Page 34 of War Mage

Finally, I hear a door open and I’m pulled outside, where there’s incidentally more light, the sky the pale gray that it turns just before sunrise. We’re in some kind of courtyard where covered wagons stand waiting and more vampires are loading chests and shackled people into the back. I see the other guard and Urim just ahead of us, heading down the steps to the courtyard.

“Zadicus sends new goods,” Gair says, pushing Urim brutally ahead of him with unnatural strength.Another sentient blood-drinker.

The vampires loading the wagons look up and size up me and the orc. One whistles. “Wow, unmarked goods. I haven’t seen bloodbags in such good condition for a while now. They for Our Lord?”

“Sheis,” my guard says, pulling me forward. “The orc’s been claimed by Magistrate Zadicus.”

“Then he won’t be so strong and healthy for long,” remarks the other vampire. “Zadicus likes to play a bit too rough with his food.”

The guard holding Urim shrugs. “Not our business. Our business is to get them chained and in a wagon for tomorrow.”

“The other wagon is already full,” a different vampire pipes up. “We’ll have to put them in the second wagon.”

“Then do it,” orders Leon, his grip on my arm tensing for a moment. “Magistrate Zadicus will haveusin chains right beside them if we don’t obey quickly enough.”

That seems to light a fire under the vampires loading the wagons, and within moments I find myself being shoved into one of the wagons after Urim. When I’m sitting on the bench in the back, cruel hands yank my leg and I feel a metal cuff closing around my ankle with a loudclick. Instantly my mana feels further away and I realize that the cuff must be iron or an iron alloy.Double, triple, quadruple shit.This has just gone from bad to worse. The guards, oblivious to my alarm, place another ankle cuff on Urim and then thread a sturdy chain through the loops before securing it with a heavy lock to a metal twist attached to the floor of the wagon, effectively chaining us to the wagon itself.

“Get some rest, bloodbags,” Leon says, throwing some threadbare blankets into the back of the wagon. “You’ll need it for what’s coming.”

The other guard chuckles darkly at his friend’s words and then the canvas flap of the wagon falls closed, leaving Urim and I alone. Though the sun is rising and the interior of the wagon is light, it’s fucking cold, the nip of winter is in the air and my fires are locked behind iron. I turn on the wooden bench, looking at the orc beside me with a feeling of helpless rage. I know it’s not technically his fault that we’re in this situation, but damn if it doesn't feel like it.

“Urim . . .” I begin, not really knowing what I’m going to say.What are we going to do? We’re fucked? How’s that master plan working, genius?

But before I can say anything, his warm fingers are against my lips, stilling my speech. Then he leans forward so that our heads are close together, close enough to kiss. I feel alarmed at that thought when his head slips past mine until his lips are by my ear.

“Don’t use my real name,” he murmurs next to my head. His voice is so low that I almost can’t hear him, even though he’s talking directly into my ear. “Vampires have keen hearing and there’s still a guard outside that will be able to hear every word we say. Call me Vargan.”

My heart thumps in my throat, his nearness doing something strange to me. I can feel the warmth of his breath against my ear, can almost taste the salt of the skin of his finger against my lips. He smells like seawater and something earthy and rich. Like fresh-tilled earth and spongy moss. It’s strange to focus on that right now while we’re captured and everything’s gone to shit, but maybe it’s because of our situation that my mind is honing in on my senses, scrambling to ground itself in the tangible.

Still, I need to know what we are going to do. He’s the one in charge of this mission, fucked though it is, and now that he’s not on his way to being beheaded, he must have an idea of how we can adapt to our new shitty circumstances.

Grabbing his finger and moving it from my lips, I lean in closer, my cheek rubbing against his in my haste, but I ignore the sensation. When I’m finally next to his ear, I whisper as low as I can, “The ankle chain is iron, cutting me off from my gift. Even if they deliver me to Grazrath, I won’t be able to attack him as long as I’m wearing this. I—”

“Calm, Adara,” Urim murmurs, his hand lightly pressing onto my back, the warmth seeping into my skin, making me realize that I’ve been shaking. A mix of fear, rage, and the cold, I suspect. His hand is strangely comforting, being that it's attached to an orc who I hate. Urim continues, his silky voice soft in my ear, “All will be well. This isn't ideal, yes, but the mission can still continue. You’re still going to be delivered to Lord Grazrath and no one will touch you. I have hidden two pieces of wire sewn into the lining of my trousers. I can pick the lock of your cuff when we get in front of the demon if they haven't removed it and you’ll still be able to take your shot.”

“What if you don’t last that long?” I whisper back furiously. “They said that the magistrate . . .”

“I’ll last that long,” he says calmly, but grimly. “I have the will to see this mission through. Nothing will stop that.”

“It will if you’re dead,” I murmur back to him. “You saw those other blood slaves in the room. They were weakened and hopeless. You’re going to have to survive at least a week of travel, of being the magistrate’s only blood slave. You can’t possibly guarantee that you’ll survive it.”

“I’ll survive it, Adara,” Urim says, his voice full of certainty. “I’ve survived worse.”

I almost retort that that’s impossible to know for certain, but something in the tone of his voice stops me. I don’t know much about this enigmatic, stoic orc, except that he has no heart and is unfailingly loyal to his rulers and mission. I think of my own past, of being six and begging on the streets of a strange land where I didn’t speak the language. That was bad; just as grim and hopeless as our current situation. I survived that through grit and more than a little luck. Who am I to say that he hasn’t survived worse? Maybe he has. Maybe he will. The thought calms my fear-filled mind. Still, I’m not stupid. I know that if things have gone wrong once, they could go wrong again.

“I hope you’re right,” I whisper in his ear. “Or the whole world is fucked.”

Chapter 14

Urim

My eyes open as the sun reaches its apex, unable to sleep anymore. The canvas of the wagon is doing little to stop the light of noon from permeating the space. It still isn’t sunset, so we are still in the courtyard, the wagon not moving. Adara groans next to me on the bench and burrows her face into my shoulder, hiding her eyes from brightness. For all her dislike of me, she couldn’t stay awake forever, not after the night we had, and is now leaning on me, wrapped in the thin blankets they gave us to try and stay warm. I suspect that her burrowing into me has as much to do with escaping the bright sun as it does with wanting to subconsciously share my orcish warmth. I'm glad to share heat with her, disliking how she shivered without her fires to warm her. For all her passion and intensity, she is a delicate thing, even more than most humans. Though she has more meat on her bones than that first time I carried her, she is still petite and her long imprisonment in the dungeons of Garden Manor and High Citadel did not give her the ability to thrive. Something uncomfortably like guilt courses through me as I look at her, remembering how I kept trying to break her spirit. Her spirit remains, but her body is frail. If she is unable to weather the hardships of the rest of our mission, I’m afraid that it will be my fault.

For all my confidence the night before, as I tried to calm her and banish her rancid fear scent, I am actually worried about our ability to complete what we set out to accomplish. And, I can admit in the privacy of my own mind, we are truly prisoners now, blood slaves in truth. Adara at least is protected, for now, from the appetites of the sadistic vampires. I am not. Though I have been trained to withstand torture of all kinds in my position as Shield to the King, that was merely to avoid revealing sensitive information under duress. I cannot control what they do to my body. If they break my hands, for instance, I will not be able to pick the lock on her leg before she gets to Grazrath. Without access to her powers, she won’t even be able totryto kill him and will likely be tortured to death by the demon lord.

Lord Grazrath takes special pleasure in ruining the pretty ones.The magistrate's words to Adara last night roll around my head like troubled thunder in a cloud. My Mating Instinct howls and rages at the thought that Adara could be hurt. Tortured. Killed. All because of me. Because I didn’t foresee the mission going sideways like this.

But I’m not dead yet,I tell myself. As long as I’m alive I can plot. Strategize. Imustsurvive. There is no other option. Anything else is unacceptable. I don’t actually care about dying. Living on the streets and staring death in the face every day of my childhood cured me of that. I’ve been living on borrowed time from the gods ever since I survived on the streets after the death of my mother. But the idea of failing my rulers, my sacred Oaths, my ma . . . Adara? That will not happen.

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