“I could have handled them both.” Fel lifted his chin, though he had to know that was bluster. Even without his injuries, battling two extremely capable stormer warriors at once would have killed him.
Syla almost wished she’d learned how to fight along with her siblings but couldn’t imagine driving a sword into anyone, even a loathed enemy. As a healer, that was anathema to her. Though, if these men had killed her sister, maybe she could have made an exception…
“You can handle the next two by yourself if you wish.” Vorik gestured to the tunnel. “I’ll be magnanimous and let you lead while I walk beside the princess.”
“I’ll bet.” Jaw clenching, Fel strode toward him with his mace raised. “I can imagine what you want to do with her.”
Vorik’s eyes narrowed, and he lifted his sword, a silent promise that he would defend himself. Reminded that Vorik hadn’t wanted to collect Fel back in the courtyard, Syla feared he would kill her bodyguard without batting an eye.
“Stop, Sergeant,” Syla said. “He helped us, so we won’t fight him, but we won’t join him. We’ll?—”
Fel didnotstop. With his mind perhaps full of imagery of vile atrocities he imagined a dragon rider would inflict on a princess, he swung the mace in a combination of feints and legitimate attacks, an attempt to brain the captain, just as he had the other stormer.
Vorik ignored the feints, somehow reading them easily, and parried the real attacks. He was shorter than Fel, only a few inches taller than Syla, but fast, agile, and strong. In between his parries, he gave Syla long-suffering looks. Fel was unrelenting, his bruised face red as he threw all of his frustrations into the attack.
“Sergeant, stop,” Syla tried again, striding toward them,though she dared not get close to the swinging weapons. With certainty, she sensed that the younger captain—the younger anduninjuredcaptain—could kill her bodyguard whenever he wished.
Indeed, when one of Fel’s attacks swept perilously close to Vorik’s face, the rider lost his patience. He parried twice more, then stepped into Fel, distracting him with a high attack while he hooked his leg around to slam his heel into the back of Fel’s knee.
Her bodyguard, who’d complained often of his chronic joint issues, couldn’t recover from the blow. His knee buckled, and Vorik used his strength to shove Fel against a wall between two sarcophagi. With a wrenching grasp, Vorik yanked the mace from Fel’s grip and tossed the weapon away. He raised his sword toward Fel’s neck.
The mace clattered and rolled on its round head to stop at Syla’s feet. She snatched it up with a notion of slamming it into Vorik’s back—or maybe his skull. Anything to keep someone else she cared about from dying this horrible day.
But once Vorik pinned Fel with his weight, the sword resting against the side of his neck, Vorik didn’t move. He could have cut deeply at any moment but didn’t.
Red face pressed against the wall, Fel snarled and flexed his muscles, as if he would shove away and continue the attack, but the blade cut slightly, drawing blood. Inflicting pain.
“Since you don’t trust me to protect your charge, Sergeant,” Vorik said calmly, “it might behoove you to keep yourself alive, if possible.”
Expression aggrieved, Fel looked sideways as much as he could while trapped against the wall, and met Syla’s gaze.
“Let him go…” Syla paused, considering using a derogatory term, but this wasn’t the time to antagonize the rider. “Let him go, Captain Vorik,” she said, struggling for a calm tone of her own. “Sergeant Fel won’t attack you again.”
Since she’d thus far had no luck in ordering Fel to stand down,she doubted Vorik would believe that, but what else could she do to win her bodyguard’s freedom?
“Is that true, Sergeant?” Vorik asked Fel. “If I release you, will you refrain from attacking me again?”
Fel seethed, lip curling, muscles flexing against the man restraining him. If he could have escaped without making any promises, he would have.
“If you won’t give me your word,” Vorik said, his tone growing icy for the first time, “then I must kill you. You won’t be the first kingdom sergeant I’ve put an end to.”
“Oh, I know,” Fel snarled, hatred in his eyes now.
He either blamed Vorik for everything that had happened in the castle and city above, or… he had some other reason to loathe him personally. Syla couldn’t tell, but maybe they’d met in battle before. After all, Fel had identified Vorik on that rooftop without hesitation.
“Your status as our enemy is what prompts us not to believe you have good intentions now,” Syla offered, though neither man was looking at her. They were too busy glaring at each other now.
“That is understandable,” Vorik said, his tone back to being calm and reasonable instead of cold and terrifying. “If we can depart this dangerous place, I’m willing to explain everything, Your Highness.”
Syladidwant to depart, but it had more to do with finding her aunt and trying to engineer the repair of the shielder than listening to explanations from a stormer.
“Are you done trying to kill me, Sergeant?” Vorik asked again.
Fel opened a hand, as if to show he was without a weapon, but he said, “If you place a single finger on her, I will strangle you until your head pops off.”
Vorik looked at Syla, a hint of a rueful smile on his face. “I’m unclear on whether he acquiesced to me or not.”
His face had been handsome before, but the smile made iteven more so. Much like the first warrior, he was striking, the kind of man a girl would swoon over in normal times.
