Chapter 27 #3
Fel and Tibby were still in her view, navigating across the wash upstream. She didn’t think the men could see them through the boulders, but they would if they drew even with her.
To buy them more time, Syla jumped down and ran off the road in the opposite direction.
The men were gray blurs in her peripheral vision, so she heard more than sensed them turning their horses, harnesses jangling, to follow her.
When she glanced back, she spotted one lifting a crossbow, but another man batted it aside.
“Just capture her,” he snarled.
Off the road, the ground was rocky and uneven, and Syla’s foot caught.
She banged her knee on a boulder and almost fell down.
Body weary from the battering she’d taken the last few days, she was tempted to stop and let them swoop down upon her, but Fel and Tibby would never find the shielder if they were pursued by the soldiers.
Syla needed to keep those men from noticing them.
Clambering over a boulder and down a slope, with the wash roaring right beside her, Syla ran.
In the rough terrain, the men had to dismount and follow her on foot.
That gave her a few more seconds than she might otherwise have had, but the enforcers were taller and faster than she and soon caught up.
One man wrapped an arm around her waist and hoisted her off her feet with a grunt. She wasn’t the lightest of princesses, not like svelte Venia had been, and he staggered. She squirmed about to keep them distracted a little longer.
His grip tightened, and another man arrived, grabbing her by the legs.
“I’m on a mission for the kingdom,” Syla yelled. “I must politely insist that you release me.”
In the awkward position, it was hard to be polite, but she refrained from calling them thugs, brutes, or troglodytes.
They were, after all, men who’d sworn an oath to the crown and who should be loyal to her, if only because she was her parents’ child.
But if she pissed them off, they might forget that.
“We’ve orders, Your Highness,” one said calmly as they toted her back to the road. “We need to take you back with us. It’s for your own protection.”
No, it was so she couldn’t take the shielder.
When they reached the road, the enforcers set her upright beside the armored carriage. It had arrived, its driver gazing across the wash and around the rocky slope as he stopped his horses.
“The temple people said she had a bodyguard,” the man said.
Syla wiped her spectacles, using the gesture to hide her glance up the wash. Fel and Tibby had disappeared.
“I lost him,” she said when several faces turned toward her.
Wet and bedraggled with water running from short hair plastered to their heads and down their shaven faces, the enforcers looked like they would prefer to leave rather than hunting for Fel, but their expressions were skeptical.
“You lost him? On the road from the temple to here?”
“The rider got him.” Syla placed a fist over her heart and looked skyward in a sign of grieving. “The dragon rider.”
“Captain Vorik? Shit. I knew he was still around.”
Several men looked about, hands on their weapons as they surveyed the slope much more carefully than when they’d believed they were only looking for Fel.
“He probably has orders to steal or destroy the shielder, and she was going to lead him right to it.” The man didn’t spit with disgust, but his expression conveyed the feeling nonetheless.
Syla’s cheeks warmed, even though she’d had no intention of doing that. She’d been trying to get rid of Vorik.
But not doing a good job of it, she admitted to herself.
“Why didn’t he kidnap you again?” another enforcer asked. “Especially if he got your bodyguard?”
“He was questioning me, but then he saw your carriage coming in the distance.”
The man swore. “That means he’s close. He was just here.”
Syla nodded, almost wishing Vorik were there.
Even without his dragon, he had the power to drive these men off or at least keep them busy so she could find the shielder.
Except, she reminded herself, he wasn’t an ally.
For the sake of her mission, she ought to wish that he’d fallen from that cliff and been swept out to sea.
Thunder rumbled again.
“Let’s take her back.” One man opened the door in the armored carriage for her.
“That’s most important. If riders are skulking around out here…
Well, we’ll warn the lieutenant, and he can decide if men need to be sent back out to hunt for them.
” In a mutter, he added, “Hopefully after the rain stops.”
Another soldier waved toward the gray sky. “The gods aren’t happy with the riders, and they’re taking it out on us.”
“The gods forsook us long ago.”
Syla let the enforcers guide her into the carriage, noting the thick metal walls and the bars on the window in the door. Even though escaping from the rain had some appeal, she wasn’t pleased by the situation. Especially when the door shut, and a thunk sounded. The lock turning.
She had been demoted from princess to prisoner.