Page 56 of Crown of the Dunes (The Ballan Desert #2)
I glanced at Erix, who was about to hand his stick back to Lord Elion. Without a thought, I stopped him with a hand on his forearm. He froze, and I swallowed.
“Come on,” I encouraged. “I’m sure you’ll be able to master it. All you have to do is try to hit the ball through the goal. ”
I felt the muscles of his forearm ripple under my touch as he squeezed the stick tighter.
“All right,” he conceded, before letting me lead him out onto the cleared field.
We stopped near the center as more clansmen grabbed their sticks and drifted toward us.
“Kaman isn’t played in Kelvadan,” he admitted, “and I was never truly one of the riders at Clan Katal.”
I considered him, watching out of the corner of my eyes as both Elion and Dhara also selected their sticks and walked toward the gathering crowd of riders.
From their posture, I could not tell if their words were hostile or not, but Elion’s lips quirked in a smile, telling me that he did not mind whatever barbs Dhara threw at him.
I considered before I responded. “Lord Alasdar wanted you to be alone—to be isolated so you were more easily controlled. But you were clearly more than The Viper he intended you to be to these people. They believed in you as their leader… they believe in you still.”
“Not all of them,” Erix grumbled, clearly referring to the other half of the clans who had splintered off to continue the fight against Kelvadan.
I shook my head, wanting to say more, but Lord Dhara stopped in the middle of the riders and held a leather ball up above her head, gathering their attention.
“Lord Elion and I will call teams,” she announced, her voice projecting with all the strength of one who commanded their riders with no room for disobedience. In a matter of minutes, I found myself standing on Dhara’s side of the field, while Erix was called away to stand by Elion.
Dhara jerked her chin toward the center of the field. “Why don’t you take the first hit?” she asked me.
I nodded my thanks and headed to the small circle traced in the sand. Dhara followed me, holding the tightly stitched leather ball we were to use. Another rider met me there, and we faced off against each other, crossing the curved ends of our sticks between us .
Lord Dhara held the ball above them, and everybody on the field fell quiet. Then, she dropped it.
Fire surged in my veins as I struck hard and fast, batting the ball back toward Dhara’s team. I didn’t waste any time shouldering the other rider out of the way as the game kicked off, and a loud grunt escaped him at the contact.
In a matter of minutes, the short hairs that escaped my braid were plastered to my face and neck by a sheen of sweat, and my heart pounded against my rib cage.
As I ran up and down the field, helping Dhara’s team drive the ball toward the arched palm branches that served as our goal, I found myself feeling lighter, despite how heavily my breaths heaved in my lungs.
One rider whacked the ball in my direction. I sprinted toward it, but another dark silhouette barreled in from the left, trying to intercept it.
Instead of trying to evade him, I lowered my shoulder and rammed straight into Erix’s diaphragm.
His breath flew from his chest with a grunt, but he didn’t relent.
I managed to beat him to the ball by the skin of my teeth, and I turned my back to him using the curved end of my stick to bat it away from his own as he wrapped himself around me.
As he did, the metal of his mask brushed against my cheek, cool against my skin that burned with exertion.
“So, this is how you learned to fight like an angry caracal,” he growled in my ear.
I couldn’t help the curl of my lips, somewhere between a grin and bared teeth. My only response was to throw my elbow back, catching him under the ribs. He swore and retreated just a few inches, giving me just enough room to bat the ball toward another rider who ran past.
We broke apart, both charging down the field to the far goal. The rider from Dhara’s team crashed through the opposition, cutting one down with a sharp blow of his stick to her shin, and shouldering another out of the way.
Lord Elion charged in from the opposite side of the field, on track to intercept him just before he reached his destination. I cried out wordlessly as I pumped my arms wildly, stick forgotten in my hand as I forced my legs to carry me faster .
My thighs screamed, but I ignored it as I launched myself into the air.
I crashed into Lord Elion at full speed, catching him on his blind side.
The force of my tackle carried us both to the ground, and we rolled in a tangle of limbs and sticks.
A muffled crunch sounded as we skidded to a stop in the sands, Elion on his front beneath me.
I pushed up onto my hands, only for horror to rise in my throat as I spotted blood staining the sand next to Lord Elion’s face.
He groaned as I scrabbled backward. With my weight no longer bearing him down into the earth, he rolled over to reveal blood dripping from an already swollen nose.
It must have landed on the stick that had somehow ended up beneath us in our tumultuous fall.
As the adrenaline of the game faded, dread blossomed behind my sternum. Breaking the nose of a clan lord didn’t seem like a queenly peace keeping tactic.
It certainly wasn’t what Ginevra would have done.
Elion raised his fingers to his upper lip, wiping away the blood there before holding them in front of his eyes to examine.
I bit my lips, waiting for his anger.
Footsteps crunched in the sand behind me, and a shadow fell over us.
Elion looked up at the figure standing behind us and grunted with wry amusement. “I can see why you like her, Lord Viper. She has the spirit of the desert in her as much as you do.”
The breath I had been holding rushed out of me, and I pushed to my feet before reaching a hand down to Elion. He grasped my forearm and let me haul him to his feet. He didn’t let go immediately, his grip tight on mine.
“Fight for the desert—the whole desert—as fiercely as you play kaman , and you will have no issues from Clan Tibel.”
Blood dripped over his lips into his close-cropped beard, painting a fierce picture of a lord who wouldn’t hesitate to wage war for his clan if he deemed it necessary.
It drove home the meaning in his words: Peace between these clans and Kelvadan would only last as long as I used my power to heal the desert .
I lowered my chin in understanding, and he turned away, marching off the field and motioning for a rider to fetch him a cloth to mop away the blood.
Erix’s shoulder brushed against mine as he leaned forward to murmur in my ear.
“Maybe we should call it a night before you break any more bones.”