Page 41 of A Matter of Dragons

CHAPTER TWENTY

Rayne

“You’re sure we’re not lost?” Eadberh asked for what had to have been the hundredth time.

“You sure you’re not just being an asshole?” I replied.

He chuckled. I huffed, then spun around to check our bearings. It’s always hard to keep my sense of direction in the mountains. As I’d followed the meandering valleys and other low places where travel was actually possible, my view of the peaks and landmarks vanished. It’s like crawling through a tunnel with no way of knowing for sure what’s on the other side.

Yes, I knew what the dragon’s cave looked like from Cairncliff. I’d even gone back to Noble’s Hill before we’d left town to sketch the outline of the peaks. Then I’d turned around and sketched the harbor, trying to guess at what landmarks might be visible from the valley beneath the entrance to the dragon’s cave. And trying not to think about that asshole Doshir and how he’d led me through that very street the night before, giggling and tipsy and so turned on that my better judgment might as well have been on the bottom of the ocean for all the good it did.

That asshole dragon Doshir.

“So, we’re scrambling up the right hillside, then?” Eadberh asked.

I bit my lip. There were a lot of trees here; at this point, my view of the harbor was mostly interlaced pine branches and optimistic guesses. But I thought I could make out a few points of light glowing in the dusk that had settled in the valley below, and those had to be the lights of Cairncliff.

“We are almost assuredly scrambling up the right hillside,” I declared.

Eadberh crossed his arms over his chest. “That almost worries me.”

“Oh, give it up,” I said. “I asked if you wanted to be the navigator. I asked several times, for the record.”

“Wouldn’t do it for my life,” Eadberh replied. “You know I’m terrible at directions—”

His voice cut off as a horse snorted in the trees below us. We stared at each other in the weak light. We’d left our two horses hobbled in a grassy aspen grove; we knew we’d have to leave them at some point, and this slope had looked too steep to navigate on horseback.

But that sound wasn’t coming from the aspen grove we’d left almost an hour ago. It was closer. Much closer. Eadberh’s hand dropped to the sword at his hip.

“Maybe it’s Vil,” he whispered.

I wrapped my hand around my own sword. “We can hear you,” I yelled at the trees.

There was the clatter of rocks sliding on the hillside below us, followed by another little snort. Fear tightened my muscles and made the night air rising from the ground feel cold. Had some assholes from the village actually tried to follow us? Was someone trying to rob us out here, on the side of a mountain?

Shit.

I made a quick check of our surroundings. Not great. This hillside was loose stone and overgrown brush, which made for bad footing and bad coverage. If someone really was trying to rob us, it would be better to face them on more level footing, with less brush for an ambush. Eadberh made a slow, soft hiss. I turned to face him. He nodded pointedly down the slope, then glanced at his fingers. Two, three, four, five. Pause. Another twitch of his head up the slope. No fingers.

His best guess was five people below, none above. I nodded, then pointed down the slope. Eadberh and I could take five untrained, idiotic highwaymen. Eadberh returned my nod and turned to descend the slope. As he moved, I bent down, grabbed a rock, and threw it into the brush above us. With any luck, it would sound like we were still climbing.

The steep, rocky hillside bled into a grove of scraggly pine trees roughly ten paces below us. Eadberh and I moved down the hill as slowly and silently as possible. Still, I felt horribly exposed. The sickly little shrubs clinging to life on this side of the mountain offered scant coverage, and it wasn’t fully dark yet. Against the pale scree of the mountainside, we must have stuck out like two enormous, fat field mice just waiting for the hawk.

More sounds filtered up as we made our slow, painful descent down the rock field. Another horse snorted. Hooves clicked against stones. There was even what sounded like a cough, quickly muffled. I sank my teeth into my lower lip. Eadberh had said five. We stood a chance against five. But more than that—

Eadberh held up his fist, and I stopped. The darkness beneath the pine trees was thick and rich, like velvet. Slowly, Eadberh eased his blade from the sheath on his waist. I followed suit, muffling the sound by bracing my sheath with my palm. Eadberh’s blade winked in the dusk. He turned back to me, his face all sharp lines and hard angles, and raised one finger. Beckoning. My muscles tensed, and my heartbeat seemed to slow. The forest came into sharp focus, the secret tangles of branches, the tiny, hidden insects singing in the trees. The horses shifting restlessly. Their riders shrouded in the shadows.

I nodded to Eadberh, then stepped forward. I had better night vision, and I made a smaller target. Of course, I would go first; he didn’t even need to ask. Raising my blade against the night, I stepped into the pine grove.

Sudden light flared in the deep shadows, blinding me. I winced and recoiled; someone barked a command. There was a scuffle of feet against rock. I spun, raised my blade, and brought it down in a clash of metal. A face growled out at me from the cage of our crossed blades. A familiar face. A sudden flash of recognition made my arms weak; he pushed back against me, and I staggered.

Another clash of swords. I spun away from my attacker and saw Eadberh spinning his blade. The man who’d attacked me pivoted, turning toward Eadberh. I saw his profile; thin nose, thick lips, and greasy, pale hair. His face made me think of practice dummies, of training in the courtyard.

“That’s quite enough,” a voice called.

The attacker stopped. The men spun toward the light, and I followed their gaze, keeping my blade raised. A man stood in the pine forest with a torch raised above his head and a lazy, sardonic smile on his thin lips.

Captain Niglan Olovan. I suddenly felt very cold. What in all nine hells was a Captain in His Majesty’s Royal Army doing in the Knife’s Edge mountains?