“You know exactly what I’m talking about. This was never the plan. They were supposed to come to us, remember? Engaging them on their own turf—again—is suicide. We both know that. Rafe knows that. Sahara, if you follow these orders, you are just giving these people the chance to die quickly.”
Sahara stood for a moment without moving, her emotions battling within her. Her gut told her that Jared was right, but she was trapped. Trapped like a wild animal. Her eyes flashed at him and she snapped her chin out of his fingers, rage pulsing through her veins and quivering in her stomach.
“You talk like a coward,” she hissed. “Maybe I was wrong, letting a minstrel have command of a battalion.”
She regretted it the moment the words escaped her lips, but she said nothing more as she pushed past him and stalked away down the hall. She couldn’t admit to him that she was wrong. Not at that moment, at least.
She shrugged it off, stuffed her hair inside her battle helmet, and fastened the strap. She would show him.
She would make him believe.
*****
Explosions from the Dragon-Lords’ artillery mounted along the ridge rippled the sands around them, shattering her lines even as she formed them for the charge. Shells whistled overhead as Albadir’s few cannons returned fire, trying to give her the chance to get her men safely underneath the range of the enemy’s guns.
She led her men at a run through the rain of fire to the foot of the cliffs that surrounded the Dragon-Lords’ fortress. As they reached the rocks, the men hunched under the meager protection they offered. Sahara had to decide what to do next. They were all waiting for her to issue her next set of orders.
But she was struggling for clarity. Jared had been right after all, it seemed, and she fought hard against the surge of hurt pride and an overwhelming sense of failure.
It’s not my fault! she told herself. How could they have been ready for us? How did they know we were coming?
Crushing panic and chaos closed in around her. For a moment, she felt like she couldn’t breathe. When she saw Jared emerge from the clouds of smoke that swirled around them, the iron bands around her chest suddenly loosed, and she gulped air, sand, and smoke all at once.
As she leaned back against the rocks and struggled to catch her breath, he placed a hand just over her shoulder and leaned in to murmur in her ear.
“You know what comes next.” He hesitated. “Sahara, my men have scouted the approach. They’re waiting for us there too. There’s no way through. We go that way, they’ll all die. We have to sound the retreat.”
A sickening pit of dread opened in her stomach.
“That’s not the news I wanted to hear,” she confessed in a whisper. “How can they have known we were coming, Jared? How? When everything was done in such secrecy!”
“They know, Sahara. It doesn’t matter how. Call the men back. Sound the retreat. It’s not too late to save them.”
He was pleading with her in earnest now, but she wouldn’t hear him. Doggedly, she said, “It’s too late. We have come too far not to try. It must be finished.”
But their ascent into the cliffs was cut short almost before it had begun. They had to try to climb the narrow path under withering fire from both sides. Her men were mowed down without mercy, and there was no way to break through the enemy lines.
She had to retreat.
“Back! Back!” she screamed, lifting her sword high above her head.
The horns sounded, their rich call reverberating all around her.
All was chaos again as the men fled, scrambling and slipping down the bloody cliffs in showers of dust and stone.
She managed to rally what was left of her forces at a safe point some distance away from the fortress, in the shelter of the bluffs. Jared was nowhere to be seen, and she spared a thought to hope he had survived.
Sahara crouched there in the sand, gripping her crossbow. A plan was forming in her mind. One last, desperate attempt. She had done it before, and Jared wasn’t there to tell her no. She prayed she could do it again.
Boots crunched in the sand next to her, and a moment later, Rafe squatted down next to her.
“What’s next?” he asked, his voice raspy with sand.
Her mind was made up. She looked up into his face. “You’ll know soon enough,” she said.
Five minutes later, she returned with a group of ten men. Rafe was peering through binoculars, studying the ridge. He lowered them as she approached.
“So what now?” he asked again.
“You stay here,” she told him. “I’m leaving you in command. We’re going to find another way into the fortress. Wait here for our return. If we aren’t back in three hours’ time, fall back to the city.” Her face was grim as she added, “And don’t bother sending a search party after us.”
“Sahara!” he called as she turned on her heel. She hesitated, and he said, “What am I supposed to tell Jared?”
Sahara swallowed, then glanced at him over her shoulder. “Tell him he was right.”
Without another word, she beckoned to her men and headed out.
She led her men up into the hills to the north of the battlefield. As they were planning their assault three days ago, Jared had mentioned the legend of a pass high above the fortress that had supposedly been abandoned by the enemy’s guards. She just hoped it was unguarded still. They made their way slowly up the path, and Sahara didn’t call a halt until they had nearly reached the summit of the pass.
Sahara!
The voice came from somewhere within her, but it wasn’t her own. Faint and far away at first, it rapidly intensified until it crashed against her consciousness so sharply that it brought her to her knees in the dirt.
She clawed her helmet from her head and dropped it on the ground beside her, breathing as raggedly as if she had been punched in the stomach. Her hair was matted with sweat. Supporting herself on one gloved hand, she raised her head and looked around her.
She was alone.
Alone.
The realization formed a knot of cold in the pit of her stomach, radiating out until it reached her fingers and her toes. She got to her feet and stared toward the south, back toward the battlefield. The road was empty save for the first hints of the harbingers, those whirling eddies of sand that, like the moon just shimmering above the jagged mountain peaks to the east, warned her to seek shelter, and soon.
Sahara closed her eyes, retreating within herself in the attempt to restore her clarity of vision, but she couldn’t focus. The images in her mind’s eye made her stomach churn with sickening dread. She couldn’t hold them back…and even if she could, she knew that it would only make things far worse later on. She opened her eyes and lifted her hands, palms down, away from her sides, as if to steady herself. Raising her chin, she focused her gaze on a crag of rock above her, and then let her vision swim into a vague blur.
Memories flashed through her mind, but she held none of them long enough to contemplate it. It was a mind-dump, a dash though traumatic and devastating experiences that lasted just long enough to be cathartic but not long enough to cause a debilitation of consciousness.
When she focused her gaze again, the empty road with the harbingers whispering around her was the same, but she felt more calm and in control.
Sahara’s thoughts returned to her strange solitude, and she shook her head. “I must have lost them all somehow,” she murmured. “But where? And how?” She put a hand to her forehead. “And that voice….”
Someone was behind her. She reached for the hilt of her sword.
A sibilant, dark voice came close to her ear, “Touch it and I’ll have your arm for a trophy.”
She felt the pain of something hitting the back of her head and, almost simultaneously, the stabbing pain of something driven into her lower back. She crumpled in a heap in the swirling sands.
*****
The noisome smell of damp rock made her retch, and the heaving of her stomach brought her roughly into sudden
consciousness. The stone rough against her hands was the first thing she sensed as feeling returned to her body in a rush. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she realized that she was in the corner of a dank cell.
She scrabbled to the middle of the floor and sat up, rubbing the back of her head. A large bump weltered there where she had been struck, and pain radiated through her head when she touched it. She dropped her hand and gazed around. The walls arched up above her into sheer darkness, and to her left, a twisted metal gate caged her in.
And then she heard singing.
It was a voice she knew, and her breath caught in her throat. For one moment, the ecstasy of recognition made her forget pain, damp, and loss. She dragged herself to the gate, tears running unconsciously down her cheeks.
“Jared!” Her voice was nothing more than a croaking gasp, but the singing stopped abruptly. “Jared!”
To her surprise, he appeared on the other side of the gate and squatted down in front of her.
“Jared!” She reached through the gate, desperate to touch him, to feel the reassurance that he was real. He gently took her hands in his, and she broke down into sobs. “Where am I? Tell me what’s happened!”
“There’s too much to tell right now.” A smile flickered across his face and was gone. He rubbed her hands to warm them, and her tears slowed. She was suddenly and overwhelmingly tired. “But I can tell you where you are. We’re on the prison moon of K’ilenfir.”
Sahara stared at him through the bars, but could find no words to say.
“You should rest now,” Jared told her. “I can give you more details when you wake again.”
“But why are you here? Why aren’t you locked up?”
Jared shrugged, his smile widening. “The guards found out I could sing. They let me out of my cell to entertain them during their meals.” He winked at her. “My father always told me, ‘Train all your talents, boy, for you never know which one will save your skin.’ I’m glad I listened to him.”
He smudged the tears from her cheeks with his thumb, and the gentleness in his touch nearly made her weep again. As her vision swam with unshed tears and sheer exhaustion, Sahara thought she saw something flicker in his eyes. But it was gone in a moment, and so was he.
She crept back to the middle of the cell and lay down. Jared was singing again. Her eyes drifted closed and she let his voice weave itself into her soul and calm her.
She slept.
Something hard and metallic was clanging against the door of her cell, jarring her awake. Jared’s voice was silent, and she sat up. In a moment, the sound registered.
Keys.
The rusted gate squealed as it opened.
“Get up,” hissed the guard.
Sahara got to her feet, and the guard immediately bound her hands behind her with an iron chain. The metal cut into her wrists, but she gritted her teeth against a wince.
I will show neither pain nor fear, she told herself. Neither pain nor fear.
The guard shoved her out of her cell and led her by the chain down the cell row. She strained her eyes to see into the darkness, but she caught no sight of Jared. Impatient, the guard jerked the chain, almost bringing Sahara to her knees. When she stumbled forward, he only laughed.
“Keep moving,” he growled.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, shaking her hair out of her eyes and glaring at him.
“The holding room. They’re deciding your fate. You’ll know it soon enough.”
With another chuckle, he jerked the chain again, speeding up their pace.
The holding room, then. And on K’ilenfir. A wan smile spread across her bloodied face. She could escape from that place—she had done it before.
Five years ago she had been held there, accused of plotting rebellion against the Dragon-Lords on her own homeworld of Amaryl. Chance had freed her then, and she didn’t dare trust to chance a second time. She brushed out of her mind the nagging protest that five years ago, there had been a rescue operation. There had been a ship waiting for her once she broke out of the holding room.
Instead, she thought about Jared, wondering how he had been captured. She hadn’t seen him after their mad retreat from the fortress, but he must have found her and followed her. It was either that or he had done something else equally as stupid. He maddened her. Somehow he never quite seemed confident in her ability to take care of herself, and so he found ways to shadow her movements, both with and without her knowledge.
Maybe it was a matter of honor or something. Something to do with the fact that he was the one who had found her, collapsed in the desert sands in the twilight seven months ago.
Sahara closed her eyes, sinking in the warmth of the memory. She had been so belligerent toward him, even though she had needed him so desperately, and he had been so patient. He had saved her life then, in spite of her venom. Any other man, she felt quite sure, would have left her to die in the sandstorm after receiving the welcome she had given him.
She glanced back over her shoulder at the row of cells, now some distance behind them, and hoped that he would be treated with mercy.
If there was any such thing as mercy on the prison moon of K’ilenfir.
Chapter 14
The guard took the manacles off Sahara’s wrists and threw her through the door into the holding room. It was a tiny space, barely six feet long and only just that wide. The only light came from strangely luminescent stones set in the ceiling, which was low enough for Sahara to palm without standing on her toes. The heavy barred door clanged shut behind her, and Sahara was left alone to consider her fate.
She didn’t sit on the stone bench that stretched the width of the room across from the door. Instead she stood for a moment, thinking and rubbing the metal collar that the guard had left around her neck. Then she began to pace slowly around the perimeter of the cell, counting under her breath. At every odd number, she paused and tapped the stone beside her. She made it all the way back to the door and ran a hand through her hair in frustration.
She swore and stared up at the pulsing glow of the ceiling. “This must be the same room! Where is that damned trap door?”
She was about to resume pacing and tapping when the bolts of the door slid back and it swung open.
Two figures entered, hooded and cloaked completely in black, their features hidden in shadow. Their hands were inside their sleeves, and Sahara had the strange sensation that perhaps there were no hands there at all, and no faces either.
Without speaking to her, the figures went to the bench and sat down. The door was bolted shut behind them once more.
The figures stared at her steadily—if they actually had eyes within those hoods. Sahara’s hands balled slowly into fists, even though she knew self-defense would be futile should the situation deteriorate.
“You are an outworlder.” The hooded figure on her right spoke first, his voice emanating from the shadows of his hood in a tone somewhere between a whisper and a growl.
“Yes.” The sound of her own voice responding startled her.
“Then why do you lead rebellions on Silesia?” the figure on the left asked. His voice was just a tone higher than his companion’s, and Sahara realized that his cowl was a shade lighter as well.
“Because we are oppressed.”
Some hideous sound that could only have been laughter fell dully on Sahara’s ears. Even the pulsing stones above her head seemed to be laughing at her.
“And who oppresses you?” the black figure asked.
“The Dragon-Lords.” She glanced from one to the other. “Why do you oppress the people of Silesia? How do they threaten your rule?”
“You do not ask the questions, outworlder.”
The rebuke from the figure in black fell on her with such fury that she involuntarily stepped back. Something had happened. The high emotion disturbed the figure’s veil of concealment, and for an instant she glimpsed—or thought she glimpsed—what hid within the dark cowl. Like two wisps of smoke, one af
ter the other, Sahara saw appear first the emaciated, almost skeletal face of a man and then the fierce blood-red eyes of a dragon. She blinked, and the moment was past.
“Why do you care about Silesia?” the grey figure resumed the interrogation. “Why do you not return to your homeworld?”
“They think I’m dead.” She swallowed the rest of her answer. They wouldn’t want me. Not after….
“Your friends on Silesia think you dead also. Not many who come to K’ilenfir ever return.”
The grey figure sat silent, watching her. Sahara took a breath.
“There is someone else here from Silesia,” she said, wondering why she was asking the question even as the words spilled out of her mouth. “What will happen to him?”
“The poeilil,” the black figure said. “He is already on his way back to Silesia.”
Sahara caught her breath as sorrow, loneliness, relief, hope, and confusion tumbled together inside her. She relaxed her hands.
“That makes you happy, does it, outworlder?” the grey figure asked, but there was no gentleness or concern in his voice.
“For him, yes.”
“You will not be so fortunate,” the other assured her. “We have seen you before, and for this same reason. The Council will decide your fate, and you will remain in your cell until it has.”
The two figures stood and, as if on cue, the door swung open. They left the room and vanished up the hallway that curved away into the darkness of the fortress. The guard returned and clipped a metal chain onto the collar Sahara wore around her neck.
“Time to go,” he snarled.
Before he could pull her out the door, she had the chain wrapped around his throat. In another moment, he lay strangled to death at her feet.
Sahara drew a shaking breath. She unclasped the chain from her own neck and then pulled the guard into a corner of the cell where he would not be visible from the hallway. Searching his body quickly, Sahara found a jagged knife and a ring of keys. She took both, and then hesitated over the small sack dangling at his waist. It contained a few gold coins and three semi-precious stones.
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