The Outworlder (17 page)

As she leaned back against the rocks and
struggled to catch her breath, he placed a hand just over her
shoulder and leaned in to murmur in her ear.

“You know what comes next.” He hesitated.
“Sahara, my men have scouted the approach. They’re waiting for us
there too. There’s no way through. We go that way, they’ll all die.
We have to sound the retreat.”

A sickening pit of dread opened in her
stomach.

“That’s not the news I wanted to hear,” she
confessed in a whisper. “How can they have known we were coming,
Jared? How? When everything was done in such secrecy!”

“They know, Sahara. It doesn’t matter how.
Call the men back. Sound the retreat. It’s not too late to save
them.”

He was pleading with her in earnest now, but
she wouldn’t hear him. Doggedly, she said, “It’s too late. We have
come too far not to try. It must be finished.”

But their ascent into the cliffs was cut
short almost before it had begun. They had to try to climb the
narrow path under withering fire from both sides. Her men were
mowed down without mercy, and there was no way to break through the
enemy lines.

She had to retreat.

“Back! Back!” she screamed, lifting her sword
high above her head.

The horns sounded, their rich call
reverberating all around her.

All was chaos again as the men fled,
scrambling and slipping down the bloody cliffs in showers of dust
and stone.

She managed to rally what was left of her
forces at a safe point some distance away from the fortress, in the
shelter of the bluffs. Jared was nowhere to be seen, and she spared
a thought to hope he had survived.

Sahara crouched there in the sand, gripping
her crossbow. A plan was forming in her mind. One last, desperate
attempt. She had done it before, and Jared wasn’t there to tell her
no. She prayed she could do it again.

Boots crunched in the sand next to her, and a
moment later, Rafe squatted down next to her.

“What’s next?” he asked, his voice raspy with
sand.

Her mind was made up. She looked up into his
face. “You’ll know soon enough,” she said.

Five minutes later, she returned with a group
of ten men. Rafe was peering through binoculars, studying the
ridge. He lowered them as she approached.

“So what now?” he asked again.

“You stay here,” she told him. “I’m leaving
you in command. We’re going to find another way into the fortress.
Wait here for our return. If we aren’t back in three hours’ time,
fall back to the city.” Her face was grim as she added, “And don’t
bother sending a search party after us.”

“Sahara!” he called as she turned on her
heel. She hesitated, and he said, “What am I supposed to tell
Jared?”

Sahara swallowed, then glanced at him over
her shoulder. “Tell him he was right.”

Without another word, she beckoned to her men
and headed out.

She led her men up into the hills to the
north of the battlefield. As they were planning their assault three
days ago, Jared had mentioned the legend of a pass high above the
fortress that had supposedly been abandoned by the enemy’s guards.
She just hoped it was unguarded still. They made their way slowly
up the path, and Sahara didn’t call a halt until they had nearly
reached the summit of the pass.

Sahara!

The voice came from somewhere within her, but
it wasn’t her own. Faint and far away at first, it rapidly
intensified until it crashed against her consciousness so sharply
that it brought her to her knees in the dirt.

She clawed her helmet from her head and
dropped it on the ground beside her, breathing as raggedly as if
she had been punched in the stomach. Her hair was matted with
sweat. Supporting herself on one gloved hand, she raised her head
and looked around her.

She was alone.

Alone.

The realization formed a knot of cold in the
pit of her stomach, radiating out until it reached her fingers and
her toes. She got to her feet and stared toward the south, back
toward the battlefield. The road was empty save for the first hints
of the harbingers, those whirling eddies of sand that, like the
moon just shimmering above the jagged mountain peaks to the east,
warned her to seek shelter, and soon.

Sahara closed her eyes, retreating within
herself in the attempt to restore her clarity of vision, but she
couldn’t focus. The images in her mind’s eye made her stomach churn
with sickening dread. She couldn’t hold them back…and even if she
could, she knew that it would only make things far worse later on.
She opened her eyes and lifted her hands, palms down, away from her
sides, as if to steady herself. Raising her chin, she focused her
gaze on a crag of rock above her, and then let her vision swim into
a vague blur.

Memories flashed through her mind, but she
held none of them long enough to contemplate it. It was a
mind-dump, a dash though traumatic and devastating experiences that
lasted just long enough to be cathartic but not long enough to
cause a debilitation of consciousness.

When she focused her gaze again, the empty
road with the harbingers whispering around her was the same, but
she felt more calm and in control.

Sahara’s thoughts returned to her strange
solitude, and she shook her head. “I must have lost them all
somehow,” she murmured. “But where? And how?” She put a hand to her
forehead. “And that voice….”

Someone was behind her. She reached for the
hilt of her sword.

A sibilant, dark voice came close to her ear,
“Touch it and I’ll have your arm for a trophy.”

She felt the pain of something hitting the
back of her head and, almost simultaneously, the stabbing pain of
something driven into her lower back. She crumpled in a heap in the
swirling sands.

*****

The noisome smell of damp rock made her
retch, and the heaving of her stomach brought her roughly into
sudden consciousness. The stone rough against her hands was the
first thing she sensed as feeling returned to her body in a rush.
As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she realized that she was in the
corner of a dank cell.

She scrabbled to the middle of the floor and
sat up, rubbing the back of her head. A large bump weltered there
where she had been struck, and pain radiated through her head when
she touched it. She dropped her hand and gazed around. The walls
arched up above her into sheer darkness, and to her left, a twisted
metal gate caged her in.

And then she heard singing.

It was a voice she knew, and her breath
caught in her throat. For one moment, the ecstasy of recognition
made her forget pain, damp, and loss. She dragged herself to the
gate, tears running unconsciously down her cheeks.

“Jared!” Her voice was nothing more than a
croaking gasp, but the singing stopped abruptly. “Jared!”

To her surprise, he appeared on the other
side of the gate and squatted down in front of her.

“Jared!” She reached through the gate,
desperate to touch him, to feel the reassurance that he was real.
He gently took her hands in his, and she broke down into sobs.
“Where am I? Tell me what’s happened!”

“There’s too much to tell right now.” A smile
flickered across his face and was gone. He rubbed her hands to warm
them, and her tears slowed. She was suddenly and overwhelmingly
tired. “But I can tell you where you are. We’re on the prison moon
of K’ilenfir.”

Sahara stared at him through the bars, but
could find no words to say.

“You should rest now,” Jared told her. “I can
give you more details when you wake again.”

“But why are you here? Why aren’t you locked
up?”

Jared shrugged, his smile widening. “The
guards found out I could sing. They let me out of my cell to
entertain them during their meals.” He winked at her. “My father
always told me, ‘Train all your talents, boy, for you never know
which one will save your skin.’ I’m glad I listened to him.”

He smudged the tears from her cheeks with his
thumb, and the gentleness in his touch nearly made her weep again.
As her vision swam with unshed tears and sheer exhaustion, Sahara
thought she saw something flicker in his eyes. But it was gone in a
moment, and so was he.

She crept back to the middle of the cell and
lay down. Jared was singing again. Her eyes drifted closed and she
let his voice weave itself into her soul and calm her.

She slept.

Something hard and metallic was clanging
against the door of her cell, jarring her awake. Jared’s voice was
silent, and she sat up. In a moment, the sound registered.

Keys.

The rusted gate squealed as it opened.

“Get up,” hissed the guard.

Sahara got to her feet, and the guard
immediately bound her hands behind her with an iron chain. The
metal cut into her wrists, but she gritted her teeth against a
wince.

I will show neither pain nor fear
, she
told herself.
Neither pain nor fear.

The guard shoved her out of her cell and led
her by the chain down the cell row. She strained her eyes to see
into the darkness, but she caught no sight of Jared. Impatient, the
guard jerked the chain, almost bringing Sahara to her knees. When
she stumbled forward, he only laughed.

“Keep moving,” he growled.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked, shaking
her hair out of her eyes and glaring at him.

“The holding room. They’re deciding your
fate. You’ll know it soon enough.”

With another chuckle, he jerked the chain
again, speeding up their pace.

The holding room, then. And on K’ilenfir. A
wan smile spread across her bloodied face. She could escape from
that place—she had done it before.

Five years ago she had been held there,
accused of plotting rebellion against the Dragon-Lords on her own
homeworld of Amaryl. Chance had freed her then, and she didn’t dare
trust to chance a second time. She brushed out of her mind the
nagging protest that five years ago, there had been a rescue
operation. There had been a ship waiting for her once she broke out
of the holding room.

Instead, she thought about Jared, wondering
how he had been captured. She hadn’t seen him after their mad
retreat from the fortress, but he must have found her and followed
her. It was either that or he had done something else equally as
stupid. He maddened her. Somehow he never quite seemed confident in
her ability to take care of herself, and so he found ways to shadow
her movements, both with and without her knowledge.

Maybe it was a matter of honor or something.
Something to do with the fact that he was the one who had found
her, collapsed in the desert sands in the twilight seven months
ago.

Sahara closed her eyes, sinking in the warmth
of the memory. She had been so belligerent toward him, even though
she had needed him so desperately, and he had been so patient. He
had saved her life then, in spite of her venom. Any other man, she
felt quite sure, would have left her to die in the sandstorm after
receiving the welcome she had given him.

She glanced back over her shoulder at the row
of cells, now some distance behind them, and hoped that he would be
treated with mercy.

If there was any such thing as mercy on the
prison moon of K’ilenfir.

The guard took the manacles off Sahara’s
wrists and threw her through the door into the holding room. It was
a tiny space, barely six feet long and only just that wide. The
only light came from strangely luminescent stones set in the
ceiling, which was low enough for Sahara to palm without standing
on her toes. The heavy barred door clanged shut behind her, and
Sahara was left alone to consider her fate.

She didn’t sit on the stone bench that
stretched the width of the room across from the door. Instead she
stood for a moment, thinking and rubbing the metal collar that the
guard had left around her neck. Then she began to pace slowly
around the perimeter of the cell, counting under her breath. At
every odd number, she paused and tapped the stone beside her. She
made it all the way back to the door and ran a hand through her
hair in frustration.

She swore and stared up at the pulsing glow
of the ceiling. “This must be the same room! Where is that damned
trap door?”

She was about to resume pacing and tapping
when the bolts of the door slid back and it swung open.

Two figures entered, hooded and cloaked
completely in black, their features hidden in shadow. Their hands
were inside their sleeves, and Sahara had the strange sensation
that perhaps there were no hands there at all, and no faces
either.

Without speaking to her, the figures went to
the bench and sat down. The door was bolted shut behind them once
more.

The figures stared at her steadily—if they
actually had eyes within those hoods. Sahara’s hands balled slowly
into fists, even though she knew self-defense would be futile
should the situation deteriorate.

“You are an outworlder.” The hooded figure on
her right spoke first, his voice emanating from the shadows of his
hood in a tone somewhere between a whisper and a growl.

“Yes.” The sound of her own voice responding
startled her.

“Then why do you lead rebellions on Silesia?”
the figure on the left asked. His voice was just a tone higher than
his companion’s, and Sahara realized that his cowl was a shade
lighter as well.

“Because we are oppressed.”

Some hideous sound that could only have been
laughter fell dully on Sahara’s ears. Even the pulsing stones above
her head seemed to be laughing at her.

“And who oppresses you?” the black figure
asked.

“The Dragon-Lords.” She glanced from one to
the other. “Why do you oppress the people of Silesia? How do they
threaten your rule?”