The Longest Day

Crying out, Vita threw herself at the man, desperately hoping that her body weight would be enough to unbalance him.

Just in time, they collided. His dagger sliced through the back of Tahni’s shirt, nicking the skin beneath as he and Vita tumbled to the ground.

Tahni gasped, her back stinging, and scurried away from the violent brawl between the two, only to bump into another man. Before she could make a sound, his rough hand clamped hard over her mouth.

She could barely breathe.

As she struggled to break free of his grasp, Tahni watched Vita fight a losing battle with the first man who had attacked them. Grunts and groans filled the night air as they struggled on the ground, fists flying as the man desperately tried to keep Vita at bay and Vita desperately tried to get the upper hand.

The man with his hand clamped over Tahni’s mouth chuckled darkly. “Is the little Seer too much for you, Thomas?” he goaded.

The first man looked up to sneer at his accomplice from the dirt, giving Vita the split-second opening she needed in order to drive her elbow forcefully into his nose.

Tahni heard the sound of it breaking as if the man were standing right next to her.

Roaring in pain and with blood gushing down his chin, the man lunged at Vita, catching her off guard. He curled his fingers around her throat and, with as much force as he could muster, backhanded her across the side of the head.

Vita fell limp almost instantly, slumping heavily to the dirt.

“No!” Tahni cried out desperately.

Ignoring her, the man—Thomas—muttered, “Don’t test your luck with me, Jordan,” as he lifted himself off the ground and brought a hand to his nose to attempt to halt the blood flow.

Knowing she was outnumbered and there was no way she could escape, Tahni gave up her feeble attempts at freeing herself.

His hand still covering the bottom half of his face, Thomas jerked his chin towards Tahni. “Why haven’t you killed her? Those were Lord Slay’s orders: ‘Strike to kill,’” he said.

In the back of her mind, Tahni registered the fact that Slay himself had apparently sent these two men to murder them.

A sinister grin split Jordan’s face. “I thought we could have some fun with her first,” he said.

The two shared a look, and Thomas broke into laughter, the blood that had run down over his mouth spraying into the air before him. “I like the way you think!” he cackled, clapping Jordan on the shoulder with his free hand.

Jordan grinned back at him and before she knew what was happening, Tahni was being shoved roughly to the ground. She managed to catch herself on her hands and knees before she landed face-first in the dirt, but almost immediately, she received a powerful blow to her ribcage and was toppling over onto her side.

Eyes bleary with pain and curled up in a ball to protect herself, Tahni could barely see the boot she’d been struck with. She could, however, feel the men kneeling down beside her and pushing her onto her back so he could rip the buttons of her shirt open, exposing her chest.

She tried to cry out, but all she could manage was a garbled moan. Her ribs were bruised at the least.
She was sure of it.

As one of the men began groping her legs, his hands moving quickly to the waistband of her pants, Tahni whimpered.

No, she thought. No, no, no… Please… This can’t be happening. This can’t be real. Please… Please just make them stop…

And, as if her prayers had been answered, the two men suddenly froze in place, their heads raised and their eyes darting quickly about the woods.

Frantically blinking away her tears, Tahni tried to see what had caught their attention. She could barely move though. Could barely even breathe.

Whatever it was, it was big enough and bad enough to have the two hulking cutthroats worried.

“Did you hear that?’ Thomas whispered nervously.

“Of course I heard it! We should go,” Jordan hissed back. “Now!”

“What about the girl?”

“Look at her, she’s not going anywhere in a hurry. It’ll take care of her for us, but I’m not sticking around to watch,” Jordan said.

With a nod of agreement and once last furtive glance around the campsite, Thomas rose from the ground and slowly began moving backwards, making sure to be as quiet as possible. Jordan followed in kind.

Once they were a good few yards away, the two men spun and darted off into the night.

Tahni laid still on the ground. A rock dug painfully into the back of her skull and she could feel dirt in the small wound on her back but she was too afraid to move. Partially because of the pain in her ribs and partially because of whatever it was out there that had terrified the two cutthroats enough to make them flee.

A moment later, she heard rustling close by. Her breath caught in her throat and she scrunched her eyes closed, not wanting to see whatever it was that would surely end her life.

Instead of feeling a creature’s strong claws digging through her skin, or sharp teeth clamping around her throat, however, Tahni felt gentle fingertips brush her shoulder.

Cautiously opening her eyes, she found Vita kneeling over her head.

Blood trickled slowly from a small cut on her temple and the skin around her eye was already swelling and turning a grotesque shade of purple. But she was alive.

“Are you okay?” she asked, though it didn’t seem like she herself even was.

Still terrified of whatever creature was lurking in the woods, Tahni shook her head slightly, the rock scraping painfully against her skull.

Seeming to understand why Tahni wasn’t speaking, Vita murmured, “There’s nothing out there, Tahni. It’s alright. It was me.”

Tahni’s brow furrowed.

“I used my powers on them,” Vita explained. “They thought they heard a cougar moving this way.”

“But…” Tahni said, “You were unconscious. I thought you were dead. That Thomas man hit you and you just collapsed. How could you have—“

“I was unconscious. I woke up when they were groping you,” Vita said softly; carefully. “Attacking them was no use, so I used my gift. The only reason I ever attacked that man in the first place was because there was no time to do anything else. If I’d have known he was there I would have used my powers to begin with.”

“Oh…” was all Tahni said.

“Can you sit up?” Vita asked her.

She shook her head, wincing at the mere thought of attempting to move her body.

“What did they do?”

“One of them kicked me. They must have bruised my ribs.”

Vita’s eyes travelled to Tahni’s ribcage, her front still bare from when the men had ripped her shirt open. It was clear that there was damage. The extent of that damage, Vita wasn’t sure.

Carefully, she slipped her hands under Tahni’s shoulders and lifted.

Pained moans rang out through the darkness. If they were still close enough to hear, the two men would think it was the sound of Tahni being killed by the cougar.

Once Vita had helped her into a sitting position and leant her gently against a tree, Tahni managed to hold herself upright, clutching her ribs gingerly.

Quickly, Vita rummaged through Tahni’s rucksack and brought out another shirt, carefully helping her put it on. For Tahni, it was an excruciating task.

“Thank you,” Tahni murmured once she was covered.

Vita gave her a sympathetic look. “I’m so sorry for this, Tahni. If it weren’t for my prophecy, you would never have been in that situation. At the very least, I should have heard them coming. I should have used my powers s—“

“Vita, stop,” Tahni ordered. “None of this is your fault. How could you have known they were there? How could you have used your powers sooner? You did everything you could, and you got them away from us. Do not blame yourself for what they tried to do to me. You’re the only reason they didn’t go through with it. You’re the only reason we’re still alive right now.”

Vita nodded solemnly. She knew that Tahni was right, but she couldn’t help feeling responsible. After all, she was the one who dragged the poor girl into all of this. Everything that happened to Tahni since they left that clearing was, in one way or another, Vita’s doing.

At least, that was how she saw it.

“You should rest,” she said quietly. “You’ll need it if you’re going to try and keep moving with those ribs tomorrow.”

“I don’t think I could rest even if I wanted to,” Tahni replied, her eyes searching the trees around them warily.

“I’m still using my powers to deflect anyone who comes near. We’ll be safe now. And I’ll keep watch as well, just to be sure. Please at least try to sleep. For me.”

Reluctantly, Tahni agreed. She rested her head against the tree and closed her eyes. With the adrenaline of the night’s events still coursing through her veins though, and the aching in her ribs, she knew she would not be able to relax enough to doze off.

She pretended though, for Vita’s sake.

~

In the morning, however, Tahni woke to find that she eventually had managed to fall asleep, after all. She couldn’t pinpoint when it had been, but she guessed—by the way her eyes refused to focus and the fact that she didn’t feel rested in the slightest—that it had only been for a few short hours.

Looking around, she saw that Vita was still awake, poking the dying embers of their fire with a stick.
She looked exhausted.

Lifting her arms to rub her eyes, Tahni made a pained noise. The next few weeks would not be pleasant as her ribcage slowly healed.

Vita jumped at the sound and spun, brandishing her stick like a sword, and poised to attack. Her eyes were suddenly very alert, her chest heaving as she searched for danger. As soon as she realised it had only been Tahni, though, her body sagged.

More than exhausted, Tahni noticed, Vita looked broken. With her eye now a deep shade of purple, the skin swollen and pulled taut, her temple covered with dried blood, a thin line of it trailing down the side of her face, and her skin so pale it was almost transparent, she looked truly defeated. Tahni could see in her face the toll this was already taking on her.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” she said.

Vita shook her head. “No, it’s fine. How do you feel?”

“It still hurts a lot. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to ride. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll even be able to mount Claire,” Tahni answered.

On the second day of their travels, Tahni had decided that they should name their horses. She’d named her own mare Claire—after her mother—and Vita had named hers Belle.

“Let’s take it in baby steps then,” Vita said. “Can you stand?”

Reluctantly, Tahni braced her hands on the ground and pushed. With a pained groan, she raised herself off the ground to stand upright, though it was an agonising feat.

“Okay, so it hurt, but you could do it,” Vita encouraged with a nod. “Now see how it feels to walk.”

Tahni took a deep breath to prepare herself, and her face contorted. That had been a very bad idea.
She waited for a few moments for to let the sharp pain subside, if only faintly, then took a few paces forward. She was surprised to find that it hadn’t hurt quite as much as she’d expected. Taking that deep breath felt worse than walking did.

With more confidence now, Tahni slowly made her way over to their horses. Although it wasn’t unbearable, it still hurt and she knew she should be careful.

Lifting an arm to stroke Claire’s mane, she gasped, wincing. There was no way she would be able to pull herself up onto her horse’s back when she couldn’t even lift her arm above her head. The pain of it would be intolerable.

Vita watched from where she stood by the ashes of their burnt-out fire and could tell that Tahni would not be able to ride. She also knew, though, that they had to keep moving, one way or another.

“I can’t,” Tahni said, turning to her friend with a sigh and a puckered brow. “I won’t be able to climb up onto her. The only way we can keep moving is to walk. I’m sorry, Vita.”

“Don’t apologise. This isn’t your fault,” Vita reminded her. “We’ll walk until you can ride again. As long as we make ground on Slay, it’s better than just sitting here while we wait for your ribs to heal.”

***

“Are you certain?” Slay demanded.

“There’s no way either of them are still alive,” Jordan answered definitively. “That cougar was close enough to hear, and there were noises after we left their campsite. Not the good kind either. Even if Thomas didn’t actually kill that Vita woman, the cougar would have.”

“But did you see them die?”

“Well… No, but—“

“But nothing!” Slay roared. “The tracking stone Barren gave you is still vibrating! It was linked to Vita, and it would have stopped if she was dead! You would feel nothing when you held it!”

“My Lord, please…” Thomas interjected nervously. “Is it possible that the stone’s powers have transferred to someone else now? Could it be tracking someone else instead, now that its target is dead?”

“No.” It was the first time Aldock had spoken since the two cutthroats had entered Slay’s quarters to report back to him. Dalton Everett stood at the back of the enormous tent, watching the exchange in
silence.

After Slay had given Everett the order to send men to kill Tahni and Vita, Aldock had teleported the cutthroats to a nearby town, just two days away from their campsite by foot. The sorcerer had placed what he called ‘links’ in every town he’d ever passed through since he was just a young boy. They’d helped him to get out of all kinds of mischief over the years. Small stones, hidden away in secret burrows only he knew of, that he could use to teleport himself—or anyone else—in or out of a town. Each stone had a twin, so if he teleported someone else to a certain town, they could pick up the stone there, and its twin—the stone Aldock would always keep with him—would begin glowing, showing him when to use his powers to teleport them back again.

Slay’s informants from the Seer’s Seminary had guessed that that particular town was where the cutthroats were most likely to find Tahni and Vita, knowing that it was the closest village to Greengrove and that they had only begun travelling sometime within the last week or two. Once there, Aldock’s tracking stone had lead the two men right to Tahni and Vita’s small campsite.

“The tracking stone,” Aldock continued, “is designed to allow you to find one person and one person only. Using one of Vita’s possessions—I assume Lord Slay must have had his informants steal it from her at the Seer’s Seminary—I channelled her into the stone. It was linked to her. Only her. That is how it could find her location. That is how, when you faced in the right direction, you could feel its vibrations in your hand as you held it. If Vita were dead, that link would have been severed. You would no longer feel those vibrations.”

“But what if—“

“I am a sorcerer who is about to create an entirely new world. Do you honestly believe I could perform such a small, simple spell incorrectly? This was child’s play to me,” he interrupted impatiently.

After a moment of charged silence, neither of the cutthroats knowing what to say, Slay spoke sharply.

“Get out.”

The two men jumped. Bowing briefly to their lord, they retreated from his marquee in a rush.

“Dalton,” Slay barked once they were out of sight.

“Yes, my Lord?” the admiral replied, stepping forward from his place at the back of the tent.

“Execute them.”

Everett inclined his head. “As you wish.”

The next morning, the two men’s heads could be found on spikes at the entrance to Slay’s quarters.

It was a warning to all his other troops: Do not fail. There are no second chances.