“That’s why I chose it, stupid Wolf.”
An icy hand touched the back of my neck. The hairs there rose stiffly, like the hackles on an angry, frightened dog. Fear traced its leisurely path down my spine. The voice came from everywhere and yet nowhere.
I checked Rufus, my sword out in a blink. Beside me, Ly’Tana raised her bow, her arrow still nocked as she searched for an enemy to shoot. Like us all, she saw naught, only the still darkness, the empty street, the silent buildings.
Ly’Tana raised her bow, searching the rooftops for the enemy I suddenly knew waited for us. “They have to be above us. There could be no place else for them.”
“Hmmm,” the disembodied voice continued conversationally. “What could be more stupid than a pack of wolves?”
I recognized that voice. The last time I heard that voice, he promised me I would share his bed. I, held powerless, enduring the agonizing pain of rape at his hands. He would take me, as others had done before, against my will. He’d break me upon his wheel of torment and savage torture, until I could claim no mind as my own.
As though in answer to my thought, three horsemen suddenly rode out of the darkness ahead, several rods away. They materialized out of the shadows themselves. From behind them emerged Brutal’s army. Where once stood an empty street, horses, riders and Federal troopers now filled it to full capacity.
Magic. Magic had hidden them, had deceived Rygel’s abilities to ferret them out, had led us into this trap. On the rooftops above, on every rooftop within the block, two and three stories up, soldiers appeared as though from nowhere. I dared not count them, but I knew there were not as few as ten, or even as few as thirty. A hundred-plus soldiers waited to take us out. Armed with swords and crossbows, their crossbows cocked and loaded. Bolts pointed down, unerringly down, at us, fingers on the triggers. From that height and angle, we were indeed, as Rygel had put it so elegantly not very long ago, fish bait.
I heard Kel’Ratan to my left stir in his saddle, heard him mutter either a curse or a prayer. Ly’Tana twisted and turned, looking for the best shot, the one shot that might free us from this debacle.
My arms master, long ago, once told me that if you cut off the head of a snake, it could not bite you. Cutting off its head rendered it harmless.
Cut off the head of the snake…
Cut off the serpent’s head.
Brutal sat on his horse, flanked by the other two shadows, his eyes gleaming slightly in the dark. I knew she took aim on that faint glimmer, that prime target, and loosed her arrow. Killing Brutal might end the standoff before it even began. They could not have known she would have an arrow nocked and ready.
Catch the snake by surprise…
It flew true, past my shoulder, straight toward the King. It had him dead to rights. The new High King would die in his saddle before he even knew what hit him.
Instantly, her arrow struck something harder than it. The wooden shaft shattered, broke into a thousand pieces, the razor-sharp steel head screamed off into the darkness. As its sharp whine faded and dropped, it left in its wake a new deadly stillness.
“Oh, now I remember,” he said calmly. “Kel’Hallans.”