Page 3 of Heart of the Desert

I turned to quip at Erix that he might have shot me if he were any less of a hunter but was cut off by a grunt and a white-hot flash of pain in my consciousness.

Erix’s sleeve was torn, a shallow gash cut into the bare skin of his bicep beneath. He had not fired past me. Somebody else had shot at us. Then I heard it: The hammer of hoof beats approaching. The sound vibrated through the earth, clearly having scared the oryx away moments before, although I had been too busy aiming to hear it.

I whirled back toward the slight dip the oryx fled from in time to see a dozen riders spill over the opposite rise. Heat rushed to my face. Somebody was attacking us, and the camp—Aderyn and Neven and all those who had taken us in after my fall—was in danger.

Before I could puzzle out who these riders were, an angry cry came from my side as Alza leapt forward, Erix already drawing his saber as they charged.

The frenetic buzz of battle filled my mind. My muscles bunched of their own volition, spurring Daiti forward to follow hot on Erix’s heels. The corded grip of my saber was rough but familiar under my hand as Erix and I charged side by side at the attacking riders.

We did not slow as the clash approached. The unfamiliar riders bore no sashes, and their weapons were strange: They were no clansmen. My closest assailant leveled some sort of pole arm at me, but I batted it aside as I barreled past, letting my outstretched saber catch him across the chest and drive him from his mount.

I didn’t wait for him to hit the ground, turning to find my next opponent, the white-hot buzz of battle flooding my mind in record time. I threw myself flat on Daiti’s neck as hooves kicked at the air where my head had been before. As the attacking horse fell back to four legs, I looked to its rider, ready to punch him from his mount—still having enough rational thought left in my mind to know leaving a few attackers alive to interrogate would be wise—but my eyes caught on the horse’s face.

Its eyes rolled back in its head as if in panic, and foam dripped from its mouth, coating the bit between its teeth.

Horror clawed at my throat, a choking, horrible thing. This was a mount of the Ballan Desert, but no rider of Kelvadan or the clans would ever subject their horse to a bit or bridle. Even a lead rope was considered an insult to anything but the freshest of foals.

These riders were not of the desert, and these horses did not belong to them.

My plans of leaving an enemy alive forgotten, I sat up and plunged my saber through my assailant’s chest. He was too busy with the reins in his hands to get his weapon up in time to stop me. I snarled as I wrenched my blade free of his corpse, scattering a spray of blood across myself and Daiti.

The thick droplets burned hot against my skin as they hit my cheeks. I whirled on my next opponent, sword already raised to slash across his chest. Before I could bring down my blade, I caught a glimmer of fear in his pale eyes, and my heart stuttered. It wasn’t enough to pull me from the growing rage of battle.

Crimson bloomed across his tunic as my blow caught him squarely. He slid off his horse and hit the ground with a thump, punctuated by horrid cracks as his panicking mount trampled him underfoot.

Three more riders fell to my blade in quick succession, each blow I landed more lethal than the last. Corpses littered the valley around me as I felled the last of the enemies, but the eerie silence that often came after a battle did not fall. I squinted against the odd clamoring, taking a second to realize that the sound did not come from my ears, but was clawing up from the bond in my belly.

I turned Daiti around to find Erix behind me. His eyes were wide and wild, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl. He whipped his head back and forth as if looking for another enemy, but they were all already dead. Daiti sidled closer to him as the hand not holding his bloodied saber reached toward his wounded arm. I thought he meant to cover the slash, but instead, he dug his fingers into the wound in a way that made me let out a hiss of a breath through bared teeth.

He had used pain to calm his magic before. Queasiness washed over me as blood dribbled down to his wrist.

I reached out and snatched his hand away, interlacing my fingers with his own. A shrill shriek like somebody raking a saber over a boulder momentarily deafened me before it began to fade, leaving a faint taste like blood on my tongue as it receded. Erix blinked rapidly, and finally his silver eyes focused on me.

“No pain. Not when I’m here,” I insisted, my voice sharper than I meant it to be.

He hesitated a moment before nodding sharply. I swallowed thickly before dipping my chin in return. Erix had not said as much, but I could tell his magic grew more difficult to calm these days, and he slipped into old ways of anchoring himself as he became more desperate. The lines on his back that I traced through his tunic every night as we held each other reminded me just what lengths he would go to, but I would not let it happen when there were alternatives.

My touch still seemed to calm him.

“Come,” I said, tugging his hand. “Let’s help these poor horses.”

That pulled Erix the rest of the way from the fugue of battle that seemed to stick to him incessantly, like date juice on my fingers. We both dismounted and each walked to one of the nearby mounts of the fallen riders. They had not fled but stood around pawing the ground uncomfortably and tossing their heads.

The chestnut gelding I approached wore some sort of saddle cinched around his middle. I did not bother searching for the buckles to loosen it, instead drawing my dirk from my belt and slicing through the leather strap. I shoved it from his back distastefully, letting it fall to the ground next to the corpse of his rider in a puff of dust. I moved to the bridle next, pulling a metal bit from between his teeth and lifting it over his ears. Immediately, the gelding shook his head violently, as if glad to be free of the contraption.

I patted him reassuringly on the nose, before hurrying to the next horse. I was shoving the saddle of a third one to the ground when Erix called my name.

“Keera!”

I looked over my shoulder to find him holding a length of green cloth—a sash of a rider from Clan Otush.

“I don’t think Lord Dhara’s spy will be returning,” he said grimly.

The sash was stained dark with what looked like a splatter of blood. A metal pin, wrought in the shape of a fennec fox, still decorated the garment but was badly dented and nearly broken in two, as if from a savage blow with a heavy weapon.

“Calix,” I said through gritted teeth.

“It would seem his conquering heart is not content with just taking the Great City,” Erix bit out. He reached into the leather bag strapped to the saddle he had been removing—apparently where he had found the ill-fated spy’s sash—now pulling out a folded piece of paper. It was sealed with blue-green wax. Erix barely glanced at the pattern of some tentacled beast emblazoned on it before cracking it open and ripping into the letter so forcefully I feared he might tear the parchment.