“Sergeant!” a rider called from the road ahead. “There’s someone out here. An arrow?—”
“Shit, Boszik!”
Hand clutched to his heart, Tunnok lunged for the door.
Syla lowered her own hand, willing her power to release him. Feeding on her emotions, it almost had a mind of its own, and several long seconds passed before the silver tendril disappearedand her moon-mark stopped glowing. Finally, Tunnok was able to open the door and stumble out of the carriage.
It had stopped moving. Outside, horses neighed in terror. Tunnok straightened and looked around, but before he stepped away from the door, someone shouted a warning. It came too late. A white arrow whizzed out of the gloom and lodged in his eye.
With new terror swarming her, Syla lunged to the far side of the carriage, putting her back against the wall and hoping the metal would protect her. The legs of another enforcer flopped into view, someone else downed by an arrow. Agargoyle-bonearrow.
“Vorik?” she wondered, but he hadn’t managed to keep his bow when he’d fallen into the ocean. Only his sword. It had been in the scabbard strapped to his back.
Shouts outside accompanied thetwang-thwumpsof crossbows firing. Scared equine screeches and snorts drowned out the calls of the men, and Syla expected the horses harnessed to the carriage to take off running. But it didn’t move, even when thundering hooves announced at least some horses departing. Maybe arrows had sliced through the harnesses? Or someone had cut them?
“Take cover behind the carriage!” a man yelled.
“She’s up there!”
She?
That couldn’t be Vorik.
More crossbows fired, but the enemy archer was far deadlier than the enforcers. A crossbow quarrel went astray, hit the door, and ricocheted into the carriage. Syla jumped as it clipped the wall inches from her head.
She might die at the hands of her own people. Not that she was sure these enforcers counted as that. She looked grimly at Tunnok’s body. He wasn’t moving, and she suspected that had been a mortal wound. Whatever he’d been, it hadn’t been an ally, and she struggled to feel remorse for his passing.
She crept toward the door, thinking to close it as some measure of protection. Too bad she didn’t have the key. As she pulled it shut, she glimpsed the enemy and paused, gaping. She’d seen that woman before.
It was the rider captain who’d attacked Wreylith, who’d wantedSyla.
Silver hair pulled back in a severe braid, she leaped, somersaulted, and attacked the men, some firing at her and some rushing up into the rocky terrain toward her with swords. None of them came close to hitting her. Like other riders, she wore black gloves that hid her hand and whether or not she was tattooed. But within seconds of watching her fight, Syla knew she was like Vorik, bonded to a dragon and flush with its power. And, when the woman’s cool gaze skimmed across Syla, her blue eyes lighting with triumph, Syla knew the captain still planned to kill her.
It grew quiet outside the armored carriage, and Syla feared her escorts—no, they’d ultimately been her captors—had all been killed. All by one woman.
One dragon-rider woman who was as strong a fighter as Vorik. As strong and as deadly.
Having no delusions about the captain being part of a friendly faction or here to help her in any way, Syla rooted through her pack, seeking something she could use to defend herself. She’d just learned she could use her power for more than healing, but she doubted that would be enough against the magically-enhanced rider woman.
Syla lifted one of the big green Candles of Serenity but snorted. There was no way this enemy would allow herself to be locked in a space with no ventilation. The carriage would have worked wonderfully for knocking someone out, but it wasn’t as if the rider captain would look at Syla and think thoughts similar to those of that ambitious sergeant.
“Maybe I can club her with it.”
Syla thought of her aunt’s belief that she might do that to Vorik and would have smiled, but she was too worried. She hoped Fel and Tibby were far away, that the rider hadn’t chanced upon them first.
After returning the candle to her pack, Syla poked around, rejecting the food and water she’d brought. Her knuckles brushed against the wings of the dragon figurine, and she pulled it out.
The magical glass felt cool in her hand, not warm and inviting. Besides, as she’d been thinking earlier, there wasn’t a way for Wreylith to reach her, even if the dragon could be convinced to help.
The door opened with a bang, revealing the rider captain, stone-faced and cold, with a sword pointed toward the interior of the carriage. Toward Syla.
Syla eased the figurine back into the pack, not wanting to draw her enemy’s attention to it, lest she take it, but the sharp-eyed captain caught the movement.
“Throw your pack out, and then, you, follow,” she ordered.
“What happened to the enforcers, Captain… ah?” Syla asked to buy time to think. She knew perfectly well what had happened to the men.
“I’m Captain Lesva of the Moonhunt Tribe, and what happened to them is the same that’s destined to happen to all gardeners who stand in our way and have no use.” The woman smiled coolly, without a hint of compassion in her eyes. “You have a use. For the moment.”
