“I know it wouldn’t…” I said desperately. My heart was torn. I had never felt so trapped before in my life—not down in Inyene’s mines, and certainly not on the expedition. Either choice was a certain failure, wasn’t it? If the Daza and the guards and the Red Hounds came down here, then we would all probably die. And if Ymmen and the others held their ground up there, then they would be overrun…
“You don’t know that, Little Sister!” Ymmen’s frustration was turning into a hotter and hotter fury with every second that I took debating our action. “Forgive me, but you do not know what I have done in my long life—nor what I am capable of…” Ymmen said, and I felt his anger concentrating into a single, incandescent purpose.
Maybe he was right. I didn’t really know what lives Ymmen had led before I had met him in the mountain cave and helped nurse him to health. It was also true that I didn’t really know what a dragon was capable of…
But that requires the dragon to be working at full health, at devastating capacity, I argued with myself. Ymmen was sorely wounded, and whatever he could or might be able to do was limited.
“Find Montfre,” I said quickly. The young mage might be our only hope right now. “Find Montfre and do whatever you can to help him. Hopefully, his magic will help us.” Will help you, I thought, as I had seen Montfre heal Abioye’s wounds before. I did not know whether the mage would be able to heal a wound as serious as Ymmen’s was—or whether even if Montfre was able to use any magic at all at the moment, given the way that those purple missiles had taxed him.
But it was all we had right now, wasn’t it? I thought. I knew that I was placing all of my trust—all of our lives—into the hands of one injured dragon and a weakened mage. That was the stuff of legends. The sort of things that didn’t—couldn’t—happen any more in this age of the world.
But what hope is there when all else is lost? “Find Montfre,” I repeated, before Ymmen’s angered mind interrupted me, at the same time that I heard a scrape of something moving in the cavern. Something that wasn’t either me or Naroba at all.
There, at one of the half-filled tunnels that led to our cavern was a movement as a shape suddenly fell into the drift of sands. A body. It wore the wrecked remnants of a fine blue cloak and a once-expensive, now torn, lace-up shirt.
“Abioye!” I shouted, shocked—but not as shocked as I was when the figure who had pushed him ahead into our cavern suddenly appeared.
“There. Now maybe we can finish this, once and for all,” the figure said. It was Captain Nol Baggar of the Red Hounds.
Chapter 22
People Like You
“You,” I said, my hate mingling with my surprise to make a horrible feeling of nausea in my gut.
“Don’t sound too eager now, lady,” Nol Baggar drawled as he jumped down awkwardly after the body of Abioye. Both men looked terrible, but Abioye was marginally the worse. Not only were his clothes in tatters, but he had a sheet of drying blood down one side of his face. His eyes were fluttering and his breathing appeared fast and shallow.
The captain of the Red Hounds, though injured, was still standing, and grinning. He had somewhere discarded his gauntlets, and his studded-leather jerkin was torn and hanging open. He appeared to have some sort of serious wound at his side, and his face was a mess of grazes—and everything was covered with the yellow scurf of sand.
“What have you done to him!” I demanded hotly as the mercenary captain staggered a few steps down the sand drift to the cavern floor.
“Holy Stars!” I heard the captain whisper in apparent awe at all of the Earth Lights—and with apparent greed.
“What have you done to Abioye!” I shouted again, my hands moving to my belt before I realized that I had lost my sword along with everything else as I had fallen through the dunes.
I was weaponless. He was a trained killer, and he already had a sword in his hands! I thought in alarm—
Did Naroba have her hunting knife on her? I wondered quickly—but that would mean crossing the distance to her and drawing Nol’s attention to her as well…
Before a colder thought replaced it. Nol Baggar wouldn’t be the first trained and sadistic killer whom I had fought, would he? And I killed Dagan Mar, I told myself.
“Him?” Baggar cast a glance back up the slope of sand at the stilled form of my friend. “He put up one hell of a fight, let me tell you. Who knew the pampered little weasel had it in him?”
I growled, falling into a warrior’s crouch instinctively.
“He’ll live,” the captain shrugged. “For now. And until I want him to die, anyway. I figure that I can at least ransom him back to his psychotic sister for a small fortune, right?”
This was Nol Baggar’s style, I now saw. He acted nonchalant and gregarious—but all the while it was an act to try and intimidate his opponents. Like a male lion showing his belly to a rival, I thought. It’s an act. He doesn’t want me to see how wounded he really is… I said nothing as the mercenary started to warily circle his way into the cavern, and I, in turn, picked my way around the outcroppings of Earth Lights, keeping him at bay.
I studied him as we moved. It was like hunting on the Plains. You had to get close to your prey, but all the while studying them for any sign of weakness, as well as measuring whether they were stronger than you were…
He had a wound high on his left hip, perhaps. Something that he was trying to hide from me but was making his step clumsy. I could use that to my advantage. Grapple him from his left-hand side, I thought as we moved.
“Your attack was solid,” Baggar congratulated me. “But you forgot the first rule of an ambush,” he continued. He was talking about Naroba’s attack on the Red Hounds, I realized.
I didn’t say anything as Baggar continued.
“You should have cut off our escape routes,” Baggar said condescendingly.
“We did.” His tone and attitude sparked my anger. “Or don’t you remember the big black dragon that landed right amongst all of you?”
“Not quick enough though,” Nol chuckled. “Some of my men managed to get out ahead of the gully. We found ourselves out in the dunes…”
“You ran away, you mean,” I pointed out. We had crossed almost half of the cavern by now, as the mercenary captain was slowly advancing towards me and I, still weaponless, was giving ground.
“We did a little ambush of our own, when those metal things attacked—” the captain was saying.
“Mechanical Dragons,” I corrected him. Let him know how stupid he is, I thought. It was petty I know, but right now I didn’t much care.
“That was when the sand gave way, and me and your”—he nodded his head behind him, to where Abioye was still lying on the sand back there—“prince ended up down here,”
“He’s not my anything!” I burst out, earning a victorious smile from the captain opposite me.
“Hit a nerve, have I?” he said with glee.
It was too much. I gave a choked cry of rage as I jumped the distance towards him, with nothing but my fists to take him down—
“Little Sister, NO!” Ymmen roared at my stupidity in the back of my mind, but maybe there was something of the dragon’s ire in me, too. I was consumed by rage—I felt I could do anything.