Read Along: The Wraithway

'I got me some vengeance to wreak with the Tonton.'

Saba thinks she knows best and heads out alone but enemies and friends are close behind.

'My every nerve's hummin.'

On the journey along the Wraithway, Saba thinks about what she'll say to Jack. She ponders on the state of the land which has been destroyed at the hands of the Wreckers. Saba compares the work of humans to a 'poison' rotting the land. She dubs them 'prisoners of their own destruction' - their life's work and effort has crumbled around them at the hands of their carelessness and only death greeted them. This means that 'nobody [living] travels the Wraithway'. There's a sense that someone or something is following Saba and her companions. 

'Don't stop on the Wraithway. No matter what.'

Saba disobeys the order Auriel gave her, and stops to drink from the river. But immediately this straying from the one rule is costly - the river is infested with eels and snakes that take blood like leeches. Hermes runs off and Saba and Tracker follow on his heels. They come across a Wrecker temple in a clearing which Hermes disappears into, but Tracker tellingly stays away from. That might be because it's 'full of skellentons'. It's a gruesome scene and the boiling of some substance on an altar makes us realise that someone else must have been around to light it. The thing that's boiling is revealed to be a human face. 

'It's a heartstrike.'

Saba and the man in the temple face off but of course, our hero wins. But only for a minute, as more of his kind are headed her way.

'We reach it jest after daybreak. The Yann Gap.'

Saba reaches the end of the path soon enough. Now she'll be stepping into Tonton territory. It's a deep canyon with a rope bridge as the only way to cross it. In the time it takes Saba to usher Tracker across the bridge, somebody has caught up with Saba and is also heading in the direction of the bridge. Saba begins to cut the rope that ties the bridge and as it falls away, it leaves the people on the other side without a way across.

'Four riders pull up  on that side of the Gap. Lugh. Maev. Tommo. Emmi.'

But it isn't as smart a decision as it seems, because the people were her friends. And behind them are those that she initially thought were after her, meaning that all of them are on the other side - with no way across. They plan to make a rope slide, as Saba shoots over some wire for them to slide across on. As time drains, the other riders come into view - and they appear to be riding on ostrich-like creatures. Their face paint brings to mind images of cannibal tribes we've seen in many a novel and film. The group aims at the oncoming riders and takes a few down. Meanwhile, Saba is busy tying up her end of the slide. Emmi comes across, then Tommo, then Lugh, but the latter is pierced with a dart from the enemy. 

'She's trapped!'

It is rveealed then that Maev has no way of getting across for lack of a belt. But then she makes use of a fallen hatchet to cut some rope away from the old bridge and slide across on that. The group is reunited altogether on one side. Once across, Maev sucks all the poison from Lugh's arm that has spread from the dart. 

'Rage, sharp a white, hardens him.'

Lugh is infuriated upon hearing why Saba left. He clearly doesn't believe that Jack is worth all this trouble, namely almost losing their lives for. Saba tries to depart once more without them all but Maev soon rejoins her, and then Emmi, and then the rest.