to be body shy, she was sure a guard would have recognized her, but
their eyes had stayed on the sway of her hips, her backside, her long legs, and
her generous bust. She started into a
jog, wanting to get as far from the city as she could before she transformed and
started flying down to the southern villages.
Her father had asked Nora to stay, to start a new unit, that
she was the only one who could train the next group. She had declined, strongly, insisting her
obligation was met with her report and she needed to go back south and start
killing those… her mind shied away from the rough language Nora had used this
morning.
She was hoping to catch up to Nora and help, surely the
woman wouldn’t turn her down. She
admitted she was helpless with a dagger, but that wasn’t how she was planning
to fight anyway. Deciding the couple of
miles she had run so far was far enough, plus her leg muscles were starting to
burn, she wasn’t used to running so much.
Her body was in shape, she had just been confined to the
castle and her work out opportunities was limited. She stopped and took a moment to rest. She smiled trying to feel confident through
the slight tremor of fear. She would
finally have the chance to prove to herself she wasn’t just a worthless
ornament. She was free of her jail, for
now at least.
She ran forward and jumped, changing to light and back to
her other form so fast it was just a quick flash. She flapped her bright burning wings once and
shot off to the South.
-----------
Arnath sighed in disgust but tried
to calm down. He knew he wouldn’t be
this angry if they had the original two or three weeks as he expected. Life wasn’t simple, and he knew problems
would come up, but with just a week to work things out, any delay was angering
him beyond reason.
He had sent out fifty men for each village while he moved
the bulk of his army further into the North. He was also burning fields behind him every step of the way, just to
make sure the enemy couldn’t miss him and accidentally pass them by. After all, they would assume the Egerians
would stop at the villages like they always did, they wouldn’t look for an
invading army. Much less the five
thousand troops he had with him.
He had even had extremely good luck early this afternoon,
his scouts had found a highly defensible hillock, and he had verified it was a
good place to take a stand. Even now his
soldiers were fortifying it. The enemy
would have no choice but to engage despite him being entrenched. They couldn’t afford to leave an enemy behind
them to bother with freeing the villages.
They also wouldn’t want to give him free reign to advance to
any northern villages or cities. In
short, they were screwed if they didn’t attack, and would lose almost three to
one soldiers when they did by his estimation.
He calmed down a bit, realizing the important part went
well. They would be ready in a week for
the coming enemy troops. The fact that
one simple village out of the ten he sent troops to hadn’t sent an update was
almost unimportant. Still, he needed to
see to it.
He growled at a captain who seemed to be somewhat
intelligent, “Send a squad of scouts to this… town of Nerin . Then lead thirty troops an hour later to act
on what the scouts find out. If there is
no problem, bring back the captain so I can execute his stupid ass for not
sending a status report, if there is a problem, deal with it.”
The captain said smartly, “Yes sir!” before bowing and
leaving the tent.
---------
Cytherea giggled. That was quite a uniform she had given the young innocent woman. Still, it had worked well to disguise
her. She was pleased that all the
players were coming together. She frowned
at that thought, this wasn’t a game.
She sighed looking down at the last, in chains and heading
for the mines. This one would not be so
easy to provide an escape for.
A
Jane Hunt
Jonathan Maberry
K. Sterling
Tara Fox Hall
James Kakalios
Jacquie Rogers
Rebecca Hamilton, Conner Kressley
Elizabeth Moynihan
Shiloh Walker
Mary Balogh