The world was a blur of screaming green and desperate breaths. Kragen's hand was a vise around Xena's wrist, pulling her through the skeletal embrace of ancient pines. Her lungs were fiery bellows, each gasp scraping her throat raw. Yet, tighter than Kragen's grip was her own around the small, swaddled bundle pressed to her chest was her son, Thorne.
He was silent. That was the thought that screamed in her mind above the thunder of their footfalls and the distant, hunting calls of horn and hound. In all this chaos, the snap of branches, the savage rhythm of their flight, the metallic taste of fear, he made not a sound.
Kragen, her brother, was a mountain of a man usually given to laughter and slow, deliberate movement. Now, he was a creature of pure motion, his face a mask of grim intensity, his armor once the polished silver of the Royal Pack, now scarred and mud-smeared. He was their rearguard, their shield, and their only hope.
"There!" he rasped, his voice gravelly with exhaustion.
Ahead, the trees thinned, giving way to the roaring white veil of the Skyfall. The mist kissed their burning faces, a cold, damp promise of concealment. The sound was immense, a constant roar that swallowed all others. Kragen skidded to a halt on the moss-slick rocks at the pool's edge, turning to her. His eyes, the same storm- grey as her own, held a universe of sorrow and resolve.
"The falls, Xena," he urged, pushing her gently towards the thunderous sounds. "There's a recess behind it. Go. Now."
"Kragen—" her voice broke, a thin thread against the waterfall's roar.
"No time!" He cupped her face, his calloused thumb brushing away a tear and a smear of dirt. "Listen. Stay hidden until the sun touches the highest peak. Then you go west. Follow the Starwash River. Do not stop at the villages. Do not trust the roads. Do not stop until you are out of Valdahal. Find the Hella. Ask for Mnior ." He pressed a heavy, linen-wrapped pouch into her free hand—coins, a seal, things for survival. "Swear it to me."
Tears welled anew, hot and relentless. "I swear. But you—"
"I will lead them on a merry chase to the eastern ridges." A ghost of his old, wolfish grin touched his lips. "They want the heir to the Bloodstone Throne? Let them chase its shadow." His gaze dropped to the silent bundle in her arms. His expression softened, something breaking behind the steel. "He is worth all the kingdoms, sister. Now go!"
He gave her a final push towards the crashing water. The spray soaked her instantly, a shocking cold. She stumbled, slipping on stone, but righted herself, clutching Thorne closer. With one last, agonized look at her brother—his broad back as he turned, drawing his greatsword with a steely whisper—she plunged behind the liquid wall.
The world muted to a resonant, drumming hum. It was a cave of water and stone, dim and shimmering with refracted light. The air was thick with spray and the smell of wet rock and deep earth. She sank to her knees, her back against the cold stone, trembling from exhaustion and terror. Outside, the waterfall was a rippling, translucent barrier, distorting the world beyond into a painting of green and grey.
She looked down. Thorne's eyes were open. In the gloom, they seemed to hold their own light, a calm, deep blue like a twilight lake. He stared up at her, utterly serene, his tiny fingers curling around the edge of his woolen wrap. No cry, not even a whimper. He simply observed, as if the roar and the fear were a distant play.
"You are definitely like your father," she whispered, a sob and a laugh tangled in her throat. She thought of Blackbone, his quiet strength, his uncanny stillness in the heart of the storm before the coup. A scholar king who saw shadows others missed. Had he seen this one? The one that swallowed him whole?
The thought was a fresh wound. She wept then, silently, her shoulders shaking, her tears mingling with the waterfall's spray on Thorne's blanket. She wept for Blackbone, dead in the Valhadal Keep. She wept for Kragen, drawing steel against impossible odds. She wept for the home she would never see again, for the crown that was now a death sentence for her son.
Suddenly, the distorted view beyond the waterfall shifted. Shadows moved. Figures. The crisp, harsh lines of imperial plate armor replaced the soft shapes of forest. Her breath hitched. She pressed herself deeper into the crevice, pulling a fold of her dark cloak over Thorne. Through the watery veil, she counted five, no, six soldiers. They moved cautiously, weapons drawn, scanning the ground.
One, a man with a warrior's plume on his helmet, stood at the pool's edge, staring directly at the falls. Could he see her? Did the cloak ripple wrong? Xena's heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drum surely loud enough to be heard over the water. Thorne squirmed slightly, and she held her breath, praying to any god that might listen.
Xena became a statue. She willed the very air around her to still, her tears to freeze, her blood to slow. Only her eyes moved, tracking the blurred shapes beyond the curtain of water. The guard stood like a sentinel, his gaze a palpable pressure. One of the soldiers prodding the ferns shrugged, saying something lost to the roar. The man looking up the cliff shook his head.
For an eternity of heartbeats, they lingered. Then, a horn blast echoed from the eastern tree line—sharp, urgent. The guard's head snapped toward the sound. Kragen. He had made contact, a deliberate clash of steel to pull them away. The warrior's leader gestured sharply, and like phantom hounds, the guards turned and crashed back into the forest, following the sound of the horn.
Relief, cold and dizzying, washed over Xena. She slumped, a muffled gasp escaping her. Thorne let out a soft, almost sigh-like sound. The immediate danger had passed, but Kragen had paid for it. She sent a silent, desperate prayer for his safety into the damp air.
As the sun's angle shifted, a single, brilliant shaft of light pierced the upper cascade, striking the pool outside and sending a rainbow shimmering across her rocky hiding place. It was time. Kragen's instructions echoed: Wait until the sun touches the highest peak.
Cautiously, she edged to the side of the waterfall and peered out. The clearing was empty, save for the churning pool and the torn moss where boots had scraped. The forest was quiet, the hunter's horn now silent. The path west lay along the Starwash, but the riverbank was exposed. The safer, slower route was through the dense pines, parallel to the water but under cover.
It was the way of the hunted—never commit fully to the open or the close dark. Xena moved like a shadow along the margin between wood and water. For a hundred paces, she would flit from the cover of a broad oak to a jumble of river-smoothed boulders, using the river's roar to mask any small sound she made. She kept the silver ribbon of the Starwash always on her right, a liquid guide pointing west.
The forest was alive with the sounds of twilight—the chirrup of insects, the distant call of a nightjar. Every rustle in the undergrowth made her freeze, heart in her throat. Thorne, lulled by the rhythm of her movement, had fallen into a fitful sleep.
After what felt like hours, but was likely only one, the terrain began to change. The river widened, growing shallower and louder as it rushed over a pebbled ford. The forest on the opposite bank looked darker, more impenetrable—the beginning of the Hella Kragen had spoken of. But to cross here was to be utterly exposed. However, staying on this side meant the river would soon curve sharply south, away from her western course.
Instinct, sharpened by terror, screamed against the open water. Xena melted back into the trees, finding a thicket of holly and hawthorn that offered a narrow view of the ford. She settled, back against a trunk, and forced herself to breathe slowly, to listen beyond the river's chatter.
She didn't have to wait long.
From the trees downstream, on the very bank she had just vacated, two figures emerged. They were not imperial soldiers in bright plate. These men wore patched leathers and moved with a predator's grace. Hunters. One knelt by the water's edge, examining the mud. He pointed—directly at the disturbed moss on the rock where she had paused not twenty minutes before.
Her blood ran cold. They were good.
The other hunter, a lean man with a longbow across his back, scanned the far bank, then looked directly upriver toward her hiding spot. His gaze swept over the thicket. Xena pressed her face against Thorne's blanket, smothering her profile in the dark wool. She could feel the child stir, a tiny leg kicking in protest at the confinement.
The hunter on the ground stood, nodding. He gestured across the ford. They were going to cross. If they gained the other side, they would cut off her path to the Hella. If they came up this bank, they would find her.
It was a desperate gambit, but the open ford was the perfect distraction. The hunter's attention was locked on the far bank, their bodies braced against the tug of the current. The moment the archer was mid-stream, his back to her, Xena moved.
Pushing through the back of the thicket, ignoring the thorns that snatched at her clothes, she burst into a low, silent run upstream, away from the ford. She stayed just inside the tree line, using every trunk for cover. Her breath came in short, sharp gasps. Thorne, jostled awake, let out a thin, startled mewl.
Behind her, a shout cut through the river's noise. They had heard. Or seen. A arrow thwipped into a tree trunk to her left with a sickening vibration. She didn't look back. She poured every ounce of her strength into her legs, the image of the Hella promised safety burning in her mind.
The forest grew darker, the pines closer together. She leapt over a fallen log, stumbled on a root, and fell hard, twisting to land on her side to protect Thorne. A sharp pain shot through her ankle. Gritting her teeth, she scrambled up, testing her weight. It held, but a hot throb began with every step. She was limping now, her speed halved.
She could hear them crashing through the brush behind her, closer. They were unencumbered, fresh. She was a wounded doe with her fawn. The trees began to thin again ahead, opening into a rocky gully. A dead end? Or a path?