The Enemy's Triumph by Kristen Banet

Author:Kristen Banet [Banet, Kristen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy
Published: 2020-06-16T16:00:00+00:00

21

Brynec

Brynec walked through the underbrush, the world lit by the glow of the dying sun. The early spring cold didn’t bother him, but the light rain did.

“How much further?” someone asked.

Another Andinna growled softly in return. The goal was to be silent and get as close to their objective as possible. With ten Andinna, that wasn’t easy. Two he could rely on were Varon and Nevyn, but the others were still in training. He had to sharpen their skills, though, so he’d asked Alchan to allow him to bring them.

He broke through the underbrush, going down to his belly at the same time. Crawling forward, he reached the edge of the cliff and angled his wings, so no one below would see them.

“Get low,” Nevyn whispered, coming up beside Bryn and looking down at the same place. “Fuck.”

Bryn was thinking the same thing. Below them in the valley were hundreds of tents and horses. Elvasi and humans walked between them. In the two-and-a-half weeks since they received word this was going to be one of the Elvasi positions, half the damn army had moved in. Toward the south end of the camp, dozens of gryphons fought against their leads, trying to pull from their posts, obviously agitated about something.

“This ain’t good,” he mumbled. “How is Lothen moving them so quickly?”

“I don’t know.” Nevyn sighed. “Luykas said he was sent out when Shadra heard about Kerit. So, that’s seven days he didn’t have to get moving, yet he’s already here.”

Bryn did the math. He liked numbers. Since Kerit, it had been nearly nine weeks. The Prince would have lost one of those weeks. That left nearly eight weeks to make it to the Dragon Spine and set up camp.

“He sent people ahead,” Bryn whispered. “He had to. Even if he rode hard and had replacement horses, he would have needed every single day to get here from Elliar. What do we know about troop positions in the Empire?”

“Shadra had already moved most of the north to train and be ready…” Nevyn cursed again. “Meaning moving them just a little further up north without Lothen and letting him catch up would be faster than making them wait on him. They wanted to get here, so Lothen could make use of the good seasons. They would have arranged it.”

“Yeah…” Bryn growled softly and began trying to get a count, but it was useless. There were so many of them. All he could do was point out places of interest. Some tents seemed much bigger than others, and he knew those would be supplies or priority targets. “He’s down there somewhere right now, I bet.”

“Likely. The Empire has powerful sorcerers. They might have made portals for him to come up faster. If several sorcerers work together, they can cover some distance. They can’t move an army, but they can move a prince and his entourage.” Nevyn began moving back. “Let’s find a place to make camp so we can keep an eye on them. We need to find good ambush locations while we’re down here.

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