Timor stepped up to my side. “If anyone can succeed, it is you. Of all the royals in Crestfallen, you are the most respected. I thought you should know that.”
Turning to him, I noticed Lady Grace nodding her agreement. I said, “Thank you.”
“It’s true,” he said. “Your brother will become king one day, but it is you that seeks out problems and resolves them. The servants and freemen all look to you as the one who truly wields power.”
“What about the king?” I asked.
He chuckled. “They say that he is there when large problems are to be solved, and you take care of all the small ones, so he is not bothered with them. They also say, he has not had to solve any large ones, yet.”
I found myself chuckling for the first time in two days. Even so, I searched almost frantically for sight of either Damon or Kendra and found neither among the hundred faces on the dock. Instead, I found a crowd of strangers, intent on taking from me what they could.
It was not a good way to look at the world.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Damon
I looked at the soldier holding a sword similar to mine, standing a few steps from me, his posture limp. His eyes flicked to his sword and back to me. The battle continued all around us. His sword was held slackly at his side, as was mine. I saw the familiar curve of his blade, the wavy reflections of metals folded by master bladesmiths, and the simple, functional hilt.
He held the twin to my blade.
I glanced at mine and still felt the stinging vibration as if a tuning fork had been struck. A movement to one side drew my attention. Only two Vin attackers remained on their feet, and as I turned to look, one of Slacker’s men finished one of them with a slash of his heavy sword.
Another of Slacker’s men charged my attacker, his sword waving wildly around his head. My attacker kept his attention on me and didn’t attempt to defend himself.
“No!” I shouted as I leaped forward. The ringing in my ears and the feel of the sword in my hands intensified as the distance closed. I managed to hold off Slacker’s man. “He’s mine,” I snapped.
Kendra rushed to my side.
*Kill him.* Anna told me in my mind.
“Truce?” I requested from the soldier.
He looked at the hand holding the twin of my sword and back at his. With a flip of his wrist, he inserted his sword back into the scabbard and waited. He said, “Truce.”
I called out, “This prisoner is mine. No harm is to come to him.”
Now there were many confused looks aimed at me. But Flier pointed behind us and said, “Here they come.”
Less than twenty of them burst from the shade under the trees and ran in our direction, but they ran no faster than we had through the soft sand, and they had a long way to go to reach us, or even to reach the range of an arrow. Slacker was debating to run or fight. If we fought in the open, outnumbered, some of ours were sure to be wounded or worse. Two already had minor cuts from the fight we’d just won.
Nobody paid any more attention to my prisoner or me.
Kendra called to Slacker, “We retreat. I’ll protect our backs.”
Now it was Slacker’s turn to be confused. There had been a lot of that in the last few moments, but behind Slacker, a black dot appeared in the sky, and I knew what it was. Kendra’s dragon was about to arrive to protect us as it had done twice already.
I said to the man who’d given me his truce, “I have no idea what happened with our swords. Do you?”
“Did your ears ring with a whine?”
“Hold your blade closer to mine,” I pointed the tip of mine at him.
He didn’t react with fear at the tip of my blade. He drew his blade, and the keening increased in pitch and volume as the blades moved closer. He raised his blade closer to mine, and it became intolerable. Slacker’s men and my friends watched us, but obviously heard or felt nothing. They must have just thought us strange to hold our swords aloft while we winced in pain, but the blades never touched each other.
“We should talk,” he said.
The dragon was noticed by one of Slacker’s men. A shout rose, then others. Fingers pointed, and attention turned away from the two of us. Kendra’s dragon flew low, then slowed as it neared us, and as it passed over the stunned Vin soldiers, it curled its rear talons and snatched a man, using the same motion like a bird of prey snatching a fish from the water. It flew higher, then passed over the tops of the trees and disappeared behind them.
The Vin troops held their ground for the space of two or three more breaths, then one of them broke and ran for the cover of the trees. In an instant, all twenty were headed for the safety of the trees, running much faster than when they’d chased us.
Kendra was at my side, and I turned to her. She obviously was telling the dragon what to do but killing a man in that fashion was beneath her and had surprised me. “The man the dragon carried off?”
She gave me the look that implied my stupidity at asking the question. “Dropped into the river from a low height. He waded ashore and has a tall tale to tell unbelieving grandchildren.”
I felt better. “What now?”
“The dragon is returning. It will land on that little hill behind us where no arrows can reach it and then guard our backs as I promised.”
“Can arrow hurt it?”
Kendra seemed unsure. She finally said, “Their hide is so thick and hard, I don’t think so, but arrows are sharp. Better to just stay out of range.”
Slacker had come close enough to hear her last words. To his credit, he didn’t argue, plead disbelief, or ask any of a hundred questions he had a right to know the answers to. Instead, he turned and called to his men, “Move out.”
We all faced the empty desert, the pointed mountain in the far distance. There was little talk. The “captured” soldier carrying a duplicate of my sword matched pace with me, and gradually the keening decreased despite the close proximity of the swords as if they sensed the truce.
As we reached the top of a long, low hill, I turned and found the remainder of the Vin troops being organized and ready to follow. There were still far more of them than there were of us, but Kendra’s dragon flew into sight again. It circled a few times, far too high for arrows to reach. With a roar that hurt our ears, even at the distance where we mutely stood, the dragon landed between them and us almost daintily.
It faced the trees where the Vin army fled and roared again as if challenging any of them to show themselves. None did.
We turned away and trudged through the soft sand, but as we moved away from the river, the footing became firmer, and we moved faster. I wanted to speak to the soldier at my side, but I was too winded to do so. He seemed the same.
I finished the last of my water, and my mind insisted I was still thirsty. The sun was at our backs and cast long shadows in front of us. We came to a small hill topped by black rocks. Slacker called a halt, and his men dug near the base of a rock and removed clay jars with sealed tops. Each contained water, stale and cool.
Kendra said for all to hear, “The dragon is still on the ground, but will fly away to spend the night in the safety of the mountains soon. It has not heard, seen, or smelled any of the Vin soldiers for a while. They may have withdrawn.”
She received more than one questioning look about how she knew all that, but nobody asked. I glanced at Emma and found her scowling at the soldier beside me. Her instincts were good, and my trust in them grew daily.