The door opened suddenly. Greykin and Beltor reached for their weapons.
“They have moved to the Yerling’s property. I don’t see any of them near us.” Jiure's eyes were wide and fearful.
“Very well. Thank you, boy,” Beltor said. I sensed a nervous tension in his voice. He nodded to Greykin and my protector touched me on my back. I gently removed my hands from Rayat’s shoulders.
My mother took a deep breath, but the words caught in her mouth when Nadea’s father shot her an angry look. Then she sighed and rose gracefully from the chair.
The rest was a blur of tears and a painful, sick feeling of fear in my stomach. I had been so happy here with Kaiyer, and then everything changed. I didn’t blame Jiure. Maybe I had looked at him inappropriately. Maybe I had not spoken of Kaiyer enough.
All I wanted was a new life, one where I might have been happy with my lover, raised a simple family, and found contentment. I had run away from home and chased after Nadea because I wanted to taste some of the adventure that she loved. But now I knew I didn’t want adventure. I didn’t want my mother’s life either. I had never fully realized the danger of being married to a king until my father’s death.
My rescuers had four horses hidden a hundred yards into the forest south of Rayat’s home. Greykin helped me climb into the saddle of the steed carrying most of the supplies. It wasn’t a lady’s saddle, so I had to spread my legs on each side of the horse instead of over one side. The riding position made my new dress squeeze my thighs painfully. We needed to escape and I could ride faster sitting as a man, so I didn't complain. My foot still throbbed from the thorn I had stepped on, but Tira had cleaned and bandaged the wound, and Greta had inspected it and assured me it was shallow and would heal nicely. I looked back and my mother and the look of horror on her face confirmed my assumption that she would be protesting if it weren’t for my uncle’s stern admonitions earlier.
“Westward. To the coast.” Beltor led the way and Greykin trailed behind my mother. Dusk was settling and the trees were not dense enough to protect us from the cool late winter breeze.
“Why west?” I whispered to Nadea’s father.
“Your idea for the boat was good, but I did not want the peasants to know our intentions. The Ancients will return there and extract our plans from them.”
I felt a surprising surge of pleasure and pride as I realized we were doing what I had suggested. I stifled a smile and simply nodded at his response. Maybe I was smart enough to make decisions for Nia. Or I could be, in time.
“Will they be safe? The Ancients won’t hurt them, will they? The two that came to the door gave us money for the cattle. I thought they would just kill us and take everything.” I pulled my horse up next to his so I might whisper. My mother would not approve of my concern for Rayat and his family.
“I don’t know, Jess.” Beltor shook his head and looked at me. There was enough light from the setting sun to see the worry in his eyes. “I am surprised as well. The two Ancients that bought the cattle differed greatly from the ones that interrupted the banquet. Like us, I suppose they are all unique." I nodded again at his words and we rode in silence for a few more minutes. The sky turned a darker shade of purple and I hoped the deeper night would prevent the Ancients from following us.
"Should I have punished Jiure, uncle?" I asked. I already guessed what my mother thought, but Beltor was wise and knew what advice my father would have given.
"Being a leader of a kingdom involves making decisions that most might not agree with." He looked backward toward Otrila, but she rode many horse lengths behind us and would not hear his words. "Justice is important, but so is forgiveness. The kingdom had little to gain if you were to execute the lad. Rayat seems to be a leader in his community and while this village is on the outskirts of Nia, you never know when you will need support. I think you made the right choice. His intent was horrible, but he did not actually execute those intentions, and he is no danger to you any longer."
"Because you and Greykin stopped him. If you had not been there I might have been . . ." My words trailed off and I thought about the blow I took to my stomach. A new wave of guilt flowed through me as I realized another possibility. “Leaving him,” I hesitated, “leaving him unpunished, he may act this way again. He may hurt another woman. I could have prevented this if . . .”
"Aye, Jess. We can only rule on the present. We cannot treat someone's intent as if it is the same as actually committing a crime. We cannot judge their future actions and prevent all evil through unjust punishment. I believe he will remember his fear, and your compassion, and have a greater respect for others going forward. You made the right choice." He reached across the gap that separated our horses and squeezed my shoulder gently. His hand was warm and made me feel at ease.
He smiled again and gave a light chuckle that reminded me of my father. Thoughts of him filled me with sadness that I knew might never leave me. He had been a great man and a wonderful father. The exact opposite of my mother. I wanted to talk to him again, to hug him, to kiss him, to tell him about Kaiyer and our love. But I never could. He had been taken from me forever.
"Uncle. I need to tell you something." I wiped the tears from my eyes. If I couldn't tell my father, then his brother would be my next choice. He looked over at me and raised an eyebrow that was hard to see in the approaching darkness.
I leaned over the saddle across the gap to whisper in his ear and winced as the dress pinched into my legs. Soon nothing would fit me and I would be in more pain.
Pain was worth this love.
"I am with child," I said.
Chapter 7-The O'Baarni
"The caravan has entered the ravine," Alexia whispered from a few feet away.
"How long before they get here?" I asked.
"Quarter of an hour. Perhaps a bit more."
"Is it as expected?" I looked away from her and down the sixty feet to the rough rocky floor of the small canyon pass.
"Yes, Kaiyer. Twelve wagons, twenty humans, and only eighteen Elven guards." She tried to fight back a smile but couldn't. She raised a leather gloved hand and ran it through her blonde hair.
"Brother. This is it!" Thayer said from his prone position behind me. I looked over at him and matched his smile with a frown.
"This is a trap," I sighed.
"No, it is not," Alexia whispered urgently. "We've gone over this before. My team has tracked them from their lands for two weeks. There are only a dozen guards. I can understand your caution, but if they are foolish enough to let us sack their shipments three times, then we must not pass on the opportunity."
I saw Thayer nod in agreement, but I knew that my bald friend just wanted to be pointed toward an Elven to smash.
"I can't shake the feeling, Alexia. They wouldn't let us do this three times." The Elven tribe of Colotar had been trading with their distant relations in the Bolatar tribe for the last year. We studied their route and struck twice over the month, sacking grain, spices, fabric, and leather that the Colotar traded for silver, iron, and gold. Both tribes were much too large for our small band to raid directly, so we settled for nipping at them from the shadows.
We also desperately needed the supplies.
Entas taught us much about survival, but it had been tough living for the last three years. We had some in our number who could farm and build. But my people were still hampered by the weather, the wilderness, and the need to evade notice of our enslavers. We could not do any useful farming that would leave traces on the land, so we had to forage and hunt constantly. Our migration made it difficult to construct anything meaningful beyond our own close-knit family of two hundred and twenty men, women, and children.
"Gorbanni's team is in place, Kaiyer . . ." Alexia's sentence trailed off into a whisper. I heard the frustration in her voice. She didn't want to pull away from this attack. The shipment was four times larger than the other ones we had taken. It would probably provide us with enough equipment to risk an assault of on
e of the larger tribes within our three hundred mile roaming range. We could free hundreds more of our people and double our numbers.
I shook my head. "Did any of their guards check inside of the wagons?"
"My scouts said that the second from the last wagon is their camp and food storage. So they went in there often. None of the others have been visited in three weeks. It would be impossible for more Elvens to be hiding in there." She slid on the rocky ground to lay prone next to me and stared down the length of the small canyon.
"Were your scouts close enough to hear or smell anything?"
"Not to hear, but the wind carried the scent of leather, spices, mushrooms, and grain." I nodded at her description. The mushrooms were unusual, but I knew that the Colotars grew many types of crops.
This was the shallowest part of a fifty-mile canyon that separated the two tribes. It was called Katalic’s Maze, after the Elven chieftains who had discovered the place. A series of deep rivers and erratic creeks dug through most of the network of red and gray stone like the blue veins of a bloated corpse. This section had long since run dry. The sandy road and smooth stone walls of the pass provided a quick route through the southeast section that connected the two tribes. We avoided the obvious ambush here during our last two attacks, but I still expected more guards.
I couldn’t get the uneasy feeling out of my stomach.
“The top of the canyon is clear?” I looked to Alexia and then Thayer.
“Yes,” they both answered as one.
“This is an easy victory, Brother. Let’s not be looking the other way when the girl is on all fours in front of us.” He spat on the dirt and winked at Alexia. She shook her head disapprovingly.
“Gorbanni is already prepared, Kaiyer. We’ll only have a few minutes to stop him before he attacks and forces them northward.” My pretty friend licked her lips and her ice blue eyes met mine.
“Tell him to delay.”
“Fuck!” Alexia pounded her fist into the top of the sand covered slate. “I worked my ass off for this Kaiyer. We need this!” She was almost never angry, so her sudden outburst caught me slightly off guard.
“Then you better let him know now. Tell him to reposition at the northern most corner. He will flank them instead of leading the attack.”
“Who is leading then?” Thayer asked with joy in his voice.
“Alexia’s team and I will. You’ll take the western flank. Wait for my signal.” He nodded and jumped to his feet. “Thayer,” I called out before he sprinted away to move his unit. “No magic. Arrows only. Remind them to watch their aim. We’ve got humans down there.” He saluted and sprinted backward for a few steps to make sure I had no more requests. Then he turned around and launched himself off of the slope.
“Return quickly.” I gazed down the canyon road. I could hear the distant sounds of horse hooves and wagon wheels bouncing off the walls a mile south of our position.
I had just made things much more complicated and dangerous for Alexia and me.
Entas and I suspected that the Elvens would look for us after our last two raids, so we found a new home thirty miles farther away from the tribes. It meant that I could only justify bringing forty warriors with me while the rest moved the supplies to the new location. We figured that with the superior ambush in Katalic’s Maze, we could squeeze the most out of our numbers and handle the guards who would escort this shipment.
Gorbanni had his first taste of command during this mission. He was leading fourteen men intending to take the caravan from the south side after they passed a particular bend in the ravine. We guessed that the spot would serve our purposes adequately and would be less suspect, as the Elvens would expect an ambush from above, where I currently hid. By moving Gorbanni’s troops forward, I was possibly falling into whatever trap our enemies had in place. But I would have twenty-eight warriors, plus Thayer, Alexia, and I involved, instead of just Gorbanni and his twelve.
I quickly pieced parts of the new plan together. Entas taught me to have contingency plans. By the time Alexia came back I had finalized what we needed to do and was moving north on the top of the canyon.
“Where are your warriors?” I asked her.
“They are meeting us there. He is pissed,” she said with a chuckle.
“How do they know where we are going?”
“I know what you want, Kaiyer.”
There was a gap of thirty feet between the upper stages of the canyon. I picked up the speed of my sprint across the sandy slate and cleared the jump with plenty of room to spare. Alexia did the same with much less noise.
“Here,” she said, and I guessed she was talking about another gap that dropped off to our left, on the opposite the side of the canyon from where we had planned our ambush. A few pine trees jutted out over the edge of the ledge and I heard the small trickle of the spring below us. I jumped down the slope, slid down the side of the slate, bounced off of a tree limb, and landed in the soft mud on the shore of the water some eighty feet beneath the gorge lip.
“Kaiyer,” one of Alexia’s warriors greeted me from the darkness of the tree’s shade. The other four O’Baarni stood behind him and wore smiles on their faces.
“We are taking point,” Alexia said. There were two men and three women. They nodded and looked to me.
“Back up the cliff.” I pointed up where Alexia and I came from and then started my climb. The shadows of the trees made the walls of slate cool and comforting against my hands.
“I must confess,” Alexia said from beneath me. “I can’t predict what your plan is moving forward. There are only seven of us and eighteen of them.”
“Glad I can still keep you on your toes,” I replied with a smile that only the wall of the cliff face could see.
“I thought the intent was to surprise them and not me?”
“By not vocalizing my plan, I am protecting our ears from the idiocy of it.” I laughed and flipped up to the top of the canyon. I offered Alexia my hand to aid her. She didn’t need it, but the dangerous blonde woman grasped it firmly and let me pull her up the last few feet.
“There are not any more troops. We won’t need Gorbanni or Thayer,” she reaffirmed. I saw her warriors ascend behind her and then I set off north on the top of the canyon again.
"Put Galazara and Ional up on that boulder ridge," I told Alexia as I pointed to the top of the farthest rock. "Put Omon there and Urance over on the opposite rock at the same position, then Alite at the break where the east boulder meets the wall. You'll be at the ground level here," I said as I gestured to the spot where I would also conceal myself. Alexia nodded at my directions and instructed her warriors.
I looked up at the ravine walls and saw Gorbanni signal from the ledge about sixty feet above my position. I motioned with our sign language to keep his forces hidden until I gave him the okay. Only a quarter of his men had bows, and they were the almost unserviceable weapons we had looted from various scavenging missions. Thayer's warriors also carried bows, but I didn't see them on the ridge opposite Gorbanni yet.
"Now we wait?" Alexia said from her spot next to me behind the boulder.
I nodded and began the horrible task of counting how many ways this could go wrong and the amount of warriors I would probably lose. After five minutes, I started to doubt my decision to change the plan and move Gorbanni out of harm's way, as it meant that Alexia and I would now shoulder most of the risk.
But we were used to danger.
"Where is Thayer?" I muttered under my breath and the wind. He should have shown up on the ridge by now. It had been at least ten minutes. Another ten and the Elven caravan would round the corner and be close enough for us to attack.
"He'll be here. I have guessed what you plan to do. You were right for not telling me. It isn't idiotic. It is insanity." She shook her head and smiled.
"You love it, don't you?"
"Today isn't our day to die. There is still much revenge to have." She took a handful of arrows out of her quiver and plac
ed them on the boulder between us. Then she tested the string on her weapon. It twanged a high-pitched tone that indicated it was strung tighter than anything even an Elven could pull back. I liked to think I was rather good with the bow, but while I could put an arrow through the eye of an Elven from about three hundred yards, Alexia could easily do the same during a blizzard. Her warriors were just a hair less skilled than she was.
"They approach." I heard the horses, the footfalls, and the wheels of the wagons bouncing off rocks a few minutes before I could smell them. Then the first of the carts rounded the bend in the small canyon and I saw what we were up against.
There were four mounted Elvens in front. They had bows in their laps, but they didn't seem that interested in using them. Their armor resembled fish scales and might have been as reflective as water if the sand and dust of their travels didn't cover them from head to toe. Behind the cavalry was the first wagon, it was a much larger than the previous ones we had sacked and was covered with a burlap tarp. The cart was driven by four horses and two humans who looked beyond exhausted. Then another large wagon came around the bend of the canyon wall. This one was flanked by two more mounted Elven with a pair of humans driving the horses. When the first group of Elvens were sixty yards from our hiding spot, I decided to act.
"Let them see you. Don't shoot until I indicate," I said to Alexia as I stood up from behind the boulder and walked around to be in their full view. The Elvens reared back their steeds in surprise and grasped for their bows.
"Greetings!" I yelled as loud as I could with the power of the Wind behind my voice. The word echoed off of the walls of the ravine and seemed to grow louder before it faded. "Drop your weapons and get off your steeds," I commanded before they pointed their bows at me.
They stopped their movement at my command but didn't get off their horses. I resisted the urge to look back when I heard the six bow strings go taut from the boulders behind me. The Elvens looked at me and Alexia's warriors.
The Destroyer Book 3 Page 12