SSS Awakening: I Become The Strongest Breeding Knight

Chapter 77: 77. The Place We’ve Been Hunting Was Under His Village the Whole Time

There was a long, desperate rustling.

Then Eveline’s head popped up over the tailgate. Her hair was full of bread crumbs.

She was holding a small blue glass bottle against her chest with both hands tightly, the way a person holds a newborn, and her wide amber eyes were shining with fierce, ridiculous triumph.

”I’ve got it,” she whispered.

”Give it here,” said Laura, in a very flat voice. ”Gently now!”

Eveline surrendered it with great reluctance. Laura pulled the cork with her teeth, tilted Garrick’s head, and poured the contents between his lips.

He swallowed... and then he coughed. A tiny bit of color came into his cheeks.

For a long moment, nothing happened.

I stared at the pulsing light on his chest and counted my own heartbeats. ’One. Two. Three. Four.’

Then Garrick drew a deep, rattling breath, as if he’d been underwater, and his whole body shuddered.

”Gaaahhhhhh...! Ahaagghh...!”

”There,” said Alicia gently. ”There you are.”

His eyes cleared. They darted around the wagon, over our faces, over the broken canvas, and settled on mine.

His lips moved... I leaned down, close enough to feel his breath on my cheek.

”It’s... under my village,” he whispered.

”What...?”

”Site Nine.” His voice was a dry rustle.

It was barely audible. ”I remember... when the Quartermaster took me... to see the ruins!”

”I stood in the middle of Harrowmere... in the square, and I felt it! It was a hum... Like a bolt, but huge.”

”It’s... under the ground.” His fingers clutched weakly at my sleeve. ”It’s under Harrowmere! It’s been there all along!!!”

A cold silence fell over the wagon.

Nobody moved.

”Harrowmere,” Laura said quietly.

”Harrowmere Hollow,” Garrick breathed. ”That’s... where they’re taking the crystals.”

He closed his eyes, and his hand went limp on my sleeve. I felt for his pulse and found it, thin but steady.

”He’s alive...” I said. ”He’s just sleeping.”

Eveline let out a shuddering sigh and sat down heavily on the tailgate. She had a bread crust stuck to her ear, and she was crying a little, silently, with a tiny smile on her face.

I looked up at the sky... The stars were still there, cold and distant and indifferent.

The darkness above the cliff was beginning to fade at the edges, a faint gray smear in the east.

’Forty minutes,’ I thought. ’And we... barely did it.’

It didn’t feel like winning. More like surviving, which is a different thing entirely.

But I was getting used to that.

...

Dawn found us sitting in the wreckage, counting what we had left.

It wasn’t much. The camp looked like the aftermath of a tavern brawl, if the tavern had been attacked by wolves, soldiers, and a very ill-tempered bear.

Overturned shields lay scattered across the rocks. A line of black-furred bodies stretched down the slope toward the river, each one still wearing its dead crystal collar.

The wet leather that Alicia had draped over the wagon hung in ragged, arrow-pierced sheets.

A thin gray smoke drifted from the remains of the fire, and the whole hilltop smelled of blood and wet dog and scorched stone.

Alicia had taken a head count twice, because she didn’t trust the first one. Ferris was lying on a bedroll with his leg wrapped in bandages and an expression of deep offense, as though the arrow had been a personal insult.

Dessa and Wynn had taken minor cuts. Pike had a purple bruise spreading across his entire left side and was eating an apple with grim determination.

Holt had a split lip and seemed to find that hilarious. Oswin hadn’t been scratched at all, which he seemed to consider a failure on his part.

Nobody had died. That was a good thing.

I kept turning that fact over in my head... the way you keep touching a sore tooth.

After everything that had happened, after the arrows and the monsters and the soldiers and the man in black... nobody had died.

We’re all one lucky bastard.

”It was a good fight,” Holt said, wiping blood from his chin with the back of a hand. ”A damned good fight, Lady Ainzfield!”

”I’ve been in a few... That one’ll go in the stories.”

”Please don’t tell stories about it,” said Alicia. ”I’d rather not be famous.”

”Too late, ma’am.”

I was sitting against the wheel of the wagon, with Garrick’s breathing at my back, and I was doing the arithmetic I’d been dreading.

The panel hovered in front of my eyes.

[Current Lust: 28%.]

[Aether Reserve: Critical.]

[Physical Condition: Compromised.]

’Twenty-eight percent... shit...’

I’d burned nearly everything I had, and the little I’d spent on keeping Garrick stable had finished the job.

My hands were cold... My head felt stuffed with wool.

Every time I took a breath deeper than a sip... my ribs reminded me exactly how many of them were broken.

Laura came and sat beside me with a roll of bandages and, without a word, began to wrap my side. And so I let her... my future wife indeed.

And also because I didn’t have the strength to argue.

”You overdid it,” she said, finally. ”Like the usual Roland Ravenshield that I loved.”

”It worked, didn’t it?”

”That’s not the same thing...”

”It’s close.”

”It isn’t...” She tied off the end and tucked it in.

Then, softly, she added, ”But I’m glad it worked.”

I didn’t know what to say next, so I leaned my head on her shoulder for some comfort to get rid of all the exhaustion inside of me. She went stiff for about a second, then relaxed.

Across the camp, I could see Sharon sitting alone on a flat rock, with her shirt cut open at the shoulder and a field dressing that someone had slapped on in a hurry.

She’d refused help from everyone.

When Laura had approached with a fresh bandage, she’d growled that it was nothing, that she’d had worse, and a scratch like that wouldn’t slow down a woman who’d once held a gate for two days with a broken leg.

Laura had held her ground, with her arms folded and one eyebrow raised, until Sharon let her wrap it. It took about four minutes and a great deal of muttered swearing.

”It’s a scratch,” Sharon had said, for the fifth time.

”It’s half your shoulder,” Laura said, tightening the knot.

”I’ve had worse!”

”I’m sure you have.”

Eveline was sitting about twenty feet away, on a pile of broken shields, with her notebook open on her knee. And she wasn’t writing.

She was just holding the pencil and staring at the page. Every few seconds, her eyes drifted toward Sharon, and every time Sharon looked up, they flicked away again.

They’d barely spoken since the fight. Eveline kept opening her mouth, then shutting it.

Sharon kept turning her face away. It was painful to watch, and not one of us had the nerve to interfere.

”What do we have...?” I said.

Alicia had been laying objects out on a flat stone, and she crouched beside the pile now, like a merchant displaying wares.

”Evidence,” she said. ”Three items so far...”

”One, the brass fork from the bear.”

”Two, the signal rod Eveline broke.”

”Three, this.”

She held up a curved piece of black metal, about the size of her hand. It was a fragment of Corvane’s pauldron, the one that Alicia’s sword had cracked.

On the inner face, hidden beneath the paint, was a pale emblem scratched into the steel: a ring with a jagged edge, and a line through the center.

”It’s the same mark,” Laura said. ”Literally the same one! On the crates, the gates, and the soldiers.”

”He wore it openly,” I said. ”He wasn’t hiding it.”

”Because he didn’t expect us to survive... maybe?”

”Or because he doesn’t care.”

Laura took out her small leather notebook and began to write. Her handwriting flew across the page, line after line, in tidy rows.

She noted the fork, the rod, the pauldron, the times, the numbers of the dead, and the wounds on our side.

She even noted the exact words Corvane had said. When she finished, she tore out the page, folded it twice, and slid it into her boot.

”There,” she said. ”If we’re ever called before a tribunal, I’d like to be able to prove every word of this.”

”You’re... terrifying,” said Alicia, with deep admiration.

”I’m prepared.”

I looked at the road, where it curved away east toward the ford, and the gray light was just beginning to turn gold.

”We can’t stay here,” I said. ”The wagon’s damaged... Garrick needs real care.”

”Ferris can’t ride... And we’ve got four miles to the depot.”

”The Greywater depot,” said Alicia. ”Where Bram is.”

”It’s the only place we know that we might find help... It’s Hallis’s contact.”

”And it’s the only way to get answers before...” I rubbed my face. ”Before whatever Phase Two is.”

”We leave at first light,” said Alicia.

”We ARE at first light now.”

”Then we leave now.”

It took an hour to patch the wagon. Pike did most of it, with a mallet and a mouthful of nails.

Wynn splinted a cracked axle. Dessa lashed fresh canvas over the hole in the side.

They loaded Garrick on a pallet of folded blankets, and Ferris onto another, and we set out down the winding track with our wounded wagon creaking behind us.

Behind me, I heard Eveline’s soft footsteps on the stones. She was still staring at Sharon’s back.

’Come on,’ I thought, at both of them. ’Somebody say something.’

And... Nobody did.

Awkward.