“Monsters in the river!” one of the slaves cried. “We’ll be killed.”
“You should be more afraid of us than anything down there,” Gara said.
Bannon still held his wooden mallet, wishing he had his faithful sword, Sturdy. He wanted to kill these hideous people, but as he looked up at the forest of jagged spear points, the curved swords and the angry scarred faces, he realized he would just be throwing his life away. Chalk was watching him, shaking his head and wagging his finger, as if warning Bannon.
Despising the Norukai more than ever, Bannon let himself slip back into the river, alert for ripples in the water and the scaly backs of swamp monsters. Soon he knew he was going to have to kill something.
Lila kept to the thickets on the riverbank, hidden but close enough that she could have thrown a spear and killed a Norukai warrior, right out in the open. But right now that would have wasted her element of surprise to no good purpose. She had already quietly killed nine of them under cover of darkness and fed their bodies to predators, and that satisfied her for a while. Now, though, she lurked in her camouflage, watching and waiting for her chance.
Bannon needed her.
When Ildakar had disappeared in the middle of the battle, she, too, had fallen from the bluff. Despite what should have been a fatal plunge, she had tumbled into shallow water and soft river mud. Stunned, Lila had drifted down the current until her body caught in the tangled bushes, where she pulled herself to shore. The Norukai hadn’t seen her.
Now, days later, her short brown hair was caked with mud, and her face was sunburned. She wore only scant black leather. The branded runes on her skin protected her from magic, but did nothing to ward off insect bites or dangerous thorns. She had a dagger, but she had lost her short sword in the fall. Since she was a morazeth, though, her entire body was a weapon. She relied on her muscles and reflexes. She would bide her time and do whatever damage she could, any time she caught one of the Norukai alone.…
Lila and her morazeth sisters had sworn to defend Ildakar, which was now gone, but she had also accepted personal responsibility for Bannon, promising to protect him. She had trained the boy in the combat pits, challenged him with her harshest exercises. She had even occasionally taken him as a lover to reward him when he did well, and as time went by, she found more and more excuses to reward him in such a way. Lila didn’t understand why the young swordsman failed to appreciate all that she had taught him. Her hard lessons had certainly saved his life more than once.
At one point, during an assault on the army of General Utros, Bannon had been taken prisoner and nearly killed. That incident had shown her that she didn’t want to lose him. She realized it wasn’t just a matter of pride for her. Bannon was cocky, believing he was a good fighter—which he was—but Lila was better. The two of them fought well together, but she doubted he could survive without her.
When he had plunged down the bluffside with King Grieve and Chalk, Lila thought he was dead, but after she survived her own fall and worked her way close enough to spy on the slaves the Norukai had taken, she caught a glimpse of Bannon, unmistakable with his long ginger hair, his familiar body. Thus, she knew he was still alive, knew she still had a chance.
For days after the city vanished, Lila prowled through the thickets, staying hidden as she climbed over knobby roots and dangling vines, always watching the Norukai. She couldn’t fight thousands of them, no matter how much she might enjoy it. She would have to be clever.
Throughout the day, she crouched among the thorny shrubs as the sluggish river lapped along the muddy shore. Bloodthirsty biting insects buzzed around her face. Even after the damage their navy had suffered, Lila could see that with all their furious work, the raiders would have several serpent ships repaired soon. She would have to think bigger.
Lila worked her way to the base of the bluffs, where she found the ruins of the Ildakaran docks, splintered boards, anchoring posts, all of which had been smashed when the Norukai warships arrived. Overhead, she saw only the remnants of sheared-off tunnels in the cliffs that now went nowhere.
She caught a glint of sunlight on steel among the dock boards and broken branches against the rocks. She hunched in the shadows until she was sure of her camouflage, then slipped forward to see what the object might be.
It was a plain, leather-wrapped hilt. She moved the broken dock boards aside, careful to make no noise, and found a sword, an unimpressive blade that had fallen from the cliffs above. She pulled it loose from the mud, splashed water on the blade and cross guard to reveal the discolored metal. This was not an ornate sword, but it was serviceable. She recognized the weapon—Bannon’s sword, Sturdy.
The edge was still sharp, and she knew that this was a better blade than any she could have wished for—and appropriate, too. Now she was armed, and she would find a way to save Bannon, even if she had to take on the entire Norukai fleet.
CHAPTER 5
Wizard Commander Maxim looked beautiful. Adessa held up his head, wrapped her fingers in his spiky dark hair. His dead face sparked a thrill of satisfaction that flowed through Adessa like warm honey.
Maxim’s decapitated body lay sprawled in the dirt in front of the cottage. Ribs poked out like broken twigs from his smashed chest. Wind rushed through the boughs of the surrounding dark spruce trees like whispered cheers. The morazeth leader raised the head in front of her face in the moonlight.
The wizard commander had been so handsome once, the haughty leader of Ildakar, but now his face was slack, his lids like loose fleshy flaps covering his eyes. His mouth hung open, and blood dribbled down into his goatee. Gore glistened on the stump of his neck.
After she sprang her trap, the man would have perished soon enough from his smashed chest, but Adessa didn’t want Maxim to die on his own. The Keeper would have him one way or the other, so she had hacked through his neck and lifted up the head in triumph.
“My mission is complete.” Adessa’s voice was a hard whisper, muffled by the stirring spruce trees around the cottage. “I always knew I would kill you, but you were too arrogant to believe it yourself.”
The dead wizard commander did not respond, but his slack cheek muscle twitched, startling her with the unexpected movement. Maxim’s mouth fell open wider as his jaw muscles relaxed in death.
Adessa drew a deep breath. She had done as Sovrena Thora commanded. Finally, she could go home to Ildakar.
Wizard Commander Maxim had betrayed Ildakar by creating unrest among the lower classes, provoking a revolt—just because he was bored! Such betrayal was unthinkable to Adessa. She and her fellow morazeth were utterly loyal to their city and to the wizards’ duma.
On the night of the uprising, when mobs killed their masters and destroyed thousands of years of the sovrena’s perfect society, Maxim had fled the city laughing. As the chaos continued to build, Thora had sent Adessa after the wizard commander with instructions to hunt him down and bring back his head as a trophy. For many days, weeks, she had tracked the man through the swamps, down the Killraven River, until finally trapping him here at this isolated cottage. She recalled the delicious impact of her sword against his neck, the crunch as she cut through his spine. A shiver went down her back as she thought of it now.
With her highly attuned reflexes, she whirled at the sound of a crackle like melting ice. Pale statues stood just at the edge of the cottage’s garden: a broad-chested man in patched clothes, and his wife with her hair bound in a scarf, her wide hips covered by a patchwork skirt. Three children were by them: a young girl of about five, a boy of eight, and an older boy of eleven or twelve. The petrified figures began to move sluggishly, inhaling deep breaths as they came alive again. Confused, the family bent their arms in wonder.