Page 128 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

“Take him.”

And they had.

The shackles they’d used to bind him were so tight that his hands had gone numb. He didn’t know how much hide he would lose to slip out of them, but he didn’t have long to manage it. Bird calls had started sounding within the trees; the attack would come soon.

He had to be ready.

One final, great effort and the bonds that had held him for so long twisted and broke. One cuff dangled free, and now that he could maneuver, he quickly ripped apart the other, feeling the blood rush back into half-starved veins. He flexed his hands, and they obeyed his commands.

He could move!

And barely in time. He ducked down, covering his fellow captive’s body with his own, just as an arrow came whizzing through the night. And took the silver-hair driving the cart straight through the throat.

He didn’t live long enough to do much more than raise a hand to it in shock before slumping over onto the bench seat. The horses were unaware that anything had happened and kept plodding on. But the silver hair beneath him had seen.

“What—” the creature said sleepily.

“Stay down!” Rask hissed. “Do as I tell you and say nothing. I will speak for you.”

But there was no time to speak or to do anything, for the road did not end in a settlement as Rask had expected. That was what usually happened to his kind who were taken captive. They were sold as chattel to the silver hair’s towns, who used them up in fields and mines until they escaped or died.

At least, that was what had happened before his people started fighting back. Now, it was more common for the journey to end in a slave caravan, which would take them so far away from where they’d been found that no one could hope to rescue them. But this . . . was neither of those.

“Get off me, you big lout,” the silver-hair gasped. “I can’t breathe!”

Neither could Rask, but for a very different reason. But he got up because the arrows had stopped, and light suddenly spilled around their cart. It was so bright that he shielded his eyes, only able to see another silver hair jumping onto the wagon seat, throwing his fellow elf off the side, and whipping up the horses.

“Prioritize the first five wagons!” he heard someone yell. “The king has need of them!”

Rask assumed his wagon must have been one of those, as the horses broke into a gallop and the cart plowed straight ahead, swaying alarmingly in its speed, toward what looked like a descended sun. Rask grabbed the cage bars and stared; it had not been there a moment ago. But now, it was all he could see as it rapidly grew closer, blocking his vision.

It was blinding.

But it did not seem to blind the silver hair who had come up beside him, on his knees as Rask was, as the ceiling was so low. “What is it?” Rask asked, his voice full of wonder.

“Haven’t you ever seen a portal before, troll?”

“A what?”

“A gate, a passage to another place, even other worlds.”

“Other . . . worlds?” Rask began to wonder just how hard his companion’s head had been hit.

But the creature just looked at him with those strange, metallic eyes. “You should come down from your mountains more often.”

Rask hadn’t wanted to come down from his mountains at all. He had been taken from them. And he wanted to go back right now!

“Hold on,” his companion said grimly and got a better grip on the bars, using his tunic sleeves to cover his hands.

“Why?” Rask said, hearing the fear in his voice.

And then he understood why.

It felt as if the light suddenly reached out and grabbed them, jerking them forward as the cage they were in turned upside down, or so it seemed. He didn’t know anymore, couldn’t tell. Only that he was being tossed around, that the silver hair was being thrown along with him, that they were tumbling any and everywhere while light seared their eyes and somebody screamed.

Rask was very afraid that it might be him.

Then the light was gone, and they were tearing across a wide expanse of pavement in the pounding rain, for the horses were as spooked as he was and weren’t stopping. Until something plowed into them from the side. Rask wasn’t sure what, but it had been so fast and hard that his cage, already unsteady, toppled along with the wagon, throwing up sparks as it skidded across neatly fitted cobbles.

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