Page 69 of The Sorcerer's Alpha
He heard no reply, and no sense of recognition shivered through the bond. There was nothing more he could do but pray that Sycamore had heard him.
A watchman woke him with a hand on his shoulder. One moon was up, casting enough light to see by. They would ride out.
As before, they stayed off the road. Marut’s night vision wasn’t terribly sharp, but even so he could see the walls of the town rising from the hills ahead, and the dark bulk of the fort to one side. The building wasn’t large—an outpost, as the commander had said—but still large enough that Marut didn’t like the prospect of making a frontal assault. He and the scouts looped around to the far side of the fort, where Nilay signaled everyone to fall into position. They had discussed the plan as they rode that afternoon, and everyone knew what they were meant to do, and would wait for Nilay’s sign to do it.
Marut walked Bunny back and forth, straining his sense of the bond. He could tell that Sycamore was inside the fort, but where? The second level, he decided, and could be no more precise than that. Unfortunate, but it couldn’t be helped.
He conveyed this information to Nilay with a series of hand signals. Then he called out again through the bond: Sycamore! We’re ready now. Do whatever you can.
Nilay raised his arm and gestured toward the fort. Half of the scouts slid from their horses and ran down the slope on foot. They would search out an entrance before summoning the others.
Bunny shifted restlessly beneath Marut, seeming to pick up on his impatience and fear—not fear of battle but fear that they wouldn’t succeed; that he would be forced to return to Chedi without Sycamore at his side.
The dark shapes of the scouts disappeared as they merged with the darkness of the fort’s walls. The moon shone down, rising above the treetops. Marut waited, his breath coming quick in his lungs.
One wall of the fort exploded in a shower of flames.
“Go, go, go!” Nilay bellowed. Marut was already halfway down the slope, his heart racing in time with Bunny’s hooves. That was Sycamore, surely that was Sycamore.
The explosion had left a gaping hole in the fort, but Marut couldn’t see what lay within through the smoke and flames. He heard frightened cries from the Skopoy woken from their sleep by a nightmare of fire. After a brief pause of shock, the Chedoy scouts had cut sideways along the perimeter of the fort, searching for an entrance that wasn’t actively burning, and Marut followed them and was there to see the main gate crumble into a thousand tiny splinters of wood.
“Stand back,” Marut called to the gathered scouts, although they were hanging back anyway, waiting to see who—or what—emerged.
Marut knew. He could feel Sycamore coming.
Hoofbeats sounded behind him as the other mounted scouts arrived. He edged Bunny forward until he could see through the gate. The fire was spreading rapidly, and the Skopoy were running around with buckets in an effort Marut could see would not succeed. A few of them had noticed the gate disintegrating and were shouting and working to organize some movement in that direction, but they were too late to stop the man running through the chaos with his hand held to his chest, running and dodging someone who grabbed for him, running for the gate and reaching up for Marut to seize him and drag him up into the saddle.
“Go!” Marut shouted, using his entire arm to gesture up the slope, and he held Sycamore tight against him as Bunny set his ears back and ran.
* * *
The Skopoy would mountno counterattack tonight, but still they rode as far as they could, north along the road before turning east toward the badlands and doubling back in the direction of Beas. Anyone who pursued them would hopefully take the shorter route straight east and find nothing but empty hills.
At dawn, Nilay finally called a halt near the border of the badlands to rest horses and weary men. While everyone save the first watch lay down to sleep for a few hours, Marut sat up with Sycamore in the early light to tend to his torn hand.
The wounds had clotted, but not before they bled enough to soak the sleeve of Sycamore’s tunic almost to the shoulder. Marut rolled back the tunic and the shirt beneath it and poured water over Sycamore’s hand, rinsing away the dried crust of blood staining his fingers and palm.
“How did you do this?” Marut asked, frowning at the torn, ragged flesh.
“With my teeth.” Sycamore grimaced. “Awful. I didn’t think I could bite hard enough, but I was only afraid to.”
“My Sycamore,” Marut murmured. He drew Sycamore’s injured hand to his mouth and pressed a careful kiss to the knuckles. His eyes stung as he did, all the fear he had suppressed over the past week raining down on him now that he knew Sycamore was safe.
He had thought he might never see Sycamore again. What a joy it was to look at his face once more.
“I’ll heal it later,” Sycamore said. “It’s not so bad.” He brushed the fingertips of his other hand against Marut’s cheek. “You were worried?”
“I thought you would be executed. That’s what King Aditya told me.”
“I see.” Sycamore mulled this over for a moment, then said, “I would have staged an escape sooner had I known execution was on the table.”
Marut opened his saddlebag and took out a strip of cloth to wrap Sycamore’s hand with. “Why didn’t you?”
“I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t think of using my teeth. I spent so much time wishing for a knife or wondering if I could break the leg of my bed and use that as a weapon.” Sycamore shook his head. “Temur accused me of a lack of imagination, which annoyed me very much at the time, but he wasn’t wrong.”
“I’m glad you heard me calling for you.”
“I felt you coming nearer. And then last night I heard you very clearly, calling my name. So I knew I had to do something. I thought, what would Marut do?” He smiled at Marut, the same wry smile as ever. His captivity didn’t seem to have done him any harm. “I remembered you asking me if couldn’t heal myself, after I was shot. Do you remember?”