Diplomats and Fugitives (The Emperor's Edge Book 9) (40 page)

“Sicarius?” she asked.

No. They would never know Sicarius was there.
Basilard peered toward the lights.
Maybe it’s a—

Another scream sounded, but it was drowned out by a bone-rattling roar. Recognition flooded through Ashara’s limbs, and she stepped back. Grimbals. Again. She wouldn’t have guessed there were this many of the big, shaggy predators on the entire continent.

“What’s happening?” she breathed. “Did some of the animals their shaman wrangled to attack your people turn on them?”

Basilard pointed off to their left. It wasn’t in the direction of the cliff. Ashara tensed, thinking he might have spotted more grimbals, ones that might be close enough to be a threat to
them
. Full darkness had fallen, and she couldn’t see much beyond the outline of the distant mountains against the sky. Even that was dim, because the stars were not out tonight. Then she caught movement. Something running. Or someone? The road was in that direction, wasn’t it?

More gunshots came from the outpost, and Ashara was certain dozens of arrows were being loosed for every musket or shotgun fired. The Kendorians had the numbers that, through sheer attrition, they
should
be able to kill a few grimbals, but in the darkness, it would be a greater challenge, and they might take losses. Those outpost walls weren’t up all the way around yet, so they wouldn’t have anywhere to hide. She sympathized with them, but if one of the creatures they had been controlling had turned on them, she couldn’t sympathize too much. Maybe the Mangdorian god was protecting his people, after all.

A blinding light came from the outpost, the sky brightening for miles in every direction. The crackling sensation of immense power being unleashed crawled across her skin. Tladik.

For a few seconds, Ashara had no trouble seeing Basilard or the terrain around her, and she felt exposed. Basilard was looking away from the outpost, toward several men in the distance, one of them hunched over as he ran. Then the light went out, and night returned. Moans of pain continued to float across the rocks, but the howls of the grimbals had stopped. The frantic movement of the lanterns calmed down. Ashara wasn’t sure what had happened, but she suspected the predators were dead.

“Maybe we should get out of here and scout later. They’re going to be on high alert after…” She stopped talking, because Basilard was jogging away, heading in the direction where she had seen those men.

Had they been Kendorian? Or maybe Mangdorian? She thought back and remembered short hair. That was more typical of Mangdorians.

Knowing Basilard would struggle to communicate with his people at night, she ran after him to help.

“Who’s there?” someone blurted in a harsh Mangdorian whisper—she had no trouble translating that.

The sound of a scuffle followed, and she hurried. By the time she reached the group, it had grown silent. A soft white light came from the ground, illuminating a young man on his knees. Basilard had captured a second man, locking his arms behind his back. Two others had bows out, but didn’t look like they knew where to point them.

“It’s Leyelchek,” one whispered as soon as the light revealed Basilard’s scarred face.

The man Basilard had been restraining went limp. Basilard let him go. He stepped back, spreading his arms, his hands empty.

The light made Ashara nervous, and she glanced back toward the outpost. It might be over a mile away, but since she had no trouble seeing the lanterns, she worried this light would also be visible, even if it was near the ground and clenched in someone’s fist. Someone on his knees with a pained expression pinching his face.

What happened?
Basilard signed.

The three standing men all spoke at once, and Ashara could not decipher any of it.

Basilard must have been having trouble, too, because he waved for them to stop talking.
Come back to our camp with us.
He pointed and started walking, so they could not misinterpret him.

The men hesitated, but then they helped their injured comrade to his feet. What Ashara had thought might be a light stone turned out to be nothing more than the man’s hand. A shaman, she realized with a start. Or a priest. Wasn’t that what the Mangdorians called their practitioners? People with power who spoke with God and delivered his messages.

Whoever this man was, he needed help. She touched the flower petals she had collected. Those could be used in a healing salve. She had more supplies in her bags back at the camp. She could make several tinctures, as well, and she had a few of her potions along that she had made back in Turgonia for improving stamina and mental clarity.

As Ashara followed the group back toward the mountains, she realized she had already made her decision. She would help Basilard in his fight, as a healer if not a combatant. She wondered if she would survive her choice.

Chapter 16

Basilard stood near the fire, listening as his Mangdorian allies told their story. The night before, they had heard Basilard’s explosion from their spot upriver in the canyon. Soon after, the priest Hykur had felt the shaman reaching out and searching, so they had temporarily abandoned the area. Maldynado’s victim had been left to wake on his own and wonder why he was half-buried in rocks. Hykur’s small team had spent the day searching for ways to sabotage the Kendorian mission without risking themselves or outright killing people. When they had stumbled across the grimbals, a pair of creatures they believed had been coerced from their normal territory in order to harass a Mangdorian village, Hykur had been scared at the idea of trying to control them, but his comrades had urged him to use his powers to do so. They had believed it fair to treat the Kendorians the same way the Kendorians were treating the Mangdorians.

Hykur had been able to convince the grimbals to travel more than ten miles, though the effort had drained him terribly and they had run into trouble near the end when his hold on the animals had faded. At the moment, he was barely moving as he lay by the fire, letting Ashara spread her healing salve on substantial claw marks. With the last of his mental energy, Hykur had turned the grimbals loose on the Kendorians building the outpost overlooking the canyon, but according to the hunter telling the story, the horror of being mind-linked with a savage beast that was relishing killing people had nearly driven him crazy. He had wrenched his mind free, abandoning all hold on the creatures. His comrades had been helping him away when Basilard had seen them.

“I commend you, Bas,” Maldynado said, ambling over while munching on a dried fruit strip. “Every time you leave camp, you come back with more troops. Maybe you have the makings of a war leader, and we never knew it.”

Maldynado might have meant it as a compliment—it sounded like something a Turgonian would consider high praise—but the notion filled Basilard with bleakness. He would accept the role of leader in trying to evict the Kendorians, but he did not want to be anything like a Turgonian general.

We’ll attack before dawn
, Basilard signed, the words for the Mangdorians and for Maldynado.
Anyone who will join me
.

“We got a plan?” Jomrik asked.

He sat on a rock with his rifle between his knees, massaging the dried duck feet tied to the barrel. He didn’t look enthused about going into battle with a bunch of untried hunters, but he had not objected openly to anything since Amaranthe and Maldynado had planted the idea that he might earn a promotion if he performed well out here.

I have part of a plan,
Basilard signed.
I’m waiting to hear what Sicarius reports back about the possibility of rebuilding that dam.

When Maldynado translated that for Jomrik, Jomrik’s face screwed up in a pained expression. “Do I have to drag more logs around? In that canyon? That climb…” He shuddered and touched the back of his shoulder. Amaranthe had removed the arrowhead and bandaged his wound that morning.

You don’t have to go at all
, Basilard signed.

“Oh?” Jomrik looked at Maldynado, probably wondering if he had misunderstood.

You’re not under my command, and I’m not…
Basilard hadn’t shared the news Mahliki and Ashara had given him, that he had been relieved of his position. There hadn’t been time.
You’re under no obligation to me.

Jomrik sighed. “I have to help. If I show up back at the barracks by myself… without my lorry… nothing good is going to come of that. I need to do something worthy, something so my first sergeant knows I’m not a coward that can’t be trusted.”

Basilard did not know what to say to that. He wanted Jomrik’s help—he needed all of the help he could find—but worried the corporal might get himself killed, all because he was worried about losing rank or earning demerits back home. It might be utterly Turgonian, but it wasn’t a good reason to join in a war, not in Basilard’s eyes.

“What’s your plan?” Amaranthe asked.

The outpost. I was looking at it earlier.
Basilard waved to Ashara. Even if her words had distracted him, and he hadn’t gotten as close to it as he had intended, he had seen enough of the terrain before and was fairly certain that what he had in mind could work, if someone suicidal wouldn’t mind setting it up.
I’m not sure how many explosives we have left—
Basilard raised his eyebrows toward Jomrik—
but I thought some placed on the cliff below the construction site might bring down the ledge with the outpost and all of the materials they brought for building it. Also, the rubble falling below might do damage to the encampment and bury a mine entrance or two. Perhaps this would be enough to discourage them, especially in the light of the other disasters.

“I think you may need more explosives than we have to cause the cliff to crumble,” Amaranthe said. “It’s not as if the outpost is perched on a ledge that hangs out over the canyon. Maybe Sicarius can do the math for you when he returns, but I think you’d just end up blowing a hole. Not to mention that someone would have to climb on a vertical cliff in the dark, plant the explosives, and climb away again before they went off.”

We’ve done that already
, Basilard signed, but he worried that she was right about the explosives.

“Can’t you just sneak up and toss some blasting sticks over the wall?” Maldynado asked. “Don’t try to make this more clever than it needs to be, Bas. If you want to blow up the outpost, blow it up directly.”

That… could work. If they’re still recovering from the grimbal attack. And if the shaman isn’t around. I couldn’t tell if he was up in the outpost or on the canyon floor. If he annihilated two grimbals from hundreds of feet below, I’m uncomfortably impressed.

“Grimbals?” Maldynado peered into the darkness around the camp. “Did you forget to mention something, Bas? I thought we’d left all of those blokes back on the other side of that river.”

Before Basilard could explain, a new voice entered the conversation.

“The dam was not destroyed,” Sicarius said, walking out of the night.

What?
Basilard signed.

“The Kendorians did not notice it or did not see it as a threat,” Sicarius said. “The water level has risen behind it.”

“They were probably too busy shooting people—” Jomrik waved at his shoulder, “—to pay attention to the river.”

“Jomrik designed it to look more like the beaver dam it started as rather than a neatly engineered trap.”

“I did?”

Sicarius gazed blandly at him. “The logs were haphazardly placed.”

“Er, right. That was on purpose.” Jomrik nodded sagely.

It was dark also
, Basilard signed,
so they might simply have missed it. Sicarius, has enough water built up that it could flood the camp? Could the dam still be triggered?

“With explosives, yes. The dam is proving sturdy. I would have expected it to cave earlier today under the pressure of the water behind it.”

“Sorry,” Jomrik said, “I didn’t mean to be such a subtle yet brilliant engineer. I should have warned you that my math and engineering grades were good in school.” He had grown almost chipper at the revelation that his work was still standing. Or maybe it was the thought that he wouldn’t be asked to start from scratch building a new dam.

Maldynado snorted. “And that’s why you became a lorry driver?”

“No, I became a lorry driver because what boy
doesn’t
want to charge into combat with the power of a hundred lizards thrumming under his feet?”

“One who doesn’t want to get in trouble when his lizards crash.”

Jomrik’s newfound cheer wilted, and Basilard thought about smacking Maldynado. He changed the subject instead.

How many blasting sticks do we have left?
If all of their tactics involved setting off explosives, they would be in trouble if they did not have a sufficient supply.

“Uh.” Jomrik poked through his pack and laid a handful of matches and two blasting sticks on a rock. One was soggy, and the other looked like something had been chewing on its end.

Anyone else?
Basilard raised his eyebrows in Sicarius’s direction.

Sicarius disappeared into the darkness. Basilard assumed that his pack was out there somewhere, rather than that he had decided the conversation wasn’t worth continuing. He hoped that was the case.

Amaranthe?

She had been sitting on a rock and holding scissors and jars for Ashara while she worked on Hykur. She blinked a few times when Basilard pointed to her. “Why would I be carrying explosives?”

“It’s not that odd to expect you to have some,” Maldynado said. “You’ve got to admit that a lot of things blow up when you’re around.”

“Me? You’re usually the one driving when something blows up.”

“Yes, but you’re the one giving me orders. Crash into that. Hit that. Drive into their path so they can’t escape.” Maldynado’s voice had gone up in pitch in a rather pathetic imitation of Amaranthe.

She glared at him but did not deny his argument.

Sicarius returned with a single blasting stick. He laid it on the rock next to Jomrik’s offerings. Basilard gazed bleakly at the paltry pile. They might be able to break the dam with those explosives, but the outpost?