Chapter 33 #2
His captive blinks at him. “No. You must—” A more urgent tone breaks through the refusal. “They told me to scout ahead and report back. I—” His voice flattens all over again. “Let me go. You have no reason to detain me.”
Alek lets out a faint snort. “Oh, I’d say we have plenty of reason.”
I kneel by the new daimon’s head. “How close is the march? Which direction from here?”
Whatever bit of freedom the daimon managed to regain, he’s lost it again. His mouth stays clamped shut.
Rheave glances around and lifts his chin in one direction. “He was coming from that way. They can’t be very far if he was able to scout over here on foot, can they?”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Stavros says darkly. He peers down at the man. “If you’ll let us help you, we’ll do our best. But we can’t do anything as long as you’re working with them.”
The man jerks against Rheave’s hold. “I don’t need your help.”
Casimir rests his hand against my hair. “What are we going to do with him? We can’t let him go running back to the march.”
But we’re not in any position to keep prisoners. My stomach knots as I grope for an answer—
Rheave bows his head. “I will release you from the bonds they’ve forced on you.”
As the last word leaves his lips, a surge of energy crackles out of him. It blackens the man beneath him for just an instant before that body stiffens into the clay it was made from.
A brief glimmer that could have been just a quiver of sunlight flits away from my view. I guess that is the other way the daimon can get free.
Rheave sits back on his heels. Just for a second, he looks weary.
I know he thinks his brethren are better off back in their natural state than under the scourge sorcerers’ control. Still, destroying their chances of enjoying their new bodies the way he has mustn’t feel good.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
He glances up at me, and the flicker of a smile that crosses his face brings back his adoring words and the eager press of his body against mine. “It had to be done. I’m glad I could deal with him on my own.”
He stands abruptly and tucks his arms around me in a tight embrace. “I came back like I promised.”
My heart skips a beat with his warmth and woodsy scent wrapped around me. There’s a soft chuckle behind me that I think is Casimir.
I’m still too jumbled up inside to know where I’d want to take the affection the daimon-man insists on offering me, if anywhere at all. But I am relieved that he kept his promise.
Even if nothing more intimate ever passes between us, I don’t want to lose him, especially not out of some misguided sense of martyrdom.
So I tip my head against his shoulder just for a second, my hands resting on his sides and then easing him back from me. I make myself meet his unearthly blue-green gaze. “Thank you. I don’t want you ever doing that again. It’ll only make things worse, not better. None of us wants you gone.”
“That’s right,” Stavros says in his commanding military tone. “We’re our own kind of squadron now, and you’ve contributed just as much as the rest of us. We’re stronger together.”
Casimir steps forward to grasp Rheave’s shoulder. “One thing you should know about humans is we all make mistakes. No one goes through life without causing any damage at all, accidentally or otherwise. We won’t judge you for it.”
Rheave’s eyes widen. His gaze slides to Alek, who nods with a small but warm smile. “I can’t imagine us going forward without you.”
The daimon-man’s mouth forms a hesitant smile of his own in return. “I’ve been so glad to live alongside you all. I’d very much like to keep doing so.”
I resist the urge to hug him all over again. “Then let’s all go see what the scourge sorcerers are up to.”
We veer back toward our fledgling campsite so Rheave can grab his bow and arrows. Inhaling deeply, I focus my mind on the now-familiar pattern of whisking our images away from sight while presenting them some other place where no one’s likely to notice.
Feeling the magic seeping out of me to do my work makes me tense up, but I push away those worries.
It’s just a little power expended. I’ve been doing this much for days on end without getting all that addled.
And we can hardly stroll up to the Order of the Wild’s march fully visible and expect a warm welcome.
We emerge from the woods and venture across the field beyond. A carriage rattles by along the road to our left, but otherwise there’s no sign of human presence.
Which of course doesn’t mean anything as far as the scourge sorcerers are concerned.
Just as the town bell peals for the fifth hour of the afternoon, the first tingle of nearby magic grazes my skin. I halt, absorbing the sensation, and adjust my course.
The men follow close behind me. I veer a little more to the right and then to the left again, judging where the sensation intensifies and fades by tiny increments. After a minute or two, I’m sure we’re heading straight toward its source.
As we tramp across the yellowed winter grass and through another thicket of trees, the aura of magic thickens. A few paces beyond the thicket in a sprawling clearing, the tingle penetrates right into my bones.
I stop again and make a gesture to warn the others that we’re almost on them. Then I push forward, one careful step at a time.
It takes five more, and with the last of those, the camp materializes before my eyes.
An Order member is standing guard so close at my right that I could touch him if I leaned over. With a hitch of my pulse, I scoot in the other direction to give us some breathing room.
Throughout the rest of the camp, men and women are bustling around.
It looks as if they’ve just arrived. No tents have gone up yet, and the horses are all still saddled, standing amid their potential riders.
Only a couple of campfires are burning toward the middle of the area, near the three covered wagons that I suspect hold the sacrificial accomplices.
As I take in the activity, my heart sinks. Have even more scourge sorcerers and unwitting dupes joined the march since we last saw them several days ago? There must be over a thousand figures hurrying this way and that.
Maybe not much compared to the entire royal army, but most of that army isn’t here. And none of it is truly prepared to contend with the power of scourge sorcery.
Fuck.
Alek comes up beside me. He nudges my arm and points to a cluster around one of the carts.
The people there are all grabbing objects out of the cart… and suiting up in a mix of padded vests, chain mail, and wooden or metal helms.
My lungs constrict. When my gaze darts across the terrain more intently, I notice a woman pointing out features on a map to a small group of on-lookers.
“They’re already preparing for battle,” I murmur.
Stavros frowns. “It certainly appears that way.”
If we had any doubt left, Borys’s voice rings out through the camp from somewhere at the far end, beyond my view. “Let’s get on with it! The faster we can make the final march, the less prepared King Konram will be.”
Julita’s presence winces in the back of my head.
I stiffen with a lurch of my gut. “They’re going to attack tonight. There’s no way any reinforcements could have arrived already.”
Stavros’s face has grayed. “We need to sound a warning. There are troops in the area—local guards—it wouldn’t take long for them to ride here. Most of these people aren’t even armed yet. If we can strike them when they’re not prepared… We can at least stall them.”
“And it’ll be clear the threat is real,” Casimir adds. “But how are we going to bring anyone here to help us when they won’t even see an army gathered?”
My heart thuds even faster, a nauseating but firm sense of resolve rising in my chest. “Casimir, you brought your new horn, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but it won’t do any good if anyone it summons can’t see the problem.”
“Let me worry about that.” I turn to Stavros. “Get one of the horses and ride to town or whatever the nearest fortress is. Alert whoever you can and send them this way. When they’re in sight, I’ll take care of the rest.”
Stavros gives me an anguished look. “Are you sure?”
Ignoring the dread pooling in my belly, I give him a shove. “Yes. Get going, before it’s too late to do anything at all.”
The former general raises his fist, and I tap it automatically alongside the other men. As he lopes back toward our camp, I extend my magic along his path.
When he’s well out of view, I yank the stream of power back to me. The other men gather closer around.
I touch Rheave’s arm. “We’re not going to do anything to call attention to ourselves until we have back-up. But when I give the word, you can start shooting anyone you can tell is a daimon. And anyone at all you see giving orders.”
He shrugs his bow off his shoulder and retrieves an arrow, his beautiful face set with total determination. “I’ll take down as many as I can.”
I reach to Alek and Casimir next. “You two will also need to be ready with your weapons. If you stay close, I think I can keep us concealed while I’m working more magic—the invisibility effect doesn’t take that much concentration anymore—but they might realize where my power is coming from.
I won’t be able to focus on defending myself. ”
Despite his past hesitations, Alek draws his knife immediately. Casimir unsheathes his dagger as well.
All my men are in this with me. I just have to make sure I don’t let them down.
But we have to wait until we have reinforcements of one sort or another. We can’t take on a thousand would-be soldiers all on our own.
Or, maybe I could, but I can already feel a shudder running through my thoughts just preparing for what I’m about to do. Even if I wanted to slaughter all these people indiscriminately… I’m pretty sure I’d lose myself in the process.
And that might be even worse for the kingdom than letting the scourge sorcerers attack.
The sun sinks to the tops of the trees. The Order of the Wild members pass around a hasty dinner. Sweat beads on my back beneath my cloak.
And off behind us, a holler carries alongside the pounding of dozens of hooves. “This way!”
I drag a breath into my clenched lungs. “Now!”
Then I hurl out a wave of my power—not at the people in the camp, but at the haze of magic surrounding it.