Susan Krinard - Night Quest

Without warning, Artemis released Garret, pushing him toward the men, and sprang into a run. Almost immediately the militiamen started after her.

“Wait,” Garret said. “I thought you said—”

Delacroix signaled a halt. “You think we’d keep a promise to one of them?” he asked. “Don’t you want the info you say she has?”

“Yes, of course,” Garret said, rubbing his throat as he got to his feet. “But if you go into those woods after her, she’ll have the advantage.”

Two of the men aimed their rifles at him. “Who are you?” Delacroix asked again.

“A former serf from the Citadel of Erebus,” Garret said. “Do you know what that’s like? Any of you?”

The men exchanged glances. One lowered his gaze. Another spat.

“This is my fault,” Garret said. “Give me one of your weapons and I’ll get her myself.”

“She’ll have even more of an advantage over one hunter,” Delacroix said. “Why aren’t you carrying a gun?”

The VS seemed to burn a hole through Garret’s pack and into his coat. “I had one,” he began, “but—”

“Take off your pack,” Delacroix said.

“Why?”

“You’re hiding something, and I want to know what it is.”

Garret lunged at Delacroix, grabbed the man’s rifle in both hands, yanked it away and slammed the butt into the leader’s face. Without slowing, he struck the next man in the neck and then reversed the rifle.

Two of the others began to shoot, but Garret had already moved out of their path. He shot one of the men in the hand, forcing him to drop his rifle. The youngest one yelled and charged at Garret wildly. His heedless rage gave Garret the chance to kick the weapon out of the boy’s grip before he could pull the trigger.

But another rifleman and the one he’d struck in the neck were almost on top of him. Someone flashed by him, a small figure who took the two men down so quickly that Garret couldn’t see how she’d done it. He didn’t take time to think it over. Shrugging out of his pack, he uncoiled the rope hanging from the metal frame and cut it into five lengths. By the time he turned back, all the militiamen were on the ground—alive, but weaponless and either unconscious or disabled.

He met Artemis’s gaze briefly and knelt beside Delacroix, who was moaning as he began to wake up. Garret rolled him over and tied his hands securely. The Opir woman helped him with the other men, her face and body shielded by an oversize hooded daycoat that was thick enough to protect her from the worst of the sun. She wore equally heavy gloves. Garret could only assume that she had kept the day clothes close by in case she was caught out of the woods after dawn.

He checked on each of the men when he was finished. Two of them were already struggling and cursing, while Delacroix and his second-in-command were bleary-eyed and disoriented. The youngest glared at Garret with undisguised hatred.

“Listen to me,” Garret said, crouching in front of him. “I’m going to set you free. You go back to your colony and tell them to come fetch their people.”

The boy pulled hard against the ropes around his wrists. “You gonna leave them out here for the rogues to eat?” he demanded.

Garret glanced at Artemis. “Are there any other Opiri in the area?” he asked.

“No.”

“You believe her?” the boy said, his face twisted in amazement.

“No Opiri are going to attack you in sunlight. Your people should be able to return with plenty of time to spare before dark.”

“Traitor!” the boy spat, tears running down his cheeks. “We’ll hunt you down.”

Garret moved behind the boy and cut through the ropes. “Take your pack,” he said, “and go.”

For a moment he thought the boy would stay and try to fight, but even he had enough sense to realize he didn’t have a chance. He grabbed the pack and ran off, his pace much too fast to maintain for more than a few minutes.

“You will pay for this,” Delacroix said, his words a little slurred. “We kill sucker-lovers around here.”

Garret ignored him. He gathered up the weapons and backed away until he was in the woods again. Artemis went with him. He noticed that she was carrying a bow in one hand and a quiver full of arrows in the other.

“Thank you,” Garret said roughly, trying to adjust the rifles’ straps so that he could carry them all at once to a place where the militiamen wouldn’t find them. “You can go.”

“You saved my life at the risk of your own,” Artemis said, her eyes reflecting crimson under the hood of her coat.

“I told you—”

“That you would not leave someone to be tortured,” she said. “But I still do not understand why you would turn against your own kind to help one of mine.”

Anger and grief clogged Garret’s throat and tore at his heart. “I knew an Opir who did the same for us.”

Her brows drew down and her lips parted as if she were about to ask how such a thing could be possible.

And then she collapsed.

* * *

Artemis woke to pain. Tiny filaments of agony circled her limbs and waist, her chest and neck. And her hands...

“Easy,” the human said as she tried to sit up. He eased her back down to the bed of fallen leaves on which she’d been lying.

Instinctively she resisted, irrational panic flooding her body. But he refused to let her up, and she realized that he was strong enough to impose his will.

Human or not, he was dangerous. She had seen him fight. He moved almost as fast as an Opir.

“You’re already healing,” he said, his brows knitting in a frown, “but if you push yourself, you’ll slow it down. We don’t want to stay here any longer than we have to.”

She disregarded the “we” and compelled herself to relax. “Where are the men?” she asked, casting about for their rank scents.

“It’s only been a few hours.” He glanced over his shoulder, and for the first time Artemis saw that they were far into the forest under a thick canopy of cottonwoods, protected on two sides by boulders that stood beside a small creek. She realized that she was wearing unfamiliar clothes that were much too large for her, carrying the oddly pleasant smell of the human who had saved her. Her daycoat and gloves lay neatly folded within reach; her knives, bow and quiver were farther away. It would take some effort to get them.

She might have just enough strength to surprise the human, grab her things and run.

“You don’t have to be afraid of me,” the man said, his eyes tracking her gaze.

“I am not afraid of you...human.”

“My name is Garret Fox,” he said, seemingly indifferent to her mockery.

“There is no need for you to stay,” she said. “It would be best if you did not.”

“Why? Are you planning on attacking me when my back is turned?”

The question seemed hostile, but his face was impassive. Too impassive to be credible. “If you believed that,” she said, “you would never have brought me here.”

“That’s right,” he said, dropping back into a crouch. “Saving my life just to kill me wouldn’t make much sense.”

She began to formulate an answer, but all at once she found herself lost in the extraordinary green of his eyes, like the moss clinging to the sides of the boulders. His dark red hair brushed the back of his collar, as if he hadn’t cut it in some time, and there was a shadow of darker hair on his jaw and upper lip. His features were strong but not coarse, his mouth mobile but decisive.

By human standards he was very attractive. And Opiri appreciated human beauty well enough to seek out serfs that bore the same qualities this man exemplified, such as his lean, fit body, broad shoulders and easy grace.

Artemis had never owned such a serf. She had never owned a serf at all, though she had been strong enough to stake out her own Household in Oceanus, if that had been her intent.