Chapter 7
Fel reacted instantly, intercepting the warrior as he leaped from the sarcophagus, swinging his bone blade toward Syla’s head. She scrambled back but crashed against the shielder and wouldn’t have evaded death if not for her bodyguard.
Fel knocked the warrior to the ground, but their opponent was agile and twisted in the air to land on his feet. With grace Syla would have admired if the man hadn’t been trying to kill her, he switched the swing of his sword toward Fel.
Using his mace, Fel parried the blow while ordering, “Take cover,” to Syla. “Out of the way.”
As the magical bone blade met the steel of Fel’s mace, clangs ringing out in the chamber, Syla ran around the back of the shielder. She looked for a makeshift weapon or any way to help, irritated to again be a liability instead of an asset to her bodyguard.
If the fierce warrior, who had to be half Fel’s age, bested him, he would come after her. Judging by the glances the man sent her way, she was his target. With flowing black hair, sun-tanned skin, and deep brown eyes, he would have been strikingly handsome if he hadn’t come to assassinate her.
And had he been the one to kill Venia?
When Syla glanced that way, she cursed in surprise. A second warrior was crawling out of the sarcophagus.
For an instant, indignation filled her—it was blasphemy to open a tomb, much less climb into it and onto the remains of the dead—but when the man leaped to the ground, fear over her own predicament replaced the feeling.
With tattooed cheeks and a gargoyle-bone dagger—one identical to the blade in Venia’s chest—the man rushed toward her.
Syla ran around the shielder again, darting past Fel’s engagement with the first warrior, and sprinted for the exit, but an alarming thought made her lurch to a stop. The stormer would easily run her down in the tunnels, and if she left Fel, she would be on her own. Defenseless.
As the man sprinted after her, Syla spotted her pack on the ground and lunged for it. Her first thought was that she would use her book as a weapon, but there wasn’t time to remove it. With the man almost upon her and thrusting with the dagger, she spun and hurled the bag at him.
Even though his brows rose in surprise, he was fast enough to dodge it and lifted an arm to knock it to the ground. The pack skidded into the doorway, stopping at the feet of someone new entering the chamber.
Forsaken by the gods, how many enemies were lurking in here? And why were these men trying to kill Syla instead of capture her, damn it?
She skittered back but bumped into one of the sarcophagi. There was nowhere to run.
But her opponent hadn’t continued to advance on her. He’d spun toward the entrance, his eyebrows rising in surprise again as a black-clad rider strode in, muscled and powerful with a gargoyle-bone sword in his gloved hand. Captain Vorik.
“Sir!” the second warrior blurted as Fel’s fight with the first raged on near the wall, the opponents fully occupied with trying to kill each other. The speaker pointed at Syla, but Vorik sprang at him instead of answering, or even responding to the exclamation.
Though startled, the man got his dagger up to defend himself.
The bone weapons clunked together, the noise different from metal striking metal but sharp and rapid as Vorik swept in with slash after slash.
The clear aggressor, he pressed the younger man, who barely managed to step onto the fallen sarcophagus lid instead of tripping over it.
Unrelenting, the captain kept attacking, the series of blows so fast that Syla didn’t know how anyone could have defended against them.
Throughout, his face remained masked, his jaw set.
He wasn’t even breathing through his mouth.
His opponent was, the man’s eyes wide and confused as he panted, struggling to keep his fellow stormer from killing him.
Why Vorik was trying to kill the man, Syla had no idea, but she glanced to the tunnel, wondering if she could slip past all the fighting and escape. But she couldn’t leave Fel. He was—
A cry of pain came from his fight, and she turned, afraid he’d made the noise.
But it was the younger man who’d dropped to one knee, struggling to keep his blade up as Fel swept the mace toward his head.
Blood streamed through the man’s fingers as he gripped his side with his free hand.
Powering past a weak defense, the mace smashed into the man’s skull.
Movement pulled Syla’s attention back to the other battle.
The younger man had also crumpled to the ground, his back to the sarcophagus, his dagger clattering onto the lid.
Vorik bent, grabbed his shoulder, and thrust his sword into the man’s heart.
His opponent didn’t scream, only gasping and stiffening with his back arching before he collapsed onto his side.
Without a change in expression, Vorik pulled out his sword.
“Come.” Not hesitating or sheathing his weapon, Vorik looked at Syla, though he also glanced at Fel. “More stormers may be down here, looking for the moon-marked. I’ll help you escape the city.”
“We’re not going anywhere with you, rider.” Though blood streamed from a gash at his temple, and his face was bruised from his previous battles, Fel stood straight and snarled, mace at the ready in case he had to fight again.
“It is I who will go with you.” Vorik kept Fel in his peripheral vision, but he focused on Syla. “As I was attempting to say before you flung yourself off my dragon’s back, I’m here to protect you.”
“Your dragon dropped the roof on us and almost killed us,” Fel said.
Syla nodded and walked gingerly around the fallen men to stand not at Vorik’s side but at Fel’s. She needed to stick with her bodyguard and find a safe place where she could use her healing magic on him again. Only grit was keeping Fel upright; she was certain.
“That is true, but it was an accident,” Vorik said. “Agrevlari was unaware of the orders that I received. He knew only of the attack orders from the general.”
“The general who is your superior officer?” Fel asked.
“That he is. He’s quite the grouch though. I can’t recommend serving under him if it’s not a familial duty.”
“We don’t need stormer help.” Fel pointed at the doorway. “Go away.”
“Do pardon my bluntness, but I believe you may have both perished if I hadn’t arrived when I did.” Vorik spoke in a calm tone and didn’t appear harried—he wasn’t even sweaty from his battle—but he did glance toward the tunnel now and then.
Were there more stormers roaming about under the castle?
These had been lying in wait for Syla. Or for someone, anyway.
They might not have known that she specifically would come but must have expected someone in the royal family to do exactly what she’d been attempting, fixing the shielder.
Or at least trying to determine if it could be fixed.
“I could have handled them both.” Fel lifted his chin, though he had to know that was bluster. Even without his injuries, battling two extremely capable stormer warriors at once would have killed him.
Syla almost wished she’d learned how to fight along with her siblings but couldn’t imagine driving a sword into anyone, even a loathed enemy. As a healer, that was anathema to her. Though, if these men had killed her sister, maybe she could have made an exception…
“You can handle the next two by yourself if you wish.” Vorik gestured to the tunnel. “I’ll be magnanimous and let you lead while I walk beside the princess.”
“I’ll bet.” Jaw clenching, Fel strode toward him with his mace raised. “I can imagine what you want to do with her.”
Vorik’s eyes narrowed, and he lifted his sword, a silent promise that he would defend himself. Reminded that Vorik hadn’t wanted to collect Fel back in the courtyard, Syla feared he would kill her bodyguard without batting an eye.
“Stop, Sergeant,” Syla said. “He helped us, so we won’t fight him, but we won’t join him. We’ll—”
Fel did not stop. With his mind perhaps full of imagery of vile atrocities he imagined a dragon rider would inflict on a princess, he swung the mace in a combination of feints and legitimate attacks, an attempt to brain the captain, just as he had the other stormer.
Vorik ignored the feints, somehow reading them easily, and parried the real attacks.
He was shorter than Fel, only a few inches taller than Syla, but fast, agile, and strong.
In between his parries, he gave Syla long-suffering looks.
Fel was unrelenting, his bruised face red as he threw all of his frustrations into the attack.
“Sergeant, stop,” Syla tried again, striding toward them, though she dared not get close to the swinging weapons. With certainty, she sensed that the younger captain—the younger and uninjured captain—could kill her bodyguard whenever he wished.
Indeed, when one of Fel’s attacks swept perilously close to Vorik’s face, the rider lost his patience. He parried twice more, then stepped into Fel, distracting him with a high attack while he hooked his leg around to slam his heel into the back of Fel’s knee.
Her bodyguard, who’d complained often of his chronic joint issues, couldn’t recover from the blow.
His knee buckled, and Vorik used his strength to shove Fel against a wall between two sarcophagi.
With a wrenching grasp, Vorik yanked the mace from Fel’s grip and tossed the weapon away. He raised his sword toward Fel’s neck.
The mace clattered and rolled on its round head to stop at Syla’s feet. She snatched it up with a notion of slamming it into Vorik’s back—or maybe his skull. Anything to keep someone else she cared about from dying this horrible day.
But once Vorik pinned Fel with his weight, the sword resting against the side of his neck, Vorik didn’t move. He could have cut deeply at any moment but didn’t.