The Marksman [The Talent of Three: Book 1]

20 ••• Missing

Atheris and Kayne stare at Chip, their expressions conveying a single message: Are you crazy?!

"Go back?" Kayne squeaks. "You want to go back to the centaurs who would rather kill us than set us free?"

"No," Atheris says suddenly. "Not us. They...they didn't seem willing to kill us. Not us, anyway. The others, perhaps." She paces. "Strange, isn't it? Nictyrus didn't need much persuading..."

"Because of your silvertongued, flowery words," Kayne snaps. "But we won't get so lucky a second time. It's best if we keep going."

Atheris hesitates, her mind still puzzling over Nictyrus's words. You seem familiar to me. Did it have anything to do with him letting them go?

"I say we go back," Chip says firmly. "We don't have to let the centaurs know we're back. We could just...set the others free after night."

"On a hunt," Atheris adds suddenly. "At night when they're on a hunt."

Chip looks back to Kayne. "See? They won't know a thing!"

"No!" Kayne says fiercely. "We can't go back! We've got to go on!"

As the two argue, Atheris slips into the grey area of her brain, the part where she is lost in her thoughts, there but not. She sees Pippa hanging limp from the branches. She imagines Redding...Jadis...Demitria...Atticus... She hears herself say, "They didn't seem willing to kill us. Not us, anyway. The others, perhaps."

And Atheris snaps back to life, decision made. "Chip is right. We can't just let them die."

Kayne scowls at them. "And how do you suppose we get there? We don't have a clue where we are!"

"Maybe not," Atheris agrees, a sly smile spreading across her face. "But the centaurs have left a track very easy to follow." Her eyes drop to the hoofprints in the soft forest floor.

•••

Kayne shoves Atheris and Chip forward. They give him almost identical looks.

"Your idea, you get to go first," he says tetchily.

Chip and Atheris exchange a look. They both roll their eyes and creep forward together toward the human shapes hanging from the branches.

Atheris moves closer to the spot she had Pippa last. "Light?" she asks.

Chip flicks on a flashlight and holds it up to Pippa. Only then does Atheris realizes Pippa and the others aren't hanging from the tree—rather, their wrists are bound and they are floating just underneath each branch. Everyone's eyes are closed, their breathing shallow. But each looked waxy, sallow, and, quite frankly, dead.

Atheris stares at Pippa's waxen face, her body frozen at the sight of a lifeless Pippa. It seemed impossible to her for Pippa to not be laughing or smiling, full of life and joyful.

"Atheris," Chip says quietly. "Your dagger."

Numbly, Atheris pulls the blade from its sheath and passes it to Chip. He, in return, gives her the flashlight in exchange for the dagger. She holds the light steady, forcing herself to look away from Pippa. Chip saws at the bindings around Pippa's wrists until they break. Pippa's eyes snap open as she falls. Atheris lunges to catch Pippa before she hits the ground.

"Ath...? Where am I?" she mumbles.

"It's a lot to explain," Atheris says. She glares at Kayne. "A little help would be appreciated."

So while Atheris fills Pippa in on what happened to her, Kayne and Chip free the others. Pippa and her companions, followed by the ones to whom they explain what happened, begin to tell the others what happened to them.

It isn't long before the sound of hooves pounding on the dirt filled the air, distant at first but getting louder far too quickly for Atheris's liking.

"We've got to hurry," she murmurs to Chip and Kayne. Chip only nods in response and finishes sawing the ropes tying together the wrists of the second-to-last person. He starts on the last person's ropes.

•••

"WE GOTTA GO!" Atheris suddenly yelled as the sound of hooves grows so loud the centaurs could be no more than twenty-four feet away.

The crowd of people in the glade start off at a run, scattering. Atheris searches out Chip and Kayne in the crush of people. She hurries to them and they join the swarm of people fleeing the glade, just as the pound of hooves enters the glade.

•••

Atheris is running too fast to see much of anything—the only thing she is absolutely sure of is Chip running on her right, Kayne on his right. Her heart slams in her ribcage wildly, a caged bird desperate for freedom. The only sound she hears is screaming and yelling, desperate shouts from the others, all running, like her, from the centaurs.

The forest whizzes by and slowly the sounds of screams are replaced by struggling breaths. Atheris finds her chest is tight and it's nearly impossible for her to breathe. Pain wracks her body and her legs muscles scream, her body pleading for her to stop.

But Atheris doesn't stop. She just keeps running.

It takes her a long while before she realizes she only hears two frantic breaths—Chip's, and her own.

She stops suddenly. "Chip!" Her voice is high pitched. "Where's Kayne?!"