The reaction was instantaneous: a hiss, a steam of acrid smoke, and Thorin’s scream, which didn’t fully crest the wet, willow-shadowed air before collapsing into a fit of hacking.
Apollo dropped the flask onto the grass, only distantly aware of the way his hands shook, of the way the chemical burn feathered the edges of his tongue and nose.
His vision tunneled down to Thorin’s face, spit-flecked beard, the brow knotted in a hatred higher than pain.
The caustic caught, hissed, and the wound sloughed off old blood and tissue in a runnel of gray-green. It slled like the end of all things.
Nik held Thorin’s arms, one across the chest and another pinning the legs.
Lyra stood back, eyes on the marsh, a single knife held loose behind her thigh, like she expected this scene to summon demons all on its own.
Thorin growled, slamd his head back against the barrow’s rim, then barked, "Again!" His voice jerked the dog from its post near the willow roots and made Apollo’s own pulse screw tight into his ear canal.
He splashed more caustic, watched the wound foam and collapse inward, then pressed a strip of boiled cloth into the ruined flesh and tied it off. It wasn’t dicine, it was a bet, and not even a particularly hopeful one.
He looked up at Nik, who just nodded, no comfort, no words, just the bleak efficiency of n who’d long ago learned how to watch a friend suffer.
Thorin passed out, which was a relief all around. Nik and Apollo bundled him back onto the barrow, Lyra slung another flask, this one unmarked, thank the gods, into Apollo’s belt as they moved.
"If we’re lucky," she muttered, "he’ll make it to noon. If not, at least it’ll be on our terms."
The words landed like an old, shared joke, but Apollo heard the edge in them, the side of Lyra that still believed you had to laugh or you’d drown.
They moved faster now, a kind of anti-march, nothing orderly about the way they sneaked the barrow down deer trails and ducked under low limbs.
The marsh got wetter, the ground more treacherous; sotis the dog disappeared entirely, then reappeared on an islet far ahead, barking once to call them forward or, once, to warn them off.
Apollo followed it, trusting the animal’s judgnt more than his own.
No one spoke for an hour. The only sounds: the squish and snap of bog underfoot, the rattle of Thorin’s uneven breathing, and the distant, ceaseless gossip of crows.
The wind changed at midday, bringing with it the skunky sweetness of burning pitch and, worse, a strange, tallic tang that Apollo recognized imdiately.
Blood. Not the fresh-cut, honest sort, but old, clotted, battlefield blood, the type that attracted flies even through a mile of fog.
They crested a rise, the marsh suddenly opening to what had once been a road, a string of black, slumped pylons, a few charred wagons, and at its center, a group of bodies stacked tidy as lumber.
The older ones had been worked over by scavengers; the children and the smaller ones left mostly intact.
The crows perched on the wagon tops, shifting foot to foot and watching the newcors with the patience of undertakers.
Nik stopped first, set down the barrow, and arched his back until it cracked. "Could be worse," he said. "Could be us."
Apollo scanned the scene.
The bodies were fresh, no more than a day old, by the look of the dried blood and the flies just beginning to settle in.
The uniforms were a mix of city blue and the striped sashes of the Watch, but a few wore the leathers of the Blackhearts; there were others, too, a rchant in a ruined velvet coat and a girl with a pageboy cut, her skin pale as frog’s milk.
Lyra stepped up beside Nik, her nose wrinkling. "Grab anything useful," she said. "If we’re not moving, we’re sitting ducks."
She didn’t wait for an argunt, just started going through the pockets of the nearest corpse, hands quick and practiced.
Apollo set the barrow’s handles down carefully, then approached the rchant.
His fingers found a purse at the man’s belt, loaded, heavy, the weight of coins and perhaps a locket.
He took both, ignoring the voice in his head that sounded a little too much like Othra. The rchant’s eyes, one hanging half-closed, seed to accuse him anyway.
He moved to the next: a Watchman, not much older than Liska in the village, jaw slack and nose broken.
Apollo searched the body and turned up a tin whistle, a pair of dice, and a rolled note sealed with a crude wax imprint. He broke the seal. Inside, a scrap of directions, probably a handoff or a bribe to be delivered downriver.
He pocketed the note, moved on.
Nik had found a ring of keys and was testing them on the charred wagon’s spare compartnt. "Locked," he called. "Bet there’s sothing worth the stink in here."
Lyra passed Apollo a flask without looking at him, her hands still busy at a fallen Blackheart’s belt. "Drink," she said, "unless you like the sll of death in your mouth."
He drank; the spirit caught in his throat, made his eyes water. He felt more awake, which was not always a blessing, but it scrubbed the mory of burning flesh from his palate.
The dog waited at the edge of the clearing, tail wagging low, nose working the air with a hunger more honest than anything Apollo felt in himself.
By the ti Nik jimmied the wagon’s lock, they’d collected a coin purse each, so dried fruit, and a few lengths of clean bandage from the Watch’s kit.
Lyra found a bundle of crossbow bolts, untouched by the blood, miraculously, and a half-burnt ledger listing shipnts and nas.
She passed the ledger to Apollo. "If we need to trade later, this might buy us a night’s roof," she said. "Or a way out, if soone likes a story."
Nik swung the wagon door wide. Inside: crates, so splintered, a sack of black barley, and a clutch of glass vials, all sealed and labeled with a sigil Apollo didn’t recognize: it was a sunburst, the mark of sothing.
He reached for one, and for a mont his chest tightened, a premonition of the old life, the old na, before he unstoppered it and sniffed. The stuff inside was blue-white, granular, and slled of almonds and crushed bone.
He took three vials, tucked them inside the wrap of his shirt, and closed the compartnt. Nik whistled, impressed. "You know what that is?" he asked, voice low.
"Willow salt, mixed with hemlock," Apollo said. "Painkiller. Or poison, if you’re careless."
Nik grinned, and for once, the smile seed real. "Remind to stay on your good side."
They regrouped by the barrow, the dog nosing at Thorin’s legs, and Lyra scanning the horizon with the lazy vigilance of a sniper.
"We need to keep moving," she said. Her eyes were flat but not cold; the violence hadn’t changed her posture, only condensed it.
Apollo nodded, and together they left the killing ground behind, the crows resuming their feast as soon as the last footfall faded.
They made camp at the edge of a ruined aqueduct, the arches collapsed, the debris forming an island above the reach of the marsh.
Lyra started a fire with a block of resin and a twist of dry grass, the fla catching with a suddenness that made Apollo flinch.
The sun, if it could be called that in this place, hung low and red, the sky gone the color of old bruises.
Nik found a tin of sardines and passed it around.
Nobody asked for more than a taste. Thorin slept, his breath uneven, the bandages at his shoulder already stiff with crusted blood.
Apollo checked the wound twice, then a third ti, feeling the heat radiate through his fingertips and up his arm, into the core of him, a warning, or maybe an invitation.
They ate in silence until the last of the light was gone. Then Nik and Lyra took turns on watch, the dog splitting the ti between dozing in Apollo’s lap and patrolling the periter with a seriousness that bordered on the devout.
Apollo waited until the others were settled, then knelt beside Thorin, the dwarf’s face slack in the firelight.
The skin at his temple was wet with sweat, the beard dark with fever. He peeled back the bandage: the burn had stopped the rot, but the damage was deep, the muscle shredded and slow to heal.
At this rate, Thorin would be dead by morning, or worse, alive but missing half his arm.
He looked at his hands, at the fine tremor in the left, the blue veins webbing the inside of his wrist.
He pressed his fingers to the wound, feeling for the old, golden current, the aether, buried now beneath layers of exhaustion and mortal cowardice.
He’d sworn to leave it, not to poke at the fire lest the gods above or below know he still rembered how.
But nobody in the world was watching; nobody cared.
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