Harbinger

by Nicole Conway

  I spun on him with a crazed snarl, dropping into a crouch and sweeping his legs. As he fell, I grabbed his shield and snatched it violently into a twisting motion that broke his arm. He screamed with pain, trying to get away from me. He’d picked the wrong little woman to mess with today.

  One plunge of my sword ended his suffering.

  The thundering clatter of hooves over the cobblestones drew my gaze up. Some of Aubren’s men rode right past me through the city square, pursued by Tibrans on their ironclad war steeds. Their line had broken. They were attempting a retreat—but had nowhere to go.

  Something had gone wrong; I just didn’t know what. We had lost our last chance to defend the third wall. Everywhere I looked there were Tibrans rushing in. I was alone and outnumbered.

  Squeezing the hilt of my sword, I backed up against the side of Jaevid’s fountain and watched as Tibran soldiers began to encircle me. They had me cornered, pinned in the center of that city square. But I could see apprehension on their faces. They probably recognized my cloak—they knew I was a dragonrider. I was never truly alone.

  All I had to do was get my whistle from my belt.

  Before I could even reach for it, however, I heard a feral screeching sound coming from beside me. Instinct made my senses snap into focus. I dropped to a knee and ducked as a mace hummed right over my head. I could feel the wind from it and caught a glimpse of the spiked ball as it passed mere inches from my head. It cracked against Jaevid’s statue, lodging deep into the stone of one of his legs.

  I kicked into an evasive roll, coming up into a squat with my sword ready for a counterstrike. Before me, she emerged through the ranks of Tibran soldiers like a lumbering giant. She pushed them aside like pesky children, snatching a shield from one and flinging him to the ground as though he were a ragdoll.

  Hilleddi towered head and shoulders over the rest of the men gathered around, looming like a giant as she stomped toward me. Her neck was nearly as thick around as her head, her biceps bulged under the weight of the shield and battle-axe, and her movements were jerking and beastly. She’d shaved away all the hair on one side of her head, leaving the other only an inch or so long. The left side of her face was covered in tribal markings, and her armor—if it could even be called that—seemed more like a ceremonial afterthought that left her torso and legs exposed.

  She leered at me and crinkled her crooked nose. Her dark, wicked eyes flickered with excited malice. “Well, if it isn’t Maldobar’s pretty little princess. I hear you like to play at being a warrior.”

  Slowly, I rose to stand and lowered the tip of my sword. I narrowed my gaze at her challengingly. “Yes. Didn’t you notice? I had a very good time playing with your war mount.”

  Her mouth curled in a delighted snarl. She swung her axe wide, gesturing to all the soldiers gathered around us. “Not one of you lot better move a muscle! This whelp is mine.”

  Hilleddi dove at me like an angry bear, swinging her double-headed battle-axe wildly. I waited, steeling my nerves until the last second before ducking and evading her wild assault. Her axe sailed right over my head as I dipped under her arm.

  Her weapon was heavy. She was committed to the swing. That was the weakness I had to exploit. Standing up behind her, I flipped my sword and caught it by the blade, taking a half-swording hold so I could use the hilt like a club. Then I wailed her over the back of the head with the pommel as hard as I could.

  She was stronger—bigger—and could probably cut me in half with one blow even through my armor. But if she wanted to kill me, she was going to have to work for it. I hadn’t lived through the hell of the academy to die at the hands of a barbarian mongrel like her.

  Hilleddi staggered, catching herself against the fountain and dropping her shield. When she faced me again, I saw blood trickling from the corners of her smirking mouth. “Clever little tramp, aren’t you?”

  I tilted my chin up and spun my blade back over to grip it by the hilt. “I doubt it takes much to be smarter than you.”

  She snarled again, turning and kicking her shield away. She grabbed the handle of the mace—which was still lodged in the leg of Jaevid’s statue—and ripped it free with one tug. She spun on me then, brandishing both weapons and prowling forward with her brawny shoulders hunched. At the last second, she surged toward me to make another frenzied attack.

  I had to be careful. Every hit had to count. I couldn’t overpower her, so I had to outlast her until she made a critical mistake.

  While Hilleddi swung wildly, flinging her weapons through the air in my direction again and again, I dodged and kept light on my feet. She chased me around the square, like we were doing laps around the fountain. Whenever I could, I ducked in to plant a calculated blow—one at her throat and another at the wound on her thigh where she’d unceremoniously ripped an arrow out during battle.

  Her strikes began to slow. She was breathing hard, favoring that wound on her leg. But when our eyes locked, I saw no surrender in her.

  Suddenly, Hilleddi reared back and hurled her axe directly at me. It spun end over end, rocketing toward my face. I pitched to the side to avoid it, but when I came up, she was already waiting for me. I took the full force of her mace against my side. It crunched through my armor like it was cheap tin. Pain shot through my body. I felt something pop—bones breaking.

  I landed on the ground at her feet, dazed and tasting the coppery flavor of blood on my tongue. Squinting through the haze and winking spots in my vision, I could barely make out the shape of her boots stomping toward me. Oh no. I clenched my teeth, trying to will my body to stand. Get up—now!

  But I couldn’t.

  Hilleddi lifted one of her monstrous feet and stomped it right into my face.

  I managed to angle my face away in time to spare my nose. But once again, my brains felt scrambled. I couldn’t clear the darkness that was swallowing my vision. This was it. I was down—and she was one swing of that mace away from spattering the feet of Jaevid’s fountain with the insides of my head.

  “My brother ordered me to spare you if I could. I suspect he wants you for a trophy.” Hilleddi scoffed as she used to the toe of her sandal to nudge my chin. “Just this once, I don’t think I’ll grant his wish.”

  Vaguely, I could see her rearing that mace back for the final swing. Past the end of her spiked iron weapon, I could barely make out the shape of Jaevid’s face on that statue. I wondered if I would see him in the afterlife. Perhaps I could plead with him to keep his promise.

  The mace came down with bone-splintering force, aimed right at my head. I closed my eyes.

  Suddenly, someone was shouting. A man? Through my fog of pain, I could have sworn I knew that voice.

  When I opened my eyes again, there was a person crouching over me like he’d materialized out of thin air. He had a shield strapped to his arm, and he threw it up clumsily to deflect Hilleddi’s killing blow. The impact made him cry out, and I saw a huge dent form in the back of the shield where the mace had hit on the other side.

  “You!” She screeched like a feral cat.

  “Get up, Jenna,” the man rasped breathlessly from under his helmet. He looked down at me through the eyeholes cut in his visor.

  I caught a glimpse of familiar, vivid green.

  Oh, gods—it was Phillip!

  “Look out,” I cried out to warn him when I saw Hilleddi lunge again—but it was no good.

  She grabbed him by the shield and sent him flying into Jaevid’s statue. He cracked off the stone hard and landed in a heap in the shallow water at the base of the fountain. She was on him again in an instant. I saw her flailing that mace again and again. He managed to block the first few blows, but then the fourth split his shield.

  The fifth blow hit him across the shoulder, crumpling his shoulder pauldron and drawing blood. He cried out, still shouting at me, “Run, Jenna! Run now!”

  Terror shot through me like a cold tongue of lightning.

  She
was about to beat Phillip—my Phillip—to death.

  “No!” A roaring shout tore out of my throat and I was on my feet. All sense of pain and injury was gone from my mind. All I knew was the white-hot taste of revenge crackling over my tongue.

  Hilleddi drew back, preparing for another swing—a killing blow—when I drove my sword straight through her burly bicep. She let out a howl of rage and surprise, and I quickly wrenched my blade sideways with ruthless force.

  Her arm, mace and all, clattered to the ground.

  “Never turn your back on me, you ugly wench,” I growled as she spun to face me.

  Hilleddi rushed me like an enraged bull, eyes bloodshot and nostrils flared. The bloody stump where her arm used to be didn’t seem to bother her at all. I kicked off to meet her, taking three long strides before I sprang into the air with my blade swung wide. I saw her eyes go wide and her nostrils flare with sudden realization about a second before the point of my sword met her neck.

  SEVEN

  I stood over Phillip and defended him until my last bit of strength was spent. Without Hilleddi to command them, the Tibrans were much more cautious when dealing with me. They’d fought enough dragonriders before to know that one of us was worth a hundred of them in battle. But the Tibran soldiers attacked in calculated waves, and soon I was overwhelmed. For each one I cut down, there were five more to take his place.

  Until at last, it was over.

  One stiff blow across my cheek from a sword’s hilt put me on the ground right next to Phillip. His shoulder had been crushed by Hilleddi’s mace. He couldn’t even sit up.

  The Tibrans could have killed me. All my strength was gone. I couldn’t move from where I’d fallen. But rather than ending it with a blade in my heart, they pinned me down and tied my arms behind my back. I was going to wind up a trophy of war after all.

  They did the same to Phillip, and I heard him screaming and wailing in pain when they moved his injured arm. All I could do was clench my teeth and wait for it to be over. Once our arms and legs were bound, we were thrown onto the backs of horses, covered with black blankets to hide our identities from anyone who might try to rescue us, and carried away through the burning remains of the city.

  I couldn’t see anything but the flurry of horse hooves and blood-spattered cobblestones blurring by as I lay on my belly. I could still hear, however. The warning sirens had gone silent. Now there was nothing but the crackling of flames and the shouts of the dying.

  It was impossible to resist hoping that Aubren, Haldor, or Calem would suddenly sweep in to rescue us. But the city had fallen faster than we had ever expected. If they had followed my orders, Haldor and Calem were already flying for the safety of the mountains while my brother made that same journey with hundreds of civilians in the tunnels.

  That left me with only one burning question—but I didn’t get a chance to ask it until Phillip and I had been delivered behind enemy lines and loaded into the back of an armored wagon. It had no windows and only one door that bolted closed from the outside, so when they locked us inside, it was pitch black.

  “Phillip?” I called out to him in the darkness, trying to scoot my way closer to him.

  “You know, this isn’t exactly how I envisioned our first time alone in the dark together,” he rasped.

  When I found him, I let my leg bump his, so he would know I was there. “What happened? How did the Tibrans get past the third wall so quickly?”

  He wheezed as though he were having a hard time getting a breath. I wondered if that wound had affected one of his lungs. “It all happened so fast. There was an explosion.”

  “From outside the gate?”

  “No, it was from the inside. They kept shouting—something about the tunnels.” His voice grew quieter. “I-I’m cold.”

  “You’re going into shock.” I tried to make my voice soft and comforting as I scooted in close enough that my side pressed against his. It hurt. From the fresh agony coming from the wound on my side and my own difficulties breathing, I could guess that a few of my ribs were broken. “Just try to take deep, slow breaths. It’s going to be okay.”

  “L-Liar.” He chuckled weakly.

  I felt his head loll against me, resting on top of mine as we sat alone in that hateful dark place. I didn’t understand why he was here—he should have evacuated with everyone else. He wasn’t supposed to be wearing armor or slinging shields around or … trying to save my life.

  “I thought I was too late,” Phillip muttered in a broken voice. “I saw you lying there. I thought she’d already killed—”

  “Hush, now. You just need to try to focus on calming down and slowing your breathing.”

  “Will they torture us?” He sounded genuinely terrified. It was a somber reminder that unlike me, he’d never been trained to handle that sort of thing.

  “You? No. I don’t see why they would.” After all, he didn’t know much that would have been useful to them. He was a duke, sure, but he was no war strategist.

  “But me … ” I stopped and swallowed hard. My mouth felt dry just thinking about it. I was valuable to them. Aubren had told me some of what had happened when the Tibrans had captured him and his men before. He’d explained how they’d seemed almost desperate to figure out if there had been a member of Maldobar’s royal family among them. They’d also seemed quite fond of torture, especially when it came to those royals. Hilleddi’s venomous words about being a war prize for her brother burned in my mind.

  “You don’t need to worry about that,” I finished at last, gritting my teeth. “I can take care myself.”

  “I do worry, though. I always worry. You are the most important person in my life.”

  I bit down harder. “Why, Phillip? Why do you always say things like that? Even now, when we’re about to—”

  “You know why.”

  I couldn’t see him in the dark, so I just glared in the direction his voice was coming from. “You’re not being serious. You’re never serious. You treat me like a joke, just like when we were children.”

  “Is that really what you think? That I’m just making fun of you or something?” He sounded surprised.

  “Well, aren’t you?”

  “No. I mean, not all the time. I do joke sometimes—maybe more often than I should. But I always thought you could tell the difference.”

  I frowned and looked away, letting the silence serve as my answer.

  “So, all this time, you thought I was mocking you? Geez, no wonder you hate my guts.” He sighed.

  “I don’t hate you.”

  He chuckled hoarsely, tensing up some as though it hurt. “I guess if you did, you would have stood back and let that beastly woman smash my head in like a spring melon, eh? What an ogre she was. I don’t think I’ve seen a more alarmingly repulsive person in my life.”

  No argument there.

  “Where do you think they’re taking us?” he asked. I could hear him still struggling for every breath. I couldn’t see him, so I didn’t know how badly he was wounded. I didn’t know if he’d even survive to get wherever it was we were going.

  That fact clamped down on me like a cold hand at my throat.

  “Maybe to some sort of prison camp or to wherever Argonox has been hiding out,” I guessed carefully.

  Honestly, I had no idea. But since I was the only experienced soldier of the two of us, I knew I had to keep morale up. If these were our last hours alive, I didn’t want him to spend them petrified of what horror awaited us when they dragged us out of this rolling prison cell.

  “You want to know the first time I realized I loved you?” Phillip broke the heavy silence. I could hear that mischievous smile in his voice.

  “Phillip,” I warned. He was right—I couldn’t tell when he was joking and when he wasn’t.

  “It was at your brother’s debut ball,” he said between rough breaths. “We were all there to honor Aubren. He was supposed to be the center of attention si
nce it was his debut to the royal court as a man. But the moment I saw you step into that ballroom, it was like the whole world had shifted under my feet and I couldn’t think of anything else except how to make you mine.”

  I closed my eyes tightly and hoped he couldn’t hear how my heart had begun to pound sloppily. I remembered that night, too—for an entirely different reason. I had still been begging my father to let me go to the dragonrider academy. After yet another monstrous argument right before the ceremony had begun, I had still been hot with rage and determined to sulk when I’d come into the ballroom.

  “I’ll never believe there’s anyone else I could be happy with,” he murmured. Fatigue, pain, and maybe blood loss had begun to slur his words. “There is only you, Jenna. I am yours; I’ve always been yours.”

  My cheeks burned, and I was thankful he couldn’t see it. I’d never dreamt any man would say something like that to me. I was still a princess, yes. But in the eyes of most of the men in the noble court, becoming a dragonrider was essentially the same thing as deciding to become a man. You couldn’t be both—not in their eyes.

  Phillip, though … It was as though he still saw me as something fragile and beautiful beneath all my armor.

  “Tell me again.” The words slipped past my lips before I could consider them.

  I felt his body tense slightly where he sat so close to me. “W-What?”

  “You know what.” My heart thrashed wildly in my ears. “But not here. Not now. Afterward, when we’re both safe and I can look you in the eyes and know you really mean it. I want you to tell me how you really feel about me.”

  “I … I … ” Phillip fumbled for words. I had never heard him do that before.

  “I’m serious, Phillip. You have to stay alive. Do you understand?”

  “J-Jenna … ” he slurred my name one last time.

  “Phillip?”