The Warrior King (Book 4) (10 page)

“No, you have to stay in the water. You need to stay strong for tonight.”

“Then go without me.”

“I told you—”

“This is ridiculous,” Sofiana interrupted. “Are you going to help me or not?”

“I could go back for my sword,” Darik said to Daria. “That way you could stay cool in the water, and I’ll be able to guard Sofiana until the wizards return.”

“What a dumb idea,” Sofiana said. “May as well give me the sword and let me defend myself if that’s all the good you’ll be able to do.”

She stomped her feet, growing more infuriated by the moment. Where were those two wizards anyway? How could they have left Daria and Sofiana in the hands of this incompetent boy? She glanced at the two of them and made a sudden decision. She tore off the ridiculous silk slippers she’d been wearing since she’d left Chantmer, then turned and broke into a run toward the opposite side of the baths.

Behind, Darik called for her to stop. He came after her as she kept running, but she had no trouble losing him.

#

Sofiana left the open air as soon as possible and continued her way toward the Balsalomian apartments through interior hallways and chambers, but she had underestimated the complexity of the palace. She possessed an excellent memory among her many skills and was certain she had not been this way before. The lamps on the wall were placed further apart than she’d seen earlier, and instead of geometric designs, dragons and lions etched the walls, painted gold and red. The paint was fresh, but the carvings themselves had lost their sharp edge and were broken in places.

But when she emerged into the open air again, she found herself briefly crossing a terrace that overlooked the palace walls and the city of Marrabat below and knew that she must be close based on her position within the palace. She returned to the hallways and soon found herself in familiar territory. Only a few hours earlier she’d been stealthily following Princess Marialla, Daniel, and Vizier Fenerath through the halls when a sudden restlessness came over her, a need to explore the palace. Not long after that, Chantmer had found her climbing a tree. She now suspected that Chantmer had made her wander off so he could find her and put her to poisoning the eunuch.

Voices came from the hallway ahead of her, and she thought it might be Balsalomian guards. If so, they could take her to Daniel and Marialla. But when she rounded the corner, she found two men standing in front of her with grins on their faces. They were the two eunuch guards who she’d escaped outside Faalam’s chambers.

“Ah, so here is the little lotus flower herself. Walked right into our arms. Our master will be very pleased.”

“Get out of my way,” she demanded, backing up when they took a step toward her. “I’ll scream and the princess’s guards will come running. They’ll kill you.”

“Go ahead and scream, nobody will hear you,” the first man said. He held out his hand. “Come with us, child. We mean you no harm.”

She took another step backward, and the two eunuchs rushed at her. But they were slow and fat. She ducked to the ground and rolled to one side. She slid out her foot as they lurched by and sent one man crashing into the other. They both spilled to the ground, and Sofiana turned to run. Shouts sounded at her back as the two men regained their feet.

Sofiana was not frightened.
Damn fools,
she thought, even as she realized that she might still be feeling the lingering effects of Chantmer’s spell. She felt unusually confident considering her precarious situation. 

But as she looped back around to try again for the princess’s rooms, she rounded a corner and ran into two more guards. These ones were not eunuchs. They wore loose flowing robes, with naked scimitars at their belts and daggers in sheaths.

The two men stared in surprise before one of them said, “Hey, that’s the girl.” The two men grabbed for her.

Faalam’s earlier worry about alerting the general palace guard seemed to be no more. Perhaps he’d decided that the risk of having her escape altogether was more worrisome.

Sofiana slipped through their grasp and risked facing the eunuchs again as she fled back in the direction she’d come. She turned down an unfamiliar passageway as the chase grew louder behind her. This wasn’t particularly amusing anymore, and her heart was thumping as much with fear as with the exertion of her run. She cursed herself for not staying with Darik and the griffin rider. It was her own pride that had sent her away.

A few seconds later, she burst through an archway and onto a small patio of fruit trees and fountains. Two monkeys washed oranges in one of the fountains, and they shrieked when she ran toward them, scrambling up the nearest tree where they sat scolding. She ran toward the matching doorway on the far side of the patio and stumbled into a man in a cloak with tattoos on his arms and a book in hand.

He grabbed her. “Where are you going? That’s forbidden.”

It was one of the mages she’d seen wandering through the palace.

“The wizard,” she panted. She cast a desperate glance over her shoulder as the two guards and the pair of eunuchs all came bursting onto the patio. “Chantmer. He told me to—”

This was enough to loosen his grip, and she broke free and ran past him.

“Wash your feet before entering the library,” he called after her.

She ignored him and kept running. She stumbled through the library. Men in robes with tattoos looked up as she ran past. Some read books, others sat on beds of nails. Others lashed themselves over the shoulder with braided whips, chanting in low voices. Few paid her much attention, but they rose indignantly to their feet when the guards and eunuchs stepped into the room. Angry words followed, but Sofiana didn’t stop running.

At last she turned down a hallway with a high, vaulted ceiling. There were no lamps, only a thin light that streamed through tiny windows high on the wall to her right. It was cooler in here behind all the stone. Sofiana stopped and listened for sounds of pursuit before bending to gasp for air, glad to take refuge in the deep shadows.

“I am doubly fortunate today, it seems,” a man’s voice said in front of her.

Sofiana looked up in alarm to see that a man had crept up while she stood gasping. His face was hidden in shadows. She turned to run, but the man swept out a leg and tripped her. While she scrambled for her footing, he grabbed her and dragged her to her feet and then shoved her against the wall.

“Who are you?” Sofiana asked, alarmed at the tremble of fear in her voice. She struggled to pull free, but the man was too strong.

“Just a guard who is smarter than my friends. I circled around instead of simply chasing you all over the place. Turns out I got lucky.” He turned his head. Voices sounded through the small windows from the other side of the wall, more sounds of pursuit. The guard yanked her deeper in, beyond the windows, where it was even darker.

“Keep quiet,” he warned and slammed a hand over her mouth.

Sofiana obeyed, figuring it was better to deal with one man than several, but she was frightened and it was all she could do to keep from screaming. The voices called to each other outside, but after a minute, they left. The man relaxed his hold on Sofiana.

“See what I mean,” he said, voice triumphant. “They’re none too smart.”

“What do you want with me?” she demanded, anger replacing her fear. “When the princess hears about this, she will be furious.”

“No doubt she will. But that is a problem for the sultan to deal with. The eunuch offered ten shekels to the man who caught you.”

“Then why hide? Why not step forward and claim your reward?”

The man spun her around and pushed her against the wall. Hot breath came against Sofiana’s face, and he pinned her in place with his body.

“Because there are things I want more than ten shekels. The sultan may have you for his concubine, but I’ll always know I had you first.” He fumbled with his belt with one hand and groped at her breasts with his other.

She found her own hands suddenly free. She grabbed for the knife he wore at his belt and yanked it from its sheath. Before the man could react, she shoved it toward his belly. He staggered backward with a surprised look on his face, as if it had never occurred to him that a girl would fight back. A gash opened through his robes, and his intestines spilled out like the coils of a snake. He grabbed at them with a cry and tried to hold them in.

Sofiana fled for her life.

Chapter Ten

Roderick and the other ravagers rested at the heart of an encampment of Veyrian and Chalfean soldiers from Pasha Ismail’s army. The Veyrians were superstitious and afraid of both the undead knights in their midst and the horn and baying hounds of the Harvester without, but Ismail had several torturers and other conjurers in his army, and they had encircled the camp in protective wards.

Roderick accompanied Pradmort to Ismail’s tent and remained silently in the corner while the two men discussed strategy and tactics. Ismail was a tall, lean man with the sharp features of a Veyrian lord. He had a penetrating gaze and, alone of the men Roderick had seen in the dark wizard’s army, did not seem cowed by the presence of the undead knights. Nevertheless, he deferred to the ravager captain and answered all of Pradmort’s questions about the state of the war in the east.

King Whelan had sent raiders to harass the supply lines of the approaching armies, but had not yet marched in force, even though Ismail and the other pashas of the dark wizard were threatening to encircle his army. Ismail suspected that the enemy king was afraid to commit his forces to open battle so far from his base of power in Balsalom and Eriscoba.

Roderick tried to control his tongue, but found himself volunteering information. “My brother is no craven. If Whelan is withdrawing from confrontation, it is either so as to choose the field of battle or to draw you into a trap.”

“This is the brother of the barbarian king?” Ismail asked Pradmort, incredulous.

“Yes. The captain of the Knights Temperate. But he is ours now.”

The pasha pulled at the ends of his oiled mustache. “You are certain? How can you be sure he is not a spy?”

“The man is dead. I cut him down on the road myself.”

“He doesn’t look dead, he looks alert.”

“That is because we are still turning him. But if he makes you uncomfortable, I will send him away.”

“No,” Ismail said after a moment of hesitation. “He carries insights into the enemy’s mind. I want to hear them. How he positions his forces, how he guards his supplies—everything.”

Roderick inclined his head. “I will tell you everything, my lord.”

#

Pasha Ismail roused the Veyrian camp before dawn, and by first light, the bulk of the army and its slaves were marching east again. Roderick and Pradmort remained behind with a dozen ravagers, twenty Veyrian archers with longbows, three giants, and the biggest mammoth in the army, together with two men to drive it. They rushed the road toward Yoth, almost gaining the gates before the sentry’s shouted warning brought defenders to the walls.

Pradmort’s archers set up position thirty feet from the walls and drove full-sized shields into the dirt to crouch behind. They launched a hail of arrows at the defenders scrambling along the battlements while Ismail’s giants trotted toward the gates. Two of them carried an uprooted tree trunk, while the third held aloft a huge shield to block attack from above. Any arrows or spears that got past the shield would then have to penetrate the giants’ heavy armor.

The defense was disorganized. Several Yothian archers returned fire at the Veyrian bowmen behind their shields, while others tried to bring down the giants. Arrows bounced off the shield or against the helms and breastplates of the giants. The giants drove the log against the gates with a booming echo. They pulled it back and crashed it into the gates a second time. An arrow slipped through the defenses and struck one of the giants in the thigh. He bellowed in rage, but didn’t stop his attack.

Roderick glanced back at the mammoth, still down the road a hundred yards, where it stamped and trumpeted in a state of agitation. Pradmort seemed content to keep it in reserve, perhaps simply to frighten the defenders.

The giants continued to batter the gates for nearly ten minutes. First the gates bulged, then they buckled and strained at the groaning iron hinges. One of the hinges snapped. The whole thing was ready to collapse. Pradmort shouted at the mounted ravagers to prepare a charge.

Movement atop the wall caught Roderick’s eye. A dozen defenders were struggling with a heavy cauldron. They heaved it up to the edge of the wall, and Roderick caught a whiff of sulfur and molten lead. He shouted a warning, but the Veyrian archers had already spotted the threat and were trying to drive the defenders off.

Lead poured from the cauldron. It hit the giants’ shield with a hiss of steam and the smell of burning leather bindings. Most of the lead flowed off the back and front of the shields to land harmlessly in the dirt, but some of it also spilled over the sides, and some of this hit one of the giants on the neck. He screamed and pitched backwards, knocking away the protective shield.

The giants’ concentrated attack turned to panic. They stumbled over themselves to get out of the way. One giant clutched at his face, his flesh smoking from the lead that clung to his skin. Another bellowed in rage as he tried to scrape the molten metal from his hands.