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Aric’s grin faded. “I wouldn’t use that word.” He only paused for a beat. “There’s a refugee inside who was, up to today, an accepted resident of this village. But the headman has cast her out to appease their newfound distaste for Zrynians. She has nowhere else to go, and her magic apparently only manifested in response to today’s invasion, so she’s collapsed from exhaustion.”
Viveca deflated and crossed her arms. “So she’s vulnerable and being blamed by association for this shit-show she’s not even responsible for.”
“Precisely. And I need you to protect her until I’m done.” Aric gestured toward the heart of the village as a fresh plume of smoke rose into the air. The barbarians were still firebombing, apparently.
Viveca sighed. “Well, I suppose glaring at assholes is better than watching smoke blow in the wind.”
His lips twitched. “Just don’tstartany fights, please. And I can’t imagine you’ll need your sword.”
She waved him off, already turning. “I get it, I get it. Take it easy on the twitchy civilians. Sure thing.”
He bit back a sigh as she rounded the building’s corner in the direction of the door. Why did it feel like this isolated, half-assed invasion attempt had gotten so out of hand?
“Aric?” The inquiry came from Cecilia, catching him in a poorly chosen moment of reflection as she angled her head around the same corner Viveca had just cleared. She cocked a teal-dyed brow, her matching hair dancing in the wind. “Why did Viv just go inside?”
“I need her to practice her bodyguarding skills,” he said. He gave himself a mental shake and continued forward, resting a hand on his longtime friend’s shoulder. “How are you holding up?”
She let out a huff of air. “The barrier’s no problem. Darnel’s doing most of the work keeping the Zrynian’s back, so I know Viv’s been getting restless. But why would someoneinsideneed protection? Is there something else going on?”
A semi-distant clang reverberated through the air and Aric turned his attention outward again. “Nothing dramatic. But keep the barrier up for a while still. I’ll go check on your cousin.”
“Sure.”
Aric nodded at her and strode away from the shielded building. No firebomb or physical assault would pierce Cecilia’s barrier, and as long as Darnel remained in charge of the defense, he trusted that no harm would come to her. The two were cousins by birth, but they’d been raised more like siblings. Darnel was perhaps the most capable Royal Knight of his generation. If anyone could match the raw strength and skill of a Zrynian with a blade, it was him.
Aric made it to Darnel’s position—forward from the building’s primary entrance—in time to see the knight parry what might have been a deadly swing. The Zrynian man rocked back, off balance for a moment. Darnel recovered faster, moving in to take advantage of his opponent’s opening. Aric watched as fresh blood splattered on the ground and Darnel kicked the broader man off his sword with a booted foot.
“That’s at least the third man you’ve not actually killed,” Aric said. He kept his eyes on the moaning, twitching, bleeding barbarian several feet ahead.
“We’re supposed to capture as many of them as we can,” Darnel said. “Those were our orders, weren’t they?”
Aric shook his head with a wry grin. “So that’s what mood you’re in. Fine. Have you seen anything useful?” As he spoke, he lifted a hand and created solid bindings around the fallen barbarian’s wrists, arms, and ankles. Like shackles.
Darnel pointed in the direction of the new smoke plume. “I saw a pair run off that way just before the smoke started rising. Do you think they could be after something specific?”
“The general destruction of a seemingly innocent border town, which we had all believed was protected by a magical border wall,” Aric replied. He started forward. “That alone would unsettle most every other border community from here to the seaport. Probably inland, too. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.”
Darnel chuckled. “That I doubt.”
Aric shared his bitter chuckle for a moment, then increased his speed as he proceeded through the village once more. A general direction was fine, but things were still too uncertain. What he needed to do was get one alone, and alive, and pillage their brain for answers. How many did they number? Was this as isolated an attack as it looked on the surface? What was the purpose—the goal? All were questions King Jensen would want answers to. Meaning they were answers Aric needed to get, and he had never met a Zrynian who talked willingly.
As Aric came upon the newer fires, he extinguished them. He scoured the partially destroyed and ransacked buildings, gardens, and stands for anything that required his attention. Survivors in need of healing. Dead who would need proper send-offs. Enemies he could vent his ever-mounting frustration on.
The Zrynians seemed to have chosen a dodge-and-strike sort of tactic for this invasion. That, or their baser instincts had them keeping a wide berth of him, specifically. That would be amusing, but Aric was losing his patience. So he closed his eyes for a moment and spread his senses out, expanding his awareness over the village. Up to the faintly pulsating magic wall that was supposed to separate the kingdom of Yafae from the nation of Zrynia, out and around in a wide, invisible net.
Darnel was again engaged in combat with another warrior. Behind him, Cecilia leaned against the wall of Corast Hall. A steady flow of mana rolled from her into the dome-like barrier she’d established around the building. Her gaze flicked up, skyward, as if she sensed something. On the other side of the building, two men who worked as Corast’s resident guards continued the patrol Darnel had assigned them.
Inside the hall, the citizens of Corast huddled together and ambled around, still tense and frightened. Mitzi worked on healing a young man several paces from where Viveca sat, at the side of the unconscious woman Aric had asked her to guard. Rochelle. Even using this tactic of observation, he could tell the magic slowly re-energizing inside her was strong. But there was something else about her that called to him, something he hoped to look into when this job was done.
He forced his attention beyond the hall once more, outward in a spiral. Locating the already captured and mostly injured barbarians. A few scattered defeated ones. The pile of mangled corpses where Aric had first spotted Rochelle, when she’d boldly screamed at two butchers in an effort to prevent them from further desecrating the dead. Andthere, on the interior edge of Corast, was a lone Zrynian simply hunkered in place. Not hacking apart a body or setting anything on fire, but seemingly waiting. Perhaps biding his time. Without knowing their purpose it was hard to guess, but this was exactly the opening Aric needed.
A thought was all it took to travel the distance between them.
The Zrynian’s head snapped up, pale brown eyes blowing wide as he leapt to his feet. “Sorcerer!”
“Sentry,” Aric corrected. “I am the Sentry of Yafae.”
The Zrynian tightened his grip on his weapon. “I have heard of your curse, Tainted One.”
