Dragon Blessed by D. K. Holmberg

Author:D. K. Holmberg [Holmberg, D. K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ASH Publishing
Published: 2018-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Jayell gave Fes a sharp glance. “What is it?” she asked as they headed down a narrow street. The storefronts on either side of them marked off simple shops, things such as a metalsmith or wax maker. None of the shops were open, which made it difficult to consider disappearing inside one of them.

“I recognized one of the soldiers,” he said.

“A soldier? I thought that you were a collector.”

She said the word with an edge to it, and he wondered if she had nearly called him a scavenger. Could she know how much he hated that word?

“I am a collector, but before I left, I was summoned before the emperor. The man I saw back there is one of his high-ranking Dragon Guards.”

He glanced over his shoulder, but there was no movement at the end of the street, not yet.

Fes kicked the horse to go faster and felt as if the sound of the horse's hooves on the stones was far too loud. Loud enough that it would give away their location. There was no getting around that. No getting around the fact that he and Jayell might have been spotted, and if Captain Jaken brought his troops to bear on Fes, what could he do?

Nothing.

And yet, if Jaken was here, what did that mean?

Could Azithan be here?

Fes had thought that the heat he was detecting wasn’t from Azithan and that it was from another fire mage, but if Captain Jaken was here, that meant that the emperor had sent soldiers he trusted out of the city.

“I don’t think we should move so quickly through the city,” Jayell said.

“I don’t know that we have much choice,” Fes said. “If he catches us…”

He wasn’t sure what would happen if Jaken were to catch them. Maybe nothing. Maybe he only wanted to ensure that Fes completed his task, but perhaps the emperor had sent him to collect Fes.

And Azithan had been with some of the emperor's men. Could the emperor have discovered that Fes had slaughtered them?

If he had, it wouldn’t be surprising for the emperor to send soldiers after him.

They turned a corner, and he came face to face with a pair of Dragon Guards.

The men studied him, and one of them brought his bow up, reaching for an arrow.

Fes didn’t wait. He launched himself from the saddle, landing in a roll. He unsheathed his daggers and slammed the hilt of one of them into the archer and exploded upward, slamming his shoulder into the stomach of the other, who was reaching for his sword.

Both men crumpled.

He looked up at Jayell. “We need to get moving.”

“They might not have been after you before,” she said.

“It’s possible,” Fes said. And if they hadn’t been before, now that he had attacked these soldiers, it was likely that they would be after him now. Which meant that he needed to move and do so quickly.

Where could they go?

They needed to either get out of the city—and if they did, they would have to ride quickly to escape the notice of the soldiers—or they would have to hide.

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