Radiance (Wraith Kings Book 1)(64)
Battle rage coursed through his veins in a hot river, even as he methodically cut a bloody swath through the ranks of enemies swarming out of the forest’s understory and dropping from the trees.
Someone shouted, and their message sent Brishen’s heart jumping to his throat. “The Gauri bitch! She’s crossing the bridge!”
Brishen tore through the forest, bolting out of the tree line in time to see an archer take aim at the fleeing horse and its two riders as they raced toward the other side of the ravine. Every sound around him faded to silence, every movement narrowed to the archer’s flexing shoulder as he drew the bowstring.
The prince of Saggara didn’t pray to gods but to the bloodied axe he held. “Be true,” he whispered and flung the weapon as hard he could.
The archer slammed forward—the axe blade buried between his shoulders—and teetered on the ravine’s edge before pitching into the abyss.
Brishen sprinted for the bridge just as a dozen Beladine riders galloped onto its span. Oh gods, no! He was fast, but he’d never catch them. He could outrun a human but not a horse.
“Commander, what do you need?” Two of his Kai, splattered in blood, raced to his side. A pack of Beladine attackers pursued them.
“Hold them off as long as you can,” he ordered. The magic would get him killed, but he had no choice. If he didn’t use it, Anhuset’s pursuers would catch her. She’d kill half before they took her down, but she’d still die and so would Ildiko.
He set his hands on the bridge’s first plank. More words of power, these a sizzling wash of pain that threatened to peel his skin back from his bones. He waited precious seconds until Anhuset’s horse touched the ground on the other side of the ravine. He closed his eyes, dizzy from relief and the blazing agony that poured down his arms. He unleashed the last part of the spell.
A rolling tide of flame roared across the bridge, consuming it with a ravenous hunger and engulfing screaming horses and their horrified riders.
Brishen staggered to his feet only to be thrown sideways. He and his attacker wrestled across the ground. Weakened and slowed by the ravages of spellwork, Brishen struggled to free himself from the grip of a Beladine sell-sword twice his size. The man slammed Brishen’s hand against a protruding rock. His fingers went numb, and he lost the grip on his knife. His enemy snarled in triumph.
Brishen snarled back before lunging up to sink his fangs into the man’s neck. A gurgling scream set his ear to ringing, and the sour tastes of unwashed human sweat and blood filled his mouth. He jerked his head, tore out flesh with his teeth and half drowned as gouts of hot gore splashed his face and neck.
He spat out the hunk of meat and shoved the dead mercenary off him. Half blinded once more, this time by blood instead of light, he stood. The Kai who’d come to help him fought hard but were overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Brishen took up his opponent’s sword and ran toward them, no longer fleet and sure-footed. A menacing growl was his only warning before a whirlwind of dusty brown fur shot toward him.
He spun at the last moment, sword blade slicing upward. A canine yelp told him he’d hit his target just as a dead magefinder landed nearby in the dirt.
The same voice that alerted others of Ildiko’s and Anhuset’s escape shouted again. Enraged. Desperate.
“Bring him down! Bring that Kai bastard down!”
He heard the warning hisses of air, but his body refused to obey his mind’s screaming commands to get out of the way. The first arrow took him in the right shoulder, the second in the upper left thigh, the third in the right. Brishen crashed to his knees. His vision blurred, and he swayed under the sudden heavy weight of a net. It tangled around his limbs, a living thing as sinuous and gripping as the tentacled sea creatures he’d heard of in stories.
The side of a club was the last thing he saw before the inside of his skull exploded in a shower of hot agony. Darkness followed, and in this blackness he could not see.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The trees did their best to claw Ildiko and Anhuset from the saddle, their outstretched limbs whipping and scratching as Anhuset’s gelding galloped hard into the dark forest. Ildiko, wedged between Anhuset and the saddle pommel stared blindly into the blackness, its edges feathered away by a distant glow that teased the corner of her eye.
Brishen.
Her last glimpse of him had been a wavering view of his back as he plunged into the chaos of horses, blind Kai and a hail of arrows. She’d struggled in Anhuset’s hold to break free, to run back to her husband, to do something other than flee. The Kai woman’s unyielding grip proved unbreakable. Ildiko had been a breath away from vomiting after the violent pitching she suffered while thrown across her captor’s shoulder. Her vision spun when she was upended and slung into the saddle of the still galloping horse.
A metallic glimmer caught her eye—moonlight on steel. Anhuset thrust the handle of a dagger into her hand.
“Take this,” she ordered in a grim voice that warned against argument. “Stab anything that moves.”
Ildiko barely had her fingers around the handle when a rippling shadow shot out of the dark from her left side and rushed the horse. Their attacker emitted a screeching cry, one echoed by Ildiko. Grasping hands tore at her skirts and leg while the horse neighed and danced sideways.
She did exactly as Anhuset instructed, plunging the dagger toward the figure hanging off the saddle. An agonized scream, the give of flesh as the dagger sank deep and the warm wash of blood coating her hand were her rewards.