Page 107 of The Winner's Kiss
No one.
Bodies and blood. And then . . . an eerie energy in his veins. A sharp zing that made his gut tighten and his guard go up right before a tiny Valorian dagger flew into his vision, spiking through the air, straight for his throat.
As the gunners fired, Kestrel sliced her dagger through the shreds of rope left tied to the stakes in the ground. She scavenged the forest floor for smooth, dry sticks of birch. Hands wrapped in broad leaves, she broke sappy twigs from the sirrin tree. Careful to keep her skin from contact with the flammable sap, she bunched the twigs together, holding them around a birch stick and one end of the rope. With a free hand, she wound the rope around the twigs and the birch stick. Then she held the makeshift torch beneath the dripping sirrin tree, letting drops of sap coat the rope and glue it down to the twigs.
“Exactly like that,” she told the four soldiers who’d agreed to join her. When they each had a torch and had taken a box of matches from the gunners, Kestrel said, “Don’t hold the stick upright until you must. The sap will run. If it gets on your skin, you might burn, too.” She told the gunners to fire two more volleys and then stop.
She and the four soldiers began to run down the hill.
Arin dodged the small dagger. A Needle. He knew that weapon. Needles were a set of six little knives.
He caught the next one in his arm, flung up to block the dagger from his face. It bit into the exposed underside of his forearm where his armor buckled.
Then either his assailant had grown impatient with targeting from afar, or a new opponent had entered the game. As pain flared up Arin’s arm, somebody’s sword crashed into his and knocked his weapon to the ground.
Kestrel followed the scars made by the fallen trees in the forest. She skidded down the steep incline, the four soldiers following. A volley of gunfire shattered the air. A Valorian cannon boomed back. The cannonball crashed into the trees. They cracked. Broken branches hurtled through the air.
A chunk of flying wood nearly hit Kestrel. Startled, she lost her balance and stumbled, getting sap from her torch on her chest armor. But she shouted Run. They were nearly to the road.
The second volley hailed down. Kestrel stopped the four soldiers at the edge of the trees level with the road. Peering through the leaves, she saw that the guns had killed enough soldiers on this flank that gaps in the Valorian defenses here were wide. She spotted the wagon that must hold the black powder. A Valorian stepped out of it, lugging a cannonball in his arms. “Not that wagon,” she told the four. “I’ll take the one next to it. The rest of you, each choose a different wagon. Ready?”
Kestrel’s fingers trembled as she opened the matchbox.
A commander never shows fear, her father said.
Her hand steadied. She lit a match.
They set their torches on fire.
Arin dodged the swing of the Valorian sword. He pulled the Needle free from his arm, felt pain spurt. Arin briefly eyed his attacker. A slender, quick form.
The Valorian lashed out again.
Just throw it and run, Kestrel told herself. Throw and run.
She burst from the trees. Her boots hit stone paving.
A crossbow quarrel soared over her head. Another hit a Herrani soldier running alongside her. He sagged and dropped.
One of the four, a Dacran woman, snagged his torch from the ground and lobbed it at the nearest wagon. Its canvas cover flared into flame.
Kestrel kept running. She couldn’t see what the woman did with the second torch, but heard a howl of pain, a shrieking eastern curse. Kestrel understood only one word of it: fire. The sirrin sap, Kestrel thought. Maybe it had run down the woman’s arm. Maybe the Dacran was burning alive.
Kestrel forced herself to run faster. Valorian soldiers were scattered now, disordered, cut off from the general.
She heard another wagon crackle with fire. She ran erratically toward her target. Never a straight line if you have to run, her father said. Other wise you’re too easy to sight and shoot.
She got shot anyway. An arrow hit her chest.
When the sword came at him again, Arin sidestepped it and seized the hand that held the hilt. Squeezed. Felt the knuckles pop. The sound and the scream were lost amid other sounds and other screams. With the Needle in his left hand, Arin pierced the Valorian’s wrist and saw the red point emerge on the other side. Arin ripped the sword free, claimed it as his own, and stabbed.
Kestrel staggered but didn’t fall. The arrow hadn’t penetrated her armor.
She had almost reached her targeted wagon. Heart slamming against her rib cage, she glanced up at her torch. The sap traced a thin blue line of flame down the birch stave. Her fingers were hot. She threw the torch into the wagon’s belly.
Then she spun and ran for the trees. Her legs pumped hard. She felt the old wound in her thigh split open and seep. She shouted the names of her four soldiers, cried out with ragged breath for them to run. Run, she called in two languages, and then a third. Even in Valorian she shouted for people to flee, because her wagon was already a bonfire, and it was right next to the wagon that held the black powder.
A breeze feathered her sweaty skin. A puff of wind.
