'Damn,' Krystin said as she slid one of the blades from Myrmeen's waist, then scurried to a rock, where she rested the chains and began to pound at the links with the weapon's hilt. They snapped quickly and she immediately went to work on the chains binding her feet.
A warm, frothy euphoria filled Myrmeen's heart as she watched her daughter. The logical part of her mind told her that her actions were not those of an intelligent, calculating woman. She was giving Djimon a chance to react, and the operation was supposed to have been a quick, clean slash and grab: take out the opposition, steal the prize, get out as quickly as possible. But for some reason she was completely enchanted and unable to think of giving orders.
Then she remembered her overconfident bearing at the bar in Calimport and the ambush she had blundered into behind the trading house. The memories were sobering.
The group had stayed close to the pillar's base, underneath the overhanging lip, where the raiders would not be able to fire upon them with arrows or any other weapons they possessed. When they departed, Lucius would have to cast a deflecting wall at their backs until they were out of range of Djimon's archers. Fighting in an environment where any form of exertion could bring about heat sickness, vertigo, and exhaustion was not a desirable option.
'Don't worry about your captors,' Myrmeen said. 'We severed their lines with arrows. Young Ord turned out to be an expert marksman. They're trapped up there, with no means of getting to the ground. I'm sure they have archers, but-'
'It speaks,' the girl said as she sprang to her haunches.
'I'm Myrmeen. My name is Myrmeen-'
'Fine, I'm Krystin. And, yes, Djimon has archers and a damn shade more than that. Let's get out of here!'
'What do you mean, more than that? What-'
'They have magical weapons, too!' she said as they both heard several cries of terror and rage from above. Suddenly a group of four men leapt from the edge of the flat, each holding one corner of a sleek black sheet that might have been a cloak. They fell quickly, but not with the speed that would have killed them. The Harpers were drawn from their mounts by the sight of the falling men.
'A cloak of levitation,' Lucius said as he watched the raiders drift slightly faster to the ground. Ord broke out his bow, nocked an arrow, and loosed a shaft at one of the four men, who squealed as the arrow narrowly missed his face. His surprise caused him to let go of the cloak's edge, and he fell another hundred feet to his death.
Ord nocked a second arrow and fired again. The raiders' descent had been slowed by the loss of the fourth man's weight. This time the teenager was able to strike one of the men dead center in the chest. One of the two remaining fighters reached and grabbed the dead man's hand, catching him before he plummeted and caused their descent to slow even further. Ord was preparing a third arrow when he saw that the raiders, who were now only twenty feet from the ground, had decided to take their chances with a free-fall. They released the cloak and fell to the ground in heaps, rolling and groaning at the impact. Myrmeen was certain she had heard the snap of bones. Neither survivor attempted to get up.
'They have more than one cloak like that!' Krystin warned. 'I bet Djimon and the others went down the other side-'
'Very astute,' a voice sounded. Djimon stepped around the curved base of the pillar, his crossbow aimed at Krystin's head, and fired without hesitation.
The bolt whistled past Myrmeen's ear as she shoved the girl from the iron rod's path and hurled herself at the swarthy-skinned, brown-haired man. She knew that she could not afford to give Djimon a chance to reload his crossbow.
Myrmeen collided with the short, powerful man and drove him to the ground. She straddled his chest and prepared to deliver an open fisted blow that would drive the cartridge from his nose deep into his brain, killing him instantly. Suddenly she heard the slight crush of boots and looked up to see three archers, arrows nocked and ready to fire. The middle archer stepped away from the others and aimed his shaft at her face. She realized that Djimon probably had sent another contingent around the other side of the base with the intent of catching the Harpers in crossfire, slaughtering them quickly and efficiently with their arrows. She heard the sounds of conflict from where she had left the Harpers and knew that she could expect no help from them.
'Get down!'
Myrmeen did not question the voice. She threw herself upon Djimon and heard two sounds: A blade slicing through the air above her head and the familiar gurgle of a dying man with a dagger lodged in his throat. Then she heard the slump of a body and the snapping of a bow caught beneath a falling man. The archer was dead.
Beneath her, Djimon had regained his breath. The man shoved her from him, then scrambled to his feet, unwittingly saving the life of the child he had wished to kill as he found himself standing between his two remaining archers and Krys-tin, who had thrown the blade that had saved Myrmeen's life. The archers pointed their shafts upward when they saw their master.
Krystin took a running start and leapt into the air, planting both feet on Djimon's back. She kicked him with all her weight, then expertly rolled to the sand as she fell. The kick drove Djimon forward, past Myrmeen, who also rolled out of the way and into the arms of his warriors, where all three collapsed in a tangle.
Suddenly, Burke and Varina were on either side of Myrmeen, running for the fallen men. Varina snatched Djimon's hair, slid her drawn sword beneath his throat, and executed him without a word. His blood splattered on the closest of the downed archers, who screamed in his own language for mercy. Burke had already driven his sword into the other archer's chest and was about to finish off the pleading man when a sound made him hesitate. He heard the scrape of a sword leaving its scabbard and registered that Krystin was removing the sword from the scabbard at the side of the still-twitching body of Djimon and was preparing to haul it over her head and decapitate the last man.
Myrmeen grabbed her arms, restraining her, and Varina slashed the last archer's throat.
'You should have let me do it,' Krystin said, her chest heaving, her mouth caked with dried blood.
Myrmeen considered her daughter's murderous rage a frightening sight and not one that she had been prepared to witness. She turned to Burke. 'The others?'
'Lucius, Reisz, and Ord are dealing with them. We should see if they are-'
'We're fine,' came a reply from behind the Harpers. Burke turned to see Ord standing before the older men, his tunic splattered with blood. 'They're all dead, except the two who hurt themselves on the way down, the ones who were supposed to distract us.'
'See to them,' Burke said.
Krystin sat back, staring at the bloody remains of her former captors, then glanced to the west and said, 'The scum these bastards were going to sell me to are on their way. I can see their caravan.'
Cardoc wiped the sweat from his brow. 'I can shield us again. We can ride past them and they will never know it.'
Burke listened to the screams of the last two raiders, whom Ord and Reisz were busy putting to death, then said, 'I feel as if I can barely breathe in this heat. Mage, are you certain your strength is enough-'
'We will find out,' Cardoc said in a cold, efficient manner. Burke nodded and gave the order for the Harpers to retrieve their mounts and prepare to ride. In moments, Myrmeen and Krystin were alone, regarding each other warily.
'We've got the same eyes,' Krystin said slowly, only now registering the similarities between herself and the woman twenty years her senior.
'Yes,' Myrmeen said guardedly. 'I noticed that, too.'
It had not been the reunion Myrmeen had anticipated.
Seven
The caravan had come and gone, its occupants pausing only long enough to verify Djimon's corpse. The buyer who had been promised the blue-eyed fourteen-year-old had been livid and had kicked Djimon's body several times before returning with his escorts to the caravan. They rode off with haste to avoid the gathering storm.
