Arrows of Promise (Kingmakers Book 2) Read online

  “Beginning to wonder the same thing meself,” she muttered under her breath. “Thank ye, Master Rod.”

  He inclined his head toward the structures that were half in place. “Ya’ll making good progress, I can see that. Anything I can bring ye that ye need?”

  Sanity? Unfortunately, they couldn’t bottle that. Riana pulled a list out of her pocket and handed it to him. “These. We be short on everything on that list, so bring what ye can.”

  He gave it a quick glance before tucking it away in his shirt pocket. “See what I can do.”

  Chapter Two

  Riana turned sideways to let someone pass before she could get through the inn’s kitchen doorway. The door wasn’t in yet, but at least the kitchen now had walls and a roof overhead. It had taken two weeks for that to happen and no one could be happier about it than the women that did all of the cooking—especially Mistress Violet and Mistress Nicole Sadler.

  Now the inn’s kitchen had three long counters to prepare and make food on, two large pot belly stoves, and a place for a sink to go underneath a window. It looked much more permanent and habitable than it had the evening before and it took Riana a moment to realize why. “Did Master Sadler put in those pot hooks for you last night?”

  The women looked up at her entrance and beamed at her. “This morning, actually,” Nicole corrected her, wiping her hands on an apron and approaching her with arms outstretched. “He made them up in the forge for me yesterday, in between making nails, and hung them up so we aren’t constantly shifting pans. I do love that man.”

  Erick Sadler had been the first blacksmith to sign up to come to the settlement and was one of the more dedicated men to getting the work done. He was as large as his wife was short, a bear of a man with a gentle nature to him. Nicole was a perfect complement to him with her sweet smiles and go-for-it nature.

  “Now that the smithy be mostly up, he has the room to work on extra things, belike.”

  “Exactly what he told me,” Nicole confirmed as she took a bag off of Riana’s shoulders. “What’s in here?”

  “Brace of quail,” Riana informed her. “Three rabbits, and I stumbled across some wild onions that I thought mayhap ye might like to have.”

  “Bless you,” Violet said sincerely. “You always bring us something to supplement the food and it is very appreciated. It certainly gives us more room to be creative and not make the same things every day. Here, put them right here.” Violet braced her forearm against the counter and shoved a pile of vegetable peelings roughly out of the way.

  “I did no’ take the time to skin or clean anything,” Riana warned as she put her bounty down.

  “Bosh, don’t you worry about that,” Nicole chided as she put the sack down and started taking quail out of it. “It’s a miracle you find time to go hunting every morning. We know things are demanding as it is.”

  Lowering her voice, Violet asked almost furtively, “Is everything alright with Ash? He came by this morning to see how much of the inn was finished yesterday and I must say, he’s looking much too slim. And a little pale. I would think he’s getting tanned working under this hot sun.”

  Nicole leaned into the conversation as well, joining the circle, and Riana confided to them both, “Atween the three of us, the man be overworked. He bounces from project to project, lending a hand with anything that may be difficult, and does no’ take the time to rest. Or eat. If he comes by again, force a snack into his hands, and something to drink. I can no’ sit on him like he needs.”

  Violet patted her hand. “Don’t you worry. We’ll do that. I know the two of you are going opposite directions most days as you’ve got different responsibilities. We’ll help you take care of him.”

  “Bless ye,” Riana responded fervently. It truly worried her, as the woman was right—Ash was growing thinner by the day.

  “We’re stuck here in the kitchen most of the time, so catch us up. What’s finished?”

  Riana did a sweep of the settlement every evening right before coming here to get dinner, so she was able to rattle this off without thinking about it too much. “Smithy be close enough to finished as to make no nevermind. Inn, as ye know, only has the ground floor.”

  “And not all of it.” Nicole made a face. “I can’t wait for the bathing chambers to be finished.”

  “I second that.” Violet raised a hand briefly before she went back to plucking quail. “Miss Riana, take a slice of that bread and eat something before you go back out. What else is done? Just those?”

  “The lumber mill should be done by week’s end, or so I’m told.” Oh yum, not only was the bread fresh, but there was soft butter and a little sugar to sprinkle over it. She bit into it with a pleased moan as her mouth became a very happy thing. “I do send thanks that the bakery was finished this week.”

  “We all do,” Nicole agreed. “The place is certainly busy all day, trying to keep us supplied with rolls and loaves. But a sandwich is the only handy thing we can wrap up and send to the men for lunch.”

  No one had complained about the repetition of the menu yet, but when you worked that hard under a blazing hot sun, anything was welcome. “Butcher shop has the foundation in as of last night. Ash magicked it so it would set quicker. Tannery be missing some walls and a roof, but it be coming apace as well.”

  “Then we’re making good progress,” Violet observed, satisfied.

  “Ahead of schedule, we be,” Riana confirmed. “Ash said if we can get the butcher shop, lumber mill, inn and such up and running, then a marketplace can go in next.”

  “Now that is exciting news.” Nicole stopped and looked around her as if she could somehow see through the inn walls. “I wonder what this place will really look like once it’s all done.”

  “Like a mini Estole at the rate we’re going,” Violet opined. “What’s next after this?”

  “Houses?” Nicole asked hopefully.

  “Houses,” Riana confirmed. Ash had spent the first two days drawing out the lots where buildings needed to go and the places where houses could be built. Half of the arguments she had fielded the first few days were about who got which lot. Some of them wanted to be close to their businesses—if they chose not to build a two-story building and live above their shops. Others wanted to be closer to the main docks so they could have easy access to Estole. With only three streets properly in and two others roughly mapped out, there weren’t a lot of choices and usually people’s needs and wants overlapped with someone else’s. It had been quite the headache getting it all straightened out. “I be leaving ye to it.”

  “Drink a lot and try to stay in the shade,” Nicole ordered. “It’s beastly hot out there.”

  “I know it.” Riana finished off her bread and waved herself out. Let’s see, what did she have on schedule for today?

  It felt like Riana had just put her head on her pillow when a loud clanging echoed through the camp. The sound was exactly like someone taking a hammer to a cast iron pot. And frantically at that. She was rolling to her feet, tugging on boots and reaching for weapons before she even properly processed what she was hearing.

  Ash burst from his tent, still shrugging into a shirt, and looked around frantically. “What? What is it?”

  “I do no’ smell a fire, and there be no weather to contend with,” Riana stated grimly, belting her quiver on, “so it be only one other possibility to my mind: we be under attack.”

  His eyes went wide before narrowing. “Let’s go see if you’re right.”

  They ran toward the direction of the banging, and as they got closer, they could hear a woman’s voice frantically screaming, “THE DOCKS! THEY’RE AT THE DOCKS!”

  Who? Riana didn’t have time to question it, just kept running, although she was grateful now to have a cemented direction instead of a vague ‘over there.’ As she ran, others joined them, most of them with some kind of tool in hands. The loggers had their saws, the others had either hammers or shovels, but as makeshift as the weapons were, they’d do a
serious amount of damage in a fight.

  Ash kept his pace at hers—he being a slightly faster runner—and she appreciated that as she would not have taken it well if he had raced off ahead. Fortunately, their camp wasn’t too far from the docks, and they burst into view to find men swarming around their supplies.

  The only real light was from the moon overhead and what few torches the dock workers had left burning, but even that was sufficient to tell Riana what they were up against. Bandits. She’d lived her life in these thugs’ shadows; she could identify them in a glance, even if it was just their silhouettes. Never once had she imagined they’d travel this far in order to raid someone, though. They were lazier than this and normally stuck to familiar hunting grounds. What had driven them all the way out here?

  There must have been almost thirty of them, and they were heading for the lighter, easier to carry supplies. Riana didn’t hesitate. She unlatched her quiver, pulled out four arrows, nocked and fired.

  Ash skid to a stop beside her, snapping up his shield, and started firing off spells in quick succession. She recognized several as they were his normal attack spells: Wind Shear, Arrows (although they weren’t in the normal form, being fashioned of fire), as well as his logging spell. In between his spells, he turned his head enough to bellow to the other men, “BLOCK THEIR PATH! DON’T LET THEM INTO THE CAMP!”

  Riana swore in her head as he gave the order. That would have been scary, if the bandits had thought to run into the camp and snatch up people. They were famous for kidnapping, as ransom usually paid out better for them in the end. Her father had dealt with bandits more than a sheriff would have for that very reason.

  She could hear the men form up a defensive line behind her, spacing out so that no one had a chance to advance into the camp without going through at least two of them at the same time. Reassured that there were people guarding her back, she put that much more focus on the bandits in front of her.

  The bandits started forming their own defense, using the stacked supplies near the docks as barriers. They dove behind them, calling out orders to each other, and even though she saw it happening she didn’t have the ability to stop it fast enough.

  Then the madness truly began.

  Her fingers were a blur, taking down targets left, right, and center and yet still they swarmed her. Using an arrow like she would a dagger, she fought two attackers off, kicking to keep one off as she stabbed at the other.

  An arm reached out and snagged her around the waist, yanking her in, and she didn’t fight it. Riana knew the feel of it too well to be mistaken. Ash brought her into his magical shield, protecting them both from being taken down, and then the spells really did come out fast and furious.

  Under normal circumstances, she would have continued to fight, but she didn’t dare. This wasn’t his usual shield, but a weapon’s shield, meant to protect him from cold iron and steel. She could recognize it at a glance because it was an entirely different color from his usual shield, being a more steel-grey and thicker. He could only fight magically and be attacked magically. In this particular fight, it made perfect sense for him to use it, because what kind of wizard would turn bandit? But it also meant that she couldn’t use her own weapons as they would rebound inside the shield.

  Well, probably for the best; she was low on arrows anyway.

  Standing in the circle of Ash’s arm, she had a very good view of what was going on and all of the time to observe it in. The bandits never got to the wall of men behind them. Instead, they either realized that a wizard was fighting, and tried archery to take him down while firing from behind a stack of crates, or they hightailed it into the woods. The ones that kept firing, hopelessly, were shouting at each other in a dialect she knew all too well.

  “Those idjuts be from Cloud’s Rest!” she spluttered, astonished.

  Ash gave her a surprised look that said, ‘Really?!’, but didn’t lose focus, striving to take down men without destroying their own supplies in the process. He took three down as she watched and then tried and failed several times to hit the other two. They were experts at ducking at just the right moment, and Ash’s attempt to hit them went right over their heads without singeing a hair on them.

  “Riana, I can’t hit them, but I bet you can. Your aim is better.” Ash fired off another spell, keeping them busy. “I’ll fire again and then lower the shield.” Another shot, this one just as useless as the previous four. “Can you take them out when I do that? It’ll have to be done in a split second.”

  A tad reluctantly, she moved out of his arm and gripped two of the last arrows she had left, notching one in standby. “Ready.”

  “That’s my girl. Three, two, one!” Ash fired off a spell that shot like flaming arrows, lighting up the night sky, then the shield disappeared without a trace.

  Riana moved as if they had practiced this a million times. Smoothly, she lifted the bow and aimed at one of them, catching the moment when he lifted up to fire at Ash. Her arrow took a clean hit to the upper chest. Without pausing a beat, she sighted the only other bandit that was still standing, whirled the arrow into place, drew back, and fired with equal precision.

  When he hit the ground with a soundless thud the whole camp held its breath, waiting to see if there was anyone else still left. But it was dead silent with only the crackling of the torches and the waves hitting the shoreline to be heard. Riana sucked in a breath and let it out again, feeling the dew of sweat on her temples and at the small of her back. Well. That had certainly gotten her blood pumping.

  “Ash. Those bandits be from Cloud’s Rest.” Bewildered, she turned to face him. “What in the wide green world be they doing here?”

  Ash groaned, his head falling back. “That is a very good question. I have a few guesses, and I’m hoping they’re not right. It looks like word of what we’re doing here has gotten out.”

  Well, granted, it wasn’t a stretch to think that word of the settlement had gone as far north as the mountains. They’d been at this several weeks, too; word was bound to get out. It didn’t mean that Riana liked it.

  “Let’s see if there are any survivors left,” Ash suggested, already grimly striding forward. “I have questions.”

  Riana followed at his heels, eyes panning right and left for trouble, although she didn’t expect to find any. Some of the men came along with them, holding torches high to help give them light. Ash, as if realizing the lack of illumination, belatedly called up several mage lights and set them around as he moved.

  It took them a while, but they found three men who were still moving. They were holding their hands to their sides and trying to either hide or hobble away. Riana only had two arrows left, but she drew one of them and fired right in front of their feet. “Do no’ move.”

  The man stopped dead. In the harsh whiteness of the mage light, and with him bleeding fiercely, he looked like a mangled ghost. Then he took a proper look at her and grinned. “I know ye.”

  Unfortunately, she could say the same. She didn’t know the man by name, but she had seen his face more than once before, and knew exactly who he was.

  Ash pointed a stern finger toward the sand. “Sit. I’ll put a spell on you to stop the bleeding. In return, you give me frank answers to the questions I ask you.” As they sat, he leaned toward her and murmured, “You know him?”

  “Aye,” she breathed, feelings of disgust and resignation curling up in the pit of her stomach. It felt like she had eaten something rotten. “Me da mentioned afore that he had experience with bandit gangs? This be one of them. The Grey Wolves.”

  “One of the larger ones?”

  “Aye. Unfortunately.” Riana had a bad premonition about this and she didn’t care for it one lick.

  Ash bent down far enough to put a spell on all three of the men, stopping them from bleeding out. She noticed he did not actually go as far as to heal them, but that was to be expected. Under Estolian law, these men would not be shown any leniency, nor should they. These were hardened crimi
nals and had never shown any regrets over the lives they lived. No punishment would make a dent with them and releasing them again would mean that some innocent in the future would be impacted.

  “Well, well, well.” The other two didn’t look up at her, knowing well what their fate was, and just laid flat on the sand. But the first man to speak was staring at Riana and Ash with a contemplative look on his face. “Riana Ravenscroft, as I live and breathe.”

  She took comfort in the fact that he wouldn’t be doing either for much longer. “How did ye come to know of the settlement?”

  “Oh, word’s all around about this place. Rich prize, this one. But then, being that it has funding right from a king, no surprise, eh?” He grinned, showing rotten teeth and an evil glee about the whole situation that made her skin crawl.

  She and Ash exchanged troubled looks. Word was all around? These were men from one of the largest of the bandit gangs, but the others were comparable in size. If they had dared to come, then odds were good that the others would try their hand at it as well.

  “Wondered where ye went,” he continued, unprompted. “Ye and yer da just up and disappeared one day. Thought someone might have finally taken the pair of ye down.” He gave her a rich leer, stretching from ear to ear. “Am mighty glad that did no’ happen. But ye got yerself a man, eh? Shame, that. We been all taking bets on who would be yer first.”

  Riana saw red. This lout, what vileness was he spouting?!

  She didn’t even see Ash move. He was between the two of them in a heartbeat, fist lashing out, clocking the man so hard in the jaw that it knocked the bandit out cold. Shaking with rage, he straightened and reached back, grabbing her hand almost hard enough to leave bruises behind. “He’d told us enough.”

  Squeezing back, she gave a simple, “Aye,” of agreement even as her heart warmed. Now this was exactly why she was so taken with the man. She was as precious to him as his own skin and he never left her in any doubt of that.