Chapter 38 Evander
Chapter thirty-eight
Evander
“It’s over,” Evander said. “See? Not a hair out of place.”
Samara unwound herself and looked around in dismay. “This is somehow your fault, or your wife’s fault! I should have known not to help you!”
“Calm down,” Evander snapped. The adrenaline set him on edge, and he was irrationally irritated with her, himself, the brightness of the flames. He pulled himself out of the well, then reached down and hauled Samara after him.
Samara’s cheeks flushed.
“Are you hurt?” Evander asked.
“No,” Samara cut. “I need to go find my family.”
She strode away through the smoke, and Evander didn’t chase after her—his legs felt like jelly, and his chest was tight.
He cursed himself for being so easily shaken.
He’d been to battle. He’d faced ranks of fire-breathing dragons.
But he’d sworn that life was behind him, and it was awful now, smelling char, feeling the ground thrum beneath his feet.
Overhead, dragons dove in and out of the darkness, some leveling the last of the shops, others—ridden by the Cobblepinions—crashing into the enemy, only to be hurled from the sky.
Few of the Cobblepinions knew how to navigate in combat, and none of the dragons were trained yet to maneuver or attack.
Evander crept back toward the main street and peered out.
Sennalaithic soldiers were rounding up the Cobblepinions and herding them toward the lake shore.
Very few bodies lay in the streets; the soldiers weren’t killing the villagers.
This wasn’t a raid; it was a violent mass conscription.
Cadmus didn’t want to destroy the sanctuary; he wanted to get his hands on dragons and able-bodied new soldiers to feed to the constant, grinding war machine.
Footsteps sounded on the cobbles behind Evander, and hands clamped on his shoulders.
Two Sennalaithic soldiers stood behind him, armed with shotfires.
There was no point in resisting; the enemy controlled the land and the sky, so Evander held up his hands as he was herded with the crowds down to the lake, then sorted into a knot of Cobblepinion youths.
Lysander and Samara were among them, along with the other trainees he’d overseen in Silvanlight.
He had been right. War had come to Cobblepine.
A pitiful bellow cut through the chaos, and Evander’s head snapped up.
He searched the flashing dark until he spotted Hera further down the shore, surrounded by soldiers.
They’d managed to loop ropes around her necks and were trying to subdue her, but she shook her head, flinging men across the rocky beach.
Moaning, her eyes rolling, she cracked her tail like a whip, striking the two nearest soldiers.
They fell bonelessly, their necks snapped.
Twisting, Hera snatched another soldier in her mouth. Blood showered his compatriots as they stood frozen in horror. Like a fox with a squirrel, Hera threw his body into the lake, where he sank out of sight in a red cloud.
She was a breath away from a rampage, and if she lost control, she would kill indiscriminately—Sennalaiths, Cobblepinions, Evander himself.
Evander braced, waiting for the right moment, but someone touched his shoulder.
“Let her,” Samara hissed in his ear. “Let her eat them all.”
“She’ll kill us next,” he replied.
Samara sighed. “Do you need a distraction?”
Evander nodded.
Samara moved to the outer edge of the group and began to sob. “Please! I don’t want to go to war! I’m so afraid!”
The soldiers turned toward her, and Evander broke from the group and charged toward Hera.
“Hera, down!” he cried. A wave of magic burst from his hands, like water released from a dam, and blasted him backward. He landed hard on the stony ground.
For five long years, he had struggled along with weak magic, barely able to give simple commands. But with the dark magic gone from him, his old power surged through him again. It was cold as a winter gale and stung his skin, like holding ice.
Hera paused, mid-breath, blinking down at him in disbelief, then she lowered her heads and blew a puff of steam from her nostrils.
“Good girl. That’s my girl,” Evander continued, standing and edging toward her. “I’m here. I won’t let anyone harm you.”
Hera let out a deep purr and thrust her nose into his chest.
Then a deep voice boomed, “Get him back with the others!”
Hera’s eyes narrowed.
“Look at me, Hera,” Evander said, his hands tight on her jaw. “It’s alright. You and I are going to stay right here, calm as can be. No one is going to hurt us.”
The soldiers poised around him, wanting to pounce, but too frightened to make the first move.
There was a temptation, startling and cold, to heed Samara and let Hera have her way with these men.
Evander owed them nothing, and he could either escape to find Valenna or return to Silvanlight and entreat the queen regent to negotiate with Cadmus.
But if Valenna had offered Hera to her father as part of the deal, and then Hera never arrived, what would Cadmus do to her?
Evander couldn’t risk it. If he could soothe the hydra, he could follow her to Valenna.
The soldiers moved within range of Hera’s tail.
She grew restless under Evander’s hands, and his anxiety grew.
An entourage of dangers marched through his mind.
She could lash out, and he might not be able to control her.
The soldiers could hurt her. She could kill him accidentally in her terror, and then Valenna’s attempt to save him would end in tragedy.
“Hush,” he murmured with mounting urgency. “Hush, girl. It’s alright.”
Hera’s gaze locked on the closest man, and her lips curled away from her jagged teeth. She began to lift her heads until Evander drew her nose into his chest. Control the center, control the beast. His father had taught him that. If he could keep her center head calm, he could keep all of her calm.
Hera grumbled, eyeing the soldiers as they edged closer.
Then a deep voice rang out. “Get him with the others! Line them all up on the shore!”
A chorus of jeers went up from the Cobblepine conscripts as they were prodded into a line, and then one voice, high and imperious, rose above the others.
“Cobblepine is a sanctuary on neutral ground; we answer to no one!”
Lysander had stepped forward, his arms crossed over his narrow chest.
A big officer with dark hair faced Lysander down. “Get into line and hold out your hands.”
“Certainly not! I will not be bound by you or anyone!”
The soldier huffed. In the flashing light from the burning village, Evander tried to make out his face because something about him was familiar. Evander squinted into the darkness and then caught his breath.
It was Haldir. Haldir Bournemuth, here, in Cobblepine, wearing a Sennalaithic officer’s uniform.
It had been mere days since Evander left Silvanlight. How was Haldir already here?
Lysander raised his chin, defiant, and the conscripts nodded and shouted, encouraging him.
“Stand down, Lysander!” Evander cried, gripping Hera as she startled at his voice.
But Lysander did not heed him. “I demand to see your commanding officer!”
Evander’s heart pounded in his chest; his voice was urgent. “Lysander, do what he says!”
“You will take me to your commanding officer,” Lysander continued, “or my mother will …”
Without a word, Haldir pulled his shotfire. A crack, a flash, and Lysander sprawled on the stones, dead.
Evander let out a strangled cry.
The conscripts gasped as one, then erupted.
Haldir spun toward them, a second shotfire in his hands. “Quiet, or I’ll shoot again!”
Samara surged forward with the conscripts at her back like a rising tide, their faces livid. They spat curses, threw stones.
Hera’s right head looked sheepishly at the other two, then nudged the big center head. The center head tugged out of Evander’s hands and reared, steam pouring from her nostrils, ready to send boiling water on the crowd. The riot settled in an instant, everyone ducking for cover, screaming.
“HEEL!” Evander shouted.
Magic poured from his hands in a ripple of watery light. It struck against Hera, and she huffed, lowered her heads, and settled onto her belly, all doggish love and regret. She lay all three heads at Evander’s feet, the big one nuzzling his boot. Her left head watched Haldir.
Shotfires drawn, Haldir’s men pushed the Cobblepinions into submission again, binding them and loading them onto a waiting dreadnought. A few exceptionally brave soldiers crept up to Evander with manacles for his hands, but he just cocked an eyebrow at them and said, “Are you mad?”
A slight snarl from Hera sent them scurrying away.
Evander mounted Hera, and Haldir climbed up behind him, his shotfire cold on the nape of Evander’s neck.
“Hello again, old friend,” Haldir snarled.
As they trudged away from the smoldering sanctuary, Evander risked a look over his shoulder. Ariadne knelt on the beach, wailing, cradling Lysander’s body and shattered head in her arms. The remainder of the village crowded behind her, watching as their children vanished into the mountains.