“Because half that army has disbanded.” Susa had reached Garek and Dix's position, and she spoke with cool assurance. “My lookouts tell me there appears to have been a disagreement, and most of the Harven contingent have left, along with small groups from Favre and Kadmine.”
Luci and the other Cassinyan villagers had come through. They'd turned the Harven against their own liege.
“The Harven?” The commander coughed it out, his face white with pain, his fingers pressing on either side of the arrow in his shoulder.
“There was a reason you never told them you were allied to the sky raiders.” Taya glared at him. “Because you knew they'd revolt if they knew the truth.”
There was a shocked gasp behind them, and Garek flicked his gaze back, saw one of the councilor's pointing upward.
Two massive ships, so huge they defied the imagination, chased each other above the clouds, the Star's light shining off them in glittering bursts as they moved.
It was a dance made in silence, and then the smaller of the two ships was engulfed in a massive, catastrophic explosion.
Huge pieces of mothership began raining down over the far hills.
It was a beautiful sight.
Someone moved, a sort of shiver of awe and fear, and Garek forced his attention back to the threat in front of them.
But the three armies guards were still staring at the sky.
Dix tapped his arm, and when he looked over at her, she nodded toward the enemy.
He looked behind him for Hanson, gave the signal for surround, and she grinned, and nodded.
Dix turned, giving signals to her own troops, and quietly, with no fuss or sudden moves, the guards from the camp formed a ring around the three armies battalions.
One or two of them worked out what was happening before the others, but by the time they'd shouted a warning, it was too late.
“What are you going to do? Slaughter us?” The guard who'd stepped out of the crowd and challenged him before curled his lip.
“We charge you with trespass and unprovoked attack.” Susa looked back to where the fallen lay, and when she turned to face forward again, anger was visible in her expression. “You will all be imprisoned for your crimes against this state.”
“That wasn't us,” one of the guards murmured, pointing to the guards struck by the white lightning.
“They were your allies. They did it on your behalf, so yes, it was you.” Dix gripped her sword a little tighter. “And what, exactly were you planning to do once you snuck in here with your sky raider fabric anyway?”
“We were going to try to get past you. Continue on to Favre and then to West Lathor.”
“There is no Council dispensation to attack West Lathor.” The Landau councilor's voice was clear and carrying. “So even that is a crime.”
There were murmurs of shock and uncertainty, and the guards began milling around, unsure of themselves.
A cry from behind them, from one of Dix's guards, cut through everything, though.
The woman was pointing up, and everyone's focus went back to the skies.
A small sky raider ship was dropping like a stone toward them. As the smaller mothership had gone up in flames, it had to have come from the bigger one, and Garek wondered if they had been trying to hail him from the sky craft and had finally given up.
It fell so fast through the sky he felt the air compress. A crack reverberated like a whip as the craft sped toward them.
It came to a sudden, shocking stop overhead, and then seemed to float gently down.
This wasn't over, he reminded himself. One group might be gone, but a bigger, better equipped group was still here.
It was time to make it clear they weren't welcome.
Chapter 36
Taya gave Garek some room as a sky craft settled on the field.
She could see a faint blurring around his silhouette, and she got a grip on her shadow ore knives.
“We will not be stepping out.” The hiss of a voice seemed to reverberate around them and some of the guards crouched low on the ground in fear. “The sevn are defeated.”
“We saw.” Garek inclined his head. “Have a safe journey home.”
There was a moment of bemused silence.
“The journey home is a long one. We will not be coming back.”
Taya liked the sound of that, but she saw Garek was not relaxing.
“But?” he asked, voice hard.
“But we would like four more boxes of shadow ore. It makes sense for us to gather more while we have the opportunity.”
Taya drew in a quick breath.
“That was not the bargain we struck.” Aidan had joined them, and he stood beside Garek, hands fisted.
“We are striking a new one. We don't want to use threats, but we could, right now, level you all and take the one who knows where the ore is on Shadow.”
“I could, right now, destroy your ship.” Taya lifted both knives.
“You could.”
She was sure the voice was that of the sky raider who'd joined her on Shadow and participated in the experiments with shadow ore.
“We knew you might threaten to do so, and we have taken precautions. If anything happens to this ship, we have another nearby that can and will level everyone here and simply take you. However, we'd prefer you unhurt and not affected by injury, so I am sorry to say that as a first option, we will hurt your family unless you come with us. We have been watching you since we met on Shadow, and we followed you to your village. I believe your family means a lot to you, and we have a ship above Pan Nuk, ready to kill them all right now unless you do as we ask.”
Taya felt as if she'd been hit by white lightning again while holding a water-covered weapon.
It was as if the sound and the air had been sucked out of the world.
She gasped, and put a hand up to her chest.
Her heart actually hurt.
“I see this is an effective threat.” The voice sounded pleased.
Taya threw her knives down and walked toward the ship.
A hand clamped on her shoulder, holding her back. “I'll take her to Shadow.” Garek's voice was hoarse.
“No. She comes with us. We'll return her as soon as we have the ore.”
“Her people are my people, too. There's no risk in my taking her.”
“If you do not let her go, we will send a message to our ship to start attacking the village.” There was an implacability to the tone, and Taya looked back at Garek, eyes wide with panic.
Garek wrenched her around to face him, bent his head so his lips brushed her ear. “I will follow. I'll be right there.”
She nodded, the numbness lessening as the world righted itself a little.
He pulled her close, squeezing her tight, and then stepped back, and she caught the look in his eye—fury and cunning.
The strange ramp that seemed to fold out of itself came down and she climbed it.
She looked over her shoulder, saw the faces lifted up to her, friend and foe alike, and then the door closed behind her.
“We are here.”
The disembodied voice broke through Taya's doze and she used the wall of the sky craft behind her to pull herself to her feet.
She was surrounded by a light curtain, and she guessed it had been rigged just for her, so she could be transported without wearing a helmet.
The hours had blurred into one another, and she rubbed at her eyes, tired and jumpy at the same time.
The curtain shifted, creating a passageway to the door, and she walked forward and stepped onto the ramp as the door slid open.
Shadow was in darkness but to the left Barit was lit up by the Star in a glow of blue and green.
She stared at it for a moment, and then sensed sky raiders coming up behind her, so she ran lightly down to the ground.
They had landed in the same place as last time and the cliff face was just up ahead.
She turned back to look at who was coming behind her, saw four
sky raiders, each carrying boxes. They stood waiting at the bottom of the ramp.
“How are we going to put the water in?” she asked.
There was a startled double-take. “How did you put it in last time?”
“Using two people in the group who have an affinity for water.” She refused to say more than that.
“What do you need?” The scientist was either one of the sky raiders carrying boxes, or more likely, transmitting her voice through a helmet, but sitting safely elsewhere.
“A bucket, at the very least.” It would take her much longer to fill the boxes this way, but there seemed to be no choice.
She turned and started walking toward the cave, uninterested in how they sorted the problem out.
After a moment, the sky raiders followed her, keeping up with her easily.
They stopped a short distance from the cave mouth, though. Too nervous to get any closer.
“You will have to take the boxes from here,” one of them called to her.
She sighed and went back for a box, then lifted her gaze to the sky.
Garek was out there somewhere. He said he would come for her, but even if he hadn't whispered it in her ear, she would have known it.
She let her gaze swing slowly across the sky, her heart beating a little faster, but there was no sign of him.
Eventually the weight of the box forced her to move, and she staggered with it to the cave entrance and left it to one side, squeezed through the crack and slid down the scree to the lake.
She stood looking around her for a moment, and then sat suddenly, massaging her heart, head bent.
It was her first moment alone since she'd been forced to enter the sky craft, and she curled over her knees and closed her eyes, breathing deeply.
The clink of a stone falling down the slope made her straighten and stand, but when she looked back, there was no one there.
She'd felt the shadow ore since she'd begun walking to the cave, and she let the feeling of absolute rightness flood her senses.
She would likely never feel this again, be this immersed in her element. She needed to savor it. And it buoyed her. Helped to bolster her.
She called the ore to her, and small pebbles and larger stones rose like a swarm of insects over the marshes, rumbling a little as they rubbed together.
Most of the ore was on the opposite side of the lake to where she stood, where the vein was visible in the rock and pieces had dropped off onto the cave floor over time. They skimmed over the dark waters toward her.
She funneled them up the slope and through the crack, hoping some would land in the box.
When she thought she had enough, she scrambled up the incline and was forced to move some of the ore aside to clear enough space to get out of the entrance.
The sky raiders had been joined by someone holding a bucket, and they had moved back considerably.
She saw the reason was the wide arc of shadow ore that she'd funneled up. Some of it had rolled down the incline and lay spread out in front of the cliff face.
At the sight of the work ahead of her, her shoulders drooped. She was deathly tired. She'd been awake more than a full day and she'd already been close to burn-out after the confrontation with the sky craft on the battlefield.
She sat down and leaned back against the rocks beside the cliff, in the same spot she'd sat with Min all those weeks ago after they'd been flushed out of the cave system.
She'd been just as exhausted then, and cold and wet, too.
She closed her eyes and remembered how she'd lain on the warm stone and told Min about Garek.
It had been a bittersweet memory, because she'd wondered then if she'd ever see him again.
Now, she knew she would. He was out there, thinking up a way to help her.
He would never leave her behind.
She opened her eyes and forced herself to her feet, moving slowly.
She could see the sky raiders watching her nervously from their position, and realized they must be wondering what she was doing.
She squared her shoulders and put one foot in front of the other, filling the boxes with ore, then sliding back down to the lake with the bucket to fill them with water.
When she was done, she called on the ore and got the boxes as far from the entrance as she could before the headache beating behind her forehead became a full blown burn-out, and then she abandoned them, stumbling more than walking back to the cave.
She had devised the plan earlier, but as she slid down the scree and landed in a heap at the bottom, she knew she might not have thought it through properly.
She was too tired to know whether it was a good idea or not, and too exhausted to care.
They couldn't get her here. They couldn't touch her.
And that had to be a good thing.
Maybe they intended to take her home. Maybe not.
They were good at changing the rules, and this way, they would have to leave without her.
Somewhere close to her, something hissed.
She turned her head, heart hammering, icy chills running down her arms as she tried for slow and calm. No quick moves. She had never once come across a slither in all her time on Shadow, but that had definitely been a hiss.
What looked like a smooth stone the size of her fist glowed an arm's length from her head.
She remembered the skitter of a rock falling earlier, and narrowed her eyes at it. Some kind of sky raider spy device, watching her while she worked in the cave.
It had blended in to the scree earlier, so she hadn't noticed it, but now it throbbed with a dark blue light.
“What are you doing in here?” The hiss turned into words.
“Hiding from you.” She closed her eyes again.
“We'll take you home. We gave our word.”
She made a rude noise. “How is this thing working in here? It's lying pretty close to shadow ore.”
“There's a thin film of water coating the outside.” The hiss faded then got louder.
“Go away. You got your ore.”
“How will you get back?” There was interest in the voice now.
“I'll find a way.”
The device was silent for so long, she almost fell asleep.
“If you think your people will come for you in the sky craft you stole from the sven, you're wrong. It was destroyed.”
She blinked. Turned to look at the device. “How?” She kept her voice scornful, but her heart was fluttering erratically.
“They tried to bring down the sky craft that was watching your village.”
She closed her eyes again, trying to keep her face relaxed. “They shot at your sky craft?”
“Yes.” Something about the word, the hissing sound of it, chilled her to the bone.
“Go away.”
“We don't want you stuck here. Come out and we'll take you home.”
They had to be lying about Garek shooting their ship, he didn’t know how to, so it was a good bet they were lying about taking her home, too.
Taya raised herself up on her elbow, reached out to grab the device, and threw it into the lake.
It sank immediately.
She watched the ripples in the phosphorescent light for a while, and hoped she had made the right choice.
Chapter 37
Garek took the time, time he didn't have, and swung past Pan Nuk.
There was no sky craft there.
If they'd been telling the truth about having a ship watching the village, it had returned back to the mothership the moment they had what they wanted—Taya in their sky craft.
He flew low over the village, and saw Kas and a few others step out to watch him, uncertain if it was him or the real sky raiders.
He waggled the craft from side to side to let them know it was safe, but didn't stop to talk.
He flew straight to Shadow.
He couldn't get there fast enough.
The fact they wouldn't let him take Taya, that they'd insisted they take her thems
elves, niggled at him. Worried him.
It could be they were nervous about letting her out of their sight when they needed her so badly, but still, he sensed something off.
He wondered if he should have insisted on bringing some help, but he had wanted to go without delay, and Aidan and Susa were surrounded by a foreign army.
It hadn't seemed an opportune time to pick a team.
He'd simply run to the sky craft the moment the sky raiders disappeared into the dark blue sky with Taya, and taken off.
She knew he was coming.
She just had to keep herself safe until he did.
And they wouldn't hurt her while she was useful to them. He used the thought to keep himself calm and focused.
He came at Shadow from a new angle, slipping into the air around the planet with all the tricks of his calling and heading for the mine, flying low and keeping directly over the river.
He dipped so low that the sky craft touched the water and flung waves up over the craft.
It couldn't hurt.
He reached the mine, and landed in front of it, not bothering to hide it from sight. They obviously had ways of tracking it he didn't understand.
If he was lucky, they wouldn't be looking out for it at the moment, their attention would be on Taya and the cave.
He jumped down and got a line of sight between the mine and the hill where the communication tower used to be.
He stepped into the inbetween, and felt a tug of interest at how it differed from the inbetween on Barit.
It was slower, more deliberate.
If this was any other time, he would have tried to understand it better, but he stepped out of it just before the rocks on the hill, and turned to the larger hills in the distance where Taya must be.
His throat constricted a little at the thought that they might already be gone.
He shrugged it off. Stepped back into the inbetween and stepped out again a little way away from the cave.
The sky craft was there, more or less in the same spot it had been before.
It looked as though sky raiders were carrying boxes between them from near the cave back to the ship, and he tried to see Taya.
He couldn't.
Shadow Warrior (Sky Raiders Book 3) Page 23