His company had ridden over half the distance to the outcrop when an arrow sailed out of the night and scored a painful cut across Kian’s forearm. Silhouetted once again by firelight, the woman in the rocks paused her renewed attack to watch for the newcomers. Kian paid her little heed, for the faintly illuminated Bashye were now scrambling for deeper cover among the boulders below her.
In a single fluid motion, Kian nocked, drew, and released. His arrow ripped through the air with force enough to knock the target off his feet. From both sides of Kian, the Asra a’Shah released a volley with their longer bows, and nearly two dozen arrows whistled amongst the stones, skewering or scattering the rest of the Bashye.
Then the company was charging past. They left the road and wheeled in two separate columns, and came thundering back. Kian called a halt just out of bowshot. Nothing was moving amid the boulders.
“Hazad, Azuri, with me. Ba’Sel,” he said to the Geldainian mercenary, “you and your men spread out. Follow us until you are within range, then halt. If you see anyone moving besides us and the woman, end them.”
The black-skinned man was nodding before Kian stopped speaking, and used hand signals to position his men. When Kian was satisfied that any Bashye foolish enough to show himself would die, he motioned Azuri and Hazad forward.
Without needing a command, Hazad and Azuri angled their horses away from Kian, who continued to slowly ride forward. Across the road from the towering pile of boulders, horses shifted around in the gloom. Without question, they belonged to the Bashye. He hazarded a quick glance over his shoulder, searching for the handful of Asra a’Shah on that side of the road. He was comforted to see that two of the mercenaries had found the enemy’s mounts, and were peering into the darkness for anyone guarding them.
When Kian decided they had come close enough, he halted Hazad and Azuri. Other than a gentle breeze rustling nearby bushes and carrying the scent of acrid smoke from the marshes, all was quiet, motionless. Bashye, for all their ruthless ways and renegade hearts, were brilliant fighters. He did not take them lightly.
“Do you see anything?” Kian called in a overloud voice, ensuring another arrow was securely nocked to his bowstring.
Understanding that he was trying to draw out the enemy, Hazad and Azuri both answered, “No,” in the same exaggerated manner.
Kian waited, letting his eyes rove the darkness, back and forth. Nothing moved amongst the shadowed boulders. If he did not miss his mark, the Bashye had fled. Above, silhouetted by the dwindling light of fire arrows, the woman continued to look down at him.
Kian called up to her, “Are you hurt?”
“No,” she answered. Then, hesitantly, she amended, “Well, actually, yes I am.”
She sounded young, but she was no wisp of girl, if her womanly shape outlined by the firelight told him anything. He imagined her ambiguous response was the product of absolute terror.
Or insanity, he reconsidered uneasily, thinking again of how she had twice placed herself in mortal danger of Bashye arrows. With the way things had been since Varis came out of that temple, it would be just his luck to have to carry a woman to Oratz whose mind had come unraveled.
“Well,” he said, almost hating to ask, lest she truly was mad, “do you need help?”
After a long moment, she muttered something.
“Speak up!”
“Yes, I need help!” she shouted, not sounding hurt in the least, and ungrateful besides.
Kian looked to Azuri, but the man pointedly ignored him. Next, he glanced at Hazad, who shook his head. Neither man, it seemed, was ready to obey an order to retrieve the woman.
“Traitorous bastards,” he growled under his breath, swinging out of the saddle. He ignored their soft laughter.
Not wishing to dither, he trotted along, relishing the feel of stretching his legs. It took little time to scamper up the path wending through the boulders. When he was within a dozen paces of the woman, who was staring down at him with an air that he should have come faster, something moved off to one side.
Kian wheeled as a Bashye reared up from behind a boulder, his face a mask of blood. The broken end of an arrow shaft jutted from one eye socket, and the other end poked out from his temple to disappear behind his ear. His good eye burned with hatred, as he slashed his sword in a downward arc. Kian flung up his bow, wood shattered under the blow, and he toppled backward with a shout, the two ends of his severed bow held in either hand. He landed hard on his back, jarring every bone against unyielding sandstone. The Bashye leapt with a fierce cry, even as Kian rolled clear and clattered down amongst the boulders. The man’s steel sparked against the stone where his neck had been.
Kian tried to gain his feet, but was horrified to find one of his ankles was caught between two rocks. He wrenched at it, trying to get loose, but the angles were all wrong. He need to go uphill to get free, yet he was all but hanging upside down. With an air of victory, the Bashye crept forward, grinning.
“Shoot him!” Kian bellowed, knowing his men would hesitate because the renegade was so close to him.
Not waiting to see if they would heed his command, Kian tried to free his sword, but the weapon was pinned under his backside. The man eased closer while Kian struggled, sword raised with the obvious intention of hacking off Kian’s leg. At the last moment, Kian found his dagger, drew it, and threw. The same instant Kian’s blade soared past the man’s twisting body, the woman fired an arrow that blossomed from the Bashye’s throat. The wild fury in his good eye became a look of bemusement, as he fingered the steel barb lodged in his neck. His sword fell away with a ringing clatter, and he toppled out of sight.
A moment later, the woman appeared where the Bashye had been. Using her bow as a crutch, she limped down and around the curve of a large boulder, gritting her teeth in obvious pain. Though the light of the fire-arrows were erratic, Kian found himself forgetting his near brush with death and blinking in surprise. Though tattered and torn, and covered in road dust, she was a beauty out of a love story.
“You were supposed to help me,” she said, sounding both irritated and breathless, “not the other way around.”
The spell of her looks broken by her hard tone, Kian glowered. “You could have warned me there was a man waiting to take my head off!”
“Only a fool would have assumed there were no dangers about,” she replied blandly, taking hold of his wrist and heaving him into a sitting position. “Bashye are not given to fleeing a fight.”
At that moment the sounds of struggle-clashing swords, a scream of agony, curses and grunts of effort-came to them from the desert floor. Just as quickly, all fell silent. Kian and the woman waited, listening.
“That seems to be the last of them,” Azuri called up a few moments later, only a little out of breath.
“Be sure,” Kian shouted back. It worried him that he and his men had made so many out of character mistakes during this skirmish, even as he knew that he and his men needed, at the least, a good night’s rest.
Pushing that aside, he belatedly dislodged his ankle. Where the rocks had held his weight, now it fell to the woman. Her grasp slipped, and she stumbled back and sat down with a shuddering cry. Kian rolled to his feet and went to her, seeing for the first time the blood coating her robes. White robes.
“You’re a Sister of Najihar,” he said, incredulous. Why would a such a woman be in the desert, alone, in the middle of the night?
She looked at him with pain-glazed eyes, and nodded.
Shaking away his surprise, he knelt beside her. “You’re bleeding. Have you been stabbed, or was it an arrow?”
“Arrow,” she murmured through clenched teeth. Shock made her as pallid as one of the northern-born, though she had the features and hair coloring of one born in the southern realms.