Sword by Amy Bai

Author:Amy Bai [Bai, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fantasy, kingdoms, epic fantasy, high fantasy, magic, Fiction, war, swords, sorcery, young adult, ya
Publisher: Candlemark & Gleam
Published: 2015-02-10T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

"A harpy?"

"Yes."

"That's a bit extreme."

"It is accurate, my Lord Prince."

"She was fresh from battle. Nobody is at their best then. I'm sure her manners are perfect when she's in her element."

"She was in her element then," Annan said emphatically, his usual non-expression suffering a little. Kinsey smothered a smile. He'd known Annan for years, and he'd never seen his lieutenant so aggravated. To be fair, it wasn't exactly unjustified. The Lady Corwynall had practically frozen the blood in his veins when she'd appeared at the end of the battle, grim-faced and misted with blood, to address him in a voice more appropriate to sentencing a hanging than thanking him for his company's assistance in the fight.

But it was still funny to see how shocked Annan was, confronted with a commander both female and a year or two younger than Kinsey himself at the head of over a thousand men.

"Elaria of Fellisdown commanded a battalion, didn't she?" Kinsey murmured, avoiding the uneasy glances of the Lardana soldiers they passed. They were busy building cairns, retrieving armor and blades, burying the dead.

"That was a hundred years ago."

"I'm just saying. There is precedent."

"Probably much more of one here," Annan grumbled.

Kinsey bit the inside of his cheek against a grin.

They rode up the northern rise toward a great pavilion tent the Fraonir had provided. They were to meet both of the Fraonir Clan leaders and also Lady Taireasa Marsadron, the deposed queen of the Lardana. They had scraps of white cloth tied over the pommels of their swords. Kinsey looked back, over the ravaged valley and the yawning graves, the bodies, and shivered.

"So, second thoughts?" he asked, in this last moment for them, and Annan huffed in stifled outrage.

"Only a wagonload or three."

"Three, is that all? I must be on the right track, then."

Annan wasn't amused. "You trust too easily, my Lord Prince, and commit yourself too quickly to get the sense of a situation."

"Well, I hope to get that now."

"Too late, my lord; you are already committed." Frustration was written in the sullen hunch of Annan's shoulders. Kinsey felt bad about that, but not about the rest. He knew he should be worried at where his wild whim to trust a stranger had brought them, and more so still by the absence of any information about where they were headed now—but he found he was strangely cheerful about it all.

He should probably be worried about that, too.

"Maybe I’m bespelled?" Kinsey suggested, frowning mildly at the sky.

"I thought of that."

"Did you?" This was fascinating. "And am I?"

"This is unusually rash for you, but I see nothing that suggests it."

"Are there signs?"

"I don’t know, my Lord Prince. I never took all this—this—for more than a child’s tale. And now I've been dropped in the midst of singing fools and harpies at the head of armies, chasing over the countryside after a rhyme a dead man wrote." Annan rubbed the back of his neck and glared at the ground.

"It is rather extraordinary, when you put it that way.

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