“So if we want to use it to help in the fight against Harven, Kadmine and Favre, we have to use it soon.” Rig rubbed at his forehead.
“If it's any consolation,” Garek told him, “that won't be a problem. I can't see Habred and his cronies waiting much longer, especially if someone has given them the news that Valtar is confined to his bed and Aidan is missing. It's too good an opportunity for them to miss.”
Ness wrapped her arms around her knees. “We really need to get out of here, don't we?”
Garek nodded. “Whether the general likes it or not.”
“And I don't like it.” Hanson stepped out of the shadows.
There was a moment of perfect silence.
Eventually Garek rose up from his crouch. “Soon your problem will be about far more than how to train Iron Guards, or the perfect way to do something. Soon, it'll be about fighting for West Lathor's independence. And you'll have to admit to contributing to the conditions that make it perfect for Harven to attack.”
Hanson stared at Garek, then inhaled through her nose. “All Aidan has to do is commit to a new recruitment plan that we can all live with.”
Taya turned to Aidan. “Why won't you? It has to be the right thing to do.”
He glared at her. “I refuse to sign anything while I'm a captive. That is not the sign of a strong leader, and it's not something I'm prepared to do.”
“Trust your new liege, then,” Taya said, standing to address Hanson. “Let him go.”
“Trust him?” She shook her head. “I don't know if I can.” She turned on her heel and stalked into the night.
Taya shook her head, and then caught Garek's eye.
She could tell from his thoughtful expression that he was thinking of a way to solve the problem.
If it came down to that, she had a feeling neither Aidan nor Hanson would like what he came up with.
Chapter 12
The food Garek and the others had bought the day before had clearly lifted the mood in camp.
The whoops when the guards had handed the levik up the riverbank the night before had led to laughing and some singing late into the night. Nothing like the quiet, almost dour behavior they'd noticed on their first night here.
The guards had put on a display of skill, flexibility and strength in a dance of throwing knives and discs, where they threw, ducked and jumped in a complex pattern that promised injury if anyone got their moves wrong.
So it was to happier, more relaxed faces that they woke the next morning.
An army marched on its stomach, after all, and Hanson's people had been barely surviving out here. They were ready to go home, he could feel it. And soon, if Hanson didn't relent and let them all go back to Juli, she'd have a riot on her hands.
Between them, Rig and Ness had agreed to a swop, so Rig would come with him today, and Ness would stay.
Taya had argued that it didn't matter if either stayed, one Juli guard couldn't do much against the eighty strong Iron Guard.
That was true, but it was also true that sometimes, all you needed was one person to have your back, and Garek wasn't prepared to leave Taya friendless while he was flying over the Dartalian Range.
Aidan wouldn't, almost couldn't, stay, and Garek was afraid to put him in too close proximity to Hanson in case they both said things neither could come back from.
Aidan may be the new liege, but West Lathor needed the Iron Guard, even if for nothing but its reputation. If Aidan could come back to Juli with Hanson and her troops in tow, it would cement his power. And right now, they needed to have a visible, strong leader almost more than they needed to start preparing for war.
“What are you thinking?” Taya had her knives hanging from her belt, a strap of leather ran across her chest, holding a quiver of spears on her back, and she had hooked the circles of shadow ore to her special jacket. They tinkled and chimed as she moved toward him. She held a crossbow loosely in her hand, and he wondered for a moment where the arrows were.
She looked loaded down for violence, and it was almost hard to watch her approach him.
Seeing her like this made him feel he'd failed. She was not a warrior. She’d been the only one who'd ever seen him as more than a warrior himself; she'd been his place of peace, of quiet joy and long, lazy afternoons in the sun.
She had seen him, the person beneath his bulk and strength, and the outsized power of his calling.
And he had seen her.
And she was not this person who approached him. And yet, she had to be.
For that alone, he vowed as he held out a hand to her, he would destroy every last one of the sky raiders. He would smash them down and watch them claw at their throats as they suffocated to death in the place they should never have invaded.
“Shh.” She had been looking straight at him, and as she reached him, she let him take her hand in his, and brushed the other down the side of his face, as if comforting him. “It will be all right.”
“Yes.” He would make sure of it.
“Are we going?”
Kima's call had them both turning to face her, and Garek drew Taya close for a quick, one-armed hug.
“The weather is clearer today. I think we should see more.” Aidan joined them, hair wet from a quick bath in the stream.
Garek nodded. “Any sign of sky raiders in the night?”
Kima shook her head. “The guards heard the whine of engines, but it was far to the south, toward Juli. They didn't come directly overhead.”
That was worrying in itself. With Dartan, the liege's treacherous advisor, unable to contact them, perhaps the sky raiders had decided Juli was fair game after all.
“We need to go back to Juli. Soon.” He looked straight at Kima as he spoke, and after a moment's hesitation, she nodded.
“The general knows it too. But without a signature from the liege . . .” She glanced over at Aidan with dislike.
“I will not sign anything under duress. That is not how to start my rule, and Hanson knows it as well as me.”
Kima shook her head and looked away, and Garek wondered how long this little tug of war could continue.
“You need to sort it out soon.” He looked between Aidan and Kima as he spoke. “Or I'll sort it out for you.”
Aidan sucked in a quick breath of outrage, paused before he spoke, and then gave a quick shake of his head. “You have no choice now, you understand. You will be my general.”
“Why is that?” Kima asked, and Garek could hear the genuine curiosity in her voice. “He orders you about as if he were the liege, not you.”
“Because he'll never tell me what I want to hear. Quite the opposite.” Aidan gave a small grin.
Taya laughed, and the sound of it, the sweet, clear sound of it, so like the laughter she'd shared with him before he'd gone to walk the walls of Garamundo, lightened his mood.
Under the weight of the weapons she carried, she was still the same Taya. And if he had anything to say about it, she would lose the burden of them as soon as possible.
“They've definitely gone.” Kima peered out as Garek made a slow pass over the camp in the cloudless blue sky.
It wasn't much of a camp anymore.
The few permanent structures they'd built remained, but most of the quarters had been tents, and they'd been taken down.
There was no one left below.
“Which way would they go?” Rig leaned against the window, where he'd been since they'd set off from camp this morning.
“They must be headed for West Lathor, and they'll have a few choices with regard to route, but if they're trying to be sneaky about it, they'll go west through the mountains of Harven and come in through the foothills directly into West Lathor. If they want speed, and don't care who sees them, they'll go east and cut through the bottom part of Dartalia, over the thin strip of Favre, and onto West Lathor's north east escarpment,” Aidan said, then lifted an eyebrow as Garek turned east. “You think Dartalia?”
“It'll be easier to check if
they have gone that way. We can get lower without the mountains.” Garek gave a slow, satisfied smile. “And it'll be very good for us, if they have.”
“Why's that?” Kima glanced over her shoulder at him. “Dartalia must be involved in Harven's plan. They wouldn't go through there without permission.”
Garek's smiled deepened. “They originally had an agreement with Dartalia that it would stay neutral and not interfere, but things have changed since that agreement was put in place. Habred, the liege of Harven, knows it, too. Susa, Dartalia's liege, has informed him she's now a confirmed ally of West Lathor. I was there when she wrote the missive.”
Aidan stared at him, mouth open. “How? How did that happen?”
“When Taya and I were explaining things to you earlier, we glossed over some of what happened in Luf. The thing is, I met Zek there.” He glanced over at Kima and Rig to explain. “Zek is a Dartalian trader who was one of the prisoners we rescued from Shadow. His liege was grateful to us for returning him and his fellow traders to Dartalia when we came back from Shadow. She decided the neutrality treaty she had with Harven could no longer stand, given the help we'd given her citizens, and she sent Zek to Harven with the message.
“Before he could pass the missive along, though, he and I were attacked by some of Habred's guards, and Zek was badly injured. I flew him and the diplomats with him back to Dartalia.
“When Zek told Susa the full story, she not only withdrew any neutrality agreement, but upped the stakes and aligned herself with us.”
“Why would she do that?” Kima asked, voice a little hushed. “Just withdrawing neutrality would have put us in her debt.”
“Two reasons. She had already decided to withdraw from the agreement, but Habred hurting Zek pushed her to making things even harder for him. Also, we have this,” Garek waved his hand around the interior of the sky craft. “Zek is all too aware of its power and the opportunities it presents.”
He thought things through a little. “When I see her again and tell her what we now know about Habred, that he's been cooperating with the sky raiders . . .” He remembered the steely resolve in Susa's dark eyes and shook his head. “My guess is that her own economy has been hard hit by the sky raider raids, because so many Dartalians are traders. If what Taya's friends in Luf say are true, then Habred has a deal where the Dartalian traders have their goods stolen from them after they've spent their money in Luf, not before.” He imagined what the tall, grim leader of Dartalia would make of that.
Aidan blew out a breath. “This is . . . very good news. We have an actual ally.”
“The best news I've heard in a while.” Rig was grinning with delight.
“There they are.” Aidan pointed down below, and they all saw a line of guards walking single-file down a narrow track toward the low hills on the very south border of Dartalia, to the east of the mountains.
Garek carried on, following the path, and after a minute or two, they found more guards stretched along a long river, watering their zanir and resting in the afternoon Star's light.
“There aren't as many as I thought,” Kima said, but her mouth snapped shut when they followed the curve of the river and found the bulk of the army setting up tents in a relatively flat field hidden amongst the softly rounded hills.
Garek shot past them, banking slightly to the left so they could see what was happening below more clearly, and then they were over the valleys and cascading escarpments of Favre which led down into West Lathor.
“Go back?” he asked.
“Do you think they realize it could be us, or will they think it's sky raiders?” Rig asked.
“Depends how much Habred has told his allies. We don't know whether he's come clean with them and let them know we aren't as helpless as we once were. He may be afraid that if he tells them, they'll back out.”
“My guess is he'll pretend it's all news to him when we do engage them with a sky craft,” Aidan said, cynicism twisting his lips.
Garek gave a short nod. He'd take the same guess.
“Garek?” Rig had been straining his neck to look back as much as he could.
“Hmm?”
“Real sky raiders.”
Garek spun the sky craft around, pulling on his Change to do it, and there, hovering above them, was a massive ship, far larger than any he'd seen so far flying around Barit.
The only one he'd seen that was bigger was the sky raiders' mothership.
There was a hissing sound from under his hand, and he jerked it up with shock.
“Will . . . you . . . land?” The hissing turned into words, stilted, as if the speaker was uncertain of the accuracy of what they were saying.
Aidan looked at him with wide eyes.
Garek studied the ship in front of him.
He didn't think it could be from the mothership.
He'd seen all the craft stored in its hanger, and there was no room there for something this size. It hadn't been anywhere to be seen on Shadow, either.
He flown there twice, and he would have noticed something this big.
Besides, it was pristine. Its metal shell hadn't yet been touched by the corrosion even a few days caused on Barit or Shadow.
It was also the first time the sky raiders had ever tried to talk to him. He wondered now why they hadn't tried before.
“Can you hear me?” he asked, and had a sick, sinking feeling. What if they had always been able to hear everything that was said in the craft?
There was no response, and eventually he decided he needed to press something to respond. Something he had no idea how to do.
He banked and looked for a suitable flat space that would fit both ships.
“Is this wise?” Aidan's gaze had swung back to the sky craft, and his hands were fisted at his sides.
“They could shoot us out of the sky if they want. They obviously want to talk. I'd prefer that option, because something tells me their ship is a lot faster than this one.”
Aidan looked back at him, gave a slow nod. “You think they want to talk us over to their side, like they've done with Habred and Dartan?”
Garek shrugged as he dipped lower and aimed for the field below. It was far enough into West Lathor to be out of the sight and reach of the combined army behind them, and far from any village that he could see.
“I'll keep the engines running.” He stood, walking to the door as the big craft landed a little way away from them.
“I'm coming,” Aidan's tone didn't brook any argument.
“I want to see what they look like. I'm coming too.” Rig didn't sound like he wanted to back down, either, and Kima simply started walking toward the door.
Garek sighed. “Then everyone be prepared to get back up the ladder and inside at a moment's notice. I'll leave you behind if you take too long.”
Rig and Kima gave a nod of agreement, but Aidan glared at him, and he couldn't help but grin at the princeling. Better that the new liege assert himself as a leader than accept orders, but in this instance, Garek planned to do the talking. He was the one who could fly them away, after all.
He touched the button to open the door, and swung his leg out to go meet the first sky raiders to ever ask him to talk.
Chapter 13
Taya was improving, but she was a realist. There was no way she'd get to the Iron Guard level of control in a few days.
She was embarrassed to think she'd assumed she could.
Back in Pan Nuk, it had seemed a good solution, a way to take control after the horror of killing someone she never meant to kill.
But the reality was these guards had trained for years, and there was no easy way to becoming as adept as they were.
Hanson was getting much more out of their deal than she was. Taya could see her satisfaction at Taya's slight improvement.
“Did you think someone who was brought in at my age wouldn't be able to learn?” she asked.
Hanson shook her head. “No, I thought . . . I believed . . .” She gave a sigh, starte
d again. “Obviously, anyone can learn if they put their mind to it and have the calling.”
“And?”
“And you've shown me that a lot of the commonly-held wisdom is wrong.” There was a bitterness in the way she spoke, and Taya wondered what the true story was. What had Hanson been told that she'd found to be a lie?
Hanson was staring at her again. “How do you feel when you call your Change?”
Taya thought of the blood-fizzing, hair-crackling shiver that gripped her every time she reached for shadow ore. “Like it's exactly what I should be doing.”
Hanson nodded. “I was afraid that sensation was confined to those who'd felt it from adolescence. But you've shown me otherwise.”
Taya nodded. She looked at the straw target she'd been throwing spears at. Her spears were close to the central target, and her control was indisputably better than it had been yesterday. They'd had to adjust the slot at the base of each spear, because the shadow ore discs she and Quardi had made were smaller than the standard iron discs the Iron Guard wore.
“This is helping you, Taya--” Hanson must have picked up on her disappointment with her progress, but she cut off what she was going to say, and Taya followed the direction of her gaze.
Two of the guards emerged from the trees, running in silence, and as soon as they realized they had been seen, they began signaling in the same way she'd seen Garek do.
“A new group of guards from Juli,” Hanson said, her surprise evident.
“Sava can't have gotten back yet, it's at least three days on foot.” Taya shaded her eyes to see better.
Hanson nodded. “Perhaps Vent sent another group out, and they missed Sava.” But she didn't sound sure. She sounded suspicious.
Taya said nothing. She had no idea what this was about.
Hanson made a hand signal, and Etta was suddenly there.
“Put Taya and Ness in a hut and guard them.” Hanson sent Taya a quick look of apology. “Sorry, but until I know what's going on, you'll have to be a prisoner for a while.”
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