Brandt’s blood boiled.
“Ryder, cut him off!”
Ryder nodded, but Brandt noticed him grimace as he darted ahead of the rest of them. He was hurt worse than he had first appeared.
Brandt yelled ahead. “Ana, assist Ryder.”
She darted farther ahead of the group, trailing Ryder as best she could. Ryder’s lightness was unmatched, but Ana’s came close.
Brandt continued to lose ground to the rest of the group. His sword and his affinity were strong, but lightness had never been a technique that came easily to him.
Ryder and Ana caught up with the bandit in less than thirty heartbeats. Brandt could just see the initial exchange, which his friends took the worse of.
But it gave the other wolfblades time to catch up, and soon the battle was again five against one. The bandit’s capture was only a matter of time. Brandt burned to know the identity of the man who possessed such an affinity. How had this skill come to be?
Lola collapsed beside him. In the shade of the trees, Brandt wasn’t sure what felled her.
Brandt caught a glimpse of a fist-sized stone as it struck Ryder in the back of the head. Ryder folded over, his eyes blank.
He couldn’t track the single stone. It was moving too fast, its direction changing moment after moment. The remaining wolfblades had also caught on to what was happening, and they looked around warily.
It didn’t save Kyler. The rock caught him in the stomach, then lifted him high into the air. Brandt couldn’t believe his eyes.
He focused on the bandit. He couldn’t stop the stone, but he could kill the man controlling it.
Kyler crashed to the ground, the only warning Brandt had that the stone was no longer occupied with the giant warrior.
Then the stone smashed into his side. Brandt only caught a glimpse of it before it picked him off his feet, just as it had Kyler.
Brandt kicked his legs, clawing for the ground no longer beneath them. His flight only lasted for a moment before it ended with him slamming up against a tree. The stone flew away, and Brandt collapsed to the ground, clutching at his stomach, unable to breathe.
The sounds of battle only lasted another few heartbeats. The thump of another unconscious body against the ground signaled the end of the wolfblades.
Brandt fought to stand. Rage burned within him, but all the hate in the world wasn’t going to make his legs move.
He slammed his fist into the ground as the forest went quiet around him.
He didn’t know how much time passed, but the groans of his squad brought him to his feet. His breath came in ragged gasps, but it came. Maybe he’d cracked a few ribs. He couldn’t be sure.
Brandt stumbled over to Lola, who had dug her sword into the ground and was using it to stand up. “You okay?”
She inhaled sharply. “I will be.”
Together, they checked on the others. Kyler and Ana both responded well, but Ryder took some time to recover. Blood flowed freely from a wound to his scalp.
Miraculously, none of them had died. As Brandt watched his friends recover from the various blows they had taken, he understood a truth.
The bandit had intentionally left them alive. Several of the blows could have killed them. If the man had the ability to lift Kyler in the air with a single stone, the blow to Ryder’s head could have easily sent him to the gates.
The bandit had pulled his punches.
Brandt wished he knew why.
Once everyone was back on their feet, they returned to where the wagon had tipped over. When they arrived, they found another surprise. One surprise too many, in Brandt’s opinion.
The merchant and his wife appeared to be dead.
Ana approached and kneeled down beside them. She put her hand next to the merchant’s face. “He’s alive.”
She moved to the wife and confirmed she lived, too. Ana examined the woman more closely. She squinted as she brushed some of the long dark hair away from the woman’s neck. “There’s a small puncture wound here.”
Brandt examined the merchant, finding a matching wound.
“The bandit?” Lola asked.
Brandt shook his head. “I can’t imagine him using poisoned darts.”
“The walls are gone,” Kyler observed.
Brandt hadn’t noticed, but once Kyler pointed it out, he couldn’t believe he had missed the detail. The short wall that had stopped the wagon during the ambush was gone. The taller wall that had toppled the wagon was, too. The road looked clear as far as the eye could see. “Could you have fixed that?”
Kyler rubbed at his chin. “Not in less than a full afternoon’s worth of work and two full meals.”
“So the bandit returned and repaired the road?”
“That would be my guess.”
Brandt shook his head. Who else had been after the merchant? Why had the bandit fixed the road when he returned?
He had no answers. “Let’s arrest these two and search through what’s left. We can question them back in Landow.”
They went to work, hoping to find answers to the questions that plagued them.
8
Alena helped serve the meal her mother had prepared. Tonight’s meal was simple, if hearty. Mother had roasted a whole chicken and boiled potatoes, a celebration of a project her father recently finished.
One advantage of Alena’s position with Bayt was that she had access to more spices every day than most people saw in a month. Often, in lieu of accepting gold for her activities, she took her payments in spice. Her mother was an excellent cook and used the herbs and seasonings to great effect. Tonight’s chicken and potatoes were no exception.
Their father was home this evening. He owned one of the best smithies in town, thanks in large part to his long history of hard work and uncompromising standards. Many years ago he had started out as an apprentice smith, but the quality of his work slowly became
