Don't Bloody the Black Flag by James Lloyd Dulin

Author:James Lloyd Dulin [James Lloyd Dulin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: G & D Publishing
Published: 2024-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

Isála recalled the fear she had felt beside the lodestone with each breath. Each footfall reverberated through her body. Her stormwood staff grew heavier, and the night went silent beneath the rushing torrent of The River’s call.

A blotch of red uniforms crested the hill behind her, cloaked by dusk and distance.

An arrow sank into the earth to her right. Another veered off somewhere in the darkening landscape.

As sporadic and ill-aimed as the arrows were, one lucky bolt could end a life as easily is a well-aimed one.

The ironoaks head promised safety of a sort, but it wouldn’t be enough. The Strait of Talmo was still a day to the north.

They had found them. There were too many to fight. She had failed.

If the warriors got too close, Isála would have to destroy the letter before they could take it. Even if it meant an end to the conclave and an end to her too short time in The Waking, she couldn’t let Kaiut discover where the peace talks would be held.

“Hey, water dancer, how about a little cover?” Rione yelled over her shoulder without slowing pace.

Her voice echoed in Isála’s head as she tried to decipher the words. Nothing made sense besides running.

Another volley of arrows crashed into the dirt behind them.

“Now, Isála. Right fucking now!”

The Song shook like a storm, cracking and rumbling through her. Then a separate, unassuming chorus hummed within the tumultuous overtones. It moved as if the chaos of the world would not bother it from its path.

This second soft force called to her, and she danced.

Even as her feet continued to race behind the siblings, her hands plucked at the wavelength surrounding her, pulling at the water clinging to the air. Vapor cooled and thickened. She fed the fog her breath, and it swelled to encompass them.

As they filtered through the gaps in the tree line, the forest canopy shrouded them from the last of Sokan’s light.

Rione grabbed Isála. “You need to be in this. This is the time where all that talk of ending the war ceases to be talk.”

“Are we going to die?” Isála hated the sound of her voice as it left her mouth.

“We are going to fight.” Rione shookIsála as she spoke.

“We can’t,” Isála said. “There are too many of them.”

“The strait is too far away, and if we don’t make it across the water in the next two days, this is all for nothing,” Teshun said, his voice finding a calm that it had no right to. “We need to move now. We pick our ground, and we hold it.”

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