by Edun, Terah
Sara shook the sweat out of her eyes with a wry grin. “So they’re coming?”
He nodded while leaning over on his knees and panting heavily. “Man, killing people is exhausting.”
She lifted an eyebrow but didn’t bother mentioning he hadn’t actually killed anyone.
“Good work with those men and with our traitorous sun mage over there,” said Sara. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
He flushed with praise and she turned to march over to a pinned Nissa with a smile.
The woman was stuck to the tree with an arrow through her shoulder, but she didn’t flinch or beg for mercy. In fact, she lifted her chin proudly and met her captor head-on.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Sara said mockingly.
Nissa looked at her with fury in her eyes.
Sara grabbed the arrow’s shaft with a smile. Nissa flinched but bit back anything she might have said.
Sara eyed her, waiting for the scream as she snapped the shaft of the arrow so that a sharp edge emerged from the sun mage’s shoulder.
Nissa whimpered. Sara thought about prolonging this. The woman had tried to kill her, after all. But she didn’t.
She grabbed both of Nissa’s shoulders in a fierce grip and jerked the woman off the tree. Nissa fell to her knees as Sara let her go the moment she was free of the arrow. But she hadn’t screamed. Instead her shoulders shuddered in pain as she knelt on the ground.
Sara looked down on her in disgust. When the woman looked up, blood met Sara’s eyes.
Nissa Sardonien had bitten through her bottom lip.
Chapter 25
Sara felt some slight envy at Nissa’s ability to project a stony expression in the face of pain, but no pity. Nissa had tried to deceive them and would have murdered Ezekiel in cold blood. She didn’t deserve her sympathy.
Sara took a step back and said, “Stand up.”
Nissa didn’t move.
“I won’t ask you again,” Sara said coldly while lifting her blade to just under Nissa’s chin. She was heartily tired of playing babysitter, especially to a conniving, backstabbing woman like the sun mage.
Nissa stood up while holding her shoulder in pain.
Ezekiel came up and winced. “We should get that looked at.”
“She can die of sepsis for all I care,” Sara said.
“I thought you said she was a prisoner of war?”
“Your empress needs me,” Nissa hissed at the same time.
“But that’s just it,” said Sara, turning around with a pragmatic look. “I don’t need you. You’ve done nothing but slow me down or outright try to get in my way. I’d be better off letting your wound fester. You want to know why?”
Nissa said nothing.
“Because it would slow your conniving mind down while the infection spreads to your head, leaving a fever and delusions in its wake,” Sara said. “By the time we locate a good healer, you’ll be too far gone to save but still ambulatory enough to tell Simon what he needs to hear. A win-win situation for us, I’d say.”
Ezekiel looked at his friend with something akin to horror on his face.
Nissa’s faced was etched with flat-out hatred.
Sara gave Ezekiel a defensive look. “She tried to kill me with nearly half a dozen assassins. She’s not worth being upset over.”
He opened his mouth to speak when Sara heard the rustle of leaves as strangers snuck up on them.
She turned with a wary eye to look around. “Someone’s coming.”
Then a voice said, “They’re over here! I’ve found them.”
Suddenly they were surrounded by a group of men and women who were wearing the elite uniforms of the scout team for the first division of the Corcoran guard. Sara relaxed in relief for the first time that day. She had had heard that the first division had been deployed out on a scouting mission a few hours earlier. She guessed the rumors were true. These mercenaries had had one very lucky break. Not a single one of them had a scratch on them.
Out of the midst of his mercenaries strode Commander Amadeus, leader of the first division.
“I see you survived,” said Sara dryly.
“I see you haven’t lost your irrelevance, Mercenary Fairchild,” replied Amadeus while hooking his thumbs in his belt while he looked over the three broken, bloody, and tired people surrounded by dead bodies.
Sara shrugged, ready to keel over from exhaustion. “It’s a gift.”
He gave her an irate look. “I can tell.”
Sara was half-amused, half-irritated. She didn’t give a rat’s bottom what they thought of her now. They had hidden in the tree line while scores of their comrades died. She had no respect for cowards.
Nodding at Sara, Amadeus commanded his men. “Take the sun mage.”
Sara shifted uneasily and Amadeus noted it. He held up a closed fist, signaling his men to stop silently.
Looking at her, the first division commander said, “Is there a problem, Fairchild?”
Sara looked at him. “I’m not concerned about her well-being. Truly I couldn’t give a damn if you threw her in the nearest river and drowned her. But I found her, I freed her, and I deserve to deliver her to the captain.”
Amadeus let out a slow smile. “Your captive, your reward, eh?”
Sara stiffened but she didn’t deny it. “Yes.”
He let out a chuckle. “Now you’re thinking like a mercenary.”
She waited for him to make his move. He could say anything he liked; it was his actions that he would count. The leader of the first division stroked his beard and then he stepped aside with a wave of his hand.
“Men, let’s escort Mercenary Fairchild and her captive to the captain of our illustrious company, shall we?”
The forest roared with the sound of mercenary approval.
Ezekiel stepped closer and whispered in Sara’s ear, “This is a good thing. A very good thing. They’re not mocking you. They’re praising you.”
Sara cracked a smile, because for once she had understood the importance of the commander’s acquiescence before Ezekiel had.
With a firm hand on Nissa Sardonien’s shoulder, she forced the mage to walk ahead of her and they strode off into the woods surrounded by mercenary compatriots that, for once, would fight to the death before Sara had a chance to. It was nice to be surrounded by a group of elite fighters that didn’t expect her to win every skirmish tonight.
They marched through the silent forest in rows of four. Four guards at the head. In the second row came Sara, with Nissa in the middle. Amadeus flanked her left and another guard flanked Nissa’s right. Sara knew Ezekiel was right behind her, as he would occasionally stumble and step on her feet. There were three guards in his row to protect him from harm and keep him from killing himself. Behind them flowed the other guards with some deploying farther out as an early warning system.
They marched for what felt like fifteen minutes when Sara began to grow uneasy.
The light hadn’t been that far out, and she knew Ezekiel had found the captain when he headed that way.
“Where are you taking us?” she asked the commander of the first division.
“To our leader,” he said.
“Is Captain Simon where the light is?” Sara stressed.
“He was when I saw him last,” Amadeus said.
She didn’t get much more from him than that. Then they emerged from the tree line to see a very strange structure up ahead. She halted in her tracks, making Nissa stop with her.
“What is that?” Sara said.
“That,” said Commander Amadeus, “is a transportation portal designed to take us from this dreadful forest to where the real action is.”
At that moment, a guard in the distance turned around and Sara recognized Barthis Simon.
He walked up with relief on his face as he said, “Good, you got her.”
Sara didn’t think the emotion on his face was because of her. And there was only one other female in her group.
Clasping Amadeus eagerly on the shoulder, Simon said, “I knew it was the right decision to send your men after the prisoner.”
“Actually, sir, we never made it out of the forest,” said the commander stiffly. “We came across these three straggling through the trees like lost lambs.”
Sara bristled at the description and Ezekiel edged his way around to stand at her shoulder.
“Are you ready to start the counterattack?” Ezekiel asked the captain of the Corcoran mercenaries eagerly.
The man gave Ezekiel a disinterested look. “Counterattack?”
He exchanged an amused look with Amadeus.
Sara couldn’t hold her temper any longer; they were treating this like a game.
“Men are dying out there. Your men,” Sara said. “We need to strike back against the Kade mages.”
“And we will,” said Simon. “But not now. The plan doesn’t involved preemptory strikes.”
“Preemptory strikes?” Sara fazed. “What are you talking about? You need to save your men while you still can.”
Commander Amadeus snarled, “We don’t take orders from grunts like you. We have the situation in hand.”
“Have it in hand?” Sara snarled back. “Is that what you call a battlefield red with the blood of your men and only them?”
“My men are right here,” said Amadeus coldly.
Sara tried to object again.
Simon held up a hand for silence. “It’s all right, Amadeus. Perhaps I should explain a little.”
“I have done what I came here to do,” said Simon, turning to Sara. “The sun mage will be the key to killing all of the Kade mages one-by-one. I won’t risk that by setting off a useless counter-strike that would leave us defenseless and likely let her escape.”
Sara swallowed harshly. “You’ve done all you came here to do?”
She was nearly shaking in anger.
“How dare you?” spluttered Ezekiel beside her. “You’ll let your troops fall to save your own hide?”
“At the orders of the empress, I would sacrifice my own child for the greater good,” said their captain.
Then it all came together in Sara’s mind as flashes of what he had said ventured through her thoughts. Orders of the empress... Done what I came to do... The sun mage is key.
She stared at the captain in revulsion. “You knew this would happen all along.”
He turned to her with calm eyes. “We made precautions in case the Kade mages decided to take out our forces in the first skirmish and recapture the prisoner before we could arrive at the battlefield at a normal pace.”
Ezekiel snorted. “Yeah, like that went so well. You left her behind. Sara brought your precious prisoner to you.”
The captain turned to her with a measured look. “Did you, now?”
Sara said nothing. Revulsion still in her eyes. She was half-tempted to take Nissa and Ezekiel and flee. Flee to where, she didn’t know. But serving under a man who abandoned his leadership to take charge of one prisoner, no matter who the orders came from, didn’t sit well with her.
“Yes, she did,” admitted Commander Amadeus.
“Well,” said the captain, “we can’t let that go unnoticed.”
Sara said, “Don’t trouble yourself over it, really.”
“No, I honor the traditions of the mercenary guild.”
Yeah, except I don’t think leaving your men behind was one of those honored traditions, she thought viciously.
The captain continued, oblivious to her thoughts, “You’ve now been promoted to Mercenary of the first division of the Corcoran guard.”
He said it as if she should take pride in that.
Ezekiel beat her to the punch. “I hate to break it to you, but thanks to your impressive leadership, all your other divisions are dead.”
Captain Simon snarled, “One more word out of you, Mercenary, and I’ll have you left here.”
Ezekiel piped down.
“No, you won’t,” said Sara staunchly. “Every mercenary of the first and second divisions has an archer assigned to them. Ezekiel is mine.”
Simon gave her a fairly amused look. “As you like.”
He turned to Ezekiel. “Ensign Crane, you are now designated to the first division as well. And for the record...the Corcoran guard is much more than the first, third, and fourth divisions.”
Simon had just listed the division of troops that they had rode from the capital city of Sandrin—over five hundred men and women strong. Sara had wondered why the divisions were labeled so haphazardly. Now she guessed she’d have her answer.
“The might of the Corcoran guard has ten divisions. Each with over two hundred mercenaries in their ranks,” said Simon as he backed away suddenly and addressed the men who gathered in the clearing. As they emerged from the shadows to stand around the broad ring free-standing in the clearing and the fiery smoke of a field burning a few miles away drifted above, Sara counted over thirty individuals until she lost track.
“Only sixty-two number among the first division,” Simon barked with his hands behind him and his feet spread. He began to walk around the center of the tight circle formed by the individuals of the first division. A loud cheer met his pronouncement.
“But still we lost the four hundred and fifty brave souls of the third and fourth divisions tonight. They didn’t sacrifice themselves for naught,” Simon continued.
They didn’t sacrifice themselves for anything, thought Sara. They were led like lambs to the slaughter by a leader who didn’t care.
“We will move forward, we will strike in heart of the darkness, and we will end the Kades for good!” shouted Barthis. “For our land, for our empress, for Algardis!”
His sentenced ended on the roar of dozens of men.
Before her Sara saw a leader with the charisma of dozens but the heart of a snake. Calculating, cold. and deadly. Simon dropped his raised fist and walked over to their sun mage.
“Nissa Sardonien, sun mage and member of the Kade mages, are you ready to complete your destiny?”
Nissa raised her head proudly. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t turn away.
“Am I ready to die so that your imperial courts can continue to drain these lands of resources and magic until Algardis is nothing but a husk, to the shame of our founding emperor and the true intention of the bond between mage and land?” she asked. “No, I am not. But seeing as I have no choice, proceed.”
With every word, anger grew on the captain’s face. When she invoked the sacred title of the first emperor, he hauled back a hand and slapped her so hard that she fell into Sara’s side. Sara helped her to stand while staring at the captain coldly.
Sara didn’t resist when the captain grabbed the rope restraining Nissa’s hand and tugged her into the center of the circle with him. Although she wanted to. By the gods, the man was a vile individual.
With a sharp push, he held up Nissa’s hands while wrenching her arrow-shot shoulder in the process. She was unable to hold back a cry. He didn’t care.
“This woman is our key! She will be the downfall of her maniacal compatriots,” he said.
The men and women cheered.
Finished, Barthis turned to another mage standing to the side with a satisfied grin. “Open the portalway.”
The man stepped toward the large circle and set to work.
Tearing her eyes away from the sight of Nissa on the ground nursing her shoulder, Sara said to Ezekiel, “What is that?”
“It’s a portalway—a gate of passage that can transport us anywhere in the empire.”
Sara stared at him. “Anywhere like to the edge of a battlefield at least four weeks’ hard riding from here?”
He nodded with a gulp.
“Are you ready?” she said.
“Do I have a choice?” he said, straightening his shoulders.
Sara shook her head and they both turned to watch as the portalway glowed with a brilliant light. The same light they’d seen before.
As Sara wa
tched, she knew. It was time to face the true battlefield—the battlefield of Aranos in the heart of Kade territory.
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