Page 2 of Winds of Destiny

Turo

Maniac that he is, Cam’s eyes light up with excitement. “Perfect!” he says, running from his study down the hall toward his workroom. “I have just the thing for chariots!”

“I do, too,” I yell after him, my fingers already itching to get to the fight. “It’s called a bow and arrows. What are you—”

“Here, here!” He speeds back just as quickly as he vanished, holding in his hand a tiny…flute?

“What the hells is that for?” I demand, already reaching for my armor. Protocol dictates that I keep it on at all times, but it’s hard not to relax the rules around Cam. He’s been persuading me into mischief since we were children, and I’ve always been too weak to deny him. “Are you going to serenade them to death?”

“No! Listen!” He lifts the tiny flute to his mouth and blows.

And no sound comes out.

I roll my eyes as I strap on my dark gray breastplate. Whelver shell is almost impossible to penetrate and relatively light, which makes it ideal armor for Zephyth’s troops. It’s not pretty, like Kamor’s bright, bronze-armored chariots, but it does what I need it to—keep me alive so I can watch over Cam. He’s everything to me—including ridiculously frustrating at times like this. “You made a broken flute. Fantastic. So you’re going to blow at them until they surrender.”

“No, it’s for the whelvers!”

I strap on my greaves and grab my quiver, then my helm. The helm is the only place the armorers attempt a bit of creativity. The nosepiece curls down low, all the way to my chin, mimicking the long face of Zephyth’s patron sea serpent god, Ophiucas. From the forehead down the back of the helm are two spiraling horns, inlaid with sparkling mother-of-pearl. Fighters learn early on how to capture the sunlight with those horns, blinding their opponents in close combat.

It makes hiding from the enemy difficult at times, but few warriors in Zephyth have ever fought more than a hundred yards from the city itself. Since the everwinds died, those of us who roam the continent are rare. And we prefer stealth.

My damn prince would be one of them in a heartbeat if he was allowed, though.

“You want to wake up comatose whelvers who only become conscious every half year for feedings with a broken flute,” I say, completely deadpan. “Brilliant plan.”

Not.

I grab my blade, bow, and quiver, then glance out the window. The gate guards are streaming out from the city to help Doric’s caravan, but they’re all on foot. They’ll be even more vulnerable to those fast-moving chariots than Doric. “I need to go.”

Cam steps in front of me. “I’m coming with you.”

“No!” I glare at Cam as my anger spikes. How dare he be so cavalier about his own safety? “You’re staying here.”

The fiercest of our warriors shrink when I look at them like this. My own mentor watches what he says when I get in this mood. But Cam? He just looks amused. “I’m coming with you,” he repeats.

“ Prince Camrael, I—”

“Ooh, you’re using my title. You’re really irritated,” Cam teases, then his expression goes serious. “I think I can help save lives. I promise to stay well away from any fighting.”

Oh damn it, he’s determined. I know that if I persist in saying no, he’ll just go on his own unless I tie him up here. It’s tempting—but there’s no time.

“Come on.” I grab him by the hand and tow him along after me as I race out of his suite and down the stairs. He stays by my side despite my speed, and warmth gathers in my chest at the evidence that he’s kept up with his training in my absence.

Good . He’ll need every ounce of skill he possesses to survive the scolding his father is going to give both of us after this stunt.

There are many benefits to being a royal in Zephyth, and one of them is the collection of private passages meant just for the Rabann family and their trusted servants. I know them all like the back of my hand, and I get Cam and myself down to the stables before any of the regular city militia makes it to the fight.

Doric’s horn is still blowing—he needs help. At least hearing him like this means he’s alive, but for how long? He’s my mentor, my guide, the man who saved me from starvation. He gave me a home and a purpose. I have to save him.

I pull Cam toward the nearest jaka bird, one of only three in the entire city, and leap up onto her back before pulling him up behind me. Luckily, Lulu—Cam’s adorable name for his vicious mount—is saddled for a training ride. She shies and menaces us with her massive beak, but a brief tug on her white crest settles her fast. These two-legged beasts are as rare as they are expensive, and only the Rabann family is allowed to own them. I’ve gotten plenty of practice on Lulu, though, and right now I need her speed.

Cam laughs with delight as we go from still to racing forward in under a second. Once we’re out of the stable, Lulu takes off at a run for the nearest gate. The guard minding it startles and barely manages to haul open the massive door before we’re charging through.

From outside the walls, the conflict is clear. Only a few hundred feet away, a small party of travelers is surrounded by quick-moving Kamoran chariots, eight that I can see. Although their city insignia is obscured and the men within them appear shaggy and wild, the chariots are being towed by lions. There’s only one place to get lions like that—Antasa, the city King Embros recently conquered.

“I don’t think those are bandits,” Cam says, noticing the same thing.

Not even close.

The only reason the defenders haven’t been overrun is that they’ve turned the wagons they were riding in on their sides and have taken cover behind them. Some of our gate guards have joined them, but far too many others lie bleeding on the ground between here and the fight. I can’t tell who is dead or alive.

I have to go. Now .

I turn Lulu toward the nearest small, rocky, gray hill just beyond the city walls. It’s one of over a hundred such hills, laid out in rows like a monument. But they aren’t hills; they’re Zephyth’s massive herd of whelvers, enormous, shelled creatures capable of moving without being blown away while the everwinds were with us. For the past twenty years, they’ve existed in a state of torpor, rousing every half a year to eat the food we lay out to keep them alive, then returning to their slumber.

And Cam thinks he can wake them and…what, make them attack the chariots that dart about the plains ahead of us?

Before I can ask, he jumps from Lulu onto the nearest whelver. My heart wrenches as he goes, even though I know this is safer for him. Let him try his tricks here, away from the battle. I doubt the “bandits” will even notice him, as this is well away from the targets they’re fighting for.

“Stay up there!” I shout to him.

He smiles and salutes me with his flute. “I will!”

I don’t know if I believe him or not, but I do know that I need to go. It hurts to leave—I only just came back to him this morning—but I turn Lulu toward the fight and ready my bow. I tap the bird with my heels and she leaps forward, long, clawed legs eating up the distance in enormous strides. This beast has clearly been dying for a run. I’m going to make sure she gets one.

I nock an arrow and fire at the driver of the closest chariot. The arrow strikes his back, and he slumps forward, falling right over the front of the chariot on the next bump. He’s crushed beneath its wheels, and the man behind him who had been menacing one of Zephyth’s guards with a javelin moments ago has dropped it as he gropes for the reins.

Excellent. On to my next target.

Riding a jaka is exhilarating, but fighting from the back of one is harder than it looks. Half my arrows miss due to Lulu suddenly shifting beneath me or tossing her feathered head back and obscuring my vision. I still manage to take out a second chariot, although I have to get so close to do it that Lulu literally jumps over the downed chariot and its riders to avoid running into them.

I catch the eye of one of the wounded men as I wheel her around. He grins at me, blood coating his teeth, then lashes out with his sword and cuts the harness holding the snarling lion to the wreckage.

The lion turns on him immediately, biting his torso with such ferocity I’m surprised the man isn’t completely torn in two. The other man in the chariot screams and tries to crawl away, but the lion savages him as well, leaving a disemboweled corpse mere seconds later.

I’m so stunned by the violence of it that for a moment I can’t move. How do they make these lions work for them if they’re so feral?

A second later the lion turns toward me, and I realize my mistake. Don’t stare, get out of range! I kick the jaka to get it to run, but the lion reaches us before we make it more than ten steps. It’s immense, larger than its brethren that live wild in the south, and its fangs have to be as long as my hand. I fire an arrow into its shoulder, but it ignores it completely. Sure that Lulu will be killed in moments, I free my sword and prepare to jump.

I underestimate my mount. She screams with a ferocity to rival the lion’s roar and flaps her wings heavily. Jaka can’t fly, but their wings help them make tremendous jumps. Even with me on her back, we’re lifted ten feet in the air. I cling to the saddle as we fall, Lulu twisting just so, and—

The jaka’s clawed feet rake the lion across the face as we hit the ground. It reels from the blow, shaking its head woozily, and Lulu presses her advantage and strikes at it with her long, scimitar-shaped beak. The lion slashes with a paw, Lulu jumps again, and—

I can’t hang on. I’m airborne.

I roll to take the sting out of landing and come up sword in hand. Lulu and the lion are a whirlwind of combat, both forgetting that I exist in the heat of their duel. I turn toward the caravan just in time to see a familiar figure cry out and fall as a javelin punches through his side.

Doric!

I switch weapons on the run, nocking an arrow and loosing it before he’s even hit the ground. The man who wounded my mentor takes the shot through the eye—the arrow penetrates all the way up to the fletching. He’s dead instantly, falling from his chariot to the dusty ground like a stone. The driver, thinking better of attacking us alone, wheels his chariot away—

And then smashes it to pieces against the whelver that appears from nowhere right behind him. Not just the one—more are following it, putting themselves between the chariots and the caravan. Every one of the “bandits” I can see is backing away, unsure of what to do against these behemoth-like protectors.

I stare in amazement up at Cam, who’s standing exactly where I left him and smiling at me like he’s pulled off a massive joke. I would be enraged if I wasn’t so impressed. How did he do this with just his soundless flute?

My ears ring with the sudden crack of a whip. A coil of gold appears around Cam’s waist. There’s just enough time for his eyes to widen in pain before he’s jerked off the back of the whelver, pulled somewhere I can’t see him.

A scream splits the air with fury and fear.

It takes a moment to realize it’s me.