They were a far different-looking lot than the rag-tag bunch they’d seemed earlier in the afternoon, and at once Raz saw why it had taken them so long to catch up. Whereas a few hours ago their armor had hung uselessly from their saddles, the mercenaries were now collectively attired in full gear, some with heavy plate and round-helms, others with leather over chain and scale-mail shirts. At their head, one of the women led the band, her brown hair cropped short about her ears, revealing an ugly scar that split around her right eye and cleaved though her cheek. For a moment Raz was reminded of an old friend, the Doctore of the Azbar Arena, but whereas Alyssa Rhen’s eyes were a bright, sharp green, this woman’s were a dull, damp brown, hungry in the pursuit.
Hungry, that is, until they found Raz and Syrah waiting for them in the center of the road.
At once, something strange came over the group, something which Raz couldn’t explain. As expected, blades and maces and axes were drawn immediately, the woman at the forefront of the party pulling a long bastard sword free from where it had been sheathed at her knee. After this, however, Raz had presumed the mercenaries would attempt to ride them down, using the momentum of their charge to great advantage.
Instead, however, the woman in front yelled “Whoah!” pulling back on the reins of her mount. At once the steed, a grey stallion splotched with white, slid to a halt, snorting as rocks and tufts of grass came loose under its shoes. At the woman’s back, the other riders did the same, some of their horses whinnying in surprise as they were brought up short, then settling and stomping nervously.
They were less than fifty feet away now. Raz could see the details of their faces, read their stunned expressions and hear the words passed to one another in hissing whispers. It took him aback, catching those hints of their sudden conversation.
“Arro,” one man was saying to his companion, his voice strained.
“Monster,” another said, apparently to no one in particular.
“Dragon,” breathed the second woman, seated in the center of the group.
It took several seconds for Raz to make sense of their apparent surprise. When he did, however, his body stiffened, his arms flexing in a spasm of concerned realization.
“Syrah,” he hissed, and from the corner of his vision he saw the Priestess glance at him, “stay here. Don’t move.”
He could almost hear the woman’s teeth grind in annoyance. “I told you,” she said in a frustrated voice. “I’m not going to leave y—”
“They’re not here for me,” Raz told her sharply, not taking his eyes off the mercenaries, who still hadn't moved from their place up the path. “Please. Do as I say.”
That caught Syrah’s attention.
“What do you mean, ‘they’re not here for—'?”
“Dragon!”
Syrah’s question was cut off by the shouted hail. As Raz looked on, the group’s leader guided her horse forward one step at a time, like she was unsure of the approach. It was she who had spoken, and her dim brown eyes watched him expectantly.
“I see you know who I am,” Raz called coolly back as Gale hooved at the ground in annoyance, not appreciating the uninvited approach of the sellsword’s charger. “It’s impolite not to introduce oneself in such circumstances.”
The woman blinked, then smirked. It was a hard, almost cruel smile.
Raz didn’t like it one bit.
“My apologies,” she said in a scornful tone, halting her horse when she was some twenty feet away. “You can call me Thera, if it pleases you. My friends and I are known as—”
“I couldn't give a shit what you and your playmates call your little gang,” Raz snarled, interrupting her and allowing the red-orange of his neck crest to flare dangerously above his head. “Instead, you can tell me why you’ve decided to follow us halfway to Ystréd, and taken the time to don your armor to boot.”
Thera—if that was indeed the woman’s name—looked none-too-pleased to be cut off, her lip curling. “Watch your tongue, scaly,” she spat. “I’m attempting to be polite because we didn’t know it was you we were chasing, and I’m not convinced you’re worth the trouble even for twenty thousand Southern crowns.”
Bounty’s gone up, Raz thought, and he would have been almost pleased with himself if the woman’s other words hadn't bothered him so much.
“Explain yourself, mercenary,” he growled, narrowing his eyes. “If you have no business with me, then you have no business with us, and I’d much rather be on my way than sitting here wasting my day on foul-mouthed rubbish such as you.”
Thera didn’t respond at once, her glare flitting away from Raz to linger on Syrah.
“How much is the faith paying you to escort her?” the woman asked finally, obviously attempting to keep her voice even. “A hundred gold? Two hundred? Hand her over, and I’ll see to it you get five times that.”
Something icy slipped up Raz’s spine and into his mind as he caught on, putting everything together.
“How much?” he asked, hearing the building rage in the barely-controlled shake of his voice.
Thera frowned. “As I said, if you tell me how much the Laorin are paying you, I’ll make sure—”
“No,” Raz snarled, baring his fangs, “I mean: how much is the price on the Witch’s head?”
The words hit Syrah like an avalanche, slamming into her in a blow of cold and fear and confusion. At first, as she heard the title—that vile name the worst of the mountain tribes had given her over the years—she was hurt, stunned that Raz would so casually use the phrase.
Then she caught on.
“What?” she hissed, startled and looking from Raz to the woman—Thera—and back again as she struggled to make sense of the question. “A price? What price?”
Raz spoke to her over his shoulder, though his golden eyes, the same shade as the rapidly closing day around them, never left the sellsword. “I was an idiot. They didn’t even see me, when we rode by. They didn’t know I was there. But they saw you. You would have been hard to miss.”
“White hair, white skin, white robes, and missing an eye.” Thera smirked, speaking as though quoting some description she’d been given. “It would take a fool not to notice Syrah Brahnt passing you, even at a run.”
Syrah felt the iron grip of shock clutch at her heart. It wasn’t the fact that the woman knew her name—she was a well-known figure in certain circles among the North. No, rather, it was the way the mercenary was leering at her, the way all of them were leering at her, when she looked back at the others still mounted a dozen yards behind their leader. It was a look Syrah knew well, the insatiable, cruel gaze of one driven by greed, by a desire for all the pleasures and glories and riches the world had to offer.
It was the same look Kareth Grahst used to have whenever his gaze fell upon her.
At the thought of the man, Syrah felt her chest constrict, felt her breath tighten and grow short. For an instant she was back in the cramped tent in which the Sigûrth had chained her, to starve and freeze and violate at their pleasure. She saw the faces of the men, the dozens that generally only plagued her now in nightmares, and she drew a ragged, heavy breath.
Then a hand, cool and smooth and strong, closed around her wrist, ripping her back into the present.
Raz hadn’t turned away from Thera and her dirty band. His eyes were forward, never giving the woman so much as an instant to believe he was distracted. Despite this, he seemed to have sensed the shift in Syrah’s emotions, felt her drop down into a place she never wanted to be. With his free hand he had reached back, seeking her out, seeking to tell her silently what he knew she needed to hear.
Come back to me, his hand said, light but firm about her arm.
Abruptly, the icy grip of fear melted away, once again leaving behind only hot, raging fire.
“They put a bounty on my head?” Syrah almost howled in fury at Thera, Nymara sidestepping nervously beneath her as white flames sparked and guttered unbidden around her hands. “After everything they di
d? Bastards!”
The mercenary shrugged as though the whole topic bored her. Raz, for his part, let go of Syrah’s wrist, apparently satisfied she was back in her right mind.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he told Thera coolly. “I asked you how much. What’s the price?”
At this, the woman hesitated. Syrah thought she knew what the mercenary was thinking. She was probably wondering—after seeing Raz’s apparently more-than-professional touch to calm her—if attempting to sway the atherian to her side was such a good idea after all.
Greed, though, makes all men fools.
And women, too, it would seem.
“Five thousand gold pieces,” she admitted finally, not looking happy about it. Then she lifted the hand not clasped around the hilt of her bastard blade, as though offering a sign of peace. “We’re not unreasonable, though. We can share. Twenty-five percent to you, seventy-five to us.”
There was some grumbling from the men and woman behind their leader, but Thera turned in her saddle and glared at them, shutting them up.
Beside her, Syrah watched something strange come over Raz. Whereas a few seconds before he’d been tense and rigid, almost shaking with outrage and disgust, abruptly his body was growing still, his face transitioning from enraged to calm, then almost impassive. At first Syrah didn’t know what to make of it, but then she saw the look in his eye, the flat, deathly sheen, like an animal had replaced the man she knew. She’d seen that expression before, and it chilled her to the bone.
It was the same look she’d witnessed on the night he rescued her from Grahst’s clutches. The same night she had witnessed him cut down a half-dozen men as though they were paper beneath his blades. The same night he had carried her across a snowy field of corpses, butchered in the wake of his desperate search to find her.
“Raz, no,” she said quietly, starting to reach out for him. “Wait. Come back. Come back to me…”
But the man would have none of it. He raised his free hand, cutting her off. He eyes, cold and flat and predatory, were still on Thera.
“Even split,” he said, edging Gale forward a few feet. “Fifty for you and yours, fifty for me.”
CHAPTER 6
For a long time, Syrah thought she hadn't heard him correctly, his words a muffled ring through her ears, like a tolling bell from beneath the surface of a lake. When it registered, however, when she truly understood what had been said, it rocked her.
“Raz?” she gasped in disbelief, staring at the back of his head. “Raz, what are you—?”
“Keep your mouth shut, woman!” he barked, looking away from the sellswords for the first time as he whirled in his saddle. “I’ve had enough of you as it is! Stay there, stop talking, and maybe I’ll hand you over with all your limbs attached.”
At once, common sense won out, and an idea formed, complete in Syrah’s mind. She wanted to catch Raz’s eye, wanted to see the confirmation there, but Thera was already speaking again, and the atherian had turned back to face her.
“Ruthless as the legends claim, Arro,” the woman was saying with a laugh, sounding almost approving. “No wonder they used to call you ‘the Monster.’”
“Small titles made by small men,” Raz snapped, heeling Gale forward another few steps, as though eager to forge their deal. “Now: I’ve said my offer. Fifty to you, fifty to me.”
Thera’s eyes narrowed again. “Thirty and seventy,” she countered.
“Fifty,” Raz repeated again slowly, the menace in his voice punctuating each word, “fifty.”
Thera was looking more nervous by the second as Raz came within ten feet of her. The mercenaries behind her, too, were sounding agitated, but their irritation seemed more a result of the deal that appeared to be slipping further and further out of their favor by the second.
“Forty-sixty,” Thera finally said in an insistent rush. “Take it or leave it, Dragon. Anything else isn’t even worth the three weeks we would need to drag her back to the Vietalis Ranges.”
The confirmation of her suspicions—that some aspect of the western clans, likely still within the Sigûrth, were responsible for this mess—registered distantly with Syrah. She had just enough time to consider that Carro probably had more dissent within his growing ranks than he realized when Raz spoke, interrupting her thoughts.
“Fine,” he said, though he sounded none-too-pleased about conceding. “Forty-sixty, but I stay with you and your lot the whole way. She’s never out of my sight. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Thera said hastily, looking as though she wanted nothing more than the conversation to be over. “She’ll be a lot less trouble with more eyes on her, anyway.”
Raz nodded slowly, glancing back at Syrah as though considering this. There was something in the dim glint of his eye meant for her, but it wasn’t the confirmation she’d anticipated. Instead, there was a hint of something like sadness, glimmering at her despite the cold deadness of the gaze.
I’m sorry, his face told her.
Before Syrah could come to terms with what it could possibly mean, however, Raz turned back and pressed Gale forward the last few paces, lifting his right hand to Thera.
The mercenary, still looking nervous but pleased that she had managed to strike a bargain with a legend, reached out to clasp it at once.
“Deal?” she asked in a tentative, eager voice.
In response, Raz leaned in with a cruel, reptilian smile Syrah had never seen, and spoke a single word.
“Not likely.”
And with that, his gauntleted fingers tightened around the woman’s. With a quick, powerful pull he jerked her forward, and Thera’s face barely had time to shift from excited to terrified before Raz brought Ahna up, gripping the weapon just below the head of her twin blades.
There was the sound of steel cleaving through flesh, and Thera’s body and sword fell to the road only a second after her head.
As the woman’s corpse tumbled from the saddle of her charger, Raz was already moving. He didn’t trust that the abrupt death of their captain would incline the rest of the group to flee. Between him and Syrah, their heads were worth enough to buy up half of Ystréd, and even clever fighters were often made idiots by that amount of gold. Sure enough, as he yelled “Hyah!” and drove Gale right at the group, the rest of the mercenaries made no move to run. A few sat still in their saddles, staring in stunned rapture at the headless body of the woman who had been their leader, but some were quicker, hefting weapons and shields.
The advantage of the charge, though, was now in the Dragon’s favor.
Old skills flared to life in Raz’s body as the stallion careened forward, limbs drawing from memories of years passed among the Arros. Holding tight to Gale’s sides with his knees, Raz released the reins completely, drawing his gladius from over his shoulder just as he bulled into the center of the group, roaring all the while. Even with their weapons already drawn, the mercenaries found themselves immediately on the defensive. The foremost man went down as Raz rode into them, Ahna skewering his chest even as Raz parried a hasty sword slash from the right with his gladius. Leaving the dviassegai stuck in the sellsword's chest, Raz maintained his momentum, Gale—a good two hands taller than even the largest of the mercenaries' mounts—little more than an oversized cannonball with legs. They broke through the back of the party with relative ease, Raz ducking the swing of a mace as they did, allowing Gale to gallop several strides before pulling him around as though to make a second pass.
The four remaining were cursing, trying to bring their own horses about to meet him in anticipation of another charge. Raz made a show of pressing Gale forward again, his gladius whirling about his head as though to build momentum for a devastating slash.
Fortunately, Syrah was quick to take advantage of the opportunity he had given her.
There was a series of bright flashes, followed immediately by a sizzling like burning meat. The remaining woman and one of the men howled in pain as something like a whip wrapped about their nec
ks, the lash looking like it was made of bright, ivory fire. They yelled again as the magic strained, both of them dropping their weapons to reach up and pull at the rope-like flames with gloved hands, but too late. A second later they were toppling off their horses, hitting the earthen ground with echoed thuds and the crash of armor.
The lashes remained, their shining lengths leading back to where Syrah still sat ahorse on the other side of the group, the ends of the arcane whips wrapped around her right hand. About her left, still clenching the patterned steel of her staff, a blaze of pure white fire lit her pale face in bright shadows as it flickered.
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