Sara watched as the captain sank his sharp knife into the man’s upper thigh and the Kade bellowed with a pleasingly high voice.
Pleasingly because the captain smiled as if the sound was music to his ears…and the games were just beginning.
Sara knew that the Kade was as smart as they were. And he knew that no good would come of him talking, which was why this tactic wasn’t going to work, but she held her tongue. She just hoped that at least the captain would know when to quit. Because the Kade was right: regardless of the fact that he was refusing to give up information, it was absolutely certain that he was no good to them dead. Alive, well, they could trade him for someone or something that a Kade would talk for.
He had to know that, too.
But as much as she feared the captain going too far, Sara realized he knew how to toe the line of just far enough.
The Kade’s screams lasted another half-hour. Enough for even the most bloodthirsty of curious spectators to keep going about their missions rather than loiter one more second to hear a man who had been an opposition leader reduced to whimpers before them.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
The worst was watching. But she did so at Barthis’s sharp command to stick around and see how a real warrior handled their prisoners. She didn’t think she had much to learn. But she observed because she had no choice, praying all the while for the Kade to spit it out, so she could go in search of Nissa and, when necessary, they could mount a forward offensive to stop the Kades from attacking what had been her home.
But she was also getting frustrated at his reticence, and her darkness—ever present once unleashed—was creeping forward as well.
“Where is my sun mage?” the captain said with a vindictive look in his eye. Then, without waiting, he twisted the knife he was holding in the Kade’s other thigh.
The screams grew louder. For a moment, their prisoner even passed out from the pain.
A bucket of salty water solved that problem.
As Barthis raised his knife to do more damage, Sara figured she had one more chance.
She stepped forward and said, “Let me.”
The captain said angrily, “I gave you your opportunity to talk, Lieutenant Commander Fairchild—now let me and my attendants do our work. To do what we do best.”
Sara made a show of looking around. “I see no attendants, captain.”
He rolled his eyes. “Your point? I have called for them and they will be here momentarily, including Davinis…my favorite.”
His voice was honey sweet at the end.
“Then give me the moments left before he gets here,” Sara said, hoping he would play her game. “Besides, who said anything about talking?”
Barthis laughed. “Fairchild, I would be more inclined to believe you had I not seen the pitiful volleys you inflicted him with before. Compassionate pleas have no place on the battlefield.”
Sara said through clenched teeth, “I know that, sir.”
“Do you?”
Sara didn’t step back. Instead she said, “No mercy this time. I am as ready as you to shed blood.”
Her visage hadn’t changed but apparently he saw the dark hunger in her eyes as the captain said, “Careful Fairchild or the Berserker nature will eat you alive.”
But then with a sigh, the captain moved aside and let her replace him. He then pointed his knife down at the man.
The captain said, “You have minutes until my people get here. No more. Do you understand?”
“Understood,” Sara said.
“Good—I need some food anyway,” said Captain Barthis. “But hear this: the minute I pull you back and Davinis steps in, I won’t hear a word further from you. That is unless you’ve accomplished what we need before then. Is that clear?”
Sara stiffened. “As glass, sir. I’ll handle it, sir.”
Barthis nodded, satisfied. “That’s what I like to hear.”
He walked to a nearby loitering guard and immediately sent him running off to fetch some water and food.
Turning to the guards, Sara didn’t hesitate. She knew what she had to do. Make a point. Whether it was to herself or to her captain, she didn’t quite know.
She gestured to capture the guards’ attentions and then shouted, “Cut him down.”
They hesitated and looked over at the captain.
Sara said, “I gave you an order, now do it.”
Barthis said with a glower, “Do it. But Fairchild, I’m warning you…”
Sara shrugged off her cloak and removed her weapons belt, including two of the swords she now preferred carrying close to her waist.
“I said I had it handled, captain, and I do,” she said sweetly.
Moments later, the ropes were cut and the Kade invasion leader was where she wanted him—on the ground. She went to work.
Moving swiftly, Sara didn’t bother giving him any warnings, just whirled her right leg in a kick that swept the Kade’s feet out from under him. Seeing he’d been hanging from a crucifix for days and was half-starved, he didn’t have much strength left.
He toppled over like a tree, and she jumped on top of his chest.
Straddling him with her knees on either side of his ribs, Sara leaned close and whispered in his ear, “I’m not going to enjoy this. It’s not in my nature to beat down someone just because I can. But…I will follow my captain’s orders until I get what I’m seeking. This is your only warning.”
Sara leaned back and looked into the Kade’s eyes. Personally she was almost sorry for what she was about to do. But the hunger was gleeful and she justified it knowing that he was still the enemy.
The Kade slowly reached up and pushed his sweaty hair out of his face, and then looked at her defiantly and said, “You do what you have to do, mercenary.”
Their eyes locked, and distantly Sara heard the whoops and catcalls of some of her more childish colleagues as they spotted her on top of him. But she barely paid them heed.
Instead, she brought up a fist and crashed it down with a satisfying cru-unch.
When his nose broke, the entire area around his containment field went silent.
Then Sara went to work.
She pressed down on the broken, twisted lump in the middle of his face hard enough for him to squeal and plead, then brought a second hand down on his throat.
Pressing down hard, she began cutting off his oxygen supply with every squeeze of his throat while increasing the pain nodes exploding in his brain by squishing the torn cartilage up and down his nostrils.
She used her own body as a counterweight to ride out his jerks and bucks. After a few minutes, she even had the feeling that some of his responses were involuntary, just pure instinct as the pain drove him to do anything he could to stop her assault. But she didn’t.
The sounds he made, the sounds his body made, were like nothing she wanted to see or hear again. But she didn’t stop until he’d almost passed out.
The she let up the pressure on both points.
Leaning back, Sara took a deep breath and said, “Once I start, I won’t stop until I’m ready. I won’t listen to your screams, I won’t heed your pleas, and I won’t let up until I’m ready. When I am ready, then you’ll have ten seconds to tell me what I want to know. If you don’t, we start all over again. Do you understand?”
His nose was a messy pulp of burst vessels, mangled flesh, and snot.
He looked up at her with red, angry eyes. But to her astonishment, he said not a word.
So she set in again.
This time, she slipped down his body a bit, until her haunches were aligned with his upper thighs.
It was low enough that he could throw her off if he had the right balance, so she waved over two of Captain Barthis’s guards without waiting for approval from their master.
He didn’t say a word when she did. The only reason Sara even knew Barthis was still present was the fact that she heard methodical chewing in the background.
I guess that means he got his lunch, she thought as she wiped sweat from her brow and let her darkness keep riding her emotions. It was the only reason she felt she had lasted through the torture session this long.
After telling the guards what she wanted done, she waited until they had gone to get the requested stakes and the others remained behind to hold the struggling Kade down by his shoulders.
The only thing Sara was thinking the whole time was that at least it was more humane than what Davinis intended to do—which was scrape the man’s memories out piece by piece with magic. She wouldn’t wish that method of torture on anyone, being trapped inside your own mind as someone else mentally carved you up and discarded your precious thoughts as waste while doing so.
At least here he had a choice.
Or that was what she told herself.
When the guards came back, this time they didn’t hesitate to do as she said. Two of them grabbed his right hand and pressed it flat on the ground, fingers out, as she instructed. Even though he struggled, they drove the stake in on her command with the powerful smashes of a hammer. His remaining hand followed, and then she nodded at them to leave the Kade to her.
Sara settled atop his upper thighs in a crouch like a girl about to play a game of rabbit jumping, and then casually looked into the Kade’s eyes as she stripped away his shirt with her knife.
He was breathing hard by then. So hard.
“Last chance,” she said with casual ease as she drew forth a smaller stake. He didn’t say a word, just gulped, and she sighed then went to work.
First, she pushed the stake up into his armpit and jabbed it in.
With a rough jerk, she kept the wood aligned with the fleshy part of his skin. Not deep enough to tear apart muscle but sharp enough to pull apart skin. As her father’s quartermaster had taught her to do when skinning wolves after the rare hunts she went on, she kept the line even and smooth to preserve the skin.
And inflict the most amount of pain.
As she did so, she watched his reaction.
First he bit into his tongue to keep from screaming.
Then his fingers were fractured and his body rose to throw her off, but all he could manage was to dig his fingers in for grip. She was too heavy and strong for his lower half to do much of anything at all. When his face began to drain of color—from blood loss, not fear—and he tracked her hand as she moved the stake to his other side, she knew she had him.
At first, he moved his lips, unspeaking.
After he finally managed to spit out the glob of blood and phlegm that was lodged in his throat, the leader said in a voice raw from screaming, “What do you want to know?”
Sara lifted the stake just a little. “Where is the Kade encampment?”
He didn’t want to tell her. As she pressed the stake down again, he had no choice.
Through gritted teeth, he said, “In the middle marches, to the west of the kingdom that borders Algardis on the far east. You’ll find them by going due north along the river and traveling up the dry riverbed to the forgotten falls.”
His voice tremored toward the end, but honesty rang out in clarion tones.
Sara almost jumped out of her skin when she heard a dismissive “She got lucky.”
Recognizing Davinis’s voice, Sara gripped her stake hard, fighting the urge not to drive it into his eye after what he had done, and, indirectly, was forcing her to do.
Then she realized Captain Barthis was standing right beside him and wouldn’t take well to her killing his pet torturer, so she relaxed her hand and kept her gaze on the Kade.
“Why, Fairchild,” her captain said, “you have surprised me well and good. That is what I like to see in a commanding officer.”
Sara looked up at her captain and said dispassionately, “His information makes sense, considering the landscape I saw when we were flying toward the Kade encampment.”
Captain Barthis nodded, pleased. As he backed away, he said, “Find out more. Well done, Fairchild.”
Ignoring his praise and letting it pass over her like the wind, Sara said to the dazed man beneath her, “You gave me what I asked for, and I’m thankful.”
She watched his Adam’s apple as he swallowed.
“Now you need to give me just a little bit more,” she said softly.
The captive’s gaze kept flicking back from the captain to her.
“What do you want to know?” he asked with a whimper.
“Just the specifications on troop movements, defense alignments, and mages on site,” she said. “We can’t go in blind.”
He blinked. Then said hoarsely, “I’ll tell you everything, and I mean it—but I need something in return.”
“And I told you—no more games.”
“No, no more games. Just—a promise. I’m giving you everything. There’s nothing more I have. But…but that man from before. He’s a mage, isn’t he?”
Sara sat back. “Who?”
His eyes darkened as he spat out another round of blood and phlegm, turning his head so he didn’t land the mess on her.
“Now who’s playing games?” he said. “The mage with your captain. I know what he is. I can’t fall into his hands.”
The terror in his voice was real—unfortunately, she couldn’t do anything about that.
“That’s out of my hands,” Sara said.
“It’s not.”
As she palmed the stake, the captain saw her movement and shouted, “Keep going, Fairchild. I knew you had it in you.”
Then, for the moment, the captain turned away to the group that had amassed around him. Planners, officers, and mages, Sara thought.
The Kade seemed to take this as his chance to speak freely.
Leaning forward, he said, “I’ll give you what you want, but I need mercy.”
“What?”
“We’ve heard of Captain Barthis’s legendary tactics,” he said. “He’ll keep me alive, but I’ve told you what I know. Just get your answers and then let me go in peace.”
“Free you?” she said, her face practically on top of his and her hair shielding their conversation from view. With her hand over his nose, they probably thought she was crushing him again.
“If you want to call it that,” he said.
Sara sat back. “Kill you?”
“There’s nothing else for me here. Nothing else to give you after this,” he said wearily, and she finally understood.
Stumbling for the first time, Sara said, “Fine. I’ll-I’ll come back tonight.”
“No—now, mercenary,” he said. “You honor your word directly after I honor mine.”