Page 388 of Of Empires and Dust

“They made for the boats. They’d be long gone, Lady Gritten.”

“You know my name?”

“You’re the one who drags us from the field. There’s not a man or woman who defends Salme that doesn’t know your name.”

She didn’t know how to respond to that.

Shouts sounded over Anya’s left shoulder. She looked to see a handful of guards drawing their swords and running towards the mouth of the main thoroughfare.

Riders streamed in. Warriors in bright steel bearing the marking of a white dragon on their chest rode atop a mixture of enormous black mounts and smaller bays and piebalds, all barded in the black and red of Loria. Beside them rode warriors in black steel atop stags like those she’d seen earlier.

This must have been the army Dahlen had been speaking of… Anya had never seen warriors garbed in such fine armour. They looked like something plucked from one of Therin’s stories.

For a brief moment, a pang of hope rose within her, but that was quickly dashed when more screams came from the rooftops that overlooked the southern end of the square and lined the thoroughfare.

Two men soared from the rooves, falling for all of a second before smashing into the ground, bones twisted and broken. More men and women followed, arcing through the air as though launched from catapults.

Uraks soon appeared on the rooftops and wasted no time in vaulting into the square, dropping twenty feet or so as though it were nothing.

The creatures paused for a fraction of a second before charging at those lying about across the square.

A pair of them bounded towards her, Conal, and the two boys.

“Get back!” The guard darted forwards, drawing his sword, but as he blocked the strike of the first Urak’s blade, the secondcreature hacked an axe into the side of his neck. The gemstone at the end of its weapon pulsed with a deep crimson light.

Anya had seen that light many times. And over the months, she had come to question what it was. She had not spoken those thoughts aloud to any others, but she could think of no explanation except that the Uraks claimed the souls of those they killed. And that thought terrified her.

“With me!” Conal roared and surged forwards.

“Conal, no!”

One of the two boys charged at Conal’s side. The other dropped his spear and ran towards the port.

Conal stabbed out with his spear, but the Urak simply swatted it aside and planted its foot square into Conal’s chest, sending him sprawling. The second creature split the other young boy’s skull with its axe, the blade bedding deep into the bone. As it grabbed the boy’s shoulder and ripped the axe free, the other Urak picked Conal up by his arms and held him in the air. It stared at him, then snapped both arms like twigs and tossed him to the ground.

Anya froze in place, staring at the two boys, then back to the Uraks. They moved towards her. The smaller of the two slammed its axe into the chest of a guard who ran to help her.

Run. Run. Run.Anya’s legs didn’t listen to a single word her mind spoke. She just kept staring down at Conal, who lay still on the ground. Her breaths quickened, and her heart felt as though it were going to explode out of her chest.

An arrow burst through the Urak’s neck from left to right, followed by a second that crossed over the first. The beast staggered, then dropped to one knee. Before it had even hit the floor, a rider on a dappled grey mount charged past, a white bow in his hands. He nocked an arrow and loosed it straight into the eye of the axe-wielding Urak. The beast dropped like a sack of stones.

The rider drew his horse near. He wore armour as beautiful as the sky was blue, emblazoned with a white dragon on the breast. “Anya! Are you hurt?”

Anya stared up at him in complete shock. How in the gods did he know her name? She nodded.

The man gazed back at her for a moment, then over towards the mouth of the thoroughfare, where more and more soldiers were flooding into the square. Some trickled in through the other streets as well, but nowhere near as many. If they were all falling back to the square, then this was it. This was the end.

The man turned his horse around to where more of the Uraks were leaping from rooves, each getting cut down by the riders on the white stags. He gestured towards the children and the injured near the oak tree. “Can you get them to the port?”

“I think… I…”

“Anya, I’m going to need you to come back to me.” He laid his bow across the saddle and removed his helmet to reveal a head of dark blond hair and eyes Anya had known since she was a child.

“Dann?” She took a subconscious step, still not sure she believed her eyes. “Dann, is that you?”

There were parts of him that were the same: his eyes, his hair, the way his lips always threatened to curl into a mischievous smile. But the passage of time had changed him. He looked harder, more fierce. His face was marked with pale cuts long healed. Even his voice had changed; he spoke like someone who expected others to listen.

“You can ask as many questions as you want once there’s nothing trying to kill us. Please, Anya, take them from here.”

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