Blood and Betrayal by Lindsay Buroker Page A

caught on a bush. He leaped over the campfire and dove into the river. His comrade had already disappeared into the water. Splashes announced enthusiastic swimming, and Maldynado couldn’t muster the desire to hurl himself into the river on a cold night to give chase.
    “Brave men.” Yara picked up the discarded crossbow and waved it in the air.
    “Well, you
did
hit him,” Maldynado guessed. “And you’re an intimidating figure. He probably lost the urge to fight after he wet himself.”
    Yara snorted.
    Maldynado headed for her, but paused, his gaze drawn by a light across the park.
    “Thanks for helping,” Yara half-mumbled. “Not that I couldn’t have handled those two on my own, but, if I hadn’t been able to, it’s good you were there to—Maldynado, are you listening?”
    “Uhm.” Maldynado pointed at the mill building where soft green light glowed behind the windows and seeped out through cracks between the timbers. “This night is getting stranger and stranger.”
    •  •  •
    Maldynado and Yara crouched beside a rusty donkey engine ten meters from the mill. The stout machine, with its broad base and vertical boiler, offered the last bit of cover before one had to cross the gravel paths and short-cropped grass surrounding the old building. A pair of tall, split-log doors marked the front of the structure. One stood ajar, allowing a slash of sickly green light to flow out.
    “What’s the plan?” Yara whispered.
    “I was hoping the rest of the team would show up and tell us,” Maldynado said. They’d passed two more bodies on their way to the mill, but encountered no sign of their comrades.
    “Do you always wait for others to take charge?”
    “Surely, as an enforcer, you’re familiar with the chain-of-command concept. And with being one of the lower links.”
    “Surely
you’re
familiar with the concept of the lower links being capable enough to step up and take charge when the upper links aren’t around.”
    A snippy comment came to Maldynado’s lips, about how she wasn’t taking charge or offering ideas either, but he merely said, “Not really. If Amaranthe is missing, Sicarius bosses people around. If they’re both gone, Books lectures us until we submit to him. If those three are all gone… it’s usually time to go find a drink and a woman.” He rubbed his head. Maybe it was the arguing, but a headache had taken up residence behind his eyes.
    “Your devotion to your duty is impressive,” Yara said.
    “You should be impressed that, in the absence of my teammates, I haven’t dragged you off into the bushes to engage in carnal relations yet.”
    Yara bared her teeth. “You could try.”
    Maldynado wouldn’t admit it, but he found the idea of facing rogue soldiers and creepy magic less intimidating. “I’ll look in the mill. Watch my back, will you?” He flicked a finger at the crossbow Yara had claimed for herself.
    “Acceptable.”
    At least she was willing to take orders if he gave them. Yara must believe that, as a newer member of the team, she held a lower rank than he did. Or maybe she just wanted him to be the one to wander in and get fried by some strange, light-emitting doodad.
    After eyeing each window and door for signs of people—snipers, more specifically—Maldynado crept toward the closest wall. Full darkness had fallen, but the green light leaking between the timbers cast its glow onto the grass. His skin appeared sallow under the influence. His headache grew in intensity, and he thought of the device Shaman Tarok had deposited in the lake the spring before, and how its power had contaminated water over a hundred miles away, not to mention filling the forest with deranged glowing-eyed animals. Maldynado hoped this light lacked similar properties.
    He paused a few steps from a window with a shattered pane. A crossbow quarrel protruded from the frame, and a second one had probably been responsible for the breakage.
    Careful not to make a sound, Maldynado