No Reprieve Read Online Free Page B

His steps pounded on dry leaves and crunched on the sticks and pinecones that littered the forest floor. Nothing mattered except finding Mari and leaving the woods. He stopped, lost. Her laughter was gone. A wolf howled. He heard her scream, this time in fear.
    “Mari!” he shouted, starting to run again. Shadows gave way to darkness. So dark beneath the tall old trees. Cold, too. Snow began to fall, thick and heavy, blanketing the ground. The wolf howled again. Another scream. The forest melted away, and Blaine ran through knee-deep snow. Up ahead he saw Mari. Her shift was no longer white, but crimson, and she stood over the wolf’s body, holding a bloody sword. Blaine shouted to her, terrified for her safety, angry that she had taken on the wolf herself, but Mari only stared at him as if in a daze, then began to shake her head.
    Blaine lost his footing and crashed down into the snow. The cold blackness swallowed him. Mari and the wolf were gone, and only the dark remained.
      
    The sound of a pennywhistle pierced the darkness. Lost, Blaine followed the music. He could barely hear it at first, but gradually, the notes grew louder, closer.
    “What in Raka is he muttering?” a distant voice asked. The music stopped.
    “Sounds like he’s counting to me,” another voice replied, just as far away as the first.
    “Why in Esthrane’s name is he counting?” the first voice sounded, closer now.
    “Ask him if he wakes up,” the second man replied.
    For a time, the voices faded into darkness. The pennywhistle took up its tune again, a jaunty tavern song that reminded Blaine of home. When the shadows parted again, Blaine heard the steady cadence of a boot tapping against rock.
    “Are you back yet?” The voice was one of the speakers he had heard before, familiar, but not yet someone he could place. “Because it’s bloody boring sitting vigil.”
    With a struggle, Blaine opened his eyes. Even the dim light of the lantern hurt. It took him a moment to recognize the sparse surroundings of the prisoners’ barracks. “Verran?”
    “Thank Torven! He’s stopped counting!” A chair scraped against the floor and then Verran Danning stood over him, looking down with an expression that mingled annoyance and concern.
    “How long?” Blaine croaked. His throat was parched, and his body felt leaden.
    “Three days in the Hole, two days since then,” Verran snapped. “With Dawe and me playing nursemaid, trying to get food down your sorry gullet and warming you up slowly enough so we didn’t have to chop off all the small bits from the cold.”
    Blaine had met Verran on the ship from Castle Reach. He and the minstrel-thief had struck a deal to watch each other’s back on the long journey, and that had deepened into friendship when they had been assigned to the same barracks. Dawe Killick, one of the other prisoners in the same section as Blaine and Piran, had also become a good friend.
    “Piran?” Blaine managed.
    “He’s alive,” Verran replied. “Probably refused to die just to annoy the piss out of Prokief. Not in much better shape than you, but at least he didn’t mutter numbers in his sleep.”
    Counting. Steps. The oubliette. Cold darkness. Little by little, memories flooded back. Pain. Dreams. Blaine shifted his weight and realized he lay on his own bunk. He winced, then realized that moving did not hurt as much as he expected.
    “Got Tellam the hedge witch over here to save your sorry ass,” Verran said, slipping his pennywhistle into his pocket. “Did his best to fix Ford up as well. Tellam said he’d settle for a quarter of your next pay, if you survived, for his trouble. He closed up the stripes on your back and kept them from souring, and then he eased the ice sickness the best he could.”
    “Thanks,” Blaine said.
    “Dawe and I agreed. It was better to keep you and Piran alive than have to get new bunkmates,” Verran replied. “We’re used to how bad the two of you snore, and how you both wake