Smuggler's Fortune by Angela Boord

Author:Angela Boord [Boord, Angela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Impossible Books
Published: 2020-10-21T22:00:00+00:00

We almost made it.

The stream glistened ahead of us. Amid the clatter of the horses’ pounding hooves and the wagon wheels rattling and bumping on the hard-packed dirt and stone of the road, I heard the twang of Nibas’s crossbow as he shot at the bandits in the rocks above us.

One man screamed, then maybe more. Beside me, LiSang hung onto the side of the bench with a death grip.

“Why aren’t they shooting back at us?” Razi said.

“Thank the gods for small blessings!” LiSang shouted back.

“No,” I said. “I don’t think so…”

I was right. Four men on horseback appeared directly in front of us, blocking the stream.

In response, I smacked the horses with the reins again.

“Kyris!” LiSang yelled. “Are you mad?”

“We have a wagon!”

“They’ve got guns!” Razi shouted suddenly. “Curse their fathers—Nibas!”

I didn’t slow the horses down. If we could just push through before they got the guns loaded, primed, and aimed…

Nibas swung around and hit one of the men with a bolt from the crossbow. The other three men frantically primed their pans, burning wicks held in their mouths. I leaned forward, as if by pitching my body I could make the horses run faster.

Nibas shot another bolt and another man fell. But one man had got his shot and wadding jammed down the barrel. He lit the wadding and put the gun to his shoulder.

There was a sharp crack and a cloud of orange and white smoke obscured the horses.

Dear gods, let his aim go astray…

There was a high chance it would. The arquebus was hard to aim, and he had shot about as fast as it was possible to shoot that kind of gun.

But then one of the horses screamed and stumbled. Blood streamed out of its shoulder. The wind blew it back in a fine spray into my face.

“Oh, don’t go down, you beautiful bastard, keep running, we’re almost there…”

Another crack exploded out of the cloud as the second man shot his gun.

The ball hit the horse in the leg, and it couldn’t recover. It went down in a heap, bringing its partner down with it, in a screaming, twisting mess of metal and horseflesh.

The wagon tilted.

“The cargo!” LiSang shouted.

“Screw the cargo!” Nibas shouted back. “Jump! Jump, dammit!”

I threw the reins aside and hurled myself off the bench.

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