Chapter 26 #2
Neil ignored it—and sprinted for his blanket.
This is madness, he thought as he snatched up the leather scabbard.
I’m about to get myself mauled by a tiger, he reasonably deduced as he stumbled out into the rain.
Jignesh made a quick, disbelieving outburst. Neil sensed the arrows trained on his back—because he had just put himself between them and their target.
The tiger swiveled its head, fixing him with an unblinking golden stare—even as the world turned to a mosaic through the rain-spattered glass of his spectacles.
“I’m an idiot,” Neil acknowledged aloud.
He whipped out his sword.
Blue-gold flames whirled up Dyrnwyn’s length, their intensity glaring after the gloom of the cavern. Neil clung to the sword desperately, holding it out before him almost as though he had some bloody notion what the devil to do with it.
The tiger stilled.
Everything stilled, as though Neil had stepped into a painting. Pale light painted stone and leaf, tree and flesh. Men hovered at the edge of the cavern with their arrows notched.
Subhas’s brows rose with surprise. Constance’s eyes widened as though Neil had just fallen out of the sky.
Rain sang against the leaves, plastering Neil’s shirt to his shoulders.
Dyrnwyn glowed like a star.
Neil filtered everything out—the branches hanging low over the mouth of the overhang. The damp soaking his clothes. The fact that he could barely see, the world a speckled wash of green, black, and gold, fractured by the water on his lenses.
Only the tiger mattered.
He knew when the animal began to shift, sensing it in the crunch of a paw on dead leaves and the orange shimmer through the dancing kaleidoscope of his spectacles.
Neil swung his blade to the left.
The tiger stilled—and a branch crashed to the ground at Neil’s feet.
He fought the instinct to jump back, keeping his eyes on the cat.
He couldn’t risk looking at what had just happened, even as part of his brain wondered wildly why a limb would have fallen when it was still covered in sturdy green growth and he hadn’t felt Dyrnwyn so much as brush against an obstacle.
Neil shoved it all aside. He could worry about it later—once he’d managed to stay alive.
The tiger froze again, its yellow gaze fixed on Neil with unblinking intensity. The sword’s weight tugged at his shoulders as the moment stretched.
He wondered what he would do when the tiger inevitably decided to attack. Could he possibly manage to direct the sword into some sort of defensive thrust?
Neil very much doubted it.
The tiger studied him as though measuring Neil’s worth as a threat… or as a meal. It was planning something—but what? Would it use all that sleek, coiled power to try to dart around Neil? Or bat his sword away with a swipe of a massive paw and bury its teeth in his throat?
Neil had no idea, and he was washed over with the helpless sense that even the sheer madness of charging at a tiger with a flaming sword hadn’t been quite enough.
Muscle flexed under striped fur—and a dart of light shot past the corner of Neil’s vision.
An arrow pierced the soil at his feet with a soft thwack. Flames licked delicately up the shaft.
Another followed, and then a third.
Neil risked a wild look back into the cavern. In the orange glow of the embers, Subhas was framed by his archers, eyes glinting with purpose and determination.
Jignesh swept another cloth-wrapped arrow through the remains of the campfire, then launched the flaming missile at the tiger’s feet.
The tiger took a wary half-step back.
The burning arrows were wisps against the darkness, their light quickly failing against the steady fall of the rain.
The beautiful predator measured all of it. The men in the cavern. The dwindling arrows. Neil. Golden eyes glittered with thoughtful intelligence.
Desperation dragged a ludicrous plea from Neil’s lips. “Would you please just go?”
The tiger cocked its head as though considering the request—then turned and leaped away into the forest.
Neil stared after the soft crash of its movements, still clinging to the sword as though afraid the wrong gesture would break the spell and bring the animal charging back.
A hand came down on his shoulder. Neil flinched.
“You can put that down now,” Subhas said.
The man stood beside him in the rain. Neil wiped his sleeve over his spectacles, momentarily clearing them enough to make out his expression. It was softened with a note of grudging approval.
In the shelter of the cavern, the Adrija embraced each other with a laugh of relief. A few of them shot looks of mingled surprise and wariness at Neil.
He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket with a shaking hand, managing to wrap it around Dyrnwyn’s hilt. The sword snuffed out, plunging the camp back into thick orange shadows.
Neil’s spectacles were worse than useless. He tugged them off and shoved them into his pocket. He squinted back out at the forest, half afraid he would see the tiger staring back at him.
The trees remained dark and still.
The branch on the ground by his boots caught his eye. The length of strong green wood was as long as Neil’s arm and perhaps an inch thick in diameter, thickly covered with leaves.
The end was cut cleanly, as though severed by a razor—if razors could slice through a solid inch of strong green wood.
Strange, Neil thought with a queasy uncertainty.
“Neil,” Constance called softly.
He turned to where she waited under the overhang, holding out his scabbard. Neil joined her there and took it with a still-unsteady hand. He sheathed the blade.
Relief washed over him alongside a shaking sense of delayed terror. “It might have pounced on me. Or pushed past me into the camp. I just put myself in the way of all the men who knew what they were doing. I—”
Constance set her hand on his arm. At the warmth of her touch through the wet fabric of his shirt, Neil’s words evaporated.
“That was very well done,” she declared softly.
Neil had no idea how to respond, locked in the steady warmth of her gold-touched eyes.
As her look lingered, the tenor of it shifted in a way that sent an odd tingle dancing over Neil’s skin.
Or maybe that was just his bad vision.
Definitely his vision, Neil thought firmly.
“Back to sleep, both of you,” Subhas warned. “We have a long day ahead of us—and I expect you to keep up.”
“Yes, sir,” Neil replied automatically.
“Sir?” Subhas echoed dryly—then clapped him on the shoulder and laughed as he walked away.