“If that’s how you want it to be, then.”
No.
Quick as a flash, Luca broke into a run, shaking off Ula’s grip as she lunged for his arm. The leader leaned down from his horse and swung his torch hard—the thick wood connecting with the tip of Mannah’s poker. The thin metal instrument went flying out of her grasp, leaving her defiant and defenseless. The man raised his torch once again, stabbing it toward Mannah’s face.
Then Luca was there.
He thrust Mannah behind him, and met the torch with a sweeping slice from his sword. The severed head of the torch went flying. It landed beyond them, still flaming.
Luca held the sword in a high block, and pressed his dagger into Mannah’s shaking hand. Together, they stared down the men. Hecouldn’t hear Ula, and had no idea where Urtzi and Osana were—everything he had was poured into confronting these men and protecting Mannah.
The leader squinted down from his horse, and laughed at their show of defiance, his teeth flashing in the twin lights of his seconds’ torches. “There’s no point in putting up a fight, wolf cub. You’re ours, your friends are as good as dead, and this place is ash. Boys, take him.”
A flash of movement from Luca’s right, and a dagger hurtled toward his exposed side. Instinct and muscle memory honed during his days in the meadow with Amarande kicked in, and Luca twisted away.
But not fast enough.
The dagger caught the edge of Luca’s tunic and slashed a shallow gash across his side. Luca stumbled, unable to catch his balance on his snakebit leg. His sword skitterered away as he hit the ground. Luca rolled and tried to lunge for it, but the stout boy had already dismounted, kicking it away.
The leader slid from his horse, drawing his own sword as his boots hit the ground. Mannah screamed and ran at him, dagger out, and he swatted her away as easily as a fly. She landed in a heap.
Luca willed his legs to move. Battle-hardened hands grabbed him, a man on each side of him, yanking him up, their torches still held in their opposite hands to give their leader light for whatever cruel intention he had before hauling him away.
“Oh no you don’t!”
Ula.
A fist-sized fireball shot over Luca’s shoulder, plowing straight into the leader’s gut. Using her sword to scoop up the severed head of the leader’s torch and hurtling it back, Ula had echoed Amarande’s trick from their fight against the Harea Asps.
Even though she was not there, Luca’s princess had once again played a part in saving him.
The leader fell back, tunic and skin suddenly aflame. His bandana slid down as he hit the dry ground behind him, his face distorted with panic as he screamed horrifically.
The men holding Luca hesitated in shock—an opportunity he used to wrench away from the scrawny one, planting a boot in his lean gut.Ula’s blade cut the stout one down with a blow to his wide upper back, and his grip upon Luca immediately died as he fell away.
More hoofbeats sounded behind them.
The death knell of raider reinforcements—or the sound of rescue?
Luca turned to see two riders approaching full-speed, bareback, headed straight toward the remaining bandits, stumbling away with their torches still in hand.
Urtzi and Osana.
As they got closer, Luca was able to make out Urtzi, juggling both a bucket and a thick unstoppered jug, while struggling to maintain hold of the horse’s reins. Osana was similarly encumbered, clutching a bucket in both arms while steering her horse with her knees.
At the sight, Luca realized exactly what they were going to do.
“Back, back, back!” he yelled, getting fully to his feet, helped along by Ula and Mannah. Stumbling, he urgently pulled them away from the bandits as fast as they could move, toward the burning cabin.
Urtzi rode to one side, Osana the other.
“Now!” Osana screamed.
She threw her bucket at the smoldering body of the leader, writhing on the ground. The contents doused him completely and suddenly he wasn’t a man, but a fireball.
WHOOSH.
Urtzi hit the other two with his own bucket and the glass jug. The instant the caustic antiseptic made contact, the torches shuddered and exploded.
