“We don’t have time to drag them along.”
“We have more than enough men to send a party back to the Core. No use wasting such hardy stock.”
Another dozen men returned, the sounds of their party interspersed with whimpers and muffled moans. Rox sat up and spun toward the returning marauders. Each raider pulled a soot-covered, bound and gagged women behind their horses, their bruised and raw hands tied to long leashes attached to the raiders’ saddles.
Rox leapt to her feet, her eyes blazing rage. “No slaves.” She charged forward, confronting the band of marauders.
“You have no authority here.” Calder rode up fast, circling around the rest of his men. Rox’s breath caught in her throat. A young girl, no older than 4 tenmoons, was bound and draped over the back of Calder’s saddle. Her blond curls hung limp with dirt and sweat around her panicked green eyes. Her skin was covered in ash, smelling of fire and blood. Long streams of tears left filthy streaks down her cheeks. “We loot as we please.”
“You’re a monster,” Rox hissed between her teeth. Calder smirked back at her, his eyes full of malicious glee. Calder had never shown an affinity for children before and Rox knew he usually didn’t keep slaves. He had brought the girl to torment Rox.
Calder slid off his saddle, landing on the ground with a heavy thud. He pulled the girl off the saddle, dropping her on the ground and crouching before her. He grabbed the child’s face, forcing her to look at him as she wept. “Such a fragile little thing, isn’t she? And so very familiar.”
Rox felt her heart break, her breath heavy in her chest. She could so clearly see another little girl, willowy and wild, her long gold girls whipping through the wind, tangled with leaves and twigs. She could see the child in the young slave’s eyes, imagine the other child covered in ash and soot and blood.
Calder ran his fingers through the child’s hair. “Golden curls. Green eyes.” Calder looked Rox in the eye. “I think I’ll call her Serena.”
Rox drew a green glass dagger off her back and charged, Calder meeting her blow with his sword, expecting her attack. He laughed aloud and pushed her back. “Kill me and you’ll never get your daughter back from the Core, Rox. You willing to trade this one’s life for your girl’s?”
Rox charged again, her mind a blank chasm of rage. Calder blocked a few of her blows, but in minutes she tackled him to the ground. Without hesitating she drove her knife through his hand, pinning him to the ground.
He screamed in pain, blood pooling out of his hand, staining the green glass blade a sickly brown. “You bitch! You’re never getting paid!”
Rox grabbed him by the face, holding him still. Her eyes danced with insane, chaotic light, her lips curled back in a snarl. “You’re still alive. You’re not vitally wounded. And Helos has the magic to seal your hand. Raids come with risks.”
“You’re dead.”
“Not yet. The Twins will never forgive you if you kill me after being healed.”
“Accidents happen.”
Rox grabbed him by the throat, sensitive and fragile organs and veins pounding chaotically under her hands. “Give me the girl.”
Rox felt rough hands grab her under the arms, pulling her slender frame off the ground. She grabbed her knife, ripping it from Calder’s hand as a burly thug pulled her toward her bedmat. Another man knocked it from her hand again.
Rox struggled against her captor, biting and clawing to get to the young girl. The child watched Rox with desperate eyes, running to reach her when another marauder scooped her under one arm and started carrying her away with the other slaves. The child cried, the sounds muffled through the strip of cloth tied over her mouth as a gag.
Rox shrieked, her voice primal and wild. “Give me the girl!”
Calder stood, his healer already rushing to his aid. “She’s mine by right of plunder.”
“And mine by duel!”
The marauder held Rox down and tied her hands and feet, leaving her bound on her bedmat.
Calder, now healed, strode toward her and kicked her hard in the ribs. He sneered, the expression full of embarrassment at letting her stab him and fury. “Perhaps it will be easier for you to wait out the raid here.”
He continued on toward the stash of loot collected deeper in the brush. A marauder known for his clashes with Calder lingered behind the rest of the party and, when no one was looking, grabbed Rox’s dagger and tossed it closer.
“Wanted to stab ’im for ages.”
“Let me go and I’ll do a lot more than stab him,” Rox swore.
The man considered, then shook his head. “Nah. I don’t have a contract with the Twins. Calder’d kill me. And everyone knows yer rages, Rox. Don’t want ya wild in the camp until ya calm down.” Rox’s eyes darkened and the man took another step back. “Still, there’s yer knife. I never see ya without it, so I figure it means somethin’ to ya.”
Rox closed her eyes, forcing herself to calm. The knife was important to her. A family heirloom. But it didn’t mean anything to her while a little girl cried, bound and gagged, not far away. When she opened her eyes again, the man had disappeared.
Rox waited, not moving a muscle as she listened to the Circle unload their plunder and prepare to return to town. She became calmer, more focused as she waited, the raging storms of her mind dissipating into a deadly quiet. She’d kill Calder. After she was paid, after her daughter, Serena, was free. She would watch the light go out in his maniacal eyes and feel his heart stop. Every slave he took to the Core, every man, woman and child he killed, would find justice through her blade.
Less than an hour later Calder led the remaining Circle members back into town. “Fisk!” she called into the nearby brush. Fisk, who had fled during the attack, raced back to join her. She motioned to her knife and he ran to it, propping it carefully up by the hilt.
Rox rolled, scurrying like a caterpillar against her bonds, until she reached her knife. She grabbed the hilt, projecting from the ground, and angled it toward the ropes binding her wrists. The thin, sharp blade, still covered in Calder’s blood, sliced easily through the bonds, freeing her hands. She quickly cut the ties around her feet and threw them aside, standing and stretching her arms and legs as she wiped her knife with a cloth from her pack and resheathed it at her back.
She raced through the brush toward a small copse of trees hiding the marauder’s loot. As she pushed through the brush into the copse, however, she paused. The slaves were guarded by half a dozen new marauders. There was no way she could take them all. Not in broad daylight, and not without severing her deal with the Twins.
The young girl spotted Rox, her face pleading for escape. Rox locked eyes with her and nodded, hoping the child could read every intention in her heart. I’ll save you. You’ll survive. You won’t end up like my daughter.
Dusk had fallen and the raid had turned into a celebration. The flames still rose high into the burnt-orange sky, but the screams were gone, replaced with wild slurs and drunken cheers. Rox listened, sick to her stomach. The only good thing about the party was the absence of raiders at the camp.
Rox knocked Fisk away from a bubbling metal bowl suspended over the small fire she’d built hours before. “That will kill you.”
Fisk skulked back a few steps, staring at the hunter-green brew. She pulled the last pinch of white powder, a blend of herbs and blessed dust from her hometown, from a leather bag at her waist and added it to the broth. The broth steamed, blowing a flash of earthy, musty hot air into her face, whipping at her warm, pink cheeks.
Despite the fact that she had been hired as a protector and occasional assassin by the Twins, the Circle rarely realized the arsenal of supplies she kept in her small pack. The powder was the base for a powerful tranquilizer poison, the last she had. But it was worth it.
She grabbed her glass dagger from the belt at her waist and dipped the blade in the brew, waiting until the hilt in her hand grew warm to the touch. When she pulled the blade from the brew, it was coated in a p
ale, sticky paste that was already hardening, infusing along the edge of the edge of the blade.
“Get my darts.”
Fisk scuttled to the edge of the small clearing Rox had turned into a makeshift pharmacy half a league from the Circle’s camp and rooted through her bag, dragging back a small, bound leather pack. Rox untied it, revealing a series of darts and needles. There was no need to waste what was left of the poison.
She was able to dip six darts and 15 needles before the brew turned a sickly brown. She used a clean knife to make small notches in the sides of the poisoned darts and rewrapped them, handing them to Fisk to put back in her bag. She carefully tipped the remnants of the poison into a shallow hole she’d dug earlier in the day and she mixed it with the dirt she’d removed from the hole, making a thick mud.
She doused her fire, carefully sheathing her blade at her hip and stood. The sky was red as the last light of day clung to the clouds. It would be dark before she reached the Circle’s camp and if the sounds from the destroyed village were any indication, nearly every member of the Circle was in town.
Rox glanced back at Fisk, her eyes already beginning to glow as her eyes began to shift to her night vision. “Stay with the pack.”
Fisk hummed low in his throat and circled her pack before settling down on the bag like a nest. Rox huffed. Even with her bedmat laid out beside the bag, Fisk chose to leave his fur embedded in her only good travel pack.
“Be here when I get back.”
Fisk huffed. He knew what to do. It wasn’t the first time she’d left him in charge of guarding her gear.
Rox turned and jogged back to the Circle’s camp, heading for the copse of trees where the loot had been kept. She crept forward, weaving through the copse until she could assess the situation. The women and child were tied to trees, secured tight enough that all but three raiders returned to the city to celebrate. The three remaining were already drunk enough not to be a threat. Rox grinned, feral and wild.
She slipped along around the copse, circling behind the guards and moving silently in front of the slaves. She turned to the women, holding a single finger to her lips. They nodded, their muscles tense with fear and hope, their dirty faces streaked with tears and sweat.
Rox pulled her glass dagger from her belt and moved swiftly toward the drunk guards. She struck in three lightning-fast movements, leaving shallow cuts along their necks, instantly knocking them out, leaving them sprawled across the ground. She stood over each and used the hilt of her knife to bludgeon their heads, not enough to kill them, but enough to blame their unconsciousness on an escaped slave beating them from behind.
The women let out a collective groan of panic and relief at their imminent freedom, each struggling against their bonds as a surge of adrenaline shot through their veins. Rox ran to each, cutting them free of their bonds. As she reached the child, the young girl collapsed off the tree and buried herself in Rox’s arms. Rox froze in shock, the feel of tiny hands gripping her waist, soft gold curls under her chin, a tiny child trembling in her arms tore at her heart. She was suddenly back in time, Serena crawling into her arms in the middle of the night, trembling from a thunder storm. Her daughter being dragged away as Rox screamed from behind the bars of a Core prison cell.
Rox held the child, her grip tight and possessive. She looked up at one of the lingering women. “You know this child?” The woman was still too shocked to speak, but she nodded. Rox pulled away just enough to angle the child’s face to the woman. “You know her?” The child reached for the woman, who scooped her into a tight embrace.
Rox grabbed a knife out of the nearest guard’s belt and handed it to the woman. “You worked free of your bonds. You knocked out the guards and cut everyone free, do you understand?”
The woman nodded again and took the knife. “Thank you.” Her voice was raspy and soft, weighed down with grief and pain.
Rox’s eyes burned as she looked at the child, worried about the burns on her arms and legs from her bonds, the injuries weaker than the irreparable mental pain that would follow her for the rest of her life. “You take care of her, do you understand me? You give her a good life. You owe me yours, now it belongs to that child.”
The woman held the girl closer and nodded again. Rox clenched her jaw tight and nodded back, trying to hope that the woman would keep her word. “Now get out of here before they return.”
Without any more prompting, the woman raced out into the night, the rest of the women following close behind. Rox said a prayer to the goddess for their safety, then immediately turned in the opposite direction and ran for her makeshift camp.
As the copse disappeared from view, Rox froze. Standing ahead of her, unmoving, was a cloaked figure. She crouched into a fighting stance. No one in the Circle wore a cloak so low over his face or traveled alone.
The figure moved forward and Rox blinked. Despite seeing everything around it clearly, the figure had no form, like a mass of living shadow. She felt an icy-cold stone form in the pit of her stomach as she remembered Tyrius’ talk of demons stalking the camp. She felt a sudden surge of fear for the slaves she’d just released into the night. She wouldn’t let anything, supernatural or otherwise, hurt them.
“I see you,” Rox growled. The figure paused again, glancing over its shoulders. “Yes. You. Why are you following me?”
The figure took another step forward and Rox drew her knife. “I don’t care if you’re a demon. Demons can be killed.”
The creature drew a long, curved sword, the silver blade glowing pale blue in the moonlight. Rox’s lips curled back in a wild grin. Finally. Something she could kill without offending the Twins.
Rox charged with a wild snarl, her dagger raised. The figure dodged her blow, unsteady as if in shock. Rox laughed, the sound almost a bark. Seemed the Circle Ghost wasn’t used to being challenged.
She swiped again, dodging a thrust by the shadow before circling to strike again, her knife an extension of her arm. She moved low to the ground, crouched and springing like a cat. The shadow recovered from its shock and sank down into its heels, thrusting and parrying with more skill than Rox expected.
Rox shifted and swayed, using her momentum to avoid her enemy’s sword. The shadow was taller and heavier than she was, but Rox was more agile, negating any advantage the shadow had by using a longer weapon.
Rox avoided downward strike, shifting to the side just as the figure struck, catching her off guard. She narrowly avoided being gored, the blade instead slicing through her shirt, drawing a line of blood across her waist.
Rox felt blood rush to her face, her skin hot as she bared her teeth. Thoughts disappeared, swallowed in a black abyss of rage. She launched another attack, moving like a cornered animal. She growled and snarled, taking the edge off a half dozen attacks, leaving her marked with ribbons of blood as the shadow fell back beneath her relentless blows.
Rox reached out and grabbed the demon by the neck, barely noticing how solid it was in her gloved fist. The shadow let out a cry of shock, the sound only feeding Rox’s rage as she pulled the shadow to the ground, kicking its sword out of its grasp.
The shadow fought back, kicking and punching as Rox pinned it down. In a move of desperation, the shadow grabbed Rox around the waist and shifted its weight, throwing Rox back. Rox grunted as she hit the ground, clawing and biting at her larger attacker until her teeth met what tasted like linen.
The shadow shouted in shock as Rox ripped through the material with her teeth, tearing free a chunk of cloth. Rox took advantage of the creature’s surprise and threw it back, wrapping her hands around its neck again. The shadow reached up, grabbing her shoulders, trying to push Rox off, but Rox couldn’t be moved.
Suddenly, the shadow’s hands glowed bright white and a shock of light exploded through the clearing with a deafening boom. Rox screamed in surprise as the light blinded her, the flash searing through her retinas as she instinctively covered her eyes with her hands. The shadow knocked her back and disappea
red.
Rox rolled on the ground, holding her face in shock and terror a her ears rung from the blast and her vision went from blinding white to black. She groped along the ground, chunks of dirt and rocks sliding beneath her as she tried to crawl away, to escape her magical attacker, but no attack came. The shadow creature had fled, leaving Rox blind and deaf in the heart of the Aggar brushlands.
Dawn came slowly, the light warming Rox’s eyelids. She could hear a soft breeze in the brambles around her, the soft scratches of a mockingbird searching for insects. Rox shifted at the sounds, grunting as she woke slowly, her body stiff from cold and the shallow cuts healing across her body.
She pushed herself up on her hands and her eyes fluttered open. She gasped with relief as the world swam into focus. The effects of the shadow’s spell had worn off, her senses returned.
Rox pushed herself off the ground. The clearing was broken and disheveled from the fight the night before. Rox ran her fingers over a crushed patch of tall grass. With a clear mind, she could tell that the shadow had to be more solid than a ghost to leave such marks. She’d felt skin when she strangled the creature, tasted cloth when she bit it. Rox’s hands balled into fists. Tyrius was a fool. Their demon was a mage.
She grabbed her dagger out of the dirt and ran to retrieve Fisk and her pack and change clothing before heading back to the Circle’s camp.
Calder stood waiting for her as she returned, his arms crossed, his jaw tight with rage. “Where were you last night?”
“Not tied up waiting for you,” Rox groused. “I camped on my own.”
“You sure you didn’t return in the night to free our slaves?”
Rox glared at him. “If you couldn’t keep your slaves secure, that’s your problem.”
She tried to pass and Calder grabbed her arm. “Where did you get that cut over your eye?”
“Hit my head on a rock.”
Sands of Aggar: Amazons of Aggar Book 3 Page 7