Page 148 of Scorched Earth
“I look forward to it and the sleep to follow.”
Kaira’s eyes burned with fury, and her horse half reared beneath her, snorting loudly.
“You’ll sleep easily, sir, for Imresh is as solid a fortress as you could want to have. If the walls had been properly guarded, I dare say we’d have lost a few men trying to take it. Was lucky for us that the general here decided those soldiers were better off watching your little chit-chat.”
“Do we rely on luck, Felix?”
“No.” Felix laughed. “We don’t.”
Kaira seethed with barely checked violence, but she held her ground.
“Felix, order the men to withdraw to our new accommodations.” Marcus waited for Felix to ride back to the ranks before he said, “To answer your question, Your Highness, I don’t know what I’d choose to do if my home and family were threatened, because it’s never happened. This”—he gestured to the ranks of men slowly retreating back up the slope—“is my family, and where they are is my home. Which makes my choices much easier than yours. That said, I hope that given more opportunity to consider said choices, you’ll make the correct one. Good day to you.”
Reining the mare around, he turned his back on Princess Kaira of Gamdesh and rode after his army.
“Tell Teriana to watch her back,” Kaira called after him. “There will be a reckoning for what she’s done!”
A chill ran across his skin, but Marcus didn’t stop his horse. Didn’t turn around. Only trusted the wind to carry his words as he said, “You harm a hair on Teriana’s head, and you’ll no longer be dealing with the Empire, Kaira. You’ll be dealing with me.”
54TERIANA
“What is happening?” Teriana demanded of Felix as he gave the order for the legions to withdraw and march north. “Where are we going? Who were those prisoners?”
“The Forty-First captured Imresh,” Felix answered, and Nic slapped his hand against his saddle and whooped with delight.
“Those prisoners were the skeleton guard and serving staff that she’d left behind,” Felix continued, giving the boy an amused glance. “As to why, you’ll have to ask Marcus.”
Who was trotting his horse up the slope toward them.
“Let’s go see if this gambit was worth it,” was all Marcus said as he rode past them, forcing Teriana to scramble up behind Quintus on their horse. With uncharacteristic urgency, Marcus wove throughthe ranks of marching men, then heeled his mount into a gallop down the road.
“Bring the ranks to Imresh and watch our heels,” Felix snapped at Nic, then he broke into a gallop after Marcus, as did Gibzen.
“Go!” Teriana shouted at Quintus, thumping her heels against their horse. “Catch them!”
They galloped down the road, and what terror Teriana might have felt at the speed was eclipsed by a desperate need to discover why Marcus had done this. To learn what his strategy was to have marched so far, to have pushed his men so hard, only to have taken a location other than their target.
Crimson and gold Cel banners were already draped from the walls of the forbidding grey fortress of Imresh as they approached, legionnaires patrolling the ramparts and manning the gates as though this stronghold had been theirs for months rather than hours. Marcus disappeared beneath the portcullis just as she and Quintus reached the drawbridge over the moat. How Felix and the Forty-First had taken Imresh so easily she couldn’t have said, for the murky waters below were filled with wooden spikes with no evidence of casualties.
The horse’s hooves clattered over the cobbles as they entered the courtyard. Marcus was already dismounted, and she heard him bark, “Please tell me that someone has found something of worth in this place?”
“Yes, sir,” one of the Forty-First answered. “It’s this way, sir.”
Slipping off the side of her horse, Teriana hurried after them, ignoring Gibzen’s glower. They wove through the interior of the fortress, which, unlike its austere exterior, was painted in vibrant colors, the walls decorated with elaborate wooden carvings and woven tapestries. It smelled heavily of the incense that the Gamdeshians burned.
“In here, sir,” she heard someone say, then Marcus’s cloak disappeared into a room, a shattered wooden door propped against the wall.
“I knew it!” Marcus shouted, and Teriana broke into a run, ignoring Quintus’s protests as she spun into the room.
To find Marcus staring at a glittering stem of xenthier.
“Is that—” She broke off, needing to swallow down the tightness that had formed in her throat.
“A genesis? Yes. Yes, it is.” Marcus turned away from the stem of crystal, and pulling off his helmet, he tossed it aside before crossing the room to grip Teriana’s shoulders. “I knew they were hidingsomething in here. Something important, else Kaira would have been in Emrant itself.”
His eyes were almost manic, a combination of exhaustion and euphoria and… something Teriana couldn’t put a name to.
“I couldn’t get a spy into the bloody place, but then I remembered a conversation I had with Agrippa in Bardeen about farts.”
