The Destroyer Book 3 (19 page)

A pointy-eared fuck came at me with his sword raised above his head. He brought the weapon downward in a cut meant to cleave me in to a symmetrical twin, but I raised my mace and tapped on the blade as it descended, sending the cut wide to my right and throwing the man off balance for a precious half of a second. My right leg swung out wide like an axe cutting down a tree, and my shin strike ripped his legs out from under him. Then my mace slammed down and helped his skull coat the sandy ground with brain matter and blood.

Gorbanni's men hit the caravan and bounced over the side like an ocean wave. The Elvens screamed in fear and tried to retreat, only to find Alexia's team and me disassembling their back line.

Five seconds later, the battle was over and we were victorious. Bodies of our enemy littered the ground with their heads either removed or crushed. Blood soaked the sand beneath our feet to the point that it looked like the canyon once had a red river flowing through its bed.

"Gorbanni. Count?" I called over to the blonde-haired man.

"Three injured. None lost." He shot me a smile over his shoulder and then pushed his spear through an Elven corpse's head that didn't look quite dead enough.

"Alexia?" I turned over to the woman.

"Just the one." She frowned slightly. We had long gotten past the point where we felt more than a pang of remorse for a lost brother or sister. We had experienced too many deaths in our lifetime. The O'Baarni would only feel joy for those who died for the freedom of our people.

"Hey, friend. It's okay. We are here to help." Gorbanni's words brought my attention back to him. He stood next to one human from the caravan. I recognized him as the man who drove the first wagon and had peered over his shoulder when he saw me. I realized that he had been trying to tell me it was a trap. The human was carrying one of the Elven's bloody swords and was standing over two of their corpses.

"What is your name?" I walked over and stood at Gorbanni's side. The man with the bloody sword looked at me with rage in his eyes. After a few seconds, I could see him start to calm down and he lowered his sword from the guard position.

"Malek." He let out a long sigh and the weapon relaxed in his right hand. "I killed these two. Please don't let them torture me." His face pleaded and tears streamed down his cheeks.

"Do not worry, Malek. We aren't here to harm you. We are freedom fighters." I smiled at him and tied my mace back up to the thongs at my belt. When the man saw me put away my weapon he seemed to grow more relaxed and his heart beat slowed down considerably. He had long brown hair that went down past his shoulder blades. He was thin, like most of the slaves, but muscular. I guessed that he wasn't a house servant. I looked over at Gorbanni and nodded for him to continue.

"We are the O'Baarni. Perhaps you have heard of us?" Malek shook his head in confusion and Gorbanni continued, "We use Elven magic to fight them. If you want to be free, you can join us. We won't promise you anything other than death, hunger, and violence. Those are the certainties we live with, in exchange for our freedom from the Elvens."

"If you come with us, you can serve in our army and learn our magic, or you can help in other ways. We are a small resistance now, but our goal is to take back this world and kill every last one of our enslavers," Gorbanni continued.

"I will come. I want vengeance!" he spat out, and the tears continued to flow. Gorbanni and I nodded but didn't smile. We had to have fifteen more of these conversations with the other humans.

"It is unusual that you killed two of them," I praised Malek. "Did they teach you how to fight?"

"No. I am a carpenter. I built most of their buildings with my family. Will they be okay without me?" He asked and I heard his heart begin to race. This often happened with people that we freed. They didn't want to leave their families enslaved.

“Life will continue for them as it has throughout our history. You have the power to free them if you come with us and fight. I was once like you, Malek. I had fears, but now I have hope. I will not stop until we have destroyed them and freed our people.” Gorbanni’s voice had an edge of venom. He had a natural charisma that persuaded most people. I could see Malek nod in solidarity at his words.

"They weren't paying much attention to me." He looked down at the Elven corpses. "It was easier than I expected."

"Kaiyer," Alexia's voice called from one of the wagons seventy yards away. I excused myself from the two men and walked toward her.

"I made a mistake." She pointed at the wagon that had concealed the archers. It held dozens of large glass bottles carefully stored under a floorboard, along with a separate covered container that was filled with feces and mushrooms. There were also stacks of cinnamon and cloves.

"What is in the bottles? Water?"

"Yes," she said.

"Tricky."

"I should have listened to you." She shook her head in disappointment.

"It turned out okay. I didn't really have much of a reason. Just a gut feeling. It shouldn't have been that easy." I put my hand on Alexia's shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

"I'll do better next time. So will my scouts." She smiled faintly at me.

"You always do. Where is--"

"Haarrrrooooo!" the bald man yelled from the ridge behind us. His voice bounced off of the sides of the small canyon and immediately got our attention. The big man bounded down the edge of the cliff like a mountain goat and his group of soldiers followed him.

"What took you so long?" Alexia and I said almost in unison. He gave us a grin that accented the scar across his face and then patted the dust off of his leather armor. I could then see and smell the blood on him.

"We ran into forty of them heading south. Looks like they were going to meet the caravan. I thought about sending someone back to warn you, but I needed every hand. A few are salvaging weapons and supplies from their horses. I didn't lose anyone." He looked at the carnage and then smirked. "Looks like you did just fine without me."

I nodded and did the math in my head. We did not obtain as many supplies as I had hoped, but we got horses, goods, armor and weapons. We also had the loot from the Elvens Thayer's warriors had killed. It had cost us a life, but we gained sixteen recruits.

"Let's not keep our family waiting. Take the weapons and armor, but leave the corpses for the condors," I shouted to the men who were picking through the bodies and readying the wagons for transport. It would be a long haul with the caravan back to our new home, and we would have to worry about covering our tracks and evading two clans now. Every single step we made toward progress was met with more risk and hardship. Nothing would come easy for us.

At least we were free.

"Don't keep me waiting, O'Baarni." Isslata's voice had a playful, singsong quality to it, as if she was taunting someone to join her in a dance. In a way, she was.

"Kaiyer, are you well?" Nadea's hands closed around my right bicep.

"Fuck," I muttered under my breath. "Was I just standing here? For how long?" I feared that these flashbacks were getting longer.

"What do you mean?" Nadea's brown eyes met mine and she looked confused. "Did you remember something?" I nodded and opened my mouth to tell her when Isslata interrupted from the cliff wall.

"I imagine screams of dying humans would echo beautifully off of these ravine walls, O'Baarni." I raised my hand toward the beautiful Elven woman to indicate that I heard her, then I turned to Nadea.

“I’ll tell you later.” I took a few steps on the ledge and crossed one of the narrow wooden bridges that spanned thirty feet over a steep drop to another group of tents. Nadea followed me, and though I could have leapt up the face of the canyon and reached Isslata in seconds, I decided to travel like a normal human.

This path bought me time to think of ways out of this situation. Unfortunately, Nia's soldiers were in various states of readiness for battle and they moved off of the ledges to let us pass with a few fearful whispers about their future. The talk distracted me enough from my thoughts to prevent me from coming up with any ideas.

The torch fires that the Elvens carried had dimmed to a non-magical brightness. Isslata was surrounded by a dozen warriors with bows trained on Nadea and me. The golden-haired woman stood ten feet from the ledge overlooking our camp, and there were three Elvens holding torches to give her extra light.

"That wasn't so hard, was it? I like it when men come when I call them." She giggled, but none of her guards even smiled. She normally wore her golden hair back into a single loose braid that ran almost down to the top of her ass cheeks, but tonight she wore twin braids on each side of her head, with orange poppies tied into the metallic strands.

"What do you want?" Nadea's voice came out as a screech filled with hate, loathing, and fear. I heard her heart beating like a hummingbird’s, her breath was ragged gasps. Runir must have misunderstood what had happened between these two women. It was obvious that Isslata had done something horrible to Nadea. I was already worried about how Nadea would react to finding out I had been with Jessmei and Isslata. Her hatred of the golden-haired Elven did not bode well for me.

"I wish to speak to the O'Baarni, human." She smiled at my friend and licked her full lips. Then she turned to me and leaned her head sideways slightly. "Tell your pet to shut up and calm herself, or I'll have to fill that river down there with some blood."

"I'll speak with you. What do you want?" I crossed my arms and glared at the Elvens that held their bows pointed at my face. Their armor all matched Isslata's in that it had flowers etched in the chain linkage, with golden accents on the dark blue plate pieces.

"My troops have set up a tent where we may speak. This way." She beckoned with her pointer finger as she used to when inviting me to follow her to bed. I stepped after her and into the circle of Elvens. They flanked Nadea and me for the short duration of our walk, some eighty yards into the darkness where they had set up a pavilion.

"Sit down, please." Isslata pointed at the two chairs closest to the exit flaps. Farther inward were a few stools grouped together. Isslata took one, positioned it across the tent five feet from me and then sat on it with her legs crossed. None of her guards followed us into the tent.

Isslata looked at my face and licked her lips with emotion that I could only guess was lust or hunger. Then she glanced at the dark-haired woman in mild surprise.

"You look different." The Elven's eyes narrowed suspiciously. Nadea crossed her arms and pushed her teeth together in a silent snarl.

"You wished to speak to me. Here I am." I tried to cut the tension between the two women with my words. Isslata and Nadea stared at each other for a few more moments until the Elven woman looked at me. Her face changed into one of mirth again.

"We have an agreement," she said plainly. It took me a few seconds to figure out what she meant.

"You were supposed to bring me Nadea as proof that she was alive and then release her." My mind flipped through various reasons why Isslata would show up here with a small army only to bring up the deal we had struck three weeks ago.

"Tell him." Isslata pointed at Nadea without looking at her.

"Fuck you," Nadea growled as Greykin would have.

"You have no idea how close we came to that." The Elven sat back and laughed. Nadea's face seemed confused for a few seconds before her eyes turned to steel again.

"He asked you to bring me to him, not to try and rape me."

"I didn't rape you, silly human. But you admitted that I was taking you to him. See?" She looked over at me and raised a pretty eyebrow. "I would have brought her to you had not something destroyed the entire East Wing of the castle. Quite tragic, actually. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that would you, O'Baarni?" Her lips turned up into a wicked grin that I knew too well.

"We had a deal. You didn't bring me Nadea, but we can all agree that you made an attempt. Where does that leave us?" I asked to avoid her question.

"I have orders to return with you. The empress is in Nia. I wanted to remind you of our agreement because you will need my assistance and presence when you are being questioned by her." She nodded after she was done speaking and then she sniffed the air with a confused look on her face.