing Emma to bark at them. Their desire for ‘flight’ wanes as unfriendly eyes brand me where I lay huddled on the floor of the cart.

“Clever Jack wouldn’t be so bold as to go back on his own promise, would he?” Emma murmurs casually, flipping the dagger in her hand expertly and cutting through an arrow that had coincidentally flown overhead. The broken pieces tumble before an abandoned storefront, the fresh produce long moldy.

I almost feel a tear come to my eye as Emma positions herself against her former friends and discreetly tries to use her body as a shield for the arrows. Our sisterhood is real. And I know for a fact that I have someone real on my side who cares for me. Even if the care originally started for my money.

“Emma, when I get back and I have some money, you’re getting a raise,” I whisper over the lump in my throat.

“What is a raise, your highness?” Emma asks coolly with her back to me. “And we will return to the palace together.” Jack pulls out the razor and Tommen slowly unfurls from the ground. They remind me eerily of the boys who robbed me blind the night I tried to run away from everything and end it all. But oddly, I don’t hate them for their sudden betrayal, despite the fact that muffin crumbs still hang from my lips.

I smile at Emma’s promise. I hate to force her to break it, but I can see no other way for us all to come out alive without coming to blows or turning into the pincushion in my embroidery basket.

“Don’t...” words fail me slightly, emotion rising in my chest like the tide as I look over the edge of the cart and begin to subtly calculate the distance to the ground. “Don’t hate your friends. They’re just trying to survive, like you and me. This world is not very kind to us underdogs.”

Now Emma can feel that something is wrong with my speech, a sharp-witted girl especially attuned to others’ emotions. The deadly dagger drops slightly as she sacrifices visual on Jack and his gang to look back at me. There’s a crack in her stoic expression and the broiling emotions of disbelief and sorrow pierce through.

A series of several events occur at once, in tandem.

I can see Jack suddenly slide forward, taking advantage of Emma’s distraction, his body closes in on me as he slides low against the floor. A lucky arrow zips over our head and plunges into the shoulder of the crazed horse tugging our cart to hell, stopping Jack’s slide midway. The cart shakes vigorously as the horse rises onto its hind legs and whinnies in distress as Emma catches herself and rushes to block Jack. As for me?

I toss my body over the edge of the cart like I’m Matt Damon jumping out of a moving car in Bourne Identity. Turns out he made the move look a whole lot easier than it actually is.

My shoulder hits the ground with a high impact of 60 kilometers per hour and the subsequent rolling does little to distribute the pain. I. Am. In. Agony. What’s new.

“Ack! Motherfucker!” I squeak out in my kid voice, tears stinging my eyes as I swear my right arm is dislocated. The stunt doubles make jumping out of a moving vehicle look so easy, I suddenly want my money back for every action movie I’ve ever been to.

My weird outburst is not witnessed by those in the cart, who are distracted by their tricky predicament. More worryingly although it was my intention, my ungainly dismount is seen by the assassins, who flip off the roof like Olympic-level gymnasts and land more steadily on their feet than cats as they begin to stalk me.

“Your highness!” Emma shrieks, her voice sounding raw as she somehow in the chaos of the rattling cart manages to notice my escape.

I throw an apologetic look her way over my shoulder, already on the move. As I’ve hoped, the assassins have all but forgotten my traveling partners as they tear after me with uniform precision. I know that with my short kid legs, the odds aren’t in my favor. But as pain radiates through my shoulder like spidery veins of hot acid, I’m not in the right headspace to plan a decent escape. I can barely see where I’m going, so focused am I on putting one foot in front of the other in the never-ending goal to put some distance between myself and the assassins. As long as I keep turning and winding around corners, I’m hopeful that my back won’t turn into an open target.

I am quite literally running for my life. My mouth is bone dry and my eyes are stinging since I’m too fearful to blink too much, lest I miss something dangerous. I careen through another alley, jumping over a fallen barrel with the dexterity of a donkey, my braids beating against my back like a drum.

My plan is about as effective as striking a rock with an egg. I slide out of the alley, the heels of my boots burning against the still healing blisters I got from the whole day of trekking through Radovalsk with Emma, Jack, and the gang. Every inch of my body reminds me how painfully out of shape I am, how woefully defenseless I am in the face of an enemy with no qualms about murdering a kid.

Black arms lunge out to wrap around me before I finish sliding, the movement so sudden I can do little more than freeze as my heart bottoms out. I’m like a doll hanging from a child’s arms within the viselike grip wrapped around my waist. I know I’m a child, but the difference in our size is so jarring and my furious wiggling makes no difference. The precious lead I’ve garnered is being eaten up as I can hear light footsteps make their way over. My skin prickles as if aware that in any second, a knife could be buried in my chest.

“Let me go! Please! Aaah, someone please help me! Please!” An arm breaks free in the midst of my caterwauling and I rake it across the assassin’s face. It meets with a hard surface, the black masks they all wear. I won’t even know who killed me in my last moments. Panic is choking me along with the restraining arm around my waist when I tumble to the ground unexpectedly.

The man that had been holding me grunts, probably in pain, but I don’t bother to check for too long as I whizz past, the tiny break making me even faster than I had been before. I manage to catch a short glance at what took him out, and it seemed that a shiny piece of metal not unlike the razor that had been held to my throat days before is buried in his calf. Jack?

I’m at the edge of the town now, nothing but the main road to Belhelm and pure fields of corn untainted by the afternoon’s violence before me. But I can’t help but take another look behind me at the cursed town, disbelieving what I had seen. Clever Jack is seated comfortably on the back of the flailing horse, cracking his whip against its bloody wound before throwing a friendly wave in my direction. I don’t see Emma, Tommen, or Emmet before I cross over the hard-packed dirt and disappear into the corn.

It sounds like thousands of people are shushing me, as the plants rustle in greeting as I bolt through without qualms. Stalks of towering plants strike my face and arms, but it’s easy to ignore as I focus on putting distance between myself and the assassins. Now, my short stature has become a blessing.

I have no food, no water, and zero clue how to hunt or survive in the wilderness other than what I’ve witnessed old reruns of Naked and Afraid I used to chuckle over. The human body can survive without water for up to 3 days, but I’m a child and already feeling rather thirsty so I cut that time in half.

The only boon I have on my side? I was smart enough to memorize the route to Belhelm. But cutting through a cornfield was not part of the original plan, meaning it will take a little bit of improvisation and a whole lot of luck to reach the warfront in one piece.