The Tales of the Wanderer Volume One: A Book of Underrealm (The Underrealm Volumes 4) by Garrett Robinson (elon musk reading list TXT) 📕

“Dark below,” I grunted, releasing Tuhin once we were in the half-cave.

“Thank you,” they gasped, seizing their wound and squeezing to keep it from bleeding.

“Save your gratitude until we survive this, if we do,” I told them. “Do you have bandages?”

“Here.” They drew them from a sack at their belt.

I snapped off the arrowhead and pulled the shaft out of the wound. Tuhin grunted in pain, but they kept their wits and handed me the bandages. I wrapped them around the shoulder, and Tuhin helped me hold them in place until I was done. When I finished, they sighed in relief and leaned back against the cool earth.

“Again, thank you.”

I stepped away from them to take stock of our situation. In the half-cave, the Shades could not see us. But neither could we see them, and we could not step out to shoot at them. I had an arrow nocked, but it felt useless between my fingers. My mind whirled, trying to devise a strategy.

“These friends of your weremage are ready for a fight,” said Tuhin with a grim smile.

I snorted. “Fortunately, so are we.”

“I should have been more watchful,” said Tuhin, wincing against the pain of their wound. “I grew lax after we left Opara.”

“You were the only one who thought anything was wrong on the road here,” I pointed out. “You and Oku. I should have been less moonstruck by the fireglass and the trench. But this is no time for blame. We must—”

“Stay alive,” barked Mag.

Before I could even look at her in surprise or ask what she meant, she ran out into the open. Oku gave a sharp bark and ran after her. I reached for them both with a cry.

But though arrows came streaking for them, they missed. Of the two that would have struck Mag, she caught one on her shield. The other passed through her cloak, and I gasped, certain it had pierced her side. But she ripped it from the cloth and flung it on the ground—it had rebounded from her armor. She darted out of sight, Oku hard on her heels.

“What under the sky is she doing?” gasped Tuhin. “There are at least a dozen of them. We need to flee, not fight!”

“That is not how Chao prefers to go about things,” I said, shaking my head. “But as tempting as it is to let her take care of them, I cannot allow her to fight alone. There was a tree not far from the stronghold. I am going to sprint for it. It is close enough to the trench that I will have one direction, at least, from which they cannot fire at me. While I give you cover, you must try to go in the same direction as Chao. You can lose yourself in the hills.”

“I will go with you,” said Tuhin. “I can still run, and I might draw arrows away from you.”

“I can do it alone.”

“Of course you can,” said Tuhin, and they sprinted into the open air.

“Dark take you!” I cried, sprinting after them.

They kept their lead, and the two of us dodged and weaved, taking sudden turns to try and confound the archers. Arrows hissed all around us. One found Tuhin before we reached the tree, but it merely stuck in their cloak.

We fell to the ground on the tree’s other side. It was a thick oak with high branches, and for a moment I simply sat there, panting and pressing the back of my head against the rough bark. At last I risked a glance out. I ducked back at once, as five arrows streaked through the air towards me. Three stuck into the tree, the other two embedding themselves in the ground near our feet.

“Only five arrows,” I said. “Chao has been busy. We should help her finish the job.”

“That shall fall to you, I am afraid,” said Tuhin, pointing to their shoulder with a rueful smile. “Unless you think I should throw arrows at them with my good arm.”

“As amusing as that would be, I think not.”

Quickly notching an arrow, I darted around the other side of the tree and fired at the last place I had seen one of our foes. Her head popped into sight, but a heartbeat too late, and I missed. She fell back behind cover again, and I did the same—but then I froze as I heard a scream from her location.

I risked another glance out. There she was—Mag, standing just in the spot where I had fired my arrow. She had plunged her spear down where I could not see it, but when it came up again, it was red with the blood of the woman I had tried to shoot. I heard a furious barking from Oku, and then Mag vanished.

“Sky bless and dark take her, both at once,” I muttered, as I hid once more.

“Chao?” said Tuhin.

“She killed another one. Mayhap more. I think I am going to try to draw their fire again, to give her as much opportunity as I can.”

“There are many rocks close by, and I think they are far enough away from the hills. We should mayhap run for one.”

I nodded. “One. Two. Three. Four!”

We pelted out from behind the tree. But only two arrows came streaking down this time. Sky above, I thought, did Mag kill that many already? I struck the ground hard, groaning as my ribs slammed into the rock I had hidden behind, and I heard Tuhin grunt as they did the same several paces away.

From the edge of my vision, I had taken note of where one of the arrows came from. I drew, leaped up, and fired. This time the arrow flew true. A man in a blue cloak appeared just in time to take the shot in the eye. His head jerked back, fletching protruding from the socket, and he toppled out of sight.

“One!” I called out, hiding again. “At least Chao is not having all the fun.”

“You two have very odd