by Jacinta Jade
The exchange of information was quick.
‘Anything?’ the sergeant asked.
Siraay shook her head and was relieved to see Drosni’s smile dim a little. ‘No. No sign of any activity.’
Pyron snorted and shook his head. ‘Well, this has been a useful exercise.’
The sergeant wisely ignored the chief archon’s comment and moved on. ‘We’ll head back in, then, taking parallel paths down. The intelligence could have been wrong, or maybe the spies didn’t come that close.’
Siraay narrowed her brows. ‘Why wouldn’t they come closer than this?’
The sergeant gave her a small, sharp grin. ‘Because they’d never walk away again.’
Siraay smiled back. Yes, she liked working with this male.
They broke up the huddle quickly, and the sergeant’s unit moved out first, Pyron glowering at the sergeant’s back as they departed.
Siraay was chuckling quietly to herself until Drosni seemed to pop up in front of her from nowhere.
‘Ready, lady?’
Ugh, that smile again. Still, it was better than dealing with Pyron. ‘Let’s move.’
***
The sun was beginning to kiss the horizon, making the sky appear to bloom outwards from that point in a range of oranges, purples, and a touch of pink, when Siraay and her unit began to make their final descent from the slope of the mountain.
From that vantage point, they had an excellent view of Xarcon City, especially the arena’s domed roof, which was reflecting some last rays of light as the evening chill descended, making Siraay especially glad for her jacket.
She was following closely behind Drosni when a gasp from behind her made her spin and reach for the knife tucked into her belt. The female behind her, Torina, was looking off to their right and pointing.
Siraay twisted that way, annoyed at the lack of information communicated by the female.
But then she saw what Torina was pointing at.
A kitespray was flying fast and low, heading directly for them.
Drosni had also seen the creature and was waiting expectantly as the kitespray glided lower.
And lower.
Its mid-air wobble was what made Siraay realise their winged ally was injured, and she shouted at the others, ‘Move aside!’
Just in time. The kitespray began to Change as it almost fell the last few body lengths to the ground, the tumbling figure of a male unfolding to crash hard into the ground, making Siraay wince at the impact.
When the male had stopped rolling, Torina and one of the other males in Siraay’s rushed over to check on him.
The male was bleeding from several wounds, a couple newly inflicted by his rough landing, while his other wounds had been caused some other way … although the broken arrow shaft sticking out from one of the male’s legs was a strong indicator of how. Siraay glanced across at Drosni, the most experienced in her unit, wanting to see his reaction.
To her great surprise, the smiling, amiable male was gone, replaced with a sharp-eyed unit leader who was obviously taking quick stock of the situation.
‘Torina, fix him up as best you can.’ Drosni squatted down and gripped the male firmly by the shoulder to get his attention while the female squatted opposite him and began pulling bandages from her pack. ‘Tell me what happened.’
The male groaned in pain, his eyes closed as he squirmed on the ground, but he didn’t respond.
Siraay felt like slapping him in the face, but before she could move at all, Drosni had altered his grip.
The injured male’s eyes flew open with a loud gasp of pain, his bleary gaze moving directly to Drosni’s face. Confusion appeared in his features as the male registered the fact that it was an ally who was hurting him.
Drosni merely leaned closer. ‘Tell me what happened,’ he said again.
‘Resistance,’ the male muttered. ‘Surprised us. Greater numbers than we thought. They fired on us, then attacked, and when we went down’—the male’s eyes squeezed shut, his face going pale—‘I managed to get away.’
Drosni looked rapidly at his three unit members and made a sharp gesture that Siraay didn’t know. While Torina moved faster to bandage up the soldier’s wounds, the other two males in her unit dropped their packs straightaway, pulling out their bows and lifting them to their shoulders with an arrow ready.
Siraay stood and did the same.
‘How many?’ Drosni’s voice was low, but when he didn’t get a response, he growled out again, ‘How many?’
The injured soldier groaned again. ‘Twenty, at least.’
Drosni’s gaze snapped up to meet Siraay’s, and she felt her face go numb.
Twenty. Not just a couple of spies. The intelligence had been wrong—this was no Resistance scouting party looking for intel—this was an incursion.
Drosni stood quickly and stepped closer to her. ‘Lady, we’ll need to move fast. We need to get to the chief archon before the Resistance can take him.’
‘Take him?’ She narrowed her brows as she spoke hurriedly with him. ‘You think they’ll take him alive?’
Drosni raised an eyebrow. ‘His mask is well known to them. And he knows everything about our operations. They will want to escape fast with such a prize.’
And then they would have access to all the intelligence they could ever need. When they eventually managed to break him. And although the Resistance’s methods in that area might not be as efficient or ruthless as the Xarcon’s, with time, they could do it.
Siraay envisioned just how fast the Xarcon empire could fall with the capture of Pyron, and she nodded. They needed to move now.
Drosni spun away. ‘Torina, finish what you’re doing, then prep to go.’ He squatted down once more, addressing the half-conscious male in a low voice. ‘We’re going to fight with the others. Move yourself into those bushes’—Drosni pointed to a thick burst of undergrowth that was in the eyeline of the injured soldier—‘and stay there until we come back.’
The male groaned, reaching for the leg with an arrow in it. ‘I’m bleeding out! What if I die before you come back?’
Drosni stood and smiled down at the male, but it was a cruel, ruthless smile. ‘Don’t die,’ he said simply before turning away to face his unit.
Torina and the others were ready to go.
‘Marxi,’ Drosni addressed the shorter of the two males, ‘fly ahead and get us intel.’ He turned to Torina. ‘Run behind us, and Change when you get there.’ Then he wheeled to face the last male. ‘Lifron—you’ll stay with me.’
Finally, Drosni shifted slightly more, his head inclined to Siraay. ‘And we will both try to keep up with you, lady.’
Siraay blinked. Of course. She would be able to outrun nearly all their forms. She nodded and closed her eyes in a slow blink … then she opened them.
The world around her was now sharply in focus, her hearing and sense of smell incredibly heightened. Siraay could feel adrenaline moving through her body as her mind prepared for the fight to come.
She began running.
***
Siraay’s gait was smooth as she sprinted in the direction that the injured soldier had flown from, and in which Marxi was flying now, the male from her unit having Changed into his kitespray form.
Behind her, Drosni and Lifron were also running—as a cripwof and a blirrus, respectively, the blirrus maintaining a surprising pace for something so small. The pair was already trailing Siraay by a number of lengths and falling still farther behind, their labours no match for her effortlessly swift gait. She ran on in a relatively straight line, dodging trees, leaping over small rocks, and climbing bigger ones, all so that she wouldn’t lose sight of Marxi.
It was something the sevonix was good at, Siraay realised. A solitary predator, it had to rely on its speed, intelligence, and fighting ability. Thus, her long rear legs were powerful in driving her forwards; her head was in line with her neck and spine; her tail was elongated behind her, sometimes curling for balance; while her front paws rapidly
ate up the ground.
But really, the most incredible thing was the silence. While half her mind thought on what she was doing in that moment and what she might find when she reached the other group, the other half of her mental capacity was given over to the sevonix instincts, though she dared not surrender more, lest she become lost within the thoughts of the great feline during the excitement that was sure to be ahead.
Those same instincts, however, saved her.
Still waiting on the signal from Marxi that they were drawing close, Siraay came full upon a Resistance sentry crouched by a tree before she realised what the oddly shaped object before her was. And while one half of her mind was still identifying that there was a threat, the other half was already reacting.
She leapt smoothly, making the barest whisper of noise as she launched herself off the ground, the sentry standing and turning to look over his shoulder at the slight rustle of undergrowth.
It was all she needed.
His throat now exposed as he looked towards where she had been, the full weight of Siraay’s feline body landed on his chest, pinning him to the tree behind him and slamming all the air out of his lungs. She wasted no time and sank her canines into his throat, ripping through the tissue and muscle with one snap of her jaws.
As blood spurted from the wound and the male made a weak grasping motion towards his throat, she leapt upwards off his body and into the branches of the tree above, climbing and running along the next branch even before the male’s body had finished sliding, lifeless, to the ground.
Her attack had been swift enough that he hadn’t even had time to draw breath to scream, and now Siraay made her way through the treetops, her jaws dripping blood. Although it was more slow going, traversing the treetops afforded her much more cover, especially now that she was coming into the range of the Resistance sentries.
Her balance was excellent as she ran lightly along the branches, leaping from tree to tree, and her feline hearing detected the quick steps of two different sized beasts approaching at pace from behind her—Drosni and Lifron.
There was no way for Siraay to warn them of the sentries that were stationed in the area—she would have to hunt quickly.
When she reached one tree that bordered a clearing, Siraay slowed as she worked her way through its branches and paused when there was just the thinnest bit of cover between her and the open space.
Unfortunately, the wind was blowing against her, leaving her no hope of smelling out the sentries in the growing dimness. Drosni might be better at that in his cripwof form, but Siraay’s eyes could make up the difference.
She started scanning, examining the now shadowed terrain around her from right to left, looking for odd shapes, shadows that were darker than the surrounding area, silhouettes, and things that seemed unnaturally spaced together, or too evenly spaced.
Yet none of those things gave away her next target—instead, it was the shine off something metallic that caught Siraay’s eye. Carefully turning on her branch, she leapt down from her tree, landing just as Drosni and Lifron came running around a clump of younger saplings.
The heckles of the cripwof rose and the tail of the blirrus became stiff as both Drosni and Lifron saw her standing there but the pair promptly settled again when they realised who it was—the only person it could be.
She growled softly at them, a low warning only they would hear. Then she glanced through the trees and into the open space behind her before she twisted back and allowed another soft rumble to escape her again.
Drosni stepped forwards and raised one paw, growling softly as he peered past her.
Good—he understood. Or at least realised that she was trying to warn him.
Siraay backed away, growling again, then turned and leapt up into the tree she had been hiding in a moment before and began moving again. She had to act fast, as uncertainty over her actions would inevitably cause Drosni and Lifron to follow soon.
So she ran along the thick branches of the trees, leaping from one to another and sometimes moving farther in when she thought a tree would not offer sufficient coverage. In this manner, she prowled quickly through the tops of the trees that arced around the left of the open space, hoping that if a sentry heard anything, they might attribute it to the wind.
As she got closer to where her target was squatting on a low branch, Siraay identified the shine that had drawn her attention.
The female sentry was wearing a pack, and one of the clippings was metal. Obviously, the hard material had been used as a quick fix, maybe where something had broken. Regardless, it was a mistake, one that only novices made.
Realising the inexperience of the opponent she was dealing with allowed Siraay to move faster. The young female wasn’t even scanning the area properly but was only looking down and out. So it was a simple matter for Siraay to circle around behind her on the branch and, using one large paw, aim a blow at the female’s head.
Out cold instantly, the female fell limply from the branch, landing with a muted thump on the ground.
A breath later, a cripwof and blirrus sprinted from the other side of the clearing.
A quick flash of teeth, a muted gurgling, and the female lay twitching on the ground, that one spot on her pack still shining in the final rays of light that filtered through the trees.
The pair left their kill and paused below Siraay’s tree, waiting for her next move.
She took out two more sentries this way, and then a fifth simply by dropping directly out of a tree onto the figure’s shoulders and biting through the back of their neck.
There was no question of leaving any of them alive. They were the enemy, and further, they were weak. Siraay didn’t bother to move or hide the bodies after each kill—what mattered now was speed and surprise. Besides, another unit would gather up the bodies later to learn what they could from them.
So Siraay, Drosni, and Lifron had taken out five of the enemy by the time they came upon the main group of Resistance soldiers.
But it wasn’t enough.
Siraay could see it straightaway. Had thought the injured male who had flown to warn them might have been overstating the enemy’s numbers.
He hadn’t.
A quick tally put their number at twenty-two—easily a squad. Which meant there had to be a few more yet that Siraay hadn’t yet counted. Most of them were armed with bows, and only a few were without, obviously favouring a blade. Or whatever advantages their animal forms might provide them.
Scanning them all quickly, Siraay observed two key things.
The first was that Drosni’s assessment of the situation had been correct. Pyron, the sergeant, and one of the other soldiers that had accompanied the pair stood in the midst of the enemy, their hands held stiffly out to the sides while each of them was roughly searched by a Resistance soldier, guards around them alert and watchful.
They had to get Pyron out of there. Siraay didn’t care too much about the others—they could be sacrificed, although it would be a shame to lose such a sensible sergeant from the Xarcon ranks. But if the Resistance managed to escape with Pyron … Siraay felt her jaw stiffen as the repercussions ran through her head.
She was scanning the group again, hoping to come up with a plan that might even the odds and allow them a victory, without, maybe, killing Pyron, when she observed the second interesting thing.
She recognised one of the Resistance soldiers.
She Changed back into her normal form.
The cripwofs at her back twitched, and Siraay heard the sound of paws shifting slightly and the quiet chitter of the blirrus as both animals startled.
Siraay stole a quick look between the trees at the enemy a final time before she spun back to address the pair, pulling off her jacket before squatting down so she was face to nose with them. ‘Wait for my signal—you’ll know it when you see it. Then attack quickly. Take the inexperienced ones first,’ she told them, indicating with a couple of quick gestures those she had identified, ‘then the rest. O
therwise stay hidden.’
She stood again, and the cripwof growled softly at her.
Siraay thought Drosni might be expressing his disapproval at her going out there alone.
Too bad. There were many strategies that could win a fight. Numbers was one. Superior experience was another. But the last, surprise, should never be underestimated.
Before she moved, Siraay glanced down and did a quick scan of herself. And frowned. Clean. She was too clean.
So she squatted back down, reached out, and yanked up a small, badly grown clump of mountain grass. A clod of damp dirt hung from it, and this Siraay grabbed at, rubbing it over her pants, over part of the top she had been wearing beneath her jacket, and on her hands and face.
She looked down, considering herself. Better, but still missing something …
Reaching both hands up to her midsection, she grabbed hold of her top and yanked at the material in opposite directions, tearing a hole. Then she reached down to one pant leg and did the same.
Much better. But …
Siraay grimaced, a memory coming to mind. She turned back to the cripwof, whose expression was curious and perhaps almost amused as it stared at her. ‘Drosni,’ she murmured quietly, making the cripwof perk up his ears. ‘I need you to bite me.’
The ears flattened and the upper lip moved.
She held up a hand. ‘I know, but you need to do it. It doesn’t have to be deep, it just needs to look good. Bleed a little. Forearm might be best. Believable, but it shouldn’t hinder me that much.’
She offered him her left arm, but Drosni hesitated.
Siraay’s temper flared. ‘We’re losing precious moments here!’ she whispered harshly. ‘Either you do this or Lifron does.’
He seemed to stare at her, still incredulous, but moved forwards a step.
‘Bite me!’ Siraay insisted, shoving her arm forwards.
Faster than her eyes could track in this form, Drosni’s head whipped out and hot points of pain ripped into Siraay’s arm. She twisted her head away and put her other hand in her mouth so she wouldn’t cry out and give away their position.