by Terah Edun
The soldier who had come beside her said “You want me to scout them?”
Sara leaned over to look past the edge of his helmet and was surprised to find someone she recognized—Linus, the enigmatic mage whose power echoed with the sounds of ringing bells from before.
Smiling as if she had seen an old friend, which she had, Sara said, “Immediately. Keep a low profile. We just need to know how many and in which direction.”
“On it,” he replied softly as his upper torso went a bit stiff, and she hastily grabbed the reins in his hands and held them low so that her grip couldn’t be seen while she guided his horse.
It was only seconds before his breath caught sharply and she felt the tiniest bit of magic surge in the air. Too small even for the mages in their cohort to catch farther back on their horses, and hopefully too small for the enemy to be aware that they were being scouted—if they had any mages who could detect such a thing in the first place.
The only thing she wasn’t sure of was if they were Kades.
The empire, after all, had all sorts of bandits and thieves, and a lonely road in the middle of the night was the perfect sort of place to ambush weary travelers to steal their goods. But even thieves weren’t foolish enough to not realize that this was more than just a common traveling party. There were too many of them, first of all. Sara had counted thirty strong individuals before they left camp. All individually horsed. And most, if not all, carried weapons—though Karn had ordered them to take pains to conceal the more…interesting…of their arsenal from sight, which was why they had a small but lightweight packhorse with them, trotting along helpfully.
They had to be ready to rumble and they had to do it quietly; she knew if she turned her horse around and called out that too many of her cohorts would be dead before the orders even fully escaped her lips.
Fortunately for Sara, she had a trick up her sleeve. Leaning over a bit to playfully grab Ezekiel and tousle his hair was a strange maneuver to do on the horse, but not exactly out of character for their close relationship. At least…she hoped.
As she brought her head close enough to his that her chin actually touched his shoulder, she whispered, “Can you get word to the rest to prepare for marauders as silently as possible? Just drop back with a casual word and have each person on the next horse do the same until we get to the last lookout in the line.”
“Got it,” he whispered back.
She squeezed his shoulder to let him know it would work, and then let him go.
Before long, he had casually slowed down his horse enough that it went from a trot to an ambling walk, and as she glanced over her shoulder, the next rider conversed with him. As he did that, she heard the rider to her left say softly, “I’m back.”
She handed over his reins without a word, not even looking over to indicate that he was speaking to her, hopefully throwing the people surrounding them off their plan just a little while longer.
“And?” she asked as she heard a whicker, and suddenly Ezekiel came trotting at a fast pace past her.
He nodded at her as he went, indicating that the messages were being sent, horse to horse, rider to rider. But he didn’t stop until his horse was in a comfortable lead, and she was mad. What was he thinking? He was too vulnerable in the lead.
But before she blew their cover and urged her horse into a gallop, Linus said, “No, he’s got the right idea. If we can seem as clueless as possible for as long as possible…”
Sara narrowed her eyes and muttered angrily, “He’s going to get an arrow to the gut out there. Now, numbers.”
Linus transitioned back to the original subject: “There’s eleven off to our left and a good fifteen off to our right. They seem to be mirroring our movements.”
“They’re boxing us in,” she said.
“Not quite,” Linus said. “But they do have us penned in from either side.”
“Astride?”
“Afoot with spears,” he said grimly after giving an encouraging cluck to his horse, who sidestepped around a pothole.
Sara’s eyebrows rose. “Now why would they think they could keep up with us on horseback, then?”
Before the mage beside her could answer, Ezekiel came back to her side in a hurry. His steed wasn’t quite up to a canter by the time he reined in, but his glasses were askew and he looked worried.
“I scouted ahead a bit,” he said.
“And almost got yourself killed,” Sara barked at him as she looked out nervously in the night, not liking being surrounded and knowing there wasn’t a darned thing she could do about it.
Ezekiel gripped her right arm so tightly that when she turned to look at him, she wasn’t surprised to see him shaking.
“What is it?” she asked quietly, trying to keep up the pretense that they were having a casual conversation.
“I didn’t have to go far to use my spyglass,” he said. “It’s coated on all sides to be non-reflective, so they wouldn’t have seen it by mage light.”
“And?” she asked.
He shook his head. “It’s not good, Sara. They’ve got us cut off at the pass ahead. The bridge has been completely destroyed.”
“We’re riding into an ambush.”
“Yes.”
Sara nodded. “Well, fine. We’ll make our stand here.”
Ezekiel looked at her, and under the pale sweat on his face, she saw determination. He gulped but nodded and released her.
“I guess so,” he said, easing back his horse.
“Get ready,” she said as she switched her reins to her nondominant hand and hoped Balefire was up to the challenge of his first battle by night.
Both men beside her steadied themselves. Linus said, “I’m ready when you are, Lieutenant Commander.”
She didn’t miss the fact that the title he bestowed on her was instilled with pride. It made her want to leap into battle and keep her people safe at the same time. It made her feel like she belonged in the seat, and not a minute too soon—because she spotted movement off to the side, and before they found themselves surrounded, she yelled, “Riders—ready!”
Everyone leaped into place, and none of them flinched. As she urged her horse to whirl around on his hind legs, she saw that her cohorts were positioning themselves to take on opponents from both sides. They had their horses turn left and right, depending on the riders, the mage orbs were blasted up to full power, and the fields surrounding them, that had recently been nothing but nondescript, softly wafting blades of wheat, were now highly visible under the light.
She saw the marauders crouched low in the wheat fields. With the lowness of the stalks, only midway through their growth spurts, and under the brightness of the light, the cohorts were clearly shown lumps that had no business pushing aside those stalks.
It couldn’t have been better had she planned on it, and she reminded herself to congratulate Karn another time. He was a darned good second in command, and it seemed he had picked an admirable crew to go on this mission with. She loved a well-prepared team, after all.
For a moment, Sara thought of the logistics of where they were placed, but she trusted them all to hold their own and back up each other. And as the person at the head of the line, she could pick up the slack, while someone in the distance, probably Marx, was the last person in their cohort of riders and could give those who needed it support. Besides that, if it was Marx, as it should be, the marauders would have a hell of a time cutting him off at the back end. Though she knew they’d fight like hell to try.
She didn’t let that bother her right now. She couldn’t.
Because they were all itching for this battle. Those unfortunate marauders had no idea what was going to hit them, and as the mage orbs brightened over them with a single powerful blast, she thought with a self-satisfied smirk, Well, if they didn’t know we were armed, they do now.
Then the path erupted in pandemonium.
“Charge!” Sara screamed as she urged her horse into the field and brandished her longswo
rd.
No one waited; everyone sought an enemy, and as the marauders saw the riders bearing down on them, they popped up like rabbits, obviously surprised into action. But there was little they could do as warhorses with skilled riders galloped straight at them with weapons ready.
If Sara had been on the other side of that field as the enemy, she would have been scared shitless.
With whoops and hollers, they came down on the enemy like avenging hellions.
Just the way she liked it.
22
Leaning over Balefire’s neck with an eager grin and a sword held tight to his side to prevent it from catching on anything, Sara set her sights on the lone man in front of her. She didn’t waste time, letting Balefire’s powerful, ground-eating stride do the work for her.
With nothing in their way for the enemy to shield themselves behind and the sheer power of a battle-trained horse let loose beneath her, Sara didn’t rein in. She ran straight over her opponent. She felt the thick squish of his lumpy flesh as Balefire’s hooves connected with meat and bone. As they came away on the other side of the man, who had been immobilized and was now no more than a lump on the ground, she turned around to finish the job—just to be sure. She didn’t want an enemy jumping up out of the weeds behind her when she least expected.
But as she leaned over the back of the horse with her sword and he turned a bit at her suggestion, Balefire did the work for her once more. His left hind leg snapped out with a swift kick and caved in the poor fool’s head.
Then Sara heard a howl of outrage from her left, and she didn’t have time to even comprehend what the horse had done. There was someone else to take care of, and she didn’t waste a moment, wheeling her stallion around to finish him off and go for another. This time it was a man who was a smidgen more prepared, but only able to hold up his spear high enough to nick the side of Balefire’s chest. That only served to enrage the horse; he whinnied in outrage and lashed out to bite down on the man’s throat.
She didn’t even have to direct him to do that. Sara watched in amazement as instead of letting go, the horse used his broad mouth and strength to jerk his head and tear a hole the size of an apple in the poor man’s esophagus.
As their second opponent of the night dropped dead, she leaned over and patted Balefire’s neck. “Good boy!”
If the flicker of Balefire’s ear and bounce of his head was any indication, he was eager for more, so she whirled him around and they headed for two more idiots on their side of the field. They were both currently occupied with fending off three of her team by using long spears and what looked like weighted nets, with which they had probably hoped to confuse and hobble their prey’s horses.
Sara came up behind them through the fields like an avenging ghost and swept down her sword. Without a word, she carved their heads from their necks and then whirled Balefire around to stop and check on her people. She had to fight the stallion a minute, because he was eager for more blood and was clearly trying to get her to cross the road and go for a man who had whipped out a sword and taken Reben on.
But she wasn’t ready to go that route yet. Besides, Reben had four others from the cohort by her side—she was fine.
Ignoring Balefire’s wishes, Sara turned to see Karn had been one of the opponents in the fray with the two beheaded marauders.
“Those idiots were trouble for you?”
Karn spat to the side and said contemptuously, “Of course not!”
He waved off the two soldiers behind him, and they mounted back up and went across the road to assist elsewhere.
Karn turned back to her and said, “I was just trying to capture them to question them.”
“Oh,” Sara said. “I should have thought of that.”
She looked around, but she could tell from the few scuffling sections in the mid-height wheat that there weren’t many offenders left to question.
“You still have a chance, Lieutenant Commander,” Karn said dryly.
Sara gave him a mild look of annoyance but didn’t take offense at his semi-mocking tone.
“I think I shall, then.” She lowered her sword a bit and prepared to give the command for her people to round up those who were still alive.
“Mind if I attend with you?” Karn said, holding out a palm for a hand up.
Her raised eyebrows indicated her surprise, but mid-battle was no time to question his motives, so she reached down with her free right hand after switching the sword to her left grip, and helped him swing astride Balefire’s back.
The horse took the addition of a second rider with aplomb, though she did notice the stallion had finally stopped dancing around underneath her. He was still eager, judging by the twitch of his ears awaiting her commands, but the additional weight of a fully grown man was enough that he couldn’t dart into battle like he had before.
Grinning and knowing they had won, Sara yelled out over the sound of singing weapons and dying groans, “Round up those you can.”
Before the fights could switch to capture-and-reconnaissance sessions, though, she heard the sounds of mini-booms and then swift feet.
“They’re running!” she heard Isabelle yell just as the mini-booms released toxic smoke.
Thick orange gas rose all around them. It filled every inch of the road and the nearby fields of wheat in a layer that rose from the horses’ hooves to the sky inches above them all, even those astride.
Sara couldn’t make out where they were coming from, and even Balefire was anxious. He managed to get into the middle of the road, but kept turning in a half-circle, trying to find where the enemy was.
Karn, for his part, was cursing up a storm and coughing in her ear.
Finally, half irritated at him and half pissed off at her opponents, Sara said, “Karn—get down! Spread out and find them!”
He didn’t waste any time releasing her waist and kicking off from the horse. When he landed with a grunt and headed into the fields on the opposite of the road, Sara tried to use the advantage of her height to spy furtive movements…to no avail.
It was no use when her eyes were watering so hard that she couldn’t keep them open.
Hands full with reins and weapons, Sara was miserable as she darted Balefire toward the sound of people, only to come out of the smoke almost on top of her own cohort several times. When that last person was Ezekiel, she noted the scholar had managed to set a curious contraption over his face, and he wasn’t having trouble breathing. It was white and webbed. She could see it wasn’t so much covering his face as enclosing it.
Linus then appeared out of the smoke by her side, eliciting a startled snort from Balefire. Linus ignored the horse entirely and reached up for Sara. Noting the glow of magic in his hands and trusting him, she leaned down and let his hand cover her face from forehead to chin.
As he slowly drew his hand back, it was covered in fibrous filaments, almost like a sticky and glowing spider web.
The web followed his hands from the edge of her face, and when he made an abrupt movement, it snapped off from his grip, and she was left with a cone over a mouth and eyes that let her breathe.
Taking her first deep breath in ages, she nodded to him in thanks and looked to the others emerging from the thick gas with similar contraptions on their faces. Those that didn’t have it were immediately guided to the mage for one of their own.
But as they all spread out, finally able to see, they soon discovered that, like ghosts in the night, their opponents were gone, and Sara was furious.
“Who were they?” she demanded as she huddled with Marx, Karn, Isabelle, and Ezekiel.
They had set three mages to guard their perimeter, one each at either end of the road and another just to keep a magical eye on the fields, while Reben had been sent to find something, anything that resembled a trail.
“Kades or bandits, does it matter?” said Karn as he swatted away a horsefly with the audacity to come for his forehead.
“Yes, it does,” Isabelle said. “I’ve
never seen the Kades deploy a human cadre before. It’s always been attacks by their magical horrors or distant bombardments.”
“That is true,” Ezekiel said. “This is…unusual for them.”
“Unusual good or bad?” Marx asked.
“They’re either desperate enough to want something from us…which doesn’t sound like the Kades at all,” Isabelle said. “They’ve had the logistical upper hand for a while now—”
“We all heard an ‘or’ there,” Karn said impatiently. “So out with it.”
“Or,” Isabelle said, “they’re close enough that if we keep riding, we might stumble upon one of their outposts.”
Sara frowned. That, too, did not sound like the Kades she knew. She hadn’t even been aware they deployed smaller outposts.
Ezekiel said, “This wouldn’t make sense, unless we consider what happened with Sara.”
As one, the team turned to look at her with raised eyebrows, and Sara stared back in surprise.
“Do tell,” she said, not exactly sure where he was going with this but willing to let it ride.
Ezekiel nervously adjusted his glasses. “You said Gabriel took you into an illusion of his making, complete with walls and a floor and tangible things?”
“If you’re asking if it felt real, definitely.”
Ezekiel nodded. “Then I think he was exhibiting a lot of power to do so, and the Kades may be extremely gifted, but no one is powerful enough to hold someone in an imaginary cage with them and not have that be taxing.”
“So what are you saying?” Marx said, flipping a knife between his fingers.
“He’s saying that Gabriel might be out of juice,” Karn said.
“Not only that,” Ezekiel added, “but he may be nearby.”
Jumping into the discussion, Isabelle said, “And if they were sent to attack and kill us on his orders, perhaps the rest aren’t too far off.”
“That’s a mighty big assumption,” Sara said. “How do you know he didn’t just portal away?”
“Because he needs to find the Sun Mage just as much as we do,” Isabelle said. “He said as much to you before, and if he leaves, he abandons the search field to his opponents.”
