Of his features, she could discern little. They blurred in her vision.
“Hadriax el Fex,” Lil said.
The man nodded, his leathers creaking. “Liliedhe Ambriodhe.” His accent was different from Lil’s.
This was the meeting King Jonaeus had tried to talk Lil out of attending. This was her meeting with Mornhavon the Black’s closest friend.
Lil did not answer the man, but nudged her horse a few steps forward. Then halted.
“I believe you requested safe haven.”
“Yes, I did. Lord Mornhavon’s atrocities have become more than I can bear, and I want to help bring them to an end.”
“After all this time?” Lil asked. “You’ve only just discovered the various hells Mornhavon has created in these lands? You had your hand in enough of it, I daresay. Why shouldn’t I just run my sword through you right now?”
“You won’t do that.”
“You sound rather sure of yourself. I wouldn’t be if I were you.”
“You won’t kill me,” the man said, “because you know I have valuable knowledge.”
Lil laughed quietly. “So I imagine. Why should I trust anything you have to say?”
“I have given up much to come here. Risked everything I am, betrayed the man who was a brother to me.”
To Karigan’s ears, the words sounded flat. Too flat. He was lying.
The man sidled his stallion closer to Lil. She didn’t move.
“You won’t kill me,” the man continued, “because without the information I possess, your people will have no hope of winning this war, and you know it. Mornhavon will defeat you.”
Lil raised an eyebrow, a touch of amusement on her lips. “Will he now?”
“Yes.”
A throttled scream, a man’s voice, erupted nearby in the woods: “Trap!”
Hadriax el Fex grabbed Lil and tried to drag her off her horse. The fog no longer clouded his features, which were sharp and hard. His hair was black and tied back into a ponytail. Upon his brow rested a crown of lead fashioned into intertwining branches. Karigan had seen the crown before, on the wraith in the clearing, the night of the attack on Lady Penburn’s delegation.
Even as Lil struggled against the man, a hundred horsemen materialized out of nothing as though a curtain had been lifted. They all bore the black and crimson colors, the device of a black dead tree on their shields. They trotted their horses to encircle Lil and the man in their struggle.
Lil swung at him and landed a fist in his eye. He rocked back in his saddle. Like lightning the greatsword flashed into Lil’s hands, but she’d be unable to fend off the archers who now bent their bows, arrows aimed directly at her.
The man laughed. “No, no. Lord Mornhavon wants her alive.” Power crackled on his upraised palm. It crawled up and down his forearm. Lil paused as if to consider her predicament. Karigan yearned to help, but was unaware of what she could do. A distraction of some kind?
Last time, she could handle objects even if she couldn’t make contact with people. Without hesitation, she hefted a large rock, and heaved it at the nearest horse. The horse whinnied and reared, dumping its rider. As she hoped, the soldiers’ attention averted to their fallen companion. Even the man wearing the crown was distracted enough to look.
Lil didn’t use the moment to escape. Instead, she raised her horn to her lips and blared out the notes of the Rider charge. No sooner did the last note ring out and she had dropped the horn to her side, was she slashing her sword at her would-be captor. Taken off-guard, his magic fizzled out. He concentrated on trying to reignite it and avoid Lil’s blade, but Lil’s big, ugly horse casually bit a chunk out of his leg, and swiftly whirled on its haunches to plant a well-placed kick on his high-tempered stallion’s chest.
The man’s scream, and the thrashing of his stallion, were lost to thunderous hoofbeats shaking the ground. Green Riders boiled out of the woods and charged the enemy.
A counter trap, Karigan thought, practically jumping up and down with glee.
The Riders loosed their own arrows and many of the enemy fell. The Riders did not pause after their opening volley, but drove into the enemy, whooping and swinging their sabers above their heads. Green and white paint masked their faces, giving them a wild, frightening countenance. Green handprints decorated the necks and haunches of their mounts.
Karigan stumbled back into a thicket to avoid getting trampled.
The two groups merged into smaller melees, and the battle almost became quiet, with but the clattering of weaponry and thud of hooves, and the isolated shout or cry. It was almost businesslike, and perhaps for enemies who had been at war for so long, it was business.
At its center, Lil Ambrioth and the man who had mas queraded as Hadriax el Fex still strove against each other, but much of their combat was lost to sight behind others. It was hard to say which side was winning, but Karigan thought the Green Riders were outnumbered despite their initial volley.
She moved through the thicket, detecting the occasional flare of magic—a ball of flame thrown or objects flying through the air without hands to guide them. She sought a different vantage point, trying to determine how the Riders fared, silently rooting for them, apprehensive when one succumbed and fell. This battle may have occurred sometime in the far distant history of the lands, but anxiety hounded her that the Riders would be devastated.
She came upon three of the enemy in the woods. One was without a breastplate, and he leaned over his horse’s neck as though wounded. His hands were bound behind him with black, writhing magic. Karigan remembered the pain of such magic all too well.