Page 81 of Shadow Master
And then something was whizzing toward the ground.
Hyde tugged me out of the way before the object hit the earth. It was oblong and brass-colored.
Orion bent to pick it up with a frown, and then his mouth parted in recognition.
“What is it?” Kash asked.
Orion turned it to the side and tapped it on his palm. A white roll of paper fell out. He unrolled it and read it, and his expression hardened.
In the distance, boot falls approached fast. Someone yelled in fomorian, “He’s here. They’re here.”
Orion looked up and locked gazes with me. “It’s from Laramir. He wants to parlay.”
Twenty-Five
Draka, Orion, Lugh, Hyde, and the troop accompanied me to the border on hound back.
This was customary in the old days, Lugh had assured me. Two sides talking things out to see if they could come to a mutually acceptable conclusion to prevent bloodshed. A parlay saved lives. He’d dressed for the occasion in Brady’s armor, and he’d even hung the damn eye around his neck like a useless talisman.
But the twist in my gut and the tightness in my chest warned that this meeting wasn’t going to go down that way. Still, it was something both Orion and Lugh urged me to do. Draka had been against it.
What can they offer? he’d pointed out. They want the mortal realm. They will not set that goal aside.
I’d been inclined to agree.
But here we were, in the hopes that the outcome would be something miraculous.
Back at camp, the militia was preparing for battle.
Preparing for word from us.
I’d left Harmon behind as my second.If anything happens to us out there, I need you to take charge.
I’d made him swear it.
The mist was gone, but the journey across the land was the most ominous yet. I leaned low over Athos’s back as we loped across the ground, past the carcasses of the mist creatures, curled up and dead. Past the AM posts, silent and useless now. Silhouettes appeared in the distance. Figures on fomorian horseback waiting at the border just as the note had said.
Athos slowed his pace, and my group came to a standstill several meters away from the fir bolg.
The fir bolg were big guys, making the mighty beasts they rode on seem small in comparison. Nine fir bolg faced us. Four on each side of a central figure who was draped in heavy furs. A necklace of bones hung around his neck. His beard was long and threaded with silver ribbon, and his eyes were shadowed by his heavy brows. On his shoulder, with its talon-tipped feet hooked into a leather shoulder guard, sat a massive raven. The fir bolg seemed unconcerned by the beast of a bird clinging to him.
This guy had to be Laramir.
He held up a hand, and then his horse trotted forward a little. Two of his men came with him, flanking him. And hopping along beside them, attached to a leash, was the scrawny figure of the little fomorian spy. His eyes lit up at the sight of me, and he let out a cackle that was cut off when the fir bolg holding onto the leash gave it a sharp tug.
Served the fucker right.
“We need to move forward a little too,” Lugh said.
“Okay. You and Orion need to come with me.”
Hyde didn’t protest at my leaving him behind. He was a warrior, and he understood this was about tactics. I needed advisors to help me understand how this system worked, and no one knew the protocol better than the fomorian and the Tuatha.
I swept my gaze over Lloyd, Aidan, and Devon. “Stand firm.”
And then I was moving forward on Athos’s back with Lugh and Orion flanking me.
Once again, we stopped a good distance away, but close enough to speak and be heard.
