by Val Roberts
"Don't do something in haste you will regret when your mate returns, Blademir.” Llamass looked as calm as ever, but then his entire world hadn't come apart around his ears.
"She's not my mate. She left, Llamass, and no amount of begging is going to bring her back.” Just like his mother. Could Llamass even begin to know how much, how very much that stung? Not just stinging, though, but deep stabbing, rending pain, all the way through. He had to call his father and abdicate because he would die without issue. He had to go after Taryn so he could protect her from all the pain waiting for her. He had to do something. He turned to look again, maybe to catch one last glimpse of her through the trees, but there was nothing. He looked farther up the slope. And farther.
A thin wisp of smoke angled into the morning sky from the direction of the Zonan border, but he wouldn't be able to see the remains of a campfire from thirty kilometers away and no Bariani used Sanctuary lands for recreation.
Something was very, very wrong in the Jags, and his instincts screamed it was aimed at Taryn.
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Chapter Fifteen
"Galen! Get the power armor. Now!"
Llamass grabbed his arm. “She will be back."
"Not if the Silvergard get her first.” Blade grabbed Llamass by the ears and forcibly turned his head. “What do you see in the sky?"
"I don't...” Llamass's voice trailed off and he stiffened. “Gods. They sent killers across the border? But that's—there must be some other explanation. Zonans don't do that."
"Talyn does.” Blade was pulled away from Llamass and Galen started strapping armor onto his body. “If I'm wrong, I'll be the first to laugh at myself and apologize to whoever I scare the hells out of in the next hour, but I'm not taking a chance."
"I hope you know what you're doing,” Galen said as the torso clamshelled into place with a snick. It was odd, because Galen would have told him flat out not to do it before the journey into Zona, but he didn't have any brainpower left to consider the change in his keeper's attitude.
"I hope you relayed orders,” was Blade's reply as he fastened one of the legs while Galen worked on the other. Even Llamass started to help, holding the gauntlets while Blade slid his arms into them after the arms were on.
"There are only four of us.” It was as close to a warning as Galen would come with Llamass within earshot.
Blade paused long enough to meet his eyes. “Five. It's the Barian Heir Consort, Galen. I'm not sitting in a bunker."
Galen swallowed visibly, but didn't demur his decision. “I'll catch up as soon as I get my own armor on."
Blade took his helmet from Galen's hands. “I'm taking the skimmer.” He pulled the last piece of armor on and latched it to the rest, then tongued the control to bring it online so he could be heard in the room. “Have them meet me at the mountain entrance."
He threw one look at Llamass, who was uncharacteristically white-mouthed. He nodded once, giving tacit permission to take the Enclave's sole air vehicle. Normally it served to ferry Sanctuarians from the Enclave to the Krystale, usually when they were ill or injured, which didn't happen often.
"Call the palace for backup. Tell them we have a real border incursion—armed troops, not starving hicks. And pray that I'm wrong.” Then Blade vaulted over the balcony rail and dropped the four stories to the packed earth. The armor cushioned the impact so that he didn't even have to roll, and he immediately started the familiar long-strided lope around the very large building to the mountainous side, wishing the suit would let him sprint. The Enclave was big, and even with power assist it would take more than ten minutes to get to the skimmer's landing pad.
When he got there, the impellers were already spinning up and Juvenan was in the hatch holding a plasma rifle. “Big gun, Your Royal Highness?” he offered. Blade held out his hands and Juvenan tossed the weapon into his hands.
"Follow Taryn's thermal trail,” he decided as he followed Juvenan through the hatch. “What's the ETA on Galen?"
"Two minutes.” Tomal's voice. “Had a little trouble with a sticky connector."
"He's getting too old for this nonsense,” Blade muttered. “By rights, he should be home with Siobhellen, tickling grandchildren."
"If you'd stop getting yourself into trouble, maybe I would be,” Galen's voice crackled over the squad channel. “And now you've got a Zonan just as bad as you are. I'll never get to retire."
Blade grinned behind his visor and sat next to the hatch. Taryn wasn't a fool and she knew not only the mountains, but how the Silvergard operated as well. She would be able to get to cover and hold them off until the cavalry arrived. She had to be able to get to cover.
An alarm pinged, signaling pulse rate and blood pressure were too high. No kidding.
* * * *
"Ramondar, we have a problem.” This time it wasn't a disembodied voice in his head, it was Deg, leaning into the amplification field so that every media representative knew why the continuation of the interrupted press conference was being cut short. “Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize with all my heart, but His Majesty has a situation. It appears Zona is invading the Sanctuary Enclave at the border."
Ramondar pulled Degusta out of the field and to the back of the dais as the media hounds erupted in a roar. “Are you crazy?” he yelled at Deg, barely audible over the wall of shouted questions.
Deg shook his head and yanked Ramondar off the platform with enough force to make his shoulder protest. “The Zonans are crazy. You know the crown guard keeps power armor at the Enclave, and Blade has five bodyguards with modern weapons. I had to get it out there that Zona invaded before charred female bodies start turning up on the news feeds."
"Gods, demons, blood and martyrs,” Ramonder recited under his breath. “What are we doing about it?"
"Admiral Crais lifted a few minutes ago with two shuttles of strikers.” Deg opened a door and hustled Ramondar down a staircase that officially wasn't there. “We need to get to the situation room before he does something unacceptable."
A mirthless laugh forced its way out of Ramondar's chest, because everything was already far beyond unacceptable and well into bizarre. “How did we get here, Deg?” he asked as he pounded down the secret steps to the back entrance of his command and control bunker. It was three stories under the palace, so they had a lot of steps to cover, but a cut in power wouldn't affect them the way it would an elevator.
"I thought it would good to send the Crown Heir into Zona for a simple negotiation so he wouldn't amuse the tabloids for a few weeks,” Degusta admitted. “What a stupid fucking idea."
"Have you contacted Silean? Does she know about it?"
"Codreascu's on his way to the Lady Palace even as we speak.” Deg paused to pant a couple of times as he swung around a landing. “Maybe now we'll get her to let us install a microwave link directly to her office."
"If she survives,” Ramondar agreed, also beginning to lose his breath and silently praying the situation wouldn't escalate to a strike on the Lady Palace. Thankfully they were more than halfway. He might get to the nerve center of his military without passing out.
They blew through the bottom doors and Deg hit the palm plate to close the blast shield. Ramondar snorted. It might have been SOP, but against Zonans it was just overkill to a degree that was silly. General Sobietski took two strides from a console and came to attention, then saluted.
"As you were,” Ramondar told the stiff woman. “I need a report."
She pretty much repeated what Deg had told him in the conference room, giving him time to get his breath back and scrub his hands over his face.
"Did he say what he was going to do about it?” he asked, starting to pace.
Leontyn Sobietski looked uncomfortable. “The transmission must have gotten garbled at that point, Your Majesty. The last sentence said His Royal Highness was proceeding to secure the Heir Consort's security."
Ramondar stopped pacing to stare at her. “Did you say Heir Consort?"
"Yes, Your Majesty. As I said—"
"I heard you.” Yes, it was rude to cut her off, but, Gods! Had everyone lost their minds but him?
"Do you think,” Degusta said carefully into the tense silence, “the Zonans could be attempting to retrieve Her Highness?"
"Sir?” Sobietski questioned. “Her Highness who?"
Ramondar sighed. “Her Highness Taryn Penthes of Zona. And quite possibly Barian, by now.” Sobietski looked visibly shaken. He started to pace again to do something with the energy that had no other outlet in the bunker. “If he did manage to talk the Santuarians into a bonding, she can't be allowed to leave Barian."
"What if they don't intend to remove her?” Deg asked. “Two days ago, they tried to kill her. And her sister, Prince Talyn, has been missing almost that long.” Sobietski's face went even whiter. “Even if the bonding hasn't been accomplished, this message conveys a clear intention on Blademir's part, Ramondar."
"I'm not bombarding a dark age duchy over it,” Ramondar snarled. “Great gods, what would Helicon think? What would the DW think?” He was near a wall, so he slammed the edge of his fist against it in frustration. “There has got to be diplomatic solution here, people. Find it!"
* * * *
Taryn climbed to the top of a small dome of granite and sat, digging the toes of her boots into a thin crack for purchase on the nearly barren slope. It was time to think, time to create a plan for the rest of her life. One day with Bariani technology had confirmed one of her most basic fears: she didn't know enough to fit in with their society. What kind of work could she find, when she couldn't figure out how to open a food packet? How could Blade possibly expect her to rule over people who knew so much more about—everything? She fingered her scar and was surprised again to feel the skin softer than normal. It was disappearing, along with every other truth she had depended on.
"I hate you,” she whispered to Blademir Erichsal von Stassos, even though he was miles away and far beyond range of the words. And it was a lie, on top of it, because even through her deep anger, she could sense the love pulsing, waiting to be set free. It wasn't fair. Her vision blurred and she raised her eyes to the lavender sky, blinking hard several times to banish the tears. It wasn't worth crying over. Nothing was worth feeling over anymore. Her forehead creased. Was that a crooked line of grey parting the atmosphere? She followed it back down until it vanished behind the second-tallest peak to the north and west.
Smoke. From a single fire. It was still too cold for camping, and none of the game in the area would be worth much, so it couldn't be hunters even if hunting was allowed on this side of the border in the early spring. Her training and her instincts told her the line of smoke meant something far more sinister. And she was in the open.
She brought her eyes back to her immediate surroundings and listened intently. The birdsong that had accompanied her trek was gone to silence, which meant whoever had created the smoke had to be nearby, and the nearest cover was a trio of scrub bushes that had found a roothold in the granite much the same as the crack holding her toes. Quickly, slithering and slipping on the steep slope, she half-crawled to the bushes, ripping her shirt on spines that got inside the open coat, and prostrated herself under the dense branches. Then she waited.
And waited.
The birds were still silent. Normal hikers would have made noise by now, so this was the silence of stalking. The only question was who was doing the hunting, and what the prey might be. She could be completely paranoid, but after the last few days, it would be a relief to be proved a fool.
Silvergard snipers were masters at waiting, able to sleep open-eyed and watch their targets at the same time, but this was her life. She could stay motionless undercover for days if she had to. Of course, a water bottle and a few pieces of biscotti bread would make the wait less horrific, but as she didn't have any, it didn't really matter. She would do what she had to. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly to calm her panicked heartbeat, and refused to allow herself to wish for rescue. This was her fight, and hers alone. If only she'd brought a bow on this hellspawn journey, but she would have had to have taken it with her for escort duty in order to do that, and who needed a bow in Balsom?
A loud whoosh echoed through the high valley, then proceeded to get louder. A silvery metallic shape rose into the air from the direction of the Enclave and streaked across the sky, covering in a few seconds what had taken her an hour to get through on foot. She bit her lip and fought off the sense of inadequacy.
A spear of light left the flying thing with a musical chime much deeper and louder than Galen's pistol, touching below the tree line and setting the forest ablaze. She thanked the goddess that she had chosen an outcropping that wasn't surrounded by trees. Then the airship sank to maybe twenty feet above a fairly level patch of open ground less than half a mile away and a hatch opened.
Two man-shaped objects that glinted in the sun dropped from the hatch, followed a few seconds later by two more, and the ship rose again. All of them carried large silvery tubes that might have been weapons, because they had that sleek look of deadly purpose to them. The first two loped into the baby forest fire while the other two began moving toward her. They had to be Bariani in some kind of armor, but what would allow men to move with that kind of grace on such a steep slope, and while carrying weapons?
A crossbow quarrel whanged off the rock and shattered to splinters ten feet above her hiding place. Taryn set her jaw and pulled her dagger from its sheath. Her hunters knew where she had gone to ground, but someone had panicked in the fire and taken a badly aimed shot. Or they were finding the range. A weapon chimed the deeper tone from within the trees and a woman's scream echoed, audible even above the roar of the flying machine. More chimes sounded, a chorus of destruction, and the two figures had reached the bottom of the granite dome.
Another quarrel shattered on rock, this one closer, almost close enough for the wood splinters to hit her. She gathered her legs under her and huddled in the thickest part of the branches to make a smaller target. The two figures were a third of the way up the dome, and the way they moved somehow looked familiar, especially the taller one. It couldn't be ... but he would, wouldn't he? Her lips curved into a faint smile. Damn you, Blade.
The third crossbow shot surprised her, because the quarrel hit within inches of where her legs had been stretched out a moment ago, and because the fletching was acid yellow. They were using poisoned bolts. She shifted a cautious few inches east, reminding herself that terrapins were safest in their shells. Except she didn't have a shell, only a few branches between her and what hunted her. One of the figures on the rock turned and fired, sighting back along the path of the toxic quarrel. The top third of a large tree exploded, but there was no sound of a scream or a visibly falling body. More loud chimes sounded from within the burning trees.
Zona must never incite a war with these people, she suddenly realized. They had tools to turn warfare into slaughter. The thought was punctuated by a veritable rain of quarrels on and around the bushes. The noise they made against the granite was different, and none of them shattered. Taryn tried to move again as the Bariani weapons fired, but realized one of the quarrels had pinned her coat to the granite, a scant two inches from her ankle. And the fletching on the metallic shaft half-sunk in granite and still quivering—was yellow. Where had they gotten all-metal quarrels? And hard enough metal to penetrate rock.
The crash of a large metallic object falling on rock raised her attention from under her feet. A quarrel had gotten through a gap in the armor, and the shorter of the two figures had fallen. Given what she'd seen of their medical treatments, she wasn't worried until she saw the yellow fletching. He might not have time to get to treatment.
She shed her coat as quickly as possible and skittered out from the doubtful shelter of the bushes, more fell than climbed down the rest of the granite to get to him, then used every bit of her upper-body strength to pull the quarrel out of his body; the lon
ger it was in contact, the more neurotoxin he would get. She bit her lip and wondered who was inside the suit—quiet Juvenan, helpful Grigor, or shy Dorcan? Goddess, let it not be Maris, who had already taken a bolt on this trip. It wasn't Blade, because he could only be the figure behind her. Ice ran through her blood, because she realized there was one more in the group: Galen, Duke of Northshield.
"No,” she said out loud, rejecting the very idea even as her stomach clenched with recognition. Galen wouldn't have allowed anyone else at his prince's side in a situation like this. Galen was on the brink of death. “No!” She had to get him to treatment—surely Barian technologists had developed an antiserum for passadder venom if Zonans knew how to fight it? But to get him out of the field of combat, she had to become more of a target.
Galen feebly dropped his weapon and fumbled with the helmet. Taryn picked up the ungainly metal object, pointed it at the trees and loosed a burst of fire to get a feel for it. It fired exactly where she pointed it, but there was absolutely no kick to the thing, which was bizarre in such a large weapon. She knelt, sighted carefully and thought of where snipers liked to wait for their victims. Then she turned around to face behind the two armored men and caught the flanking maneuver being covered by the sniper attack. They hadn't left any possibility uncovered. Of course not, they were Silvergard, and Silvergard were the best of the best.
It was almost surreal that Silvergard troops had been sent across the border for the sole purpose of killing her. And yet, there they were, at least until she started shooting them. The last one to go down was the major—another major—and she saluted Taryn with her sword before her body exploded in flames, a gesture of respect and camaraderie. Then they were all gone and she turned to see Blade, with his face plate up, kneeling on the slanted rock next to where Galen had fallen, his weapon discarded.
"It's passadder venom,” she called. “The quarrel had a yellow fletch.” Blade looked up, his expression thunderous, and she understood immediately. “Start with norepinephrine and adipene, and then we have to get him to good medical treatment quickly."
