The chant played over and over in her head as they raced through Wellspring Holt. Gharek plowed the horse through a small knot of fighters, using his sword to cut down a pair of Nunari who tried to halt their escape. Siora spotted one of the town’s two gates so close, though it might have been in another kingdom for any chance they’d have of reaching it alive. Gharek lashed the horse to greater speed. The gods only knew what threat lay on the other side—no doubt more Nunari invaders riding on a second wave of attack to finish what the first wave had started.
They didn’t slow, and the horse raced through the breached gate at a dead run. Siora flinched and closed her eyes for a moment, expecting a hail of arrows to descend on them, death from above, painful but hopefully quick. She opened her eyes again at Gharek’s bellowed “Oh fuck!” and yelped when their mount reared once more, pivoting hard on its back hooves before crashing down again. Siora narrowly avoided biting her tongue as her teeth snapped together from the jarring landing. She caught aquick glimpse of what looked like an ocean of uniforms, a landscape of shields, and a forest of spears stretched as far as her eye could see. Instead of Nunari horsemen waiting outside Wellspring Holt, an entire battalion of Kraelian soldiers stood at the ready.
A voice rose above the din behind them, sounding both surprised and triumphant. “Holy gods, it’s the cat’s-paw! Catch that fucker!”
Panic engulfed her when Gharek turned the horse back toward the gate, toward the burning town, and the fighting within. She struggled for space in the saddle, enough to fling herself sideways and off the fleeing animal. She sent up a brief prayer that she wouldn’t break anything. She never got the chance.
Two loud cracks split the air, followed by agony so sharp she thought she’d retch. Like the vicious edge of a mirror shard, the pain cut across her upper arm, tore along her collarbone, and bit deep into her other arm before she was wrenched from the saddle. The world turned a somersault in her vision an instant before another breath-stealing fall to the ground rattled every bone in her body. A last tiny huff of air burst past her lips in a whisper when Gharek landed on top of her with a hard grunt.
CHAPTER THREE
Gharek sat, bound and bloody on the saddle of a trotting horse, and swallowed back the foul-tasting bile that hung in his throat. The view in front of him offered little in either interest or comfort—a solid wall of mounted, armored Kraelian soldiers. They rode toward some unknown destination, absolute in their intent that Gharek go with them. He scraped his tongue gingerly over his split lip, wincing at the sting there. He didn’t complain. They could have broken his jaw and made him spit teeth, and that was before they might have entertained the idea to crack his spine like a broomstick or gouge out his eyes. Kraelian soldiers weren’t known for their civility or their mercy. He would know. He’d been one before taking up the far more lucrative and dangerous role of Dalvila’s cat’s-paw.
The blessing of no life-threatening injuries didn’t stop him from cursing inwardly, not only over his rotten luck but also his own foolish mercy toward Siora. Had he not tried to play the role of hero, he wouldn’t be in this sorry predicament right now, a prisoner of some faction of the fracturing army with plans for him that no doubt included a slow, agonizing death at the hands of one or more of the countless enemies he’d made in the Empire. The only question was who among that considerable number would have the pleasure ofweaving his entrails through their garden gate or displaying his severed head on a pole outside their front entry.
He’d realized the second his horse had cleared Wellspring Holt’s gate that he’d ridden into an equally grim situation. A full Kraelian garrison’s worth of soldiers had gathered outside, weapons drawn, as they waited for the command to charge inside the city and battle the Nunari ransacking, pillaging, and looting. Any hope that he might simply ride past them had died when one voice rang out, urgent and demanding.
“Catch that fucker!”
A trio of soldiers had leapt at the command, using whips to wrap around both him and Siora. Gharek didn’t even get a chance to turn his mount in a different direction before the whips tore into his clothes and cut his flesh as thoroughly as any knife. When they fell, he’d fallen on Siora, certain he’d crushed her to death with the impact. A pack of soldiers pounced on him with the speed and ferocity of starving wolves, punching and kicking him while he did his best to protect himself and the small woman still trapped beneath him.
In no time he was bound, gagged, and tossed atop the horse he was yanked from, a soldier riding beside him, holding the reins. Siora, also bound but free of a gag, shared a saddle with another soldier. Gharek only caught glimpses of her stiff shoulders and back as she rode ahead of him, doing her best not to touch her companion.
That she hadn’t been raped by their captors still astounded him. The Kraelian army was no better than the Nunari tearing apart Wellspring Holt behind them, its townspeople in as much dangerfrom their saviors as they were from their invaders. But the man commanding this party had threatened to geld anyone who even twitched in Siora’s direction for a better look at her ankles.
“Probably nothing more than a whore,” the leader said and spat at Siora’s feet, even while his flat gaze traveled over his underlings with unmistakable warning. “But you shitheads don’t get to find out. Only the general does. So until we deliver these two to him and he decides what to do, it’s hands off or I’ll cut your balls off and force-feed them to you.” After that grotesque threat, the soldier riding with Siora was no more eager to touch her than she was to touch him.
They were a party of sixteen, carved out of the large battalion gathered at the gate outside of Wellspring Holt. They rode away with the Kraelian battle cry ringing in Gharek’s ears. If there was anything left of the town by the time the day was done, he’d be amazed.
The bodies of Nunari nomads and some of their horses littered the roadside as they passed, signs the Empire’s troops hadn’t arrived here without some resistance. Their much greater numbers allowed them to overwhelm the lesser force of Nunari, either caught unawares or unable to flee in time and warn their kinsmen already in the town that the enemy fast-approached.
The group Gharek and Siora rode with traveled hard along a narrow path that forked north of the main trade road to run perpendicular with the borders marking the Nunari hinterlands. Gharek might have assumed this was a renegade band turned slavers, who’d decided to sell their two captives to the enemy, if it weren’t for overhearing their leader’s remarks.
They rode toward a destination where a nameless Kraelian general waited, and Gharek’s stomach twisted into a knot. Half of Domora’s surviving elite were hunting him, and someone among these men had recognized him as Dalvila’s cat’s-paw. Gharek understood hatred and vengeance. Both dictated how he lived his life. He didn’t delude himself into thinking he was unique in being driven by such forces. Another felt the same about him. Whatever punishment they wished to bring down on his head for any of the numerous crimes he’d committed while serving Dalvila, it would be prolonged and it would be brutal.
He pushed away the rising despair along with the image of Estred’s innocent face, the one shining light in his dark thoughts. He’d not go down without a struggle. He’d failed at many things in his life, but he knew how to survive, to start over, and to prevail. He didn’t have the luxury of dying just yet.
They rode for several hours, stopping once to water the horses. Siora used the time to answer nature’s demands, hiding behind a cluster of horses for privacy. Gharek found it odd that only one soldier paid attention to her movements, and that was the guard assigned to her. Even he didn’t leer but kept a respectful watch only in the sideways glances he sent her way.
Kraelian army men were a vulgar lot, more feral than a pack of pit dogs most of the time, with little knowledge or concern for property, or so it had been Gharek’s experience when he was a soldier. These men were unique among the ranks, and he wondered who commanded them in such a way that they acted with such restraint.
A soldier pulled down Gharek’s gag long enough to tip a flask of water to his mouth. He downed several gulps before he wasgagged once more and shoved toward the waiting horse. Siora’s gaze followed him, though she remained silent as her guard lifted her onto the saddle and mounted behind her.
They were off again, their path a steady ride along the boundaries of Nunari territories. A pair of scouts rode farther ahead before circling back to cover ground the party had already tread, reporting to the leader any movement or activity. Tension ran high in the group, everyone braced for a Nunari raiding party to suddenly crest one of the adjacent hillocks and bear down on them with spears and a hail of arrow fire.
The Nunari had revolted against their imperial overlords and allied with their Savatar neighbors to attack and lay siege to the once-great capital of Kraelag. With both the emperor and the empress now dead and the powerful Kraelian families slaughtering each other in their bid to seize the contested throne, the Empire fractured even more, and the Nunari steadily clawed back bits and pieces of Empire territory into their grasp. They’d set their sights on Wellspring Holt, and in Gharek’s opinion they’d take a lot more in a short period of time if the army didn’t crush the invading forces soon and without quarter.
Twilight had cast a gossamer veil across the sky by the time the commander called a second halt and ordered his men to set up camp. Gharek knew this territory. As the erstwhile cat’s-paw, he’d traveled all over the Empire to do Dalvila’s often bloodthirsty work. He didn’t need a map or a guide to tell him they were headed toward the burned out remains of Kraelag; a city so destroyed by god-fire it had taken months to stop glowing red from the heat. Its fiery light had been seen from as far off as Sokoti Island, where the locals there had crafted charms and wards against the spirits ofthousands who’d burned in the conflagration. If Siora was indeed a true shade speaker, she was about to greet an entire city of the restless dead in the next few days.
The camp was a spartan affair with only bedrolls laid out to provide a barrier between the sleeper and damp ground. A frail breeze provided the only relief from the lingering summer heat, and the vault of sky above them sported only a few clouds, none promising rain. Neither Gharek nor Siora got a bed, only a stake rammed into the ground to which each was tethered. He took a long, grateful breath when one of the soldiers removed the gag. His relief didn’t last long, and he stiffened as the group’s leader approached.
The man squatted in front of Gharek and inclined his head toward Siora before returning his attention to the cat’s-paw. “Here’s how this works. I have two guards to keep an eye on you, so you’ll have a hard time trying to wiggle out of your bonds without someone noticing. I don’t know if the whore means anything to you, and I don’t care, but if either of you try to escape, I’ll break one of your legs. Then I’ll break one of hers.” His mouth turned up briefly at Siora’s gasp, though his gaze remained steadfast on Gharek, who scowled.
“You won’t allow your men to rape her, but you’ll break her bones if I try to run?”
The other man’s smile widened even more. “They’re a careless bunch of fucks who’d end up killing her while they took their pleasure, and swiving a whore serves no purpose. Making sure neither of you decides to run off does serve General Zaredis’s interest. I won’t be showing up in his camp without you, even if I have to cut your feet off to keep you docile.”
Zaredis. Gharek recognized the name though he’d never met the man or seen him at court. One of Dalvila’s most capable generals. Capable enough and ambitious enough to be a threat, but one too valuable to have assassinated. She’d exiled him instead, to quell and control the rebellious southern territories with their barbarian tribes who fought even harder against the Empire’s yoke. Why Zaredis wanted the cat’s-paw, Gharek could only guess.