Arrows of Promise (Kingmakers Book 2) (2 page)

Master Rod ran the back of his hand against his chin,
peering over the rim of a barrel. “Yellow again, I take it.”

Riana slapped the lid back on in a huff before spinning to
face him. “This be ridiculous. We can no’ be painting the whole town yellow!”

“Oh, I won’t disagree there, Miss. No, can’t disagree
there.” He peered down the line of barrels, all neatly stacked, still rubbing
at his chin. “Now, what to do with these?”

Indeed, what were they to do with them? Riana wasn’t sure
either.

Rod Hatcher was the dockmaster for Estole. He had kindly
taken on the responsibility of making sure that people and supplies got to the
settlement without delay or more aggravation than could be helped. He looked
like the epitome of an old seaman. His hair was thick and white, skin hard and
dark after decades in the sun, hands rough from years of hard labor, but he had
the most brilliant smile that made a person laugh along with the joke, no
matter how bad it was. So when he started laughing, Riana laughed as well, even
though she was aggravated that some idjut had ordered
eighteen barrels of
yellow paint
.

“Well, we should all be in a cheerful mood, with this much
yellow about. Man can’t help but be otherwise.”

She shook her head in disagreement. “Or it be making people
sick to their stomachs. One or the other. Well. What about the rest?”

“Oh, the rest of what you need arrived fine. Nails, boards,
floor boards, pipes, tiles, and roof shingles.” He stopped ticking things off
his fingers and thought for a moment before nodding in satisfaction. “That
should be enough to get you started. I reckon the paint is a mistake on
someone’s part. What do you want me to do with it?”

Not much to do, now that it was mixed. “Mayhap Ash can take
a look, turn it to a different color?” she aired the thought doubtfully.

“Wizards have tricks up their sleeves. Wouldn’t doubt he
could.” Master Rod turned and peered behind him, going up and down the
coastline. “It’s him, I take it, that’s putting the docks in?”

“He put the posts in,” she corrected. “The rest of the docks
be built by the workers.”

“Ahh, that so? They made good progress. It was nice, having
a proper place to dock.” He extended a sheet of paper. “Sign off for me,
Missy.”

She took it, scanned through the list, and didn’t see any
discrepancies. With a flourish, she signed it, and handed it back. “So what’s
happening in the city?”

“Missy,” Master Rod sighed, “it be the usual. I ain’t sure
which is harder, dealing with troublemakers in Estole or trying to build a town
from the ground up over here in the settlement.”

“Beginning to wonder the same thing meself,” she muttered
under her breath. “Thank ye, Master Rod.”

He inclined his head toward the structures that were half in
place. “Ya’ll making good progress, I can see that. Anything I can bring ye
that ye need?”

Sanity? Unfortunately, they couldn’t bottle that. Riana
pulled a list out of her pocket and handed it to him. “These. We be short on
everything on that list, so bring what ye can.”

He gave it a quick glance before tucking it away in his
shirt pocket. “See what I can do.”

Riana turned sideways to let someone pass before she could
get through the inn’s kitchen doorway. The door wasn’t in yet, but at least the
kitchen now had walls and a roof overhead. It had taken two weeks for that to
happen and no one could be happier about it than the women that did all of the
cooking—especially Mistress Violet and Mistress Nicole Sadler.

Now the inn’s kitchen had three long counters to prepare and
make food on, two large pot belly stoves, and a place for a sink to go underneath
a window. It looked much more permanent and habitable than it had the evening
before and it took Riana a moment to realize why. “Did Master Sadler put in
those pot hooks for you last night?”

The women looked up at her entrance and beamed at her. “This
morning, actually,” Nicole corrected her, wiping her hands on an apron and
approaching her with arms outstretched. “He made them up in the forge for me
yesterday, in between making nails, and hung them up so we aren’t constantly
shifting pans. I do love that man.”

Erick Sadler had been the first blacksmith to sign up to
come to the settlement and was one of the more dedicated men to getting the
work done. He was as large as his wife was short, a bear of a man with a gentle
nature to him. Nicole was a perfect complement to him with her sweet smiles and
go-for-it nature.

“Now that the smithy be mostly up, he has the room to work on
extra things, belike.”

“Exactly what he told me,” Nicole confirmed as she took a
bag off of Riana’s shoulders. “What’s in here?”

“Brace of quail,” Riana informed her. “Three rabbits, and I
stumbled across some wild onions that I thought mayhap ye might like to have.”

“Bless you,” Violet said sincerely. “You always bring us
something to supplement the food and it is very appreciated. It certainly gives
us more room to be creative and not make the same things every day. Here, put
them right here.” Violet braced her forearm against the counter and shoved a
pile of vegetable peelings roughly out of the way.

“I did no’ take the time to skin or clean anything,” Riana
warned as she put her bounty down.

“Bosh, don’t you worry about that,” Nicole chided as she put
the sack down and started taking quail out of it. “It’s a miracle you find time
to go hunting every morning. We know things are demanding as it is.”

Lowering her voice, Violet asked almost furtively, “Is
everything alright with Ash? He came by this morning to see how much of the inn
was finished yesterday and I must say, he’s looking much too slim. And a little
pale. I would think he’s getting tanned working under this hot sun.”

Nicole leaned into the conversation as well, joining the
circle, and Riana confided to them both, “Atween the three of us, the man be
overworked. He bounces from project to project, lending a hand with anything
that may be difficult, and does no’ take the time to rest. Or eat. If he comes
by again, force a snack into his hands, and something to drink. I can no’ sit
on him like he needs.”

Violet patted her hand. “Don’t you worry. We’ll do that. I
know the two of you are going opposite directions most days as you’ve got
different responsibilities. We’ll help you take care of him.”

“Bless ye,” Riana responded fervently. It truly worried her,
as the woman was right—Ash was growing thinner by the day.

“We’re stuck here in the kitchen most of the time, so catch
us up. What’s finished?”

Riana did a sweep of the settlement every evening right
before coming here to get dinner, so she was able to rattle this off without
thinking about it too much. “Smithy be close enough to finished as to make no
nevermind. Inn, as ye know, only has the ground floor.”

“And not all of it.” Nicole made a face. “I can’t wait for
the bathing chambers to be finished.”

“I second that.” Violet raised a hand briefly before she
went back to plucking quail. “Miss Riana, take a slice of that bread and eat
something before you go back out. What else is done? Just those?”

“The lumber mill should be done by week’s end, or so I’m
told.” Oh yum, not only was the bread fresh, but there was soft butter and a
little sugar to sprinkle over it. She bit into it with a pleased moan as her
mouth became a very happy thing. “I do send thanks that the bakery was finished
this week.”

“We all do,” Nicole agreed. “The place is certainly busy all
day, trying to keep us supplied with rolls and loaves. But a sandwich is the
only handy thing we can wrap up and send to the men for lunch.”

No one had complained about the repetition of the menu yet,
but when you worked that hard under a blazing hot sun, anything was welcome.
“Butcher shop has the foundation in as of last night. Ash magicked it so it
would set quicker. Tannery be missing some walls and a roof, but it be coming
apace as well.”

“Then we’re making good progress,” Violet observed,
satisfied.

“Ahead of schedule, we be,” Riana confirmed. “Ash said if we
can get the butcher shop, lumber mill, inn and such up and running, then a
marketplace can go in next.”

“Now that
is
exciting news.” Nicole stopped and
looked around her as if she could somehow see through the inn walls. “I wonder
what this place will really look like once it’s all done.”

“Like a mini Estole at the rate we’re going,” Violet opined.
“What’s next after this?”

“Houses?” Nicole asked hopefully.

“Houses,” Riana confirmed. Ash had spent the first two days
drawing out the lots where buildings needed to go and the places where houses
could be built. Half of the arguments she had fielded the first few days were
about who got which lot. Some of them wanted to be close to their businesses—if
they chose not to build a two-story building and live above their shops. Others
wanted to be closer to the main docks so they could have easy access to Estole.
With only three streets properly in and two others roughly mapped out, there weren’t
a lot of choices and usually people’s needs and wants overlapped with someone
else’s. It had been quite the headache getting it all straightened out. “I be
leaving ye to it.”

“Drink a lot and try to stay in the shade,” Nicole ordered.
“It’s beastly hot out there.”

“I know it.” Riana finished off her bread and waved herself
out. Let’s see, what did she have on schedule for today?

It felt like Riana had just put her head on her pillow when
a loud clanging echoed through the camp. The sound was exactly like someone
taking a hammer to a cast iron pot. And frantically at that. She was rolling to
her feet, tugging on boots and reaching for weapons before she even properly
processed what she was hearing.

Ash burst from his tent, still shrugging into a shirt, and
looked around frantically. “What? What is it?”

“I do no’ smell a fire, and there be no weather to contend
with,” Riana stated grimly, belting her quiver on, “so it be only one other
possibility to my mind: we be under attack.”

His eyes went wide before narrowing. “Let’s go see if you’re
right.”

They ran toward the direction of the banging, and as they
got closer, they could hear a woman’s voice frantically screaming, “THE DOCKS!
THEY’RE AT THE DOCKS!”

Who? Riana didn’t have time to question it, just kept
running, although she was grateful now to have a cemented direction instead of
a vague ‘over there.’ As she ran, others joined them, most of them with some
kind of tool in hands. The loggers had their saws, the others had either
hammers or shovels, but as makeshift as the weapons were, they’d do a serious
amount of damage in a fight.

Ash kept his pace at hers—he being a slightly faster runner—and
she appreciated that as she would not have taken it well if he had raced off
ahead. Fortunately, their camp wasn’t too far from the docks, and they burst
into view to find men swarming around their supplies.

The only real light was from the moon overhead and what few
torches the dock workers had left burning, but even that was sufficient to tell
Riana what they were up against. Bandits. She’d lived her life in these thugs’
shadows; she could identify them in a glance, even if it was just their
silhouettes. Never once had she imagined they’d travel this far in order to
raid someone, though. They were lazier than this and normally stuck to familiar
hunting grounds. What had driven them all the way out here?

There must have been almost thirty of them, and they were
heading for the lighter, easier to carry supplies. Riana didn’t hesitate. She
unlatched her quiver, pulled out four arrows, nocked and fired.

Ash skid to a stop beside her, snapping up his shield, and
started firing off spells in quick succession. She recognized several as they
were his normal attack spells: Wind Shear, Arrows (although they weren’t in the
normal form, being fashioned of fire), as well as his logging spell. In between
his spells, he turned his head enough to bellow to the other men, “BLOCK THEIR
PATH! DON’T LET THEM INTO THE CAMP!”

Riana swore in her head as he gave the order. That would
have been scary, if the bandits had thought to run into the camp and snatch up
people. They were famous for kidnapping, as ransom usually paid out better for them
in the end. Her father had dealt with bandits more than a sheriff would have
for that very reason.

She could hear the men form up a defensive line behind her,
spacing out so that no one had a chance to advance into the camp without going
through at least two of them at the same time. Reassured that there were people
guarding her back, she put that much more focus on the bandits in front of her.

The bandits started forming their own defense, using the
stacked supplies near the docks as barriers. They dove behind them, calling out
orders to each other, and even though she saw it happening she didn’t have the
ability to stop it fast enough.

Then the madness truly began.

Her fingers were a blur, taking down targets left, right,
and center and yet still they swarmed her. Using an arrow like she would a
dagger, she fought two attackers off, kicking to keep one off as she stabbed at
the other.

An arm reached out and snagged her around the waist, yanking
her in, and she didn’t fight it. Riana knew the feel of it too well to be
mistaken. Ash brought her into his magical shield, protecting them both from
being taken down, and then the spells really did come out fast and furious.

Under normal circumstances, she would have continued to
fight, but she didn’t dare. This wasn’t his usual shield, but a weapon’s
shield, meant to protect him from cold iron and steel. She could recognize it
at a glance because it was an entirely different color from his usual shield,
being a more steel-grey and thicker. He could only fight magically and be
attacked magically. In this particular fight, it made perfect sense for him to
use it, because what kind of wizard would turn bandit? But it also meant that
she couldn’t use her own weapons as they would rebound inside the shield.

Well, probably for the best; she was low on arrows anyway.

Standing in the circle of Ash’s arm, she had a very good
view of what was going on and all of the time to observe it in. The bandits
never got to the wall of men behind them. Instead, they either realized that a
wizard was fighting, and tried archery to take him down while firing from
behind a stack of crates, or they hightailed it into the woods. The ones that
kept firing, hopelessly, were shouting at each other in a dialect she knew all
too well.

“Those idjuts be from Cloud’s Rest!” she spluttered,
astonished.

Ash gave her a surprised look that said, ‘
Really?!’,
but
didn’t lose focus, striving to take down men without destroying their own
supplies in the process. He took three down as she watched and then tried and
failed several times to hit the other two. They were experts at ducking at just
the right moment, and Ash’s attempt to hit them went right over their heads
without singeing a hair on them.

“Riana, I can’t hit them, but I bet you can. Your aim is
better.” Ash fired off another spell, keeping them busy. “I’ll fire again and
then lower the shield.” Another shot, this one just as useless as the previous
four. “Can you take them out when I do that? It’ll have to be done in a split
second.”

A tad reluctantly, she moved out of his arm and gripped two
of the last arrows she had left, notching one in standby. “Ready.”

“That’s my girl. Three, two, one!” Ash fired off a spell
that shot like flaming arrows, lighting up the night sky, then the shield
disappeared without a trace.

Riana moved as if they had practiced this a million times.
Smoothly, she lifted the bow and aimed at one of them, catching the moment when
he lifted up to fire at Ash. Her arrow took a clean hit to the upper chest.
Without pausing a beat, she sighted the only other bandit that was still
standing, whirled the arrow into place, drew back, and fired with equal
precision.