The Amazon's Pledge- Ultimate Edition

by Sarah Hawke

  I pursed my lips in thought. The tent was fairly close to the edge of the encampment, but Val was right to be concerned. A dozen frost wolves were tied to an enormous dead tree trunk not far away, and their handlers were keeping a close watch on the whole area. The Roskarim were also smart enough to dig drenches and erect a quick palisade just in case the Icewatch defenders attempted a surprise cavalry charge.

  Still, the situation definitely could have been worse. We wouldn’t have to sneak past a thousand sleeping barbarians or fight our way through a horde of sentries. I only counted about eight barbarians in close proximity to Zalheer, and only one was wearing the creepy, ceremonial bone mask marking him as a shaman.

  “I can eliminate the spotter and sneak up to the tent,” Kaseya said. “The two of you can cover my escape.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Valuri scoffed. “They’ll spot you before you get halfway there.”

  “One person can move much more quietly than three.”

  “Yeah, no kidding.” Valuri sighed and visibly braced herself. “That’s why I’m going to take care of it.”

  We both turned and looked at her, mouths agape. “What?” I asked.

  “I’ve been training as an assassin since I was eight years old,” Valuri said. “I can handle a few barbarians.”

  I started to protest but stopped myself before I said anything stupid. Objectively, she was correct—Kaseya was a warrior, not an assassin. But I was still surprised by Val’s willingness to go along with this plan in the first place, let alone take all the risks herself. Kaseya must have wounded her pride even more than I’d realized.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said. “There must be another way to—”

  “There’s no other way,” Valuri interrupted. “This old fool had better be worth it.”

  She glanced between us for a moment, then silently drew one of her crossbows and slithered off down the hill. I knew where she was going and I still had trouble tracking her movements in the darkness. The odds that any of the barbarians would see her were low…at least until she started shooting them.

  “Her behavior is confusing,” Kaseya whispered after a moment. “Has she always been this unpredictable?”

  “Pretty much,” I said, smiling.

  Shaking her head in confusion, Kaseya surreptitiously drew her bow and nocked an arrow. I knew from experience that she was almost as skilled of an archer as she was a duelist. Back when we’d taken that Mage’s Guild bounty last month, she had picked off several bandits with deadly precision. Just remembering it was disturbing...and strangely arousing.

  “She did not properly articulate her plan,” Kaseya said. “How are we supposed to support her if—?”

  I cupped my hand over her mouth. “Just watch and wait.”

  We stayed as low and quiet as we could, our frozen breath billowing out in front of us. I wished I knew more about illusion magic; I could have cloaked us in a thick shroud of shadows or perhaps even made us invisible altogether. I was surprisingly bad at the “subtler” side of channeling, when it came right down to it. If only the Roskarim would clump together in a nice little pack for me to fireball them…

  “I do not understand the purpose of those devices,” Kaseya said, pointing beyond the prisoner tent to a row of strange, reinforced wooden crates that almost looked like battering rams. I had never seen anything like them before.

  “I don’t know what they’re supposed to be,” I admitted. “I suppose you could fill them with people and drag them along like sleds?”

  “To what end?”

  I shrugged. “Shielding them against arrows, maybe?”

  She didn’t reply, but I could tell she wasn’t convinced. We could both sense a faint Aetheric aura clinging to the wood; whatever the crates’ purpose, they had apparently been enchanted.

  I shook away the thought and glanced back to the sentry on our left. Val was taking so long I started to wonder whether or not she would even bother with him, but just before I turned away again the man crumpled and vanished from sight. I didn’t hear or see anything—in one moment he was standing there, idly pacing back and forth across the snow, and in the next instant he was simply gone.

  I blinked in confusion, wondering if I had missed something, before I spotted Val sneaking through the trench towards the prison tent. She kept impossibly low, crossbow in one hand and tiger claws in the other. My hands clutched the rocks nervously in anticipation of the barbarians spotting her, but they never did. She waited patiently for one of them to loop around behind the tent by himself before she struck.

  I had never seen anyone move so quickly. The instant the warrior was out of sight of his companions, she vaulted out of the trench, fired a crossbow bolt into his throat, and then silently rolled forward to catch his corpse before it hit the ground. When another of the Roskarim wandered near her a few seconds later, she gave him a fraction of a second to see the bloody corpse and freeze in place before she speared her claws through his heart and clutched her hand over his mouth to muffle his dying scream.

  “Zor kalah ,” Kaseya whispered, her jaw hanging open.

  I nodded in silent agreement, boggling at the bizarre juxtapositions in my daily life. In one moment I would have Kaseya bent over her rock, bound and helpless while I fucked her ass, and then ten minutes later I would watch her scythe her way through men twice her size. It was the same with Valuri—it was hard to imagine that this lethal assassin was the same woman who had spent all of last night begging me to glaze her head to toe in my seed.

  After piling the bodies atop each other behind a bush, Valuri scrambled up to the side of the tent and waited. There were still six more of the barbarians in close proximity to the tent, and I doubted that even she could eliminate all of them without raising an alarm. I started glancing about the encampment for inspiration, wondering what Kaseya and I could realistically do to help out. But apparently the amazon already had an idea.

  I turned just in time to watch her draw back her bowstring and fire. The arrow arced through the darkness, its whistling flight completely drowned out by the crackling campfires and chortling soldiers right up until it struck a pile of barrels about twenty yards away from the tent. All the Roskarim turned at the loud thump , and four of them rushed over to investigate when the barrels fell over and started spilling ale across the snow.

  Valuri only waited for them to take a few steps before she struck. She spun around the tent and pounced atop the only shaman, ripping open his throat just like she had done with the other guards. The last Roskarim sitting next to him still heard the commotion, however, and when he turned and gasped I feared the whole plan was about to collapse in front of us. But somehow Valuri managed to throw something at him, striking him in the forehead and stunning him just long enough for her to draw and fire her crossbow right into his gaping mouth.

  I couldn’t believe that none of the other barbarians noticed, but apparently the threat of losing a cask of ale was enough to completely occupy their attention, at least for the moment. Valuri didn’t bother hiding the second batch of bodies; she immediately dashed into the prison tent and disappeared.

  “Zalheer is barely conscious,” Kaseya whispered. “She might have to carry him.”

  I bit down on my lip, my fingers twitching in anticipation. Valuri’s Senosi strength was more than sufficient to lift a man twice her size, but the noise would be a real problem…

  She emerged a moment later, the moshalim slung over her shoulder. I couldn’t make out any details from here, but he seemed like he was in pretty bad shape. Without access to a vatari collar to suppress his power, they had apparently decided to just beat him to a pulp instead. My breath caught in my throat as they stumbled away from the tent and towards the trench at the edge of the camp.

  “I can’t believe it,” I breathed. “She’s actually going to make it.”

  It was, almost without question, the stupid thing I had ever said. The instant the words left my mouth we heard a sharp cry in the
distance followed by the inevitable blast of a Roskarim warhorn. We were officially out of time.

  “Help Val get him onto the horse and start riding,” I said, gulping down a steadying breath and reaching out to the Aether. “I’ll create a distraction.”

  “I will not leave your side, Mask —”

  “Go!” I shouted, leaping out from behind our cover. “I know what I’m doing.”

  I didn’t, of course, but that wasn’t really the point. The time for subtlety was over.

  Before the Roskarim could organize, I hurled a trio of fireballs just past the prisoner tent. The explosions churned up a cloud of dirt and flaming debris, but I knew that this time a wall of smoke and fire wouldn't be enough to shroud our escape. We needed a much bigger distraction.

  Pivoting to my right, I extended my arm and unleashed a bolt of lightning at one of the trees where the barbarians had tied up their wolves. The trunk splintered with a deafening crack , and the strained groan of the tree falling echoed for hundreds of yards across the snowy fields. The giant wolves might have been trained for war, but they were still animals—the fire and explosions sent them racing in all directions across the camp.

  I had exactly two seconds to stand around basking in my own cleverness before an arrow whistled past my face. I dropped into a crouch and turned just in time to see a dozen Roskarim with bows dashing through the clouds of smoke in an effort to get a clear shot at me. These people might have been rapacious savages, but they definitely weren’t cowards. I had to give them that.

  Sheathing myself in a mantle of spell armor, I hurled another fireball towards the archers. Two of them vanished in the flaming cloud, their bodies completely incinerated by my magic, while the others scattered and attempted to regroup. My arms were already twinging with exertion, and I knew I ran a serious risk of overchanneling if I continued pushing myself. But I also knew that any Roskarim I killed here wouldn’t be able to attack Icewatch later, so I conjured another fireball and another…

  “Jorem, get out of there!”

  Valuri’s voice snapped me out my rampage just in time. Several more arrows whistled past me, and one struck my spell armor. The force of the impact knocked me off my feet and flattened me against the snow. A rock jabbed into my back, knocking the wind from my lungs, and as I struggled back to my feet I could feel more and more barbarians rushing towards me. My luck, it seemed, had finally run out.

  Grimacing, I vaulted back to my feet and tried to run, but thanks to the darkness, the snow, and the continual barrage of arrows, the barbarians were still gaining ground. I risked a quick glance back over my shoulder, gaped in horror when I saw how close the savages were encroaching—

  And then yelped in surprise when Kaseya grabbed me by the arm and hoisted me up onto her mount. I landed stiffly in the saddle behind her, still struggling for breath, as she kicked the horse’s flank and sent him bolting forward. I did everything I could to shield us from attack, echoing my defensive barrier on Kaseya. Arrows still whipped past us one after another, and I waited for the inevitable shriek of our horse followed by us being thrown from the saddle…

  But it never came. The rain of arrows eventually stopped, and the shouts and screams of the Roskarim gradually faded into the distance. We didn’t pause until I could actually see the torches atop the walls of Icewatch.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” Valuri snapped. “How many times are we going to have to pull your ass out of the fire?”

  “I had everything under control,” I assured her, hopping down out of the saddle and rushing over to Zalheer. The old sorcerer’s face was badly bruised, but he was smiling nonetheless.

  “The Vaer Tal’Shira and her Maskari ,” he croaked. “I knew I was right about you…”

  “What about the Senosi who actually saved your ass?” Valuri grumbled. “This is the thanks I get?”

  “We need to get him inside the walls,” I said. “Let’s wave Derec’s flag and hope no one else tries to kill us tonight.”

  ***

  My fears that the Roskarim might retaliate by attacking the fortress outright proved unfounded, and Sir Derec and many of the other defending soldiers were flabbergasted by our success. So was I, of course, but I didn’t want to ruin the mystique by admitting how narrowly we’d avoided capture…or death.

  Derec offered us access to the Silver Fist healers in the fortress infirmary, but I assured him that my own restorative magic would be up to the task. I wasn’t an outright lie—I had always been a competent healer—but the truth was that I didn’t want an audience. Whatever Zalheer had to say, I wanted us to be the ones who heard it first.

  Unfortunately, his wounds were worse than I had anticipated. The barbarians had fitted him with a vatari crystal collar after all, but apparently they hadn’t completely trusted its magic suppressing power without Ayrael around. His skull was cracked and badly bruised, and it took all the power I could muster to reduce the swelling and accelerate the healing process. When my arms started to tingle again, I backed off and took a break. He wasn’t in bad enough shape that I wanted to risk overchanneling.

  “This would not have been possible without your help,” Kaseya murmured to Valuri, breaking their long silence while they watched me work. “Thank you.”

  Valuri grunted softly and leaned against the wall. “I wasn’t sure if you’d approve. Stabbing people in the back isn’t particularly honorable.”

  The amazon’s face twitched uncomfortably. “No, it is not. But perhaps it was necessary.”

  I glanced over at Valuri and silently begged her not to push the issue any further right now. Amazingly, she got the message…and even more amazingly, she went along with it.

  Zalheer coughed a moment later, and I leaned forward to help steady him when his eyes fluttered back open. “Easy,” I soothed. “Try not to move your head.”

  The moshalim’s eyes flicked between us but eventually settled on Kaseya. “The Vaer Tal’Shira …” he breathed. “The Aether told me you would come.”

  “I am not the one you should be thanking,” Kaseya said. “She is the one who rescued you.”

  “You can take the credit,” Valuri replied. “I’m still not convinced this was a good idea.”

  Zalheer turned to face her. “You are brave to have turned against the Corruptor and her minions. Thank you.”

  Val grunted. “Yeah, well, you had better be worth the trouble. The Roskarim are about to burn this place to the ground, and who the hell knows what the Inquisitrix has planned for Highwind.”

  “Nothing good,” the moshalim said. “But your focus must remain on Nol Krovos. Our people need to know what’s coming for them.”

  “Unfortunately, it’s not quite as easy as hiring a random ship,” I said. “Not many people sail that way normally, and your people aren’t the most hospitable hosts.”

  “You must find a way. They will listen to warnings from the Vaer Tal’Shira .”

  “I wish I shared your confidence,” Kaseya murmured.

  I nodded gravely. “Regardless, the Black Mistress is still our best chance. With luck she’ll have the resources and connection to get us a ship, or at the very least a messenger.”

  “Then you should return to Highwind,” Zalheer said, leaning back on his pillow. “Time is short, and the Fount of Velhari must be protected.”

  “We’ll do what we can,” I said, though I genuinely had no idea what that would entail. Even though I had seen the Fount in a dreamscape, I still wasn’t completely convinced that the old man knew what he was talking about.

  That’s because you don’t want to believe it. If you do, then you have to take responsibility for preventing it, and responsibility has never really been your thing.

  I grimaced at the thought, suddenly wishing I had taken Valuri up on her offer and run away from this nonsense. A little jaunt to the south was sounding better and better by the day—it would be a lot warmer, for one, and we would almost certainly live longer, too. We could sit around fucking
and drinking all day…what could possibly be better?

  “For now, you should rest,” I said, standing. “I’ll come and check on you in the morning.”

  The old man seemed like he wanted to insist we travel on to Highwind without him, but he couldn’t quite muster the strength. He closed his eyes and slumped back onto the bed, at which point I nodded for the girls to follow me out into the hall.

  “How soon do you think he will be well enough to travel?” Kaseya asked.

  “Not for a few days at least,” I said. “Without a healer, I doubt he would have survived the trip to Vorsalos. He’s lucky we showed up when he did.”

  “Then we have a problem,” Valuri said. “The Roskarim could attack tomorrow morning, and we don’t want to be here when that happens.”

  Kaseya grit her teeth and glanced out the nearby window to the flickering torches in the courtyard behind us. “Then perhaps we should help them fight.”

  Valuri blinked. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Why not? All three of us are skilled combatants in our own way. We could make a tremendous difference.”

  “These fools are outnumbered ten to one!” Valuri reminded us. “Even if the reinforcements show up, they’ll still be outnumbered at least five to one!”

  “Leaving Zalheer to wolves seems pointless considering the risk we just took to rescue him,” I said, scarcely believing the words coming out of my own mouth. “Besides, Ayrael probably hasn’t returned yet. The barbarians might wait for her to attack.”

  Valuri scowled at me. “And what if they don’t?”

  I let out a long, deep breath. Kaseya’s idiotic sense of honor must have been rubbing off on me more than I’d realized. That, or I was slowly going insane. The latter seemed more and more likely by the day.

  “If they don’t then Kaseya is still right,” I whispered. “I guarantee the two of you are a better shot than any of the dregs here, and if I’m being honest, sorcery is perfectly suited for this kind of thing.”