Cascade by Lisa T. Bergren

Author:Lisa T. Bergren [Bergren, Lisa T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781434764317
Publisher: David C Cook
Published: 2011-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 18

“Well, that’s not good,” I panted, hearing our name in the air behind us as if it had grown wings and was flying around the camp, shrieking its repetition to everyone it passed. We were the symbol of defeat. The reason they were all here. And now the sole focus of a thousand men.

We jumped from camp and into the woods, holding hands so we didn’t lose each other in the dark. We held our other hands out, guarding against branches that slowed us down, desperately seeking a path. And taking a beating while we did so.

“Here they come,” Lia grunted.

I glanced back. The forest was alive with torches, more arriving by the second.

“Burn them out!” bellowed Paratore.

“Is he insane?” Lia asked in a whisper. “He intends to burn down the forest to kill us?”

“Yeah.”

“Here,” she said. “Come on.” She yanked me to the right, and my tights ripped on a thorny bush.

“Lia. This is my only pair.”

She ignored my weak joke and we rushed on. We found our stride and tore down the path as fast as we could, one in front of the other now. After a while, freaked that they’d find the path too, we cut right and moved through the trees again. Slowly, we were making our way to the border.

I thought. Unless we were getting totally turned around in the woods.

Which was possible, since we were operating by gut instinct and in the total dark. For the thousandth time, I wished I had my cell and its compass app. Or GPS. Yeah, that’d be helpful…

We hit a patch of boulders and immediately started climbing them. Up top, we paused. We could see torches coming our way, but fewer of them. They’d divided up; obviously they didn’t know where we were.

“Which way is south?” I asked Lia, looking up. Here, away from the fires and torchlight, we were again under the blanket of a thousand stars. The Milky Way was more like the Creamy Way in Toscana; you could see her millions of glittering stars so clearly. Stargazing was so good here, in fact, that it made it harder to pick out the major constellations. Fortunately, Mom and Dad had always been big on us getting to know the night skies when we were little, dragging us out in the dark for meteor showers. But that’d been a few years…

“Big Dipper,” she said, speaking behind me. “See it?”

I turned and studied the sky with her. “Got it. So if that’s the North Star off the end, then south is…this way.”

I turned to my right, fighting the feeling that it was the wrong direction. “Right? This is south?” I picked my way down a boulder, tapping my foot out, reaching for the next.

“Right,” she said.

The assurance in her voice calmed my fears a bit. Lia had always had a better sense of direction than I.

We were halfway down the rock face—this side twice as high as the other, obviously some sort of cliff descending into a valley—when we heard voices above, not thirty feet away.

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