Chương 47: [B2] Chapter 5: Pride

Zero closed the distance in the only way left to him: not by catching the eagle, but by catching Viria. He dropped out of the wing-shift entirely, trading altitude for speed, and hit the ground beside her hard enough to drive them both sideways as the volley that would have taken her found empty air instead. Feathers buried themselves where she'd been standing a half second earlier, deep enough that one of them quivered on impact.

"Move!" he called, already hauling her upright.

"I was already moving!"

"You were not." They scattered toward the tree line as the eagle wheeled for another pass, and Zero understood, watching it thread the canopy without once slowing to consider its own path, that the fight had not improved in the time it had cost him to save her. If anything it had worsened. Miho's shoulder still bled from the earlier graze. Yukito's shadow found nothing to grip in open air. Zero's own attempts to corner the creature kept arriving a half second behind wherever it had already decided to be.

"It's not going to get tired before we do," Miho called, breathless, blade sweeping through a space the eagle had vacated a full second before her strike arrived.

"We need something that reaches it without needing to catch it first."

"I am open to any and all suggestions," said Zero.

It was Yukito who said it, ducking beneath a feather that split the bark beside his head.

"Does anyone have any ranged options? Anything at all?" Nobody answered immediately, because the honest answer was no, and the silence said it clearly enough. Zero's own approach was built for closing distance, not covering it. Miho's blade was a blade. Yukito's shadow needed a surface to anchor to, and the sky offered none. Zero's eyes went to the bow still gripped, forgotten, in Viria's other hand.

"You have one," he said.

"The bow." Yukito followed his gaze and understood immediately.

"Viria. Can you use a bow?" Viria straightened, and something in her posture shifted before she'd fully processed the question, old reflex answering before thought caught up to it.

"Of course I can use a bow," she said, almost offended by the implication otherwise.

"My bloodline has produced archers for longer than most kingdoms have existed. I could nock and draw a longbow before I could eve–" She stopped. Zero watched the realization arrive on her face in real time, the exact moment the question stopped being about lineage and became about right now, this bow, this fight, and her hands.

"Oh," she said, quieter.

"You mean actually use it."

"That was the general idea, yes," Yukito said, ducking another pass. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. Viria's grip on the bow did not tighten. If anything it loosened, her arm lowering half an inch, and Zero recognized the shape of what he was watching even before she spoke again, because he had watched her build an entire door out of the same refusal weeks before any of them had understood what it cost her.

"I-I don't," she stammered, "I have never drawn one. Not once in my entire–""Viria." Miho's voice cut through her obvious attempt at a lie, flat and hard in a way Zero had heard from her exactly twice before. Both times, it was before she talked about her clan. Viria's mouth closed.

"My cousins, Lian and Yuha, could have run," Miho said. The eagle screamed somewhere above them, another pass gathering, and still she held the words steady, deliberate, like she was setting down something heavy she'd been carrying a long time and needed both hands free to say it properly.

"The night my clan fell. They both had a clear path to the outer wall and enough time to take it." Miho paused to dodge another feather.

"Neither of them took it, because I insisted on staying behind to fight. Because I had pride."

"Miho—""My aunt went back for both me and her daughters. She did not need to do that either. She could have been through the wall and gone. But my aunt went back instead, because she could not leave her children standing there alone. She threw me into the well, because I was the only one small enough to fit." Miho pulled Viria out of the way of another volley.

"By the time I crawled out on the other side, all three of them were dead." Miho's jaw was tight, her eyes bright in a way she was clearly refusing to let become anything more than that.

"My clan did not fall because we were weak. We were ambushed, and had more pride than strength to back it up. That is the truth and I will not have anyone tell it differently." Miho deflected another round of feathers with her sword.

"But three of the people I loved most were already dead by the time I crawled out of the other side of the well, because in the last hour that any of it still mattered, my pride told me that standing against them was worth more than staying alive. And it cost me three of my family members." She looked at Viria directly, and did not soften anything further.

"Now I'm going to ask you: is your pride worth more than our lives?"

Viria did not answer with words. Her hands moved before her voice caught up to them, an arrow drawn from the looted quiver, nocked, drawn back, the motion clumsy and unpracticed and entirely, finally, hers. She loosed it at the eagle's next pass without waiting to see if her aim was any good, because there was no more time left to decide whether she was allowed to try. It went wide, skimming past a wingtip without connecting, and the eagle didn't so much as flinch.

"Again," Zero said, immediate, no judgment in it at all.

"The first shot is never the one that matters." Viria's hands were already reaching for the next arrow. [Skill Attempt Logged: Marksmanship (Unstable)] Insufficient completions for formal acquisition. Continue attempting under combat conditions. Viria ignored the window and shot again. Her second shot went wider than the first.

Her third came close enough that the eagle broke its pass early, wheeling off in a direction it hadn't chosen a half second before, and Zero understood, watching the correction ripple through its flight path, that they had just changed the terms of the fight for the first time since it began.

"It noticed that one," Miho called.

"Then make it notice the next one too," Zero said, already moving to force the eagle's retreat back toward open ground, toward the one place left in this clearing where Viria could actually get a clean line. Viria's hands were shaking, but she nocked another arrow anyway.