Tempest (6 page)

Chapter 7

I awoke to discover the point of a sword not far from my nose. It was near dawn, and a blush of light ran along the blade, running from the strong fist on its hilt to the sharpened end. My eyes widened. Kye stirred beneath me.

“
What
...” Brennus swore.

From the corner of my eyes, I saw more swords, more points, and a loud roar that shook the early morning air. Lochlen!

Another peek, and I found the golden dragon caught underneath a net, thrashing as men and swords circled him. It was his struggling that had woken me.

“We mean no harm,” Kye said calmly from beside me, his voice hoarse with sleep.

I stared at the sword as Lochlen roared again.

“Kill it if you must,” a strange voice ordered, and I stiffened.

“No!” I called out.

No one paid me any attention. The men who’d spoken were not Medeisian, but I knew their language as well as I knew my own, and I struggled beneath the sword’s point.

“Kill it!” the voice ordered again.

“No!” I cried in Sadeemian.

The men paused. The sword at my throat lowered. I dared not look up.

“Please,” I begged.

I knew, even in Sadeemian, my voice squeaked. The sword lowered more, falling from my throat to my chest. I risked a glance upward, my eyes finding the strong face of a middle-aged man with short sandy hair and blue eyes. He wore the unadorned blue cloak of the Sadeemian guard. There was no crest or design, only a rich blue cloak covering a plated armor I’d never seen before.

“Who are you?” the man asked.

I fought not to flinch.

“Who are you?” I responded. “To be so close to the Medeisian border, surely we should be more concerned with your presence than you are with ours.”

The man stiffened, his rugged face tightening. Kye’s hand found my wrist and squeezed.

“And yet,” the Sadeemian soldier countered, “you appear to be fleeing your country for ours. Spies are sentenced to death across our border. Are you aware of that? There is no clemency.”

Lochlen still thrashed from his place beneath the net as Kye lifted one of his hands. A sword came down instantly, pressing against the prince’s tunic, but he showed no fear.

“We are no spies. We are refugees seeking an audience with your king,” Kye declared, his use of the Sadeemian language more accented than mine, but passable.

The soldier’s eyes narrowed.

“Refugees? Traveling with a dragon? And a wolf?”

Oran snarled, and I dug my hand into his fur.

“Even the animals in Medeisia are refugees now,” Kye said.

Lochlen snorted as he thrashed, indignant even in captivity over being called an animal, but Kye was right to do so. The words seemed to calm the soldier, though no weapons lowered.

“And you seek our king, why?” the man asked.

Kye met his gaze evenly. “Because the Medeisian king plans ill will toward your king, and we can prove it.”

The soldiers all froze.

“What mean you?” the guard asked, his voice tense. “Let us see this proof.”

Kye shook his head. “We will only speak to the king.”

The guard’s eyes roamed over our group, his gaze narrowing on the wolf and dragon before he stepped back and nodded.

“Then come,” he said,” but, as of now, you are prisoners until I decide otherwise. Understood?”

No one nodded. I’m not sure we were meant to.

“Bind them!” the guard ordered.

I shook my head wildly, my gaze going to the curious shadows in the sky, dark against the rising sun.

“No,” I breathed. “The wyvers!”

Bound, we would be unable to defend ourselves if they were to attack.

The man laughed. “We’ve traveled much in this desert, young one. Be thankful I don’t offer you as food to them now.” He looked away. “Bind them and return to the main camp!”

The soldiers obeyed, lifting us each roughly before turning us so they could bind our wrists.

“What about the dragon, sir?” one of the Sadeemian men asked.

The middle-aged man waved a hand dismissively. “He is a danger to us. Kill him.”

I struggled. A sword bit into my back, and still I flailed.

“No!” I shouted. “He is a refugee as much as the rest of us. He seeks mercy, not death. He can turn into a man if you prefer. He would be less threatening thus.”

The sandy-haired soldier paused. “A man you say?” He snorted, his eyes on the dragon. Smoke curled from Lochlen’s nostrils.

“Transform then,” the guard ordered. “Turn, and I will spare you.”

Lochlen opened his mouth, his pointed teeth obvious as angry smoke billowed up into the desert sky. His long black pupils dilated.

“Lochlen, no,” I called out. “Do as they say. It is for the best.”

We’d left Medeisia in order to stop an assassination and seek an audience with the Sadeemian king. It wasn’t our right to question why King Freemont had men within the desert. We had maybe a month until the Greemallian princess made the journey to Sadeemia. If she died because one of Freemont’s men believed he’d been ordered to assassinate her, there would be war. War and chaos. Our country would be lost, our men forced to fight a power war for our crazy king. It would only get worse for the rebels, not better.

Lochlen lowered his head, his yellow-green eyes meeting mine before he finally stilled. Magic encircled his body as he transformed from dragon to man. At first, he was naked, and I heard Maeve squeak as more magic swirled. Clothes cloaked his frame. His eyes did not change.

“I do not do this for you,” Lochlen growled in Sadeemian, his gaze on the guard.

To the man’s credit, he did not gawk, although his men did.

“Impressive,” the soldier said instead. He turned while motioning at his men. “Gather their supplies. We’ll need them.”

The men did as they were told, picking up our packs, our weapons, and the water barrel we’d so carefully filled.

One guard tied Lochlen’s hands behind his back while others prodded us from behind.

“The wolf?” someone asked.

“Leave him be!” I called out. “He is as tame as a dog and follows only me. He will harm no one.”

The group’s leader, their captain, turned to look at me.

“Do you lead these refugees, woman?” he asked.

I’d never been referred to as a woman, and my cheeks heated.

“No,” I answered. “I-I only lead the wolf and the dragon.”

Again, Lochlen huffed, the sound indignant.

The captain’s eyes narrowed, moving first from my face and then to Kye’s. “Then
you
lead the refugees?” he asked.

Kye nodded.

I noticed the way the man’s eyes traveled along the scar on Kye’s temple before dropping to the ones that covered his neck. There was no doubt Kye was a fighter, and a fierce one.

“Leave the wolf be,” the man ordered finally. “But watch him.”

He turned and marched. We followed, shadows falling over us.

“What do they say?” Daegan asked. He couldn’t speak Sadeemian.

A sword prodded him in the back, and he started in surprise.

The captain’s cloak flailed in the hot desert breeze as he walked, throwing sharp sand into our faces.

“It’s okay, Aleck. Let them speak. I understand them,” the captain said.

It was as much a warning as a reprieve. We could talk freely amongst ourselves, but the man wanted us to know he understood every Medeisian word we said.

Kye looked to Daegan, who relaxed once the sword at his back lowered.

“We are being escorted to the Sadeemian king,” Kye replied.

Daegan huffed in disbelief. “We be prisoners,” he argued.

Kye didn’t flinch. “Aye. We are. We are prisoners until we’ve had our audience with their sovereign.”

Daegan glanced at the guards, his face strained, but he knew as well as we did that we would have been taken prisoner at some point anyway. We just hadn’t expected it to happen so soon, and certainly not here.

“Why are they in the desert?” Maeve hissed.

Kye shook his head, and Maeve said no more. Lochlen fumed before speaking in the dragon tongue, his voice sounding like snarls to the men in front and behind us. I couldn’t understand him, but Oran could.

“He says these men are mages,” the wolf translated. “They used power to sneak up on him, power to keep him under the net.”

 
“Hush! Stay quiet!” the blue-cloaked captain ordered Lochlen. Only I could hear the wolf.

 
Lochlen quieted. The dragon could have killed the men. Even being held with magic, he could have taken out the Sadeemian soldiers with a simple breath, but he’d held back. He’d held back because he’d seen the men’s armor, their sandy hair and blue eyes and knew they were Sadeemians. Not all Sadeemians were blond and blue-eyed, but many of them were.

The sun beat down on us. Sweat built up under the rope on my wrist, causing it to slide along the skin. I grit my teeth.

“May we have water?” Kye asked.

There was an order, and a pause. Water skins were forced against our mouths, and we gulped before they were jerked away.

“The wolf!” I insisted.

Someone filled a strange looking bowl, offering it carefully to the wolf before backing away. Oran drank, and we were shoved forward again.

We marched, and we marched, and we marched some more. We walked until I thought my feet would bleed, my body so hot, it was desperate for relief. None came. We halted often to drink, and to eat, but it didn’t help with the heat. The soldiers wore hooded cloaks, but the material looked thinner than ours, more comfortable.

We stopped to relieve ourselves, too. My cheeks burned with humiliation until I discovered the soldier who held a sword at my back as I squatted was a woman. I stared at her even as I knelt in the sand. The wind had blown back her hood, and I’d noted the delicate face and long, braided blonde hair before she’d pulled it back up again.

“You’re a woman!” I exclaimed.

She’d looked at me, her gaze confused.

“And?” she’d queried brusquely before shoving me back toward the group.

It seemed Sadeemia didn’t have the same constraints on women as Medeisia did. Not if women were allowed in their army. I stared at the blonde-haired soldier often as we walked after that. She noticed my stare and fidgeted.

“How long until we reach your camp?” Kye asked many hours later. He looked as overheated as I felt.

The captain looked over his shoulder. “Two more days after this one,” he responded.

I fought not to cry. Two more days!