XXVII

Sorika ran through the trees as fast as she could as she moved around the battle. With the Roaming Lions on her right, and the cultists on her left, she could easily slip behind the enemy front.

Behind her, Liora kept pace, and like Sorika, had her bow in her right hand with an arrow knocked—ready to deliver a swift death.

With determination and self-assurance, she moved into the enemy side, keeping to the shrubs and the trees to stay out of sight. Their commander would be behind the force, directing the small battle of mages, men-at-arms and maligned adventurers against them.

She wanted to kill him.

But she would not.

She would capture him—with Liora’s help.

With Yorinius leading the Lions into this fight, they couldn’t lose. But capturing a cult leader was beyond simply winning a battle.

She needed to do this.

They needed information. For Yoreno.

If he was to live, they had to find the whereabouts of Lak’temora.

Gods!

Why hadn’t Sorika seen what was happening? Why hadn’t she—

A man came out form behind cover, in his hand a curved sword. The dark robes and the hood marked him as a Schuarist cultist.

She lifted her arm and drew her arrow.

As Liora loosed, he slapped the shaft away, but Sorika knew he would—and so she had loosed her arrow just after Liora and toward another part of his body far enough to where he wouldn’t be able to deflect both shafts with a single swing of his sword.

Her shaft buried itself in his thigh and he screamed.

Snarling through her teeth, Sorika didn’t stop running as she charged him. Still standing, but limping like a wounded dog, the cultist made to defend himself, but just before Sorika got to him, she jumped, took three steps up the trunk of the tree between them, then jumped again, landed on the bark of the tree slightly behind the first, then launched herslf off.

The filthy cretin was so stunned from his wound and her sudden jumping that he was unable to bring his sword up in time to defend himself.

Sorika slammed into him with her dagger, the blade penetrating his chest.

As they crashed to the ground she removed her dagger before his head even hit the ground a second time from its initial thump, due to the heavy impact, and stabbed him again and again in quick succession as he snarled through the pain and died.

“Sorika!”

She was grabbed hard from behind, her shoulder smarting, but she wouldn’t let the second Schuarist kill her. She screamed and turned, thrust her dagger forward. Gritting her teeth, Sorika growled and pushed her weight forward, forcing her enemy back.

“Sorika!”

Coming to, she let off and stopped herself.

Everything around her was pulsing as her heart hammered inside her chest. Her ears were throbbing with the pounding of her blood.

She breathed in and out heavily and didn’t remove the blade from Liora’s throat as the blood dripped off her her knife onto the other woman’s leather armor.

“Sorika…”

Breathing heavily, Sorika took a step back.

She swallowed, glanced about as the sounds of screaming and blades and exploding magic echoed over the hills and through the trees.

She blinked. “We have to move,” fully realizing that she had fallen into some kind of rage and nearly killed Liora.

“Are you…?”

“I’m okay.”

Liora nodded.

Sorika ran—ran for the leader of these cultists. If he didn’t have what she needed, she would gut him.

Like a flopping-fucking-fish!