by Sara Gaines
“BASED on what you say, Kahira, Ariwa is only a few days away.” Ori seemed to reduce his hostility toward the woman as soon as he realized she had not only brought us physical supplies, but as much information she was able to gather. Granted, he was obviously still far from trusting her.
“Yes, even if this rain continues, we shouldn’t be delayed too much.” Her tone was civil, but with her face masked behind the hood of her cloak, I doubted her expression was as friendly.
The oiled cloaks Kahira provided worked, mercifully protecting us from the rain that had rolled in. With the bruise on my side still sore, I found the weather made for even more uncomfortable travel; but at least with the horses, we were able to avoid trudging through the mud. Enza, however, seemed to enjoy running through the murky puddles forming on the road.
Ori pulled his horse alongside mine. “And we will find information there in the city?”
The hood of Kahira’s black cloak turned with her head. “I have heard of a tavern just inside the city’s eastern wall. Any rumor passing on its way to the kingdom’s capital will have been heard there first. I warn you, you will not find the most pleasant company there, but the information will be good. With luck, you’ll even hear word of what is happening in your homeland.”
“Was there any word of Eniva where you got these horses?” I pushed my hood up from my eyes, letting the rain hit my face as I watched Kahira rein Taewin to a stop, turning toward Ori and me.
“Not directly, no.” She uncovered her head, exposing an expression I had not seen on her face, but yet another I could not name. “But, Aleana, there were soldiers on the road. A group of thirty men moving along the border. The road they were on would take them to Seyna.”
“In Enivian colors?” Ori’s cream-colored mare stamped her feet, unhappy with her rider’s orders to halt.
Kahira’s eyes burned as she practically spat the name. “Dakmor’s.”
My skin went cold. “How are they now traveling openly?”
“I don’t know, and I didn’t want to risk following them to try and find out. Maybe Ariwa will hold that answer as well.” Kahira replaced her hood and rode ahead. Atop her massive black horse, she would be frightening to any stranger.
I glanced at Ori and knew the worried look on his face was reflected in my own expression. I was afraid to ask, but the question slipped from my mouth:
“Do you think Halvaria has been invaded?”
“I don’t know, Aleana. But, if they have been, Tallak will be more inclined to believe you rather than any rumors he has heard. We just have to keep moving.” Ori spurred his horse slightly.
I watched Ori briefly before directing my own horse to follow. He was right, and if Dakmor’s Princess Zoriah was after all of Halvaria, Tallak would understand the significance of taking Eniva first. Zoriah’s own father had led a campaign to take my family’s land as a bastion of support for a full Dakmoran invasion of Halvaria. If Zoriah was planning on starting another war, allying herself with Dalric would improve her odds of succeeding where many of her ancestors had failed. And yet, I still could not piece together why Dalric had so readily turned a traitor for his most hated enemy. If it was power he sought, then why would he spread rumors of my death, only drawing more attention to Eniva?
Understanding jolted through me.
“Ori, wait!” I caught up to him, renewed urgency flooding my veins, drowning the pain in my side.
Worry highlighted the creases in his face. “What is it, milady? Are you unwell?”
I ignored the honorific.
“We have to warn Tallak. I don’t think he knows yet that Dalric is working with Dakmor. If he hears that I tried to start a rebellion, no matter what else Dalric has said, Tallak will send his soldiers north to Eniva.” I waited for him to pick up on what I was saying.
“Leaving Seyna almost completely open to attack, and Dakmor’s army is already filtering in, destroying guard stations as they go. Small groups of them mean they’ll be less likely to get caught.” Ori was obviously working through the scenario in his head. “If Zoriah gathers enough of her men and cuts off Tallak’s soldiers from Seyna, they will have nowhere to run, leaving them completely vulnerable. Seyna will be open for the taking. No matter how many men remain in Seyna, without a way to call the main army back, there is no hope.”
I felt my panic rising with each word Ori spoke. I clenched my teeth in frustration. I felt powerless. I only had pieces, small pieces of everything going on around me, and the only picture I could make with them was terrifying. What was worse was that each new piece only seemed to point to even more horrors.
“We have to reach Tallak before he has the chance to move his army.” I tried to keep my fright from carrying over into my words, but I knew I was failing.
“We will get you to your betrothed. We will get you to Seyna, and I will return to my home, where my wife and my child will be waiting.” Ori smiled at me, his expression full of an optimism I could not begin to match. “Just think of the songs they will sing. You’ll be a legend before you are even crowned. The queen who saved a kingdom. You will bring even more honor to your family name, Aleana.”
As terrified as I was, my childhood dreams came flooding back. I smiled at the guard, letting him know he had succeeded in lightening my mood. Still, I could only hope we would reach Tallak in time. If I could only warn him, Zoriah might be caught off guard, and her and Dalric’s plan could fail.
“HOLD on, there’s something up ahead.” Kahira’s hushed voice broke the silence that had settled on us since the night before when the rain had seeped into our skin. “Ori, stay back with Aleana.”
The continued rain only managed to dampen our already somber moods, but Kahira’s words awoke a sense of foreboding deep within me.
Ori set his jaw, unhappy with taking orders, but he said nothing to the woman riding ahead. For reasons I couldn’t explain, my palms began to sweat as my heart raced. Before Kahira had put much distance between us, eight men emerged from a trail leading deeper into the woods. The blood drained from my face as soon as I saw the colors of the soldiers’ uniforms. Seeing a flicker of movement under Kahira’s cloak, I knew one of her daggers had been unsheathed. Still, she kept her head down, not looking at the men who were now slowly riding straight toward us.
Ori and I moved our horses to the side of the road, silently hoping the Dakmorans would somehow pass without incident. Those hopes crumbled, however, when one of the men, despite her best efforts, managed to get a look at Kahira’s face.
Throwing his hand up to halt his comrades, the man’s voice mixed with the sounds of falling rain.
“Well, look what we have here, men.” The man’s deep chuckle sent a chill down my spine.
Kahira lifted her head, exposing the tattoo above her brow to the soldiers. Her hood fell back, revealing a woman who looked regal in her defiance.
Another man spoke, sliding his hand to the hilt of his sword. “Tell us, girl, what was your crime so we can remind you of your punishment.”
Kahira remained silent, only staring at the men who were focused on nothing but the armed woman in front of them.
Growing impatient with her insolence, one of the soldiers brought his horse alongside Taewin. Before he could even react, Kahira’s dagger was lodged in his thigh and he was pulled from his mount, only to be met with Enza’s powerful jaws as he hit the ground. With one of their men lying broken in the mud, the soldiers drew their swords, no longer willing to just taunt Kahira. When she flung her cloak behind her, the brand on her arm flashed in the day’s grayish light. I was not sure if I had imagined it, but I would have sworn I saw fear spread across the faces of Kahira’s attackers.
The man nearest Kahira spat a foreign word I didn’t understand. She turned to him, a sinister sneer on her face as she responded in the same tongue. Whatever Kahira said seemed to only infuriate the men further. Their blades sang through the air, seeking Kahira’s flesh. My horse danced under me nervously as Ori freed
his own sword and dismounted, joining the fight.
The air came alive with the striking of metal against metal. Kahira had dismounted, taking turns pulling the Dakmorans from their saddles. On the ground and faced with Enza’s jaws as well as Kahira’s blades, the men stood little chance. As I watched the scene before me, I realized Kahira and Ori were wordlessly working to keep the men from flanking them—to keep the men from reaching me. There were too many of them, though, and even with Ori’s help, the outcome was inevitable. Kahira knew it as well. Kahira’s daggers pulled another man from his horse as she yelled to Ori.
“Get her out of here!”
With Ori only focused on deflecting thrust aimed at him, Kahira’s direction went unheard.
“Ori!” Kahira kicked a Dakmoran soldier away. “Get her out of here, now!”
This time, Kahira left no room for the guard to ignore her again. Grabbing the back of Ori’s clothes, she threw him in my direction. Finally understanding and realizing he only had a few moments, Ori sheathed his sword and climbed into his saddle. When he called for me to ride off, I refused to move. I would not leave Kahira there to die at the hands of these men, not when she was here because of me. Not when she had already saved my life before.
Kahira glanced over her shoulder before another sword was lifted in order to strike her down. She was avoiding the blades of three men by the time her shout registered in my conscious.
“Go!”
I ignored her command, as well as Ori’s pleas for me to kick my heels into my horse and flee. Enza latched herself to the arm of a Dakmoran, giving Kahira the opening she needed to make the kill. Immediately, another soldier was there to step in, knocking Kahira to the ground as his fist connected with her jaw.
“Kahira!”
Hearing my shout, one of the Dakmorans turned his focus to Ori and me. As the man started toward us, his blade glinting in the dim light, Ori tore the reins of my horse from my hands. Overriding my protests, Ori pulled my horse after him as he sent his own mount racing down the path.
I shouted to Ori, but he ignored me, urging our horses to go faster. I was not sure how much time had passed before Ori finally halted his horse, forcing mine to stop as well.
“Ori!” The guard ignored my pleas. “We have to go back!”
He only answered me after listening for any hints of pursuit. When he felt confident that the Dakmorans had chosen to let us go, Ori turned to me, his brow creased.
“Those men wanted Kahira, not us. Your life is too valuable to throw away for some criminal’s!”
“No!” I knew my shouts would make it easy for any pursuer to find us, and yet my anger suppressed the voice of logic urging me to remain silent, “We can’t just let her die!”
“Aleana, think about this!” Ori’s voice slowly lost its tone of frustration as he spoke. “We can’t risk your life. You have more important things to worry about than the fate of a woman who has already lived longer than she had any right to.”
Knowing my glare said more than I could ever put into words, I grabbed my horse’s reins from Ori, quickly turning my horse around to ride toward the fight before he could stop me. I heard Ori call my name shortly before I heard the beats of his horse’s hooves sloshing in the muddy ground behind me.
Racing as fast as my horse would carry me, it wasn’t long before I reached the section of road I had so recently been forced to flee from. I reined my horse in, and Ori stopped beside me as we looked at the carnage before us. Seven men lay bloody in the mud, their horses scattered off into the woods. And yet, Kahira was nowhere to be seen. An unimaginable sinking feeling hit my stomach as I saw one of Kahira’s daggers carelessly thrown in one of the many puddles. My hand drifted to the knife at my waist, sliding it free as I tried to find any sign of Kahira. It wasn’t long before we heard a bark ring out farther down the road. I immediately kicked my heels against the flanks of my horse, trying not to think about what I might find.
A few paces around a bend exposed Taewin, standing near a massive oak tree. Sheathing my knife, I hurriedly dismounted, cringing at the sudden flare of pain in my side. Forgetting it, I rushed toward the figure propped against the tree’s trunk. Ignoring the mud, I dropped to my knees in front of her. Blood covered her clothes and her head was slumped to the side, clearly displaying the swelling that had already started on the side of her face.
“Kahira!”
To my relief, her eyelids fluttered open and she smiled weakly. “I thought I told you to run.”
Ori appeared over my shoulder. “And we did.”
“Why did you come back?” Kahira struggled to look at me.
Shaking my head, I felt the blush spreading across my cheeks.
“Are you all right?” Before I even finished my own question, I saw Kahira’s shredded vambrace and the cut on her forearm, her blood still flowing slowly.
Like she had done so many times before, she ignored the question.
“One of them got away. I tried to stop him with my bow, but… you need to get out of here. We don’t know if he recognized you.”
“No, you’re coming with us. Can you ride?” My tone held no room for argument.
“Of course I can. I just have to—” Kahira struggled to her feet, a wave of dizziness almost sending her crashing back to the ground. “I need to bury those men.”
Frustration was clear in Ori’s voice. “Forget about them. We need to get out of here.”
Kahira was still struggling to focus her vision. I reached out, hoping to offer some sort of support.
“Kahira.” My heart began to beat faster at the weight of her hand pressed on my shoulder. “If burying these soldiers is truly that important, the man that got away will see them taken care of.”
The woman looked confused for a moment, and I began to question just how hard the blow to her head had been.
“You’re right, we—”
“We need to move.” Ori had thrown himself into his saddle, obviously upset that I had forced him to come back.
It was not long before she seemed to regain some semblance of control over her limbs and pulled herself toward Taewin. Kahira barely stopped herself from falling off the other side of her horse. When she grabbed for her horse’s saddle, I saw the pain from her wound register on her face. As though she had also understood her owner’s expression, Enza whimpered. Finally atop Taewin, Kahira nodded to Ori and me, a vain attempt to convince us that she was not hurt. Before I climbed into my own saddle, I tore a piece of cloth from the clothes of a Dakmoran and handed it to Kahira to wrap her wound. As the three of us gently spurred our horses forward, I caught Kahira’s mournful gaze as she looked down at the fallen Dakmorans. Once again, I listened as she formed unfamiliar words that were barely audible.
After a while, an obviously exhausted Kahira rode up beside me. The bandage on her arm already showed signs of blood seeping through. A stray tendril of black hair was plastered to her cheek, for she made no effort to keep the still steady rain from hitting her face. I looked at the dots above her eye, and sensing she was under my scrutiny, she shifted her attention to me. I didn’t turn away, letting her burning eyes—struggling to remain open—focus on me as well as they could.
I saw sadness in her gaze, and I would have reached out to her, I would have touched her if I could have mustered the courage to close the space between us. I wanted so badly to comfort her, and my lip pulled between my teeth at the realization. It took me a minute, and my heart was beating faster than I thought was possible, but I finally gathered the strength to ask, “Kahira, what happened to you in Dakmor?”
Chapter 14
“I WAS born close to Dakmor’s eastern border.” Kahira’s undamaged arm was draped over Enza’s body, her hand busy running through the dog’s fur. “My family was poor, and most of our relatives were taken by illness or starvation. My mother had fallen ill one winter and never recovered, finally relinquishing her hold on life four months later. We struggled to survive day after day, but my fath
er did all he could to advance the social status of our name—a name I will not bear again as long as I live.”
Earlier, Kahira had promised an explanation for the Dakmorans’ reaction to her. Ori had tried to force a reason from her as we rode on, hoping to avoid any other unfortunate encounters, but the last of Kahira’s energy was being used to keep herself in Taewin’s saddle. However, as soon as we had stopped to make camp and Kahira was able to properly dress her wounds and let her body relax, Ori renewed his efforts. Seeing the exhausted look on Kahira’s swollen face, I felt a twinge of guilt for not stopping Ori’s demands. Thankfully, my conscience eased as Kahira spoke, unwilling to admit even to herself that she needed rest. Now that she was talking to us, albeit hesitantly, I felt anxiety rushing through my body at the thought of sating my curiosity of this woman’s past, and I silently begged nothing would interrupt Kahira’s story.
Still paying no attention to anything but her dog, Kahira continued.
“When I was young, my father managed to get my sister a position working for the lady of the local manor house. She was a diligent employee and managed to gain favor within the house, enough so that when my father sought a position for me, my sister was able to open negotiations. Deciding they had no use for me as a personal servant, they still took me into the household, but essentially threw me in the kitchens. I knew better than to complain, however, for the alternative was quite possibly starvation.”
Kahira drew in a large breath of air, a flicker of pain crossing her expression. “Then, one day, one of the Lord’s messengers fell from his horse as he left the manor, injuring himself badly. Since the message still needed to be delivered, I volunteered to take it. Seeing he had few options, Lord Moray agreed. From then on, I was one of the household’s official messengers, a jump in station I had never expected.
“I eventually became one of Moray’s trusted servants, giving me more access to the castle. The ease with which I moved around, going unnoticed most of the time, gave me incredible freedom and an easier life than I could have ever hoped for. However, that gift is what eventually led to my downfall.”