Head bowed but still unbroken, the Kade leader spoke to her before she could question him again, “I gave you an honest-and-true answer. It may not be one which slides down your throat like honey but it is honesty.”
Sara stilled as she felt her hand twist the hilt of the sword held tightly in her grip. It was almost as if another person was inhabiting her body. It was the darkness wanting the blood she promised.
Later, she soothed this separate person.
A different person. One who only dreamed in blood and death, but that person wasn’t Sara. At least it wasn’t the person she wanted to be, so she firmly grabbed the darkness inside her as best as she could. If she couldn’t push it away with a threat present then at the very least she could put a choke hold on it.
Until she was ready to proceed and done talking.
“Keep your word,” the Kade leader snapped at her like a leashed dog from the ground.
Sara Fairchild turned cold, distant eyes upon him but she understood that his bark was all he had left. Being surrounded and under surveillance, he could do more for his men and in that sense—she approved of him more now than before.
She approved of his fight for his men. Deciding that she had lingered long enough, Sara turned to look off in the distance to the area where the Kade portal was still live. Wavering, but live, which meant that one of the five here was the key to it. Not any of their compatriots who had already lost their lives on the battlefield.
Although she had already agreed to let them go, that knowledge stilled her. She even briefly considered taking them prisoner, but she figured if the Mercenary’s Guild or the imperial forces wanted ransoms, well, they could get them themselves. Sara was done with them after they and their leadership had left them all to die not once, not twice, but multiple times.
She was no fool, and neither were her people.
But she was fair when she could pierce the darkness to think…and she approved of this Kade. Not at what he’d done or even what he’d accomplished, which was a standstill against overwhelming odds in the center of an enemy encampment. But because of the leadership qualities he possessed—he was a tactician who was willing to sacrifice himself for his men.
She could only wish for such a man amongst the leaders of her own side.
Waving her hand at the portal, she gave the leader a dark look and said, “Send them through before I change my mind.”
Surprisingly, the darkness within her didn’t object to this. She wondered why—maybe she was stronger than it after all.
The Kades went to the portal, and with one last, lingering look, each of the soldiers walked through and left behind their leader making one last stand. She waited, and then the portal disappeared—with a swift wave of the leader’s hand in a cipher she was sure he didn’t want memorized. This, too, Sara filed away to study later.
For now, she focused on the present, and she was pleasantly surprised.
She had expected betrayal—in fact, she had lived for it. Hoping for a new fight. A better fight. More hordes to pour through the portal and more heads to feed her blade—but that wasn’t what had happened.
Resentment took its place, and now Sara knew why the darkness had been so eager to accept this deal. It wasn’t sentient, she knew that, but she had the feeling it had hoped for more betrayal and for more enemies to come through to feed its insatiable need for blood. But none did.
Now there was only one.
Weaponless.
Defenseless.
Unsuitable.
The Kade leader must have read the disappointment etched on her hungry face; she didn’t try to hide it. He said, “We would not deceive such a formidable opponent on their own grounds. Calling more of my men here would have done no good—just assured more sacrifice.”
Sara raised an eyebrow at the compliment, but said nothing. She could barely stop herself from striking him, after all. Now that the darkness knew it wasn’t going to be fed more, well, it just wanted what was standing in front of it. Resentment had morphed to revulsion and eager desire to at least take one more victim, as it was going to be able to ride out on a wave of blood with the majority of the enemy gone.
She held it in check—barely—giving the Kade leader the respect he was due…and the chance to say a few last words.
But if he had any to give, he wasn’t saying them.
“Speak,” Sara said between stiff lips.
The unarmed leader smiled. “What is there to say? I’m ready to die.”
Sara’s hand tensed on her sword hilt, but then someone spoke up—from a careful distance away.
“You could at least tell us what your objective was,” Karn said as he leaned on the base of his axe with a glum look. “We certainly sacrificed enough tonight for that.”
Sara waited as the Kade leader deliberated in his head, then shrugged. “There’s no harm in that—now that it’s over.”
“What is?” Karn asked.
“Everything,” the man said. “We have what we came for.”
A chill went down Sara’s spine at those words. They were perfectly acceptable for the conversation, deliberate, even. But the tone—the tone held joy. Joy, not fear. Pride, not resentment.
Meanwhile, everyone gathered around looked confused, even indignant.
“Are you insane or do you take us for fools?” asked Isabelle.
“Neither and both,” the Kade leader said. “I merely answered your queries.”
Sara didn’t understand, and from the confusion on their faces, neither did anyone else. How and why could he be this confident when it was clearly her side that had won this tête-à-tête? She didn’t know. But judging by the leader’s stiff bearing, he wasn’t going to tell her unless they employed tactics that she could tell the darkness would not have time for. And she and the darkness did not have the patience necessary.
If one drop of his blood spilled, his head would follow. It was her kill.
As she spiraled back into the madness, Sara focused on one thing: the leader’s smug face. That face hid secrets; it said that if she killed him now, he’d be taking some very important knowledge to the grave with him.
“Tell us,” Sara said with a menacing step forward.
Up until now he had been brave, but even the fearless folded when they saw her dark gaze.
Whatever he saw in her gaze moved him to answer. He spoke, and they listened in disbelief.
“A distraction?” said Ezekiel in a daze.
“No, it can’t be!” Reben said frantically as she turned around and looked up and out. It was true—the sky above the dome was dark and the surrounding area looked ominously silent. But they would have heard. They would have known.
“Surely they would have,” Sara muttered doubtfully to herself.
The Kade laughed as he said, “The dome walls only show you what you want to see. You’d have to venture outside to see the true effect.”
“You’re lying!” Marx growled as he strode forward, accidentally cutting off Sara’s path to her kill. She none too gently shoved him aside and pushed him in a more helpful direction.
Then Sara rose full from the darkness that held her, the darkness that kept her mind pliant and her battle mage skills honed to peak intensity.
She saw her face mirrored in the Kade leader’s glistening gaze.
Then she said with a shake of her head, “You can’t think we’re fools.”
“Fools, no,” he said softly. “But neither am I, and I didn’t sacrifice myself for no reason. I have information. Information for your leadership.”
“The leadership you killed off? With your ghostly army?” Sara asked.
He gave a shrug. “There are always more, no?”
Sara took a step back, disturbed.
There was no lying in his tone. No dishonesty in his gaze. If he was fabricating his words in an effort to make one heroic last stand and strike fear in their hearts before he died, well…he certainly believed what he was saying was the truth.
Slowly, Sara lowered her sword. This would take more thought and more decision power than she had. It was one thing to kill an invader; it was another to kill off a leader who might have crucial insight into the tactics that had wrought devastation to their encampment tonight…according to him, anyway.
Stepping back, Sara said, “Reben, come here.”
She looked over at her friend and saw fear on Reben’s face. She quickly masked it, but it had been there for all to see. Sara tried to not let it affect her as she looked away and gave Reben time to compose herself.
Before anyone could say something and speak up on behalf of the group, Reben walked over to Sara of her own accord. Sara was silently proud of her, even as she winced internally as she got a good look at Reben’s arm which Sara had apparently broken in her haze.
After swallowing harshly, Sara asked, “Is your arm well?”
“Well enough,” Reben replied. “What do you need?”
Sara faced her head-on, her sword down by her side. “For you to do some reconnaissance for me. Are you up for it?”
A bright smile lit Reben’s face. “Anytime, anywhere.”
Sara nodded in approval and, with some relief, outlined what she wanted Reben to do.
It was time to take back the night.
As Reben listened, she nodded periodically.
“Sounds simple enough. You want me to scout out the encampment for you.”
Sara nodded. “But be careful. If his information is right, we aren’t the only ones here by a long shot, and haven’t been for a long while.”
Reben cocked her head to the side. “And if he’s not?”
“Meaning?” Ezekiel said as he pointedly stepped forward and into their conversation.
Sara didn’t dismiss him. He was right. She wanted to know what Reben was thinking as well.
Hesitantly, after eyeing them both, Reben said, “If he’s not right and it’s just our forces out there, somehow, someway, they looked away. They left us in the middle of an invasion to die.”
“You think they broke camp?” Ezekiel asked.
None of them would be surprised, judging by the faces around them.
Hesitantly, Reben replied, “I think they could have. That or even looked away as the Kades dropped a heck of a sight-and-sound shield over us all.”
“What’s that?” Marx asked from over in the distance.
Sara absent-mindedly bit her lip. “The dome overhead. It seems to both function as a physical barrier but also has taken on components more common to a sight-and-sound shield, specifically the ability to secure the physical area in proximity to an individual or group so that no one can hear a conversation or even see the person inside the casting area.”
Several heads nodded all around.
“Yes, but creating a shielding around a group this large must be taxing, even physically debilitating,” Ezekiel said.
The man who had managed to put a protective shielding around all of them against dragon fire earlier spoke up: “But possible if your life depends on it.”
“Or if the Kades were desperate enough,” Ezekiel said.
“Yes, but the question is how? We all saw the activation blast but it has to be upheld by more than one mage,” Sara said. “Don’t forget, the empress forces camp nearby, just as our own do.”
“Well, there’s a grim thought,” said Karn. “So we’re blocked in by opposition mages and abandoned by our own forces.”
“She never said that,” Ezekiel said while looking over his shoulder warily. “Just that it’s possible to create with a larger group of mages.”
“Must be disturbing for you to realize just how badly you’re screwed,” said the Kade leader dryly.
“Shut up,” said several others at once.
“No one asked you,” said Reben to the Kade as she turned to Sara.
Sara turned the subject back to her original thought process as she said, “We need you to go out and scout for us. Can your magic get us through the dome wall?”
“You know I’m only half kith,” Reben replied to her.
“But you can do what we’re asking?” Ezekiel said as he knelt in the mud next to the two of them.
Sara kept a wary eye behind them on the prisoner, but he seemed complacent between Karn and Marx, as if he knew they wouldn’t kill him now. He wasn’t wrong.
“Yes,” Reben said firmly. “I can get out of the sight-and-sound shield holding us here just like I did before, I can see if there are more people out there, and hopefully, if our leadership is waiting and betrayed us, not alert them to my presence.”
“Good, that’s good,” Sara said.
“What else do you want me to do?” Reben asked.
Sara waited for a moment before she replied. She didn’t take Reben’s words lightly. She was no one’s commander legitimately, but had taken on that role, and if she accepted it, she would see it through.
Sara pinned Reben with her gaze. “Come back to us, no matter what. We’ll figure it out from there.”
Reben gave a sharp nod. “Always.”
The younger mercenary even saluted, and Sara gave a halfhearted one back, knowing that their actions from this moment on, and what they found out when Reben returned, could make or break a lot of people’s belief in the system they had been born under, the people they followed, the crown they served.