Kingdoms at War (Dragon Gate Book 1) by Lindsay Buroker

Author:Lindsay Buroker [Buroker, Lindsay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-04-21T16:00:00+00:00

Tezi sat against the wall, the mage transport vessel barely reverberating as its magic guided it through the skies. It was her first time off the ground, unless one counted her times being thrown by Sergeant Tinder, and it was hard to shake the uneasy feeling that she would be trapped in the sky city once they arrived. For so much of her life, she’d feared she would be selected and dragged up to one of the castles to be a king’s bedroom servant. She never would have believed she would voluntarily step onto a mageship for a ride up to that world.

She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. It was cold in the cavernous cargo hold, the area where the mercenaries had been told to stay. They shared the space with crates labeled explosives, magelocks, and—most alarmingly—alchemical ingredients: danger, do not touch. Straps bolted to the deck and walls kept the crates from moving around, but she didn’t feel safe.

Nearby, others in the unit played dice and cards, unfazed by this rapid change in their plans. If anything, the mercenaries were excited, chattering about the possibility of seeing action and combat bonuses.

Tezi might have felt similarly, but she worried she hadn’t had enough training to survive a serious mission. In the months since she’d joined, Thorn Company had been hired for a few skirmishes—raiding a bandit camp for stolen goods, chasing squatters out of a lighthouse, and exterminating giant tunnel rats that had moved into a mine east of Perchver—but nothing that could be called a war.

Was she ready for that? Were the others ready to rely on her? The captain might be, after their incursion into the hotel together, but few others had seen her fight yet. On the mine-extermination mission, she hadn’t been allowed to go down into danger. Sergeant Tinder had positioned her outside one of the tunnel exits, with orders to shoot any of the predatory rats that fled, but none had come in her direction. She’d ended up feeling worthless—if not deliberately placed where she couldn’t get in the way.

Captain Ferroki finished talking to the leaders of two other small units who’d been recruited—Wrath Rangers, a squad of only ten who were supposedly experts on hunting and tracking enemies, and the Moon Guard, pale-faced northerners who might have come from Tezi’s continent. Once done, she walked past her troops, checking in with the lieutenant and her senior sergeants, then surprised Tezi by coming over to sit down next to her.

“You doing all right, Rookie?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Let’s talk about today.”

Tezi hid a grimace. Did the captain plan to berate her for disobeying the lieutenant and running to help in the hotel? None of them had been injured, and Tezi didn’t think it had gone badly, but the captain hadn’t truly needed her there, and maybe she would have preferred it if Tezi had obediently stayed on the highway with everyone else. It was hard not to feel disgruntled at the thought. Tezi

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