The Night Parade by Scott Ciencin

efficiently with their arrows. She heard the sounds of conflict from where she had left the Harpers and knew that she could expect no help from them.
    “Get down!”
    Myrmeen did not question the voice. She threw herself upon Djimon and heard two sounds: A blade slicing through the air above her head and the familiar gurgle of a dying man with a dagger lodged in his throat. Then she heard the slump of a body and the snapping of a bow caught beneath a falling man. The archer was dead.
    Beneath her, Djimon had regained his breath. The man shoved her from him, then scrambled to his feet, unwittingly saving the life of the child he had wished to kill as he found himself standing between his two remaining archers and Krystin, who had thrown the blade that had saved Myrmeen’s life. The archers pointed their shafts upward when they saw their master.
    Krystin took a running start and leapt into the air, planting both feet on Djimon’s back. She kicked him with all her weight, then expertly rolled to the sand as she fell. The kick drove Djimon forward, past Myrmeen, who also rolled out of the way and into the arms of his warriors, where all three collapsed in a tangle.
    Suddenly, Burke and Varina were on either side of Myrmeen, running for the fallen men. Varina snatched Djimon’s hair, slid her drawn sword beneath his throat, and executed him without a word. His blood splattered on the closest of the downed archers, who screamed in his own language for mercy. Burke had already driven his sword into the other archer’s chest and was about to finish off the pleading man when a sound made him hesitate. He heard the scrape of a sword leaving its scabbard and registered that Krystin was removing the sword from the scabbard at the side of the still-twitching body of Djimon and was preparing to haul it over her head and decapitate the last man.
    Myrmeen grabbed her arms, restraining her, and Varina slashed the last archer’s throat.
    “You should have let me do it,” Krystin said, her chest heaving, her mouth caked with dried blood.
    Myrmeen considered her daughter’s murderous rage a frightening sight and not one that she had been prepared to witness. She turned to Burke. “The others?”
    “Lucius, Reisz, and Ord are dealing with them. We should see if they are—”
    “We’re fine,” came a reply from behind the Harpers. Burke turned to see Ord standing before the older men, his tunic splattered with blood. “They’re all dead, except the two who hurt themselves on the way down, the ones who were supposed to distract us.”
    “See to them,” Burke said.
    Krystin sat back, staring at the bloody remains of her former captors, then glanced to the west and said, “The scum these bastards were going to sell me to are on their way. I can see their caravan.”
    Cardoc wiped the sweat from his brow. “I can shield us again. We can ride past them and they will never know it.”
    Burke listened to the screams of the last two raiders, whom Ord and Reisz were busy putting to death, then said, “I feel as if I can barely breathe in this heat. Mage, are you certain your strength is enough—”
    “We will find out,” Cardoc said in a cold, efficient manner. Burke nodded and gave the order for the Harpers to retrieve their mounts and prepare to ride. In moments, Myrmeen and Krystin were alone, regarding each other warily.
    “We’ve got the same eyes,” Krystin said slowly, only now registering the similarities between herself and the woman twenty years her senior.
    “Yes,” Myrmeen said guardedly. “I noticed that, too.”
    It had not been the reunion Myrmeen had anticipated.
     

Seven
     
    The caravan had come and gone, its occupants pausing only long enough to verify Djimon’s corpse. The buyer who had been promised the blue-eyed fourteen-year-old had been livid and had kicked Djimon’s body several times before returning with his escorts to the caravan. They rode off with haste to avoid the gathering storm.
    The first