by Sarah Hawke
By midafternoon we found ourselves a comfortable perch along the ridge where we could watch the whole pass, and we settled in and took turns keeping watch. A few hours before sunset, we finally found what we were looking for.
“There they are,” Kaseya announced, squinting through the spyglass. “I see five soldiers on each side plus the driver and three horses.”
Valuri flipped over and shielded her eyes against the sun. “What are the odds they start shooting at us the moment we approach them?”
“Too high,” I murmured, taking the spyglass. The carriage was larger than I expected and probably heavier too, considering the size of the mighty draft horses pulling it along. The soldiers on either side were traveling on foot while their leader steered from the saddle.
“They certainly look professional enough,” Valuri commented. “Expensive armor and weapons, elaborate tabards…no one would ever confuse them with any of the rag-tag companies back home.”
“Should we move out to greet them?” Kaseya asked. “The longer we wait, the more suspicious they’ll become of us lurking in the ridgeline.”
I let out a deep breath and nodded. This was all going precisely according to plan so far, but I still couldn’t unwind the anxious knots twisting in my stomach. Something just didn’t feel right…
“Let’s go,” I said. “But keep your guard up.”
We shimmied our way down the hill and slowly maneuvered through the rocky path back to the road. When we finally emerged into direct view of the mercenaries, I was careful to ensure that we were plainly visible for a solid quarter mile before the caravan reached us. Unsurprisingly, the guards stopped the wagon and sent a man ahead to greet us.
“Identify yourself!” he called out, his hand clenched around the handle of his unsheathed sword.
“Our employer thought you could use some backup,” I said, holding out the symbol Telanya had given me. “We’re here to help.”
The man stopped a good fifty feet away from us, his eyes squinting at the symbol. I could barely see his face beneath his upturned visor, but I could tell he was one ugly son of a bitch.
“Lord Martel promised to send a whole squad.”
“Well, we’re all that’s coming,” I said. “But we pack a punch, don’t worry.”
After staring at us for another moment, he made a hand signal to the rest of the caravan before he approached closer. “Two women and a fop with a ruffled shirt,” he sneered. “And here I thought Martel was taking this seriously.”
“Well, he did hire you,” Valuri said. “So evidently not.”
It was hard not to wince. It was even harder not to elbow her in the gut.
“We can handle ourselves just fine, don’t worry,” I said, opening my palm and summoning a crackling ball of Aetheric energy. “The boss thought you might need a little extra firepower.”
To his credit, the man didn’t recoil at the sight of magic. He just stared at us in contempt for another moment before the wagon finally caught up.
“They’re your problem—you deal with it,” he muttered to the driver.
The man in the saddle—a thirty something human with short hair and an out-of-place appreciation for basic hygiene compared to his companions—chuckled softly and held out his hand.
“The name’s Koth,” he said. “Romar Koth. Sorry for the rough greeting—we just needed to make sure who we were dealing with.”
“I understand completely,” I assured him, shaking his offered hand. “I’m Jorem. Kaseya is the one in red; Valuri is the one in black.”
Koth nodded at each of them and grinned. “It’s not often you see a man wandering the pass with two beautiful, heavily-armed women on his flank.”
“He’s just lucky,” Valuri said. “Incredibly, unbelievably lucky.”
“So it would seem,” the man replied dryly. “You’re Vorsalosian, huh? I haven’t heard that accent in a while.”
“I’m sure it’s a little strange given the nature of the danger you’re expecting,” I conceded, “but who better to fight your enemy than someone who knows how they think?”
“Fair enough.” Koth eyed the rest of his men and signaled for them to fan back out around the caravan. “You’ll have to forgive my soldiers for leering. Some of them haven’t seen a woman in weeks…and most of them have never seen an amazon.”
“They can stare all they like, so long as they do their jobs,” Kaseya said matter-of-factly. “I noted all the most likely ambush points during our trip south from Highwind. We’ll pass through two high-risk areas before we stop tonight—your men need to be prepared.”
Koth chuckled. “They will be. Lord Martel hired the Falcon Guard because we’re the best. And with the help of an amazon and a sorcerer, I’ve no doubt we’ll succeed.”
I smiled back at him. Something about his calm demeanor had already set me on edge. Mercenary captains weren’t usually smooth talkers, in my experience, though I was probably extra biased against the man purely based on his point of origin. Falcon Ridge was called “Buccaneer’s Bay” for good reason—the city’s king had been murdered by a coalition of pirate captains about ten years ago, and those men were still in power as far as I knew. The Ridge was a cesspool of crime and corruption.
Not that Vorsalos was any different.
“We had hoped to clear the pass by sundown, so we should really keep moving,” Koth said after a moment. His eyes flicked between Valuri and Kaseya. “There’s an open seat in the saddle if one of you lady friends would like to rest her legs a bit...”
“I cannot effectively watch for an ambush up there,” Kaseya said. “I will take point.”
“You go ahead and do that, Red,” Valuri said, smiling wryly as she climbed up next to Koth. “My feet have been aching all day.”
Kaseya scoffed. “Why am I not surprised by your laziness?”
I clamped my hand over her mouth. “We’ll both take point,” I said. “We’ll have plenty of time to chat tonight.”
Koth grinned again. “I look forward to it.”
I took Kaseya’s wrist and escorted her in front of the wagon as the horses started moving again. She was at least savvy enough to wait until we were out of earshot before she questioned me.
“I am sorry for upsetting you, Jorem,” she said. “But there are times when her habits are too maddening to ignore.”
“Val’s not being lazy,” I said. “She wants to ride next to their captain so she can loosen his tongue and figure what he’s up to.”
Kaseya blinked. “Shouldn’t she be paying attention to the roads and helping us spot an ambush?”
“She trusts us to do that. In the meantime, she’ll feel out our new friends and tell me what she thinks tonight.”
Kaseya paused in thought for a minute. “Perhaps I have underestimated her.”
I grinned. “Everyone always has. Even the Inquisitrix. Even your sister.”
“I had assumed your previous attraction to her was purely physical, but perhaps I was mistaken,” Kaseya said. “In any event, we have other duties to attend to. My sister is out there somewhere.”
“Yeah,” I murmured. “I bet she is.”
***
The Senosi didn’t attack us at either point Kaseya had marked dangerous. They didn’t attack us at all, in fact, which made me more and more nervous the more I thought about it. We were still at least twenty miles south of Lake Dunarthe, but by tomorrow we would be back in in the lower grasslands and much more likely to stumble into armed Silver Fist patrols. Our enemies wouldn’t wait that long to strike. If they were going to hit us, it would be soon—possibly even overnight.
“Perhaps I should stay awake just in case,” Kaseya suggested as the Falcon Guard mercenaries began setting up camp for the evening. “These men seem relatively competent, but I do not trust them to spot an ambush before it is too late.”
I nodded and blew a thin stream of air between my teeth. She wasn’t wrong, of course, but I didn’t relish the thought of walking another h
undred plus miles to Highwind without getting any sleep. Then again, even if I did fall asleep out here, it wasn’t like Kaseya would be able to wake me the same way as usual…
“I hope you two had fun,” Valuri said, sauntering over to us. “I certainly had an enlightening day.”
“Stimulating conversation?”
“Let’s just say he’d lick dung from my boots if I asked him to.”
Kaseya frowned. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning she has him wrapped around her fingers,” I said with a knowing smirk. “Let me guess: he thinks he’ll be fucking you by the time we reach Highwind.”
“He think he’ll be fucking me tonight ,” Valuri corrected. “He thinks I’ll be having his babies by the time we reach Highwind.”
I snickered despite myself. I almost regretted not being able to hear their whole conversation. Valuri could convince a monk to abandon his life-long vow of chastity in about ten minutes, given the chance.
“From your tone, I assume you were lying to him,” Kaseya said. “Did your deception have a purpose besides cruelty?”
“Only if you think it’s valuable to know about the people you’re working with,” Valuri replied tartly. “Whatever else Koth may be, he’s a natural bullshitter. I can’t even remember half the things we talked about.”
“Not necessarily the skill I’d expect from a mercenary commander,” I commented.
“He obviously manages the business side of things for the Falcon Guard,” Valuri said. “I’m pretty sure about four-fifths of what he told me was nonsense, but I get the feeling he was probably a smuggler or con-artist who realized he could make more coin going legit.”
“Charming,” I muttered.
“On the plus side, I’m fairly certain his soldiers know what they’re doing. They should be useful enough if we get into a fight.”
“I agree,” Kaseya put in. “They are reasonably competent, and their equipment is in excellent shape.”
“You could tell all that just from watching them walk for a few hours?”
“Yes,” the amazon replied as if it were obvious. “I have spent my life training as a warrior, Jorem. I know what to look for.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I said, glancing around. “I do know that they don’t have any channelers, wizards or otherwise. I haven’t decided if that’s good or bad yet.”
“It depends how many actual Senosi we run into,” Valuri said. “Anyway, you two get some shut-eye if you want. I’m going to sit down and try to win some gold.”
“Cards?” I asked.
“They think they’re good at sejaak. I’m about to prove them wrong.”
I grinned as she sauntered back over to the mercenaries. Hopefully they wouldn’t hold a grudge when she cleaned them out…
“We should probably try sleeping one at a time,” I said. “We could…”
I trailed off when I saw Kaseya staring hard at the carriage across camp. A couple of the mercenaries were perched on top as nighttime lookouts, but I didn’t see anything sense out of the ordinary.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“I do not know,” she murmured. “When I look at the carriage, I feel…strange.”
“Strange how?”
“It is difficult to explain. It’s like I’m looking at something that isn’t really there.”
“It feels strange to me too, but that’s because of the vatari crystals inside. The Aether essentially doesn’t exist around it.”
Kaseya grimaced. “It must be something else. I do not have your powers.”
I frowned and studied her profile for a few moments. “Just because you’ve never directly tapped into the Aether doesn’t mean you’ve never felt its presence. Back when we first met, you said you could sense magic clinging to me. You said that ‘all amazons are taught to feel the natural ebb and flow of the Aether to better serve their Maskari .’”
She nodded slowly. “We are.”
“Well, that ability has to come from somewhere,” I said. “What if all your Red Sisters are connected to the Aether?”
“That is not possible.”
I wanted to argue, but this didn’t seem like the right time or place. Still, perhaps I’d found another pressure point I could nudge later…
“That carriage is filled with mined crystal, right?” Kaseya asked, her eyes narrowing.
“That’s the idea,” I said. “Why?”
“If vatari crystals absorb Aetheric energy, shouldn’t a large collection of them absorb a greater amount?”
I frowned, wondering where she was going with this. “Presumably, yes.”
“Then why is the aura around the carriage so small?”
I turned and followed her gaze again. When I stretched out, I could feel the gap in the Aether around the wooden sides of the carriage. But it was small—much smaller than it probably should have been, now that I thought about it.
“That’s a good question,” I said, the hairs on the back of my neck prickling up. “A very good question in fact. Thankfully, we have our own vatari expert nearby…”
I signaled for Valuri to come over, and she quickly detached herself from her game. “This better be important,” she huffed. “I had three Sovereigns and a Dragon in that hand.”
“Gambling can wait,” I said. “How much do you know about freshly-mined vatari crystal?”
She blinked. “You mean other than the obvious?”
“Is its power cumulative? If there was a lot of it—say, a whole wagon full—do you think it would project a larger dampening field than normal?”
Valuri glanced back over her shoulder to the carriage. “I don’t know. I’ve never had to worry about it since I can’t channel anyway. Why, do you sense something?”
“No, which is the problem,” I said. “I can feel a bubble around the carriage, but it’s small—much smaller than I’d expect given how must we’re supposed to be hauling.”
“Interesting,” she murmured. “I wish I had a definitive answer, but I don’t. What are you thinking?”
“It’s probably nothing,” I said, wishing I believed it, “but remember our conversation about Telanya?”
“You mean our theory that she might be moonlighting as a crime boss?”
“That’s the one. What if this is some kind of setup?”
Valuri shook her head. “To what end?”
“I hadn’t thought that far ahead just yet.”
“Well, she literally had us locked up at the Citadel—if she wanted us dead or out of the way, she wouldn’t have let us out in the first place.”
I hissed softly between my teeth. “Good point.”
“Perhaps you were right about this being a test,” Kaseya said. “She may have ordered the mercenaries to escort a smaller load in order to see whether or not the Senosi are aware of the shipment.”
“A trial run,” Valuri murmured, nodding. “Normally I’d say such a thing was too expensive, but she obviously has plenty of gold. I’ve heard worse theories.”
“It does make some sense,” I mused. “She’s basically using us as bait to try and draw out the Senosi without risking much of the cargo. Clever and ruthless.”
“Those are two of the words I’d use to describe her,” Valuri said. “I suppose the only question is whether or not the mercs realize what’s going on.”
“You’re the one who chatted with them most of the day,” I reminded her. “What do you think?”
She frowned. “It’s hard to say. Like I mentioned earlier, their leader is a tough nut to crack. But just because he’s a good bullshitter doesn’t necessarily mean anything sinister. He’s expecting to fight and he’s confident in his men.”
“Hopefully it’s not misplaced,” I murmured. Even though Kaseya’s theory made perfect sense, the nervous knots in my gut refused to untangle. Something was wrong here—I was sure of it.
“I’ll see if I can learn anything else while playing cards,” Valuri offered. “But in any event, at least one of
us should be awake at all times. Maybe two.”
“Definitely two,” I said. “I’m not willing to take any chances.”
***
Against all odds, the mercenaries behaved themselves overnight. All three of us managed to snag at least a few hours of sleep, and Valuri won a pouch full of gold at sejaak, I was frankly a bit surprised she didn’t find the cutest merc and fuck him in his tent just for kicks, but apparently none of them were up to her standards. That, or she was just as on edge as I was. I blasted her with a few sparks of Aetheric energy to sustain her for the rest of the day, and we set out not long afterwards.
Yet again we weren’t ambushed in any of the obvious places, and yet again that made me even more nervous. The next day was even more of the same—nothing. Once Lake Dunarthe was firmly behind us and we officially entered the southern grasslands, however, I started to wonder if we had all been wrong about this whole thing. Maybe the Senosi didn’t know about the caravan. Maybe this would be the easiest gold I had ever made in my life.
I had almost convinced myself to believe that when we rolled over a steep hill and spotted a group of armored riders about a mile away across the plains. A Silver Fist banner rippled in the air above them.
“Looks like our lucky day,” Koth said from his perch up on the carriage. “The knights probably have a camp nearby. We can stay with them tonight and head the rest of the way into the city tomorrow.”
He cracked the reins and pushed us forward. The sinking feeling in my stomach refused to settle.
“I guess Telanya’s ‘test run’ was a complete waste of time,” I murmured. “Unless the Inquisitrix has an army hiding in the grass somewhere, I doubt the Senosi will risk striking us this close to Highwind with so many knights around.”
“Probably not,” Valuri agreed. “I can’t believe it—I really thought we’d run into Ayrael by now. Or at the very least another pack of Huntresses.”
I nodded. “Maybe you and I have gotten too cynical in our old age. Maybe the gods really don’t hate us.”
