He made a zipping motion across his mouth, even while he grinned like the fool he was. Another time I would have grinned back. But not in the midst of this mess. I grabbed a kukri blade and sliced through the attached rope.
“Thanks.” He rubbed at his wrist.
With some effort, I put the flail back in its sheath across my spine, wondering why I’d pulled it in the first place. While the fight hadn’t been going great, it also hadn’t been so close to being a full-out rout on the gorcs’ part that I’d need to pull the powerhouse weapon that liked to suck my energy away.
That spoke volumes about the attachments the magical weapon could have, which should have made me nervous. But it didn’t.
“Marcel, let’s get the fuck out of here before they bring their friends back.” I turned from him, checking the gorcs’ bodies quickly to see if they had anything worth taking. The only thing of interest I found was a sheaf of papers in a leather satchel. I flipped through them. They were blank. I took it anyway. Good for lighting fires at the very least.
Marcel followed me with a small length of chain dangling behind him. “How did you know I was there? You must really like me, to save me from the gorcs. I didn’t think you really liked me, seeing as you turned down my offer to flounce.”
“Or I really don’t like gorcs because they are creatures that belong to the Jinn, and I’m not an asshole to leave anyone with them, maybe?” I offered.
“No, I think you really like me. Ten flouncings for you. The question is, all at once or spread out over one glorious night?” He made a reach for me, and I stepped out of the way.
I couldn’t help the laugh. I really tried not to, but he was so dumb, he was funny. “Marcel, seriously. I do not want a flounce of any kind from you.”
We climbed the loose scree slope to where I’d left Kiara and the horses. Though I was irritated with her, I wasn’t really pissed. At least not until I stepped around the boulder to find only Balder left standing where I’d given him the command.
Kiara and her horse were gone.
I sighed, anger and frustration coursing through me. She was a fucking child having a baby and obviously couldn’t be trusted. I was babysitting her. Fuck me sideways. I looked at the satyr.
“Can you keep up on foot?” I asked Marcel.
“Of course.” He sounded indignant. “I can outrun any horse.”
I lifted an eyebrow, doubting he could outrun Balder, but kept that to myself. “Then why didn’t you outrun the gorcs?”
He frowned, and a wave of sadness rolled off him. “I was caught with my friend. We were. . . busy.”
His friend. The one on the spit that had his bones picked clean by the gorcs. I reached out and put a hand on Marcel’s shoulder. “I’m sorry for your loss. Truly.”
“We’ve been friends since we were boys, I never thought. . . ” He closed his eyes and big fat tears rolled down his cheeks into his sparse beard.
I turned away from him, his grief making me feel more than I wanted to. “Well, unless we want to end up the same way, we need to move. Where there is one gorc, there are more. And two ran off to tell their buddies we are here.” Not to mention they knew my name. That couldn’t be good in any scheme of things.
He bobbed his head, and I mounted up on Balder. I turned him, and we started down the slope toward the flatter plain at a jog. As soon as we hit flat ground, I urged Balder into a gallop. Kiara and her horse couldn’t be that far.
I had to give Marcel credit, he kept up even with that uncomfortable length of chain dangling. Two miles away, I slowed Balder and Marcel followed suit. “We need to get that chain off or it’s going to rub you raw.”
“We need to get farther away, I think.” Marcel turned and squinted into the distance.
I froze. “You see something?”
“No, not yet.”
“We can move faster if you are free of it.” I slid out of the saddle and searched for my lock-picking kit in the pack.
Jewel thieving 101. Never leave home without all your tools.
I dropped to the ground and slid the pick into the iron lock, working it for only a few seconds before it popped off.
The fetlock was raw, fur gone, flesh torn. I put my picks away and grabbed my hacka paste. Without a word, I rubbed it over the wound and Marcel let out a low sigh. “You’re not like the other supes, you know that, right?”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “I know.” Did he really have to point out that I was a house cat now? Like right after I saved his hairy goat-bellowing ass?
“No, I don’t mean your cat shape, though I do find that interesting.” He crouched, and I had to look up fast so I wasn’t staring right at his crotch, a definite invitation to a satyr. “I mean you look out for others. That’s not normal here. It hasn’t been normal for a long time. Not since the massacre.”
A chill swept down my spine. “What do you know of the massacre?”
He shrugged and stood. I followed his lead and chose to walk Balder for a bit.
Marcel sighed. “We all knew that the lions took the brunt of the Jinn’s anger. We knew it and we let them because we were afraid and they were the strongest of us. As long as the Jinn were occupied, they let the rest of us live our lives. Once they massacred your kind. . . we no longer had the safety we once falsely believed we had. We all should have stood together.”
I frowned, unsure how to take that. As a compliment maybe, but also a confirmation that other supes didn’t look out for one another any longer. It was one thing to know that, of course, but to hear it so blatantly put was a little hard.
He was quiet a moment. “Where are you going?”
“Dragon’s Ground,” I answered without much thought, simply because it was no secret. And I doubted Marcel was going to run off and tell the dragons I was on my way. I grinned at the thought of him asking one of the dragons for a quick flouncing.
“Funny, I’ve been hearing a whisper of a rumor about a dragon that was an outcast.” He tipped his head to one side, as I slowly turned to him.
“What did you say?”
He paled, and I realized that perhaps my intensity level had gone a little high.
I reached out for him and grabbed the tip of one of his nubs. “What rumors?”
He tilted his head to one side, then pushed my hand away so he could scratch at the nubs on top of his head. “Well, Rev, that’s my friend I was meeting, he came from the western slopes. He said there was a dragon sighted there, but. . . ”
“It was very small?” I couldn’t help the hope in my voice. Lila, it had to be her!
“Yes, how did you know?”
“Could you find where Rev was? Where he heard about the little dragon?”
“Well, yes. I know where he lives, but his wife hates me. I really don’t want to go there.”
I put a hand on his shoulder and tightened my fingers until I knew he was feeling the pinch. “You owe me, Marcel. And besides, you should probably tell his wife that he’s gone, don’t you think?”
Horror flickered over his features. “Tell her that Rev is dead? Good goddess of the mountains, you want me to be killed, don’t you?”
I fought the irritation that wanted to climb up and out of my mouth. “I doubt very much she’s that bad. She cannot be worse than the gorcs who wanted to roast you on a spit and eat your liver for breakfast.”
“Says you,” he muttered under his breath, causing my lips to twitch. I’d never met a more spineless creature and yet he made me laugh.
“Come on. Maybe we can catch up with the cowardly lioness.” I hopped into the saddle once more and Balder broke into a fast trot, picking up on my energy. There was only one dragon that was too small to be believed, and I wasn’t about to let her go this time.
Though she be but little, she was fierce, and she was my friend, damn it.
Chapter 7
Two more miles and we caught up to Kiara and her horse. I wanted to roll my eyes when she first caught a glimpse of us, and booted her poor horse in the sides. He just didn’t have the energy to give her more than a half-hearted gallop.
I let Balder take the reins, as it were, and we took them over in a matter of minutes. “Kiara.”