Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
Everything hurt. Her mouth was gummy. Her brain banged against her skull.
She cracked her eyes open. The world was fire and smoke and twisted metal.
Figures picked their way through the debris. “There are two more over here!”
Then a person was standing over her, kneeling, pressing a chemical-smelling rag to her face. And she was fading back into the darkness once more.
Pip groaned and shifted. She seemed to be lying on something hard and metal, her arms twisted at an awkward angle as something unyielding dug into her wrists. Her head pounded like a ball-peen hammer was rapping at her skull.
“That’s it. Take it easy. Crashing isn’t fun.” A voice was talking in a soothing tone.
She groaned again and blinked her gritty eyes, squinting as she struggled to focus.
She was in the cargo bed of a military truck. The floor and sides were metal while canvas was stretched on metal ribbing above her head. Her hands were shackled to a rail at the front of the cargo space.
Prince Edmund sat with his back to the front of the cargo bed, his arms twisted to the side since they, too, were shackled to the rail.
His clothes, both the Mongavarian uniform and the Escarlish clothing beneath, were ripped, blackened, and begrimed.
But he didn’t appear to have any cuts or gashes.
He regarded her with a searching look. “Are you all right?”
“I think so.” When she pulled herself into a sitting position, her head pounded, her muscles ached, but nothing screamed with intense pain. “Just a horrible headache.”
“Getting knocked out from the crash, then sedated will do that.” Prince Edmund rolled his head on his neck, as if trying to work out kinks. “But it doesn’t appear either of us was hurt worse than that. Thanks to your magic, no doubt.”
Pip nodded, as she performed a more thorough assessment of herself. Both feet were working. As were her legs. All her fingers moved, and breathing didn’t hurt. All in all, she was in far better shape than she had a right to be after falling from the sky.
She glanced around, but she and Prince Edmund were alone. “Where are Fieran and Prince Farrendel?”
“I don’t know. I woke up only a few minutes before you did.” Prince Edmund shifted again, as if trying to find a more comfortable position with his hands shackled.
“Then…should I…” Pip gave a small tug on the shackles. They were metal. She could easily release both herself and Prince Edmund. “We can—”
“Not in Escarlish,” Prince Edmund cut in, speaking in dwarvish with only a trace of an accent. “I’m guessing none of the Mongavarians will know this language. They might have a few soldiers who learned elvish over the past seventy years, but likely not dwarvish.”
“You speak dwarvish?” Pip replied in the same language, gaping at Fieran’s uncle. No wonder he’d been a part of the diplomatic mission to Dalorbor. If she were to guess, he hadn’t let her family know he spoke the language.
“It seemed prudent to learn.” Prince Edmund shrugged. “I have a knack for languages, and thanks to my heart bond, I have plenty of time to make a hobby out of it. How’s my accent?”
“I can tell you aren’t a native dwarf, but I wouldn’t necessarily pick you out as Escarlish just from your accent.” Pip gave a shrug of her own, which rattled the shackles.
“I’ll have to keep working on it, then. I haven’t had any dwarves to practice with.” Prince Edmund lifted his hands, making his own shackles clank. “As to your question, yes, you might as well remove our shackles so we can talk more comfortably.”
She’d been thinking more on the lines of escaping rather than talking. But talking through a plan was probably wise instead of just diving out the back canvas flaps, running pell-mell in a random direction, and hoping for the best.
Easing her magic into the shackles, she gently opened the metal so that she could free her wrists. Something told her that she shouldn’t destroy the shackles too much, in case she and Prince Edmund wanted to put them back on, for some unknown reason.
After taking just a moment to rub her wrists and shake out her arms, she reached over and freed Prince Edmund’s hands as well. “So…what’s our plan?”
“Farrendel does not take to captivity very well.” Prince Edmund rubbed his wrists and settled into a more comfortable sitting position.
“As we haven’t heard any explosions and screaming, I’m guessing Farrendel and Fieran either aren’t here or are still unconscious.
We can’t make a move until we’ve discovered which it is. ”
Right. If they were here but unconscious, it would be up to her and Prince Edmund to rescue them as part of their escape plan.
“All right.” Pip swallowed and hugged her knees, despite the stiffness in her muscles and bones. “And if they aren’t here, then we escape?”
“Not necessarily.” Prince Edmund held up two fingers, pointing to the first finger with his other hand.
“We have two options. We can escape, but then we’ll spend the next days and possibly weeks on the run in a foreign kingdom.
Trust me, it’s terribly uncomfortable. No food.
No supplies. Nothing but the clothes on our backs and whatever we manage to steal along the way. ”
That did sound rather unpleasant. Her chest twisted. She wasn’t cut out for this. She was a mechanic, not a spy used to being hunted. “And our other option?”
“We stay where we’re at.” Pointing at his second finger, Prince Edmund said it as if it was perfectly logical to remain captured when one could escape.
“The Mongavarians will nicely provide us with transportation to wherever they’re taking us.
We’ll be fed, probably given blankets at night, and hopefully they’ll treat you reasonably well. ”
“Me? Not you?” Pip dug her fingers into the grimy fabric of her trousers.
“I’m the most wanted man in all of Mongavaria. I don’t think treating me nicely will be on their priority list.” Prince Edmund was far too nonchalant about that.
“More wanted than Prince Farrendel or Fieran?” Pip hugged her knees tighter.
“By the basic soldier on the ground? Probably not. By the Mongavarian empress? Oh, yeah.” Prince Edmund gave another rolling, elven-style shrug. “Which is why I’m reasonably sure they’ll take us to Landri. She’ll want to oversee my execution herself.”
“So we’ll escape before then?” Pip eyed Prince Edmund. Surely he had escape somewhere in his plans.
“No, not unless Farrendel and Fieran are here somewhere. I won’t leave Farrendel captured if I can help it.
” Prince Edmund met her gaze. “But if they aren’t here, then Landri is exactly where we need to be.
We’ll just have to be clever about it. It’s where Farrendel will head once he gets free of wherever he is, and we’ll have help arriving in about a week and a half. ”
That mysterious second half of the plan. The part she and Fieran hadn’t been told. It seemed that she would find herself tagging along with crazy Prince Edmund.
“We have one big advantage.” Prince Edmund nodded his head toward her. “They clearly don’t know about your magic.”
That was true. They’d locked her up in a metal box with metal shackles.
“Do you think they realize I have magic?” Pip gestured at their surroundings, the canvas stretched tight over the metal ribs arching overhead.
“I doubt it. Yes, being shackled like this would make it difficult for your average elf warrior to escape.” Prince Edmund stretched his legs out in front of him.
“But we’ve also been left alone, without a guard.
They’re pretty confident in our inability to escape.
Something tells me they wouldn’t be so confident if they thought you had magic of any kind. ”
“So I probably should keep my ears hidden.” Pip reached up, ensuring that her straggling and frizzing hair covered her ears. “Strange they didn’t check.”
“Likely a subconscious oversight. You don’t exactly look like your typical elf warrior.
” Prince Edmund sighed and leaned his head against the canvas stretched tight across the front of the cargo bed.
“The good news is they’re going to underestimate you.
The bad news is, if they don’t think you have magic, then they probably assume you’re one of my spies. ”
“That would explain why they have divided us up like this.” Pip shifted, trying to find a more comfortable spot. Her head was still aching, and, despite how much time she’d been unconscious, she still wanted sleep. “The two with magic together, and the two spies together.”
“Yes. At least, we can only hope they are together and just in another truck in this same convoy.” Prince Edmund held out his arm. “I know we don’t know each other that well yet, but you can lean against me if you wish. It will likely be hours before we stop.”
It was a fatherly gesture, and after several days in an airship with only the four of them, he felt almost like he was an uncle to her.
Pip leaned her head onto his shoulder, sighing at how good it felt to rest. She let her eyes fall closed. “Do you think they’re still alive?”
“I believe so. Your magic protected the two of us from serious injury. It should’ve done the same for them.
” Prince Edmund shifted slightly, as if to get her head into a more comfortable position on his arm.
“I’m communicating with Jalissa in our heart bond.
The heart bond doesn’t lend itself to true telepathy, but with some time, I should be able to communicate the gist of what happened.
At the very least, Jalissa knows I’m still alive and that something went wrong.
I’m trying to prompt her to talk to Essie, who will know if Farrendel is still alive.
We should be able to get some idea of what is happening eventually. ”
“That’s good.” Pip found her body relaxing as she drifted toward sleep.
The jolt of the truck stopping woke her. Pip bolted upright, blinking for a moment as she tried to process where she was and what was happening.
Prince Edmund moved first, shoving his wrists into the shackles.
Pip molded the metal back into place before she scooted to her original spot. Fumbling, she worked her wrists into the shackles and eased the metal into place.
Not a moment too soon. The canvas flaps at the back of the truck were flung aside, revealing three Mongavarian soldiers standing there.
One of them pointed a gun in her and Prince Edmund’s direction while the other two climbed into the truck bed.
It wasn’t particularly good form, considering the man with the gun would risk hitting one of his fellow soldiers if a scuffle broke out.
But Pip didn’t resist as the soldier unlocked her shackles, freed the chain from the rail, and reshackled her hands in front of her.
He yanked her to her feet and dragged her across the truck bed.
He jumped down first, then pulled her after him.
She landed with a stumble and nearly went down to her knees.
Only the man’s grip on her arm kept her upright.
Prince Edmund didn’t resist either as he was similarly unshackled and dragged from the truck, though his hands were secured behind his back. A sign that the Mongavarians considered him the greater threat.
As she got her feet beneath her, Pip finally took a good look around.
The line of trucks was parked on the side of a dirt road beside a recently cut hay field, the hay still in rows waiting to be baled.
A Mongavarian officer was talking with a man in farmer’s garb in front of a ramshackle farmhouse, the barn behind it in better shape. Other Mongavarian soldiers were in the process of setting up some kind of camp in the field complete with tents and campfires.
As she was hauled farther from the trucks, she glanced over her shoulder, taking in the soldiers unloading supplies. But none of them were dragging a second set of prisoners from any of the vehicles.
Pip shared a look with Prince Edmund. If Fieran and Prince Farrendel weren’t here, then where were they?