“Fes!”
He glanced back at Alison. “The others haven’t returned, which means they are still down in the dragon base. With as many as we faced, they would likely have found the same that we did.”
Fes raced back down the hillside, not waiting on Alison. When he reached the building where he and Alison had gone in, he rode around it, released the horse’s reins, and grabbed for his daggers.
He found a body. For a moment, he feared that it might be Micah. Fes didn’t want to see Micah dead, if only because the man had been kind to him. Thankfully, it wasn’t, but it was one of the rebels, and when he continued forward, he found another fallen, an arrow sticking out of his neck. Two more lay on the ground, unmoving. Blood pooled around them and flies had already begun to descend.
They hadn’t been like that when they had left, had they?
Fes jumped out of the saddle. As he did, something whizzed through the air, barely missing him. It sunk into the stone of one of the neighboring buildings.
Fes looked across, searching for where it would’ve come from, and spied an open window in a small building. The building was crumbling, little more than the remains of something greater, and not nearly as well-maintained as the one he and Alison had broken into.
He raced forward and jumped to the side as the top of what might be a bow came into view. He hurried forward so that he could get to the building.
When he got there, he saw no way in.
What was this? How could he find the archer? He circled the building, but there was no entrance other than a small window on each side of the building, archer slits that were designed to allow an archer to look out but prevented anyone else from getting in.
Fes crept along the side of the building before stopping. Grabbing a stone from the ground, he threw it across the clearing. He waited, dagger in hand, for the bow to reach the window.
Fes spun, slamming the dagger through the opening and jamming it into flesh.
The person screamed.
The sound gave him a twisted sort of satisfaction. He hated that he enjoyed it, but he would’ve hated even more had he been shot. Fes waited, keeping his back against the building. He still hadn’t seen Micah or the other rebels who had left the caravan.
When no other sounds came, Fes made his way from hiding and crept toward the next building. This one had a door that barely hung on the hinges. He pulled it open and paused, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. When he stepped inside, a musty smell greeted him, clogging his nostrils. It was a mixture of dust and time and mold, all odors that nearly overwhelmed him.
He made his way along the hallway, moving carefully. On the inside of the building, the stone had begun to decay and crumble. Some sections had massive cracks occupying the entirety of the wall. One wrong move and he feared that he would crash into the wall, making it collapse onto him.
There were three doors along the hallway. Fes glanced behind the first one and saw nothing. It was a small room, empty other than fragments of stone and a few piles of bones that appeared to have been left by some creature that had dragged its prey here. The next door led into a larger room, but this one was still not very big. There was more in the room. The remains of a table that had long ago lost one of its legs and teetered forward filled the center of the room. The broken chairs that once had surrounded the table lay scattered along the back wall. Fragments of glass and ceramic littered the floor.
Fes moved on. At the end of the hall, was the third door. This one appeared to be newer, and it was solid. Fes checked the handle and, surprisingly, it was locked.
Why would there be a locked door inside abandoned buildings? This wasn’t like the other, and it wasn’t like where he and Alison and had found the old forger. Why should this be where they came across a locked door?
Then again, the doors in had been locked, though most of them from the outside.
Fes jammed his dagger in the doorframe, trying to pry it open. The wood screamed as he forced it open, and he worried that he might have been too loud. Someone had to be here. There was no other reason to explain why this door would be locked.
He jiggled the handle, and it finally popped open.
Something shot out of the room, clattering into the wall behind him.
Fes ducked back, looking around. It was a piece of rock. Had it hit his head, it might have been enough to do some damage.
He stepped around the corner and rolled into the room, prepared for whatever might come his way. He wasn’t sure what sort of attack he might face and heard a soft yelp, little more than a child’s voice.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” he said.
“You hurt my father.”
There was something about the voice that was familiar. “Indra?”
He heard a strangled cry and then saw a movement in the shadows.
“It’s Fes. I was the one who spent the night with you camping. I was the one your father gave the totem to.”
“Fes?”
The girl crawled forward, and anger bubbled within him. Her face was bloodied and bruised, and her clothing was tattered.
“What happened?” he asked.
“They came across us while we were traveling. There were too many of them. Too many for the…” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. There were too many. Father tried to stop them, but…”
“What happened to your father?”
“I don’t know where they took him.”
Fes glanced at the door. “How long have you been here?”
“I don’t know. They brought me here, locked me in…”
“Come with me. I can protect you.”
“There were too many, even for you.”
“I’m not alone.”
“You were alone when you came across us. You said you were doing a job.”
“Apparently there are others who are helping me with this job. Come with me, and I’ll make sure that you are safe.”
“What about my father?”
Could Theole be here somewhere?
They had found the forger, and he imagined that Theole’s skills would be appealing to Carter—or whoever had captured them—especially if he was having someone make forgeries of dragon relics.
“I don’t know where your father is, but I’ll look for him.”
“You can’t leave me.”
Fes squeezed his eyes shut. She was right. He couldn’t leave her. He didn’t know what had happened to her, but he knew that whatever it was put her in danger. If Carter was responsible for capturing her and her father, given the strangeness of the totems they made, he wouldn’t put it past her to have some interest in them.
“Come on,” he said.
He crept from the room, and when they reached the door leading out of the building, he paused, holding his hand up. He peered around. Five men waited in the center of the collection of buildings. None of them were rebels, which meant that they must have come out of some of the nearby buildings.
He would have to get her out of here and to safety, but could they wait until these men departed?
They started coming toward them.
“Go back to that room,” Fes said.
“I thought you said you were going to protect me.”
“I intend to protect you. That’s why you need to go back to that room.”
She looked up at him, her eyes wide. She paused for a moment, then her hand darted into her pocket. She pulled out one of her totems and handed it to Fes.
“I doubt that will help.”
“Take it,” she said.
He shrugged and took it, stuffing it into his pocket with the others.
She scurried off to the end of the hall, and when she had disappeared behind the door, pushing it closed, Fes turned his attention back to the doorway.
Five men. What approach could he take that would handle five men? But then, if he let the anger fill him, he could easily handle five men. If only there were some way to have control over it.
He had an advantage in that he was here and they didn’t know it—at least, he didn’t think that they knew it. Unless they’d heard him. He’d made plenty of noise freeing Indra.
Fes positioned himself so that he could keep watch outside the door, and as he did, he realized that his count was wrong—or more had joined them.
Now there were eight.
Eight men coming toward this building. All were heavily armed, and all appeared solid, as if they could handle themselves. They would be more than Fes could take on, especially in small quarters like this. They could swarm over him, and if they did, they would reach Indra.
Fes was not about to let them reach Indra.
He glanced at the wall, and an idea came to him. When he’d first come in, he’d noticed the stone crumbling. There were sections of the wall that were unsound and wouldn’t take much to collapse onto the attackers.
It was risky, but against this many, it might be the only way he could get out. Fes stepped out into the doorway, revealing himself.
The men gathered themselves, and Fes darted deeper into the building, backing up.
He waited. The men followed him in, three of them at first, and then two more. That would have to be enough.
He took one of his daggers and jabbed it into the wall, shoving it into a crack. He twisted the dagger and jammed it forward before pulling back.
The men continued to swarm toward him.
That hadn’t worked as he had hoped.
He jammed his shoulder into the wall and then scampered back.
At first, he heard the sound of stone falling from the roof. Then it increased, growing louder and louder until he realized that the collapse was going to be greater than what he had intended.
He slammed his shoulder into the door Indra was hiding behind and ducked inside, pushing against it from the other side.
“What happened?” Indra asked.
“Watch your head.”
“What?”
When the building collapsed, it did so with a thunderous explosion. The door shook, and the walls adjacent to the door trembled before they collapsed. A section crashed onto his shoulder, and he bit back a scream. Pain shot through his arm.
How badly was he hurt?
When the dust cleared, he looked around. Dust hung over everything, a haze glowing around them, but daylight shone overhead.
If his plan had worked, the others would be dead, but he wasn’t certain that they were. And only five of them had entered the building, which meant that three others were still on the other side.
Fes pointed to the far wall, and they hurried up it. When they climbed up the wall and over, he was met by four soldiers.
Two of the men went for Indra.
Fes jumped at one of them, kicking out. His arm screamed in pain, and he ignored it. Using his good arm, he struck the man in the chest and spun around. He slashed at the next man, his dagger slicing across the man’s chest.
Anger boiled within him. “You aren’t going to take her,” he growled at one of the attackers.
He jumped, and his jump carried him up and over one of the next men. As he landed, pain jolted through him, but he jammed his dagger into the attacker’s back until his victim staggered forward, falling to the ground.
That left one man.
Fes turned around and saw that he had one arm wrapped around Indra’s neck. An angry gleam crossed his eyes. “Lower your daggers.”
Indra trembled.
He wasn’t about to let this man harm her. His injured arm hurt too much, and he didn’t think he could be fast enough to get to her.
There was something he could try.
He brought his hands up, as if to drop the daggers, and then flicked one.
It sailed true and pierced the man’s eye. He collapsed, releasing Indra as he did.
Fes ran over to her. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, eyeing the man with the dagger sticking out of his eye. There was a curiosity in the way that she looked at him, nothing more. It should disturb him, but at her age, he had already killed more times than he could count and had been used for that ability.
Fes withdrew the dagger from the man’s eye and wiped it on his shirt before slipping it into his sheath. “We need to get you out of here.”
“What about my father?”
“We can return when I have others with me. There are some of their people who are missing, too.”
Fes scooped her up in his good arm, and they raced out of the clearing, away from the dragon base, and up the hillside on foot. He wasn’t sure where his horse had gone, and in the noise from the explosion, he probably had scared it off. He didn’t want to wait behind any longer, and a part of him was hopeful that Alison and the other rebels had heard what had happened and would come for him.
He was about halfway up the hillside when the sound of pursuit behind him forced him to turn.
Two dozen men chased him up the hill.
Where had they been?
He glanced behind them and saw more streaming from within a building on the far side of the dragon base clearing.
Between the dozen that he and Alison had taken down and the eight more that he’d faced, they would have had to have been a group of nearly fifty stationed here. All mercenaries. Enough that he should have seen Carter, but hadn’t.
“Alison!” Fes screamed as he raced up the hill.
He wouldn’t be fast enough, not on foot. The men were storming up behind them, moving more quickly than he could manage while carrying Indra. He put himself between Indra and the oncoming men. If nothing else, he would protect her from the initial attack. Maybe buy her time.
And then the rebels appeared over the hillside.
A dozen had bows out, and a dozen more had crossbows, and arrows arced over his head and dropped the on comers. The few that remained turned, as if to run off, but they were chased down.
When Alison saw him, and when she saw Indra, a puzzled expression came to her face. “I don’t know where Micah is or her father, but we need to go back and see,” he said.
“Where did these men come from?”
Fes turned back to the dragon base. The buildings he’d explored hadn’t been large enough to house this many soldiers. It meant there was someplace else, and likely underground.
And he would find it.
Chapter Seventeen
Returning to the larger building with others gave Fes and Alison a chance to examine it more closely. They made their way through the building slowly, patiently, and explored room by room until they found what Fes expected to find—a stair leading down.
He glanced over at Alison. Indra remained near Fes, unwilling to leave his side. He didn’t blame her. After everything that she’d been through, she only knew Fes, and even he wasn’t someone she knew well. Then again, she knew that he wouldn’t leave her, and she knew that he had fought on her behalf.
“Where do you think this goes?” Alison asked.
“It seems as if it goes down,” he said.
“I can see that it goes down, but why?”
Fes looked into the darkness, not sure. Whatever was beneath here would be where the other men had come from. Maybe there were more like that. Maybe Micah and the others had been dragged here. If so, he needed to see why and if there was any way that he could get to Theole. Indra deserved to have her father with her.
“I’m going to go down and see.”
“Do you think that’s wise?” Alison asked. “The last time you ran off on your own, you nearly died.”
Fes looked over at Indra. “I nearly died, but I found someone who needed my help.”
Alison frowned at him. “Yeah. Because that’s exactly what you do. You help others.”
He bit back a response. Alison wouldn’t understand. Indra and her father had been kind to him while he had been traveling, and that was valuable, even to him. It was not something he was going to easily overlook, especially as he feared what Carter might have done with her father.
Alison chuckled. “A lantern? We might be able to find a torch, but there aren’t any lanterns here.”
“Fine. Find me a torch.”
“I’ve got something that might work,” Indra said.
Alison and Fes watched as Indra pulled one of her figurines out of her pocket. This was different than some of the others and had less detail. She ran her finger along the side, and it began to glow softly at first and then with increasing brightness. Soon it put off enough light to push back the shadows leading down the stairs.
“How did you do that?”
“It’s something that my father taught me to do,” Indra said.
Fes had more questions, but now wasn’t the time to ask them. Was the same magic used in making the totems? If so, did that mean that the totems he carried had that same magic?
Indra handed the glowing totem to Fes, and he took it, wondering whether it would be hot, but it wasn’t. The carving remained cool despite the steady glowing.
He started down the stairs, unsheathing one of his daggers as he did.
The stairs led down deep beneath the building. They weren’t very wide and had been cut into the stone. The walls had a slight dampness to them. A chill came to the air as they descended that wasn’t present up above.
Fes glanced back at Alison. She followed him, along with a dozen rebels. Fes was thankful that they had come along. They claimed not to have known about the attack, and from where they were situated behind the hillside, that was possible. But if there was another attack, if there were more of Carter’s men, Fes didn’t want to be stuck facing them alone.
Indra stayed close behind him.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he whispered.
“I’m not being left up there.”
“I’m not sure that you should come down here,” Fes said.
Indra shook her head.
Fes turned his attention back down the hallway. It was narrow, and there were no outlets off it. He followed it until it reached a branching point, where he paused.
Dragon Bones (The Dragonwalker Book 1) Page 19