by Sarah Hawke
Serrane closed her eyes and swallowed the bitter lump in her throat. More than ever, she wished that Julian were here…
“I’m not sure what else we can possibly learn from this vantage point,” Valuri said after a minute. “We might as well start heading back. If we reach flat ground before—”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Serrane said. “Not until I’ve at least figured out a way to slow them down.”
Valuri turned and stared blankly at her. “Slow them down? There are a hundred bloody wyverns down there!”
“And we have to figure out a way to keep them grounded. That’s the whole reason we came up here.”
“No, the reason we came up here was to scout out this hatchery. I never volunteered for a suicide mission.”
Serrane glared at the other woman. “I almost forgot that you were a mercenary.”
“Oh, don’t even start with that sanctimonious bullshit,” Valuri grumbled. “I have far more reasons to hate the Inquisitrix than you do, honey. I’m just not interested in throwing my life away for no reason, especially not while my tits and ass are still this young and firm.”
“We don’t need to kill all those wyverns,” Serrane said. “We just need to delay whatever the Inquisitrix is planning long enough for Julian and Tahira to get back to the city.”
Valuri snorted. “I don’t care how tall, dark, and handsome this guy is, one silly little paladin isn’t going to win this war.”
“If he’s able to muster allies at the Silver Tower, we’ll have a fighting chance,” Serrane insisted. “In sufficient numbers, the knights are capable of channeling a powerful barrier—one large enough to shield entire sections of the city.”
“Wait, what?”
“The technique hasn’t been used since the Winter War, but it could help hold off the wyverns,” Serrane said. “At the very least, we’ll force the Inquisitrix to commit more of her soldiers. She’ll have to take the city the old-fashioned way, and that will buy us even more time.”
Valuri paused for a moment and glanced back over the lip of the ridge. “You said yourself that you aren’t sure if he can actually convince anyone to help. And what if this Eternal Priestess isn’t up to the task?”
“Then Highwind is doomed anyway, and your former mistress will have even more power at her disposal. But it won’t come to that. Julian will figure out a way to make it work, I promise.”
Serrane could feel the other woman’s green eyes boring into the side of her head, searching for any signs of weakness or doubt. There were plenty, but none of them had anything to do with Julian. Somehow, he would get the job done. Serrane was absolutely certain of it.
“You really are as crazy as Red,” Valuri muttered. “Okay, let’s assume your paladin boy toy really does return to the city with an army of knights. I still have no idea what we could possibly do to help.”
Serrane pursed her lips and studied the camp again. “We may not be able to kill all the wyverns, but what about their oil?”
“What about it? There’s still an army of soldiers between us and that cave.”
“We don’t need to get into it—we just need to open it up long enough for me to line up a shot.”
Valuri arched a black eyebrow. “How big of an explosion can you make?”
“Big enough,” Serrane said. “I just need to get within a few hundred yards.”
“In this wind? Are you kidding?”
“I’ve made harder shots before. I just need someone to open the vault door for a few seconds.”
Valuri groaned and squinted back down into the shadows. “Well, no one else seems to be hauling barrels, and I doubt they’re going to mess with it any more now that it’s dark.”
Serrane shrugged. “Maybe not, but one of those guards probably has a key.”
“You mean one of those guys standing within shouting distance of a hundred soldiers?”
“Aren’t you a professional assassin?”
“I was a professional assassin,” Valuri corrected. “Now I’m…fuck, I don’t even know.”
“If you think you can make the shot, I’ll gladly take care of the guards and open the door for you instead.”
“For one, my crossbow bolts don’t explode. For two, those cute little elven arms of yours won’t be able to open that giant stone door without help.”
“Then I guess we’re lucky that my arrows do explode and that your cute little Senosi arms could rip that door off its hinges.”
Valuri’s face soured. “I walked right into that one, didn’t I?”
Serrane grinned. “If we can creep down this incline without being spotted, I can take up position there by that boulder. It should be close enough to cover you and hit that vault.”
“So all I have to do is sneak around a whole army and kill a dozen guards without being spotted,” Valuri muttered. “That’s great. Just great.”
“We might as well wait a few more hours so more of the men are asleep. I’d like to wait even longer, but it would be nice to have darkness to cover our escape too.”
“I like that you think there’s going to be an escape.” Valuri took a deep breath and nodded. “All right, let’s wait a bit. We might as well plan as much as possible before everything inevitably goes to shit…”
***
The sweet scent of cooking fires eventually wafted over the ridge, and most of the soldiers in the war camp ate, sang, and otherwise relaxed for the evening. The wyverns ate too, though that was far more revolting to watch. Valuri genuinely wondered how these idiots were ferrying enough livestock up into the mountains to sustain so many beasts. Perhaps the Shattered Peaks had far more mountain goats than she had realized.
A few hours later, after the fires had simmered down to their embers and the men had shuffled into their tents, Valuri and Serrane finally decided to make their move. It was stupid, it was reckless, and it was almost certainly suicidal…but it was also probably their only real shot of accomplishing anything up here. Valuri still had her doubts about this new Conduit and the Knights of the Silver Fist, and if she’d had her way they would have already been halfway down the mountain. But Serrane had that same crazy glint in her eye as Kaseya—the one that said she was going to try this whether she got help or not—and Valuri was apparently a sucker for a lost cause. Or maybe she just couldn’t resist the temptation of the wild victory sex they would have if they survived…
“All right, let’s do this,” Valuri said, checking her crossbow cartridge for the fiftieth time in the past ten minutes.
“Don’t you need to feed first?” Serrane asked.
The Huntress bit down on her lower lip. “If you want me to tug open that door by myself, definitely.”
The general nodded and pushed aside her hood enough to expose the soft, flawless skin on her neck. “Then take what you need and let’s get moving.”
Valuri paused for a moment before she leaned in and extended the tip of her wrist blade. She had been resisting the urge to suggest this for a while, mostly because she didn’t know if she could control her hunger. The instant that first drop of sorcerous blood touched her tongue, she would just want to tackle Serrane and repeat last night’s festivities over and over until the sun came up. For some reason, the thought of climbing between a gorgeous elven woman’s legs was far more appealing than fighting off a whole army.
“Hold still,” Valuri said, gently nicking Serrane’s neck. A few tiny beads of blood hemorrhaged from the wound, and the Huntress quickly leaned in and licked them up. Unsurprisingly, her prediction instantly came true: her hunger flared out of control, and her quim became a sopping mess. When her arm wrapped around the elf’s bare, slender waist, Valuri could feel Serrane struggling to resist her own pangs of desire…
“That’s enough,” the general said, clearing her throat and pushing the other woman away. She channeled a quick healing spell into her neck, but she kept her eyes closed and visibly braced herself against temptation. Apparently her sense of duty was strong enou
gh to overpower her lust.
Valuri wasn’t so lucky, mostly because she didn’t have a sense of duty. As the vatari crystals in her flesh fed, her ravenous Senosi hunger quickly spiraled out of control. It certainly didn’t help that her tattoos were now growing brightly enough to bathe the elven woman’s perfect body in green light. Her smooth stomach, her tantalizing cleavage, her sparkling blue eyes…
“Fuck,” Valuri said, stumbling backwards and clutching the nearby rocks so hard they shattered in her grip. “Gods, you are so unbelievably delicious…”
“If we get out of here, you can feed all you want,” Serrane said, smiling. “I know all the best spots in the mountains, I promise.”
Valuri grimaced. “I’ll hold you to that,” she murmured. “Here goes nothing…”
One by one the women hopped over the jagged ridgeline and began carefully creeping down the other side. The terrain was loose and gravelly enough that they couldn’t have sprinted even if they had wanted to, but they also didn’t want to trigger a loud landslide. Valuri watched her steps as carefully as she could, more thankful than ever that her Senosi powers allowed her to see almost as well in darkness as daylight. All told, it probably took them at least five minutes before they reached the boulder Serrane had chosen for her sniper’s perch.
“Getting out of here is going to be fun,” Valuri muttered as they crouched behind cover. “Do you have any idea how hard it’s going to be to climb back up that hill?”
“If everything goes as planned, they’ll be so distracted we’ll have plenty of time to escape,” Serrane said, calmly nocking an arrow to her bowstring. “I’ll cover you as best I can from here. Try not to attack anyone until you’re close to the cave door.”
Valuri nodded and swallowed, her mind flashing back to when she, Red, and Jorem had sabotaged the Roskarim catapults before the battle at Icewatch. At least then they’d had the option of running back to the walls of the fortress. Here…well, here they had nothing.
“Caro lle ilindyth thand, desh'iriai,” Serrane whispered.
“I assume that means ‘good luck’ or something,” Valuri muttered. “I suppose it’s now or never…”
Taking a final deep breath, the Huntress crouched low and dashed across the rocky ground towards the mouth of the cave. There weren’t any tents between her and her target, thankfully, but there were plenty of stacked equipment crates she was able to use for temporary cover. All things considered, this definitely wasn’t the most difficult stealth approach she’d ever had to make; between the darkness and the wind an amateur probably could have gotten reasonably close without being spotted. With every step she became more convinced that the real challenge here was going to be the escape.
Don’t get ahead of yourself. One obstacle at a time, otherwise you’ll get sloppy and make a stupid mistake.
Her Senosi instructors had all been unrepentant cunts ninety-five percent of the time, but they had been good at their jobs. Their old warnings had just popped into Valuri’s head when she spotted a patrol of three soldiers passing in front of the cave.
Diving behind a cluster of rubble, she flattened herself as low as she could and readied her crossbow. Killing them wouldn’t be a problem—killing them quietly and hiding the bodies before another patrol stumbled this way was another matter entirely. Valuri held her breath as they approached, mentally plotting out her plan of attack as their footfalls drew closer and closer…
The soft but unmistakable whistle of an arrow cut through the air a split second before she heard a suit of heavy armor thud against the ground. Valuri froze in place for a moment, but then she heard a second whistle and a second thud. Confused, she popped up out of cover and gasped when she saw two of the patrollers lying dead in a pile, arrows jutting out of their helmets. The third soldier had just turned and spotted his companions, and he swore viciously under his breath—
Valuri lifted her crossbow and shot him before her mind could fully process what was going on. He staggered backwards, his lungs unable to muster the air to scream as they filled with blood, and he glanced up at her in horror for a fraction of a second before a third and final arrow put him out of his misery.
The mountain wind whipped across the corpses and ruffled their tabards, but Valuri didn’t detect any other movement nearby. She was already far enough away that she couldn’t even see Serrane, which made this whole thing even more unbelievable. How in the bloody hell could anyone make those shots in the dark with this much wind?
She said she would try and cover you. Apparently she wasn’t fucking around.
Shaking her head in disbelief, Valuri quickly grabbed the corpses and hauled them behind her cover. The bodies were heavy, especially when covered by fifty pounds of steel, but in her freshly-fed state they felt as light as straw. Once they were hidden, the Huntress continued her approach. The hourglass had officially tipped over—it was only a matter of time before someone noticed that the patrol had vanished.
Valuri crept through the shadows towards the mouth of the cave, her eyes scanning the area for any signs of movement. She pressed herself flat against the side of the rock wall when she finally arrived, then dropped into a crouch and pivoted out of cover to study the actual door. The cave mouth was natural, but the slab sealing it shut was not—the smooth stone surface had obviously been shaped by magic. She didn’t see any obvious handholds or locks, either; this was clearly meant to be more of a wall than a door. Only the channeler who had shaped the rock in the first place was meant to be able to open it.
They really are paranoid about protecting this. The oil must be even more explosive than normal.
Frowning, Valuri glanced down at her new wrist blade. Silver was far too soft to function as a pry bar, unfortunately, though even if it had been made out of steel she wasn’t sure it would work. Bashing in the rocks the old-fashioned way was another option, but that would obviously make a ton of noise and draw half the camp down on top of her…
“What the bloody hell…?”
Valuri’s head whipped around as another trio of soldiers materialized out of the shadows about a hundred feet to her left. They hadn’t spotted the bodies, thank the gods, but they had apparently noticed the splatters of fresh blood on the ground. She only had a few seconds to silence them before this whole plan went to shit…
Lifting her crossbow, she took aim and fired as quickly as the repeating cartridge would allow. The first bolt struck one man in the back, flattening him to the ground, while the follow-up struck his friend in the arm. One of Serrane’s arrows streaked in a fraction of a second later to finish the man off, and the third soldier—
The third soldier didn’t go down so easily.
Valuri knew they had a problem when the man blocked her bolt with his shield, and she knew they had an even bigger problem when he whirled around and blocked Serrane’s follow-up arrow a heartbeat later. He thrust out his free hand as he crouched low, and a glimmering suit of spell armor materialized around his upper body. Even if it weren’t dark, the mantle of energy would have been almost blinding.
“Intruders!” the man yelled. “We are under attack!”
Valuri hissed through her teeth. His voice had probably carried halfway across the camp even with the wind, and anyone who wasn’t already asleep had surely seen his radiant spell armor anyway. Apparently tipping the hourglass had been pointless because the fucking thing had been empty all along…
“Fuck,” she snarled, unloading the rest of her cartridge. She needn’t have bothered—the man blocked every shot with his shield or barrier even while he drew his sword and rushed straight at her. Judging from his armor and spells this must have been another of these “Knights of the Crimson Flame” Jorem had fought back in Riverbend. Sadly, Valuri couldn’t breathe fire and roast him.
But she also didn’t need to. Tossing aside her crossbow, she extended her wrist blade and met the knight head-on. She caught his sword mid-slash, showering the air with sparks, and thanks to her superior strength and sp
eed she had no trouble pushing him away and kicking him in the chest. Sharpened or not, her heel couldn’t quite pierce his barrier and armor combined, but the force of the impact still hurled him backwards into side of the mountain near the mouth of the cave.
“How…?” he wheezed as he brought himself to his feet. She could see his eyes widen beneath his helmet, first in disbelief that a woman half his size could overpower him and then in terror when he recognized her for what she was.
“You must be the latest goon in Marcella’s arsenal, huh?” Valuri said. “Sorry, I’m not impressed.”
“Traitor!” the man snarled, leaping right back at her. He obviously knew how to handle a blade—even with her physical advantage he managed to drive her back several feet. Perhaps he had been a mercenary or a member of the Ravenguard who had been promoted.
Either way, it made little difference. Channelers were still her prey no matter how many layers of armor they hid behind. Valuri waited patiently for him to make a mistake, and the instant he overextended she slapped the sword from his grip, swept out the back of his legs, and speared her blade through his chest.
“Sorry you had to learn the hard way, kid,” Valuri said as blood frothed from the dying man’s mouth. “But no matter what armor and titles your bitch of a mistress gives you, the Senosi are still the queens of Vorsalos.”
“You’ve no idea how right you are.”
Valuri glanced upwards just in time to see a shadowy figure leap down from the rocky arch above the vault and fire a crossbow in mid-air. The bolt struck the Huntress in the shoulder so hard she whirled a hundred-eighty degrees before she hit the ground. Her head spun and her flesh screamed, but she knew she had to keep moving. Despite the pain, she was already rolling to the side before a second and third shot struck the ground nearby.
“I see you haven’t lost your edge after all. Good. But the real question is where you’re hiding that sorcerer of yours…”
Valuri didn’t bounce back to her feet until she had rolled behind a boulder for a cover. Staying low, she ripped the bolt out of her shoulder and tried not to scream. “He’s right over here,” she hissed, digging her fingers into the rock. “Come on over and take a look.”
