Phoenix Unbound
Page 81

“Impossible then?”
She shook her head again. “No, just improbable.”
“Try anyway.”
The archer bowed. “As you wish, Ataman.”
“Azarion, she better get that arrow in the air now.”
Erakes’s warning made him whip around. The empress was leaving the ramparts.
“Fuck!” he snarled before slamming his heels into his horse’s sides. The animal leapt forward toward the open field. He spotted an abandoned shield on the ground, leaned from the saddle, and snatched it up before slowing his horse to a walk. He kept the shield in front of him, a guard against Kraelian arrow fire.
The Kraelian war chant faded away as the soldiers wondered why a lone Savatar rode to the edge of the field to pace his horse before them. The empress paused, staring over the ramparts.
“Come on, bitch,” Azarion murmured. “Come back to the edge.” Behind him, the archer waited. He’d found a way to capture her attention. Now he just needed to keep it.
He pulled off his helm. He’d been beardless when he escaped from Kraelag a year earlier. The one he wore now was neatly trimmed, but it still obscured some of his features and altered his appearance. Distance would also make it difficult for her to see his face clearly, but Dalvila was familiar with more than his face. She’d seen him fight in the arena and fuck in her bed. She knew his body language, and he counted on that now, helmless and alone as he stared at her from the edge of the field.
She lunged for the rampart. From where Azarion stood, she was too far away for him to make out her expression, but her one word, venomous and bubbling with loathing, pealed across the battlefield.
“YOU!”
Azarion wheeled his horse around and raced back toward the outcropping. The empress’s shrieks blistered the air. “Kill him! Kill that gladiator!”
He flattened against the horse’s back, making himself as hard a target to hit as he could while they raced for the safety of the Savatar lines. The stretch of a bowstring and muffled thwump of an arrow fired sounded close by. His archer had taken her shot.
Dalvila’s shrieking halted abruptly. Azarion dared not look back as more arrow sounds filled the air, only this time aimed at him.
He galloped past the shielded outcropping before swinging around to where Erakes and the archer waited. “Did you hit her?”
The archer blew out a breath. “Yes, though I’m not sure it was a kill shot. I couldn’t tell if I got her in the chest or the shoulder. The shot knocked her backward, out of sight.”
“It’s chaos on the ramparts.” Erakes pointed to the city. “Look.”
People raced to and fro along the battlement walls. There was shouting and plenty of arm waving. Below, where the Kraelian army stood in formation, the commanders shouted for order. “Hold the line! Hold the line!”
Erakes leaned from the saddle to clap Azarion on the shoulder. “That was either good strategy to damage morale or personal retribution useful to all of us.” He saluted the archer. “Impressive shot. From what clan do you hail?”
She grinned. “Saiga, Erakes Ataman.”
“I’ll sing your praises to Insaza Ataman when I see him.”
The archer’s smile widened even more. She bowed to him and to Azarion as he paused in front of her and waited until Erakes was out of earshot before speaking. “I’m in your debt, archer.”
“I don’t know if I succeeded, Ataman.”
“You did,” he said. “And you’ll be rewarded. You honor your family with your bravery and your skill.” He made sure to learn her name before he spurred his horse to catch up with Erakes.
It would be too much to hope that the arrow had killed Dalvila outright. Azarion could hardly believe it managed to hit her at all. His need for revenge against the woman who had debased him in ways his mind still shied away from was blade-sharp, though the archer’s arrow had blunted its edge a little. With any luck, whatever wound it made would poison and kill the Spider of Empire.
They returned to the camp and had barely come out of the saddle when another scout arrived with different news.
He gave a quick salute. “I have news, Atamans. We’ve captured a group of women and children fleeing the city. They made it outside the walls but were caught trying to reach the river. All of them say they’re from Beroe. That Azarion Ataman keeps his promise.”
The blood still singing through Azarion’s veins from his brief confrontation with Dalvila rushed even faster through his body. Gilene. Those were Gilene’s words. The scout’s eyes widened, and he took a hasty step back when Azarion stalked him. “Where are they?”
“Just outside. Riders brought them here when they mentioned your name.”
“This has been an eventful day,” Erakes said and followed Azarion and the scout to where a small crowd of Savatar clustered around a ragged group of women and children. They held on to each other for support, their faces bleached of color, eyes rounded with terror as they stared at the fearsome nomads surrounding them. None wore illusion. Gilene didn’t stand among them. The tiny hope that flared to life inside him at the idea she might be here, in his camp, died.
Azarion approached carefully, hands at his sides, body relaxed. It would do him no good to scare them more than they already were. “Who speaks for you all?” he asked in a quiet voice.
There was a long pause, in which no one moved, before a tiny woman with big eyes and a generous mouth stepped forward. She folded delicate hands in front of her and lifted her chin before addressing him. “I do.” She spared a quick glance behind her. “I think.”
“Who told you to say you were of Beroe?” He knew. Knew in his gut but wanted to hear this woman say it. He didn’t get his wish.
A graying redhead stepped up alongside the petite woman. “She never told us her name. She was a Flower of Spring like us. She gave me the message before we escaped the catacombs.”
Secretive, suspicious Gilene. That wariness had served her well on numerous occasions. “Was she tall with dark hair?” And beautiful. The most beautiful woman ever born. Those words Azarion kept to himself.
The tiny Kraelian woman answered this time. “Tall, yes, but with light hair and blue eyes.” Awe altered her expression. “She can wield fire.”
His eyebrows shot up. Her powers had replenished then over the winter months. He knew they would, but that she had revealed them to those who would recount what they witnessed had been either an act of desperation or one of dark resolve. Neither lessened his worry. “She isn’t among you.”
“She stayed behind to face any guards who would follow us. If she escaped, we didn’t see.”
Erakes spoke up this time. “How did you escape?”
The Kraelian paused, reluctant to answer. “There is a tunnel forgotten by all. My father told me about it. It leads from a storeroom in the catacombs to the city’s outer curtain wall. You can’t see the entrance because of the wall’s angles and the growth of bushes there. It was barricaded. The barricade has collapsed.”
A rush of bitter laughter rippled up Azarion’s throat, and he clamped his lips shut to keep it from escaping his mouth. What he wouldn’t have given during his ten years of enslavement to learn of that tunnel.
An insidious voice entered his thoughts. But would you have met the fierce agacin?
Fate was a vicious taskmaster of cruel, arbitrary humors, but every once in a while, it granted a boon in its own twisted way.