“Get behind me, Thom,” Thordin snapped as he advanced toward the screaming, howling things left behind as the flames of Rory’s initial assault subsided.
“How the hell am I–”
“Dammit, just do what I said. Your wife will murder me if anything happens to you. If your damn boots hadn’t been on the bloody ground a minute ago, I’d have sent you with the other two!” Thordin brandished his weapon at the first of the battered skinchangers to emerge from the burning brush alongside the road. “Now stay behind me and back me up.”
Thom uttered a heartfelt curse and sidestepped until he was half behind Thordin. “This would work a hell of a lot better if I had something with range.”
“It’s not my fault you didn’t think to bring your wife’s bow!”
Howling a battlecry, Thordin launched himself at the skinchangers, Thom and Rory plunging in his wake.
• • •
Cameron shuddered at the sound of Thordin’s cry, now far behind them. Damn. I should be there, not running like this. He glanced back at Jacqueline, riding half a stride behind him. Her face was pale and drawn in the moonlight, her jaw set.
She was terrified, but she hated leaving as much as he did.
“They’ll be okay,” he shouted over his shoulder at her.
“They’d better be!” she snapped, her eyes narrowing briefly. “I won’t forgive a single one of them if they get themselves killed!”
Something tells me you’d drag them all back from the other side just so you can give them a stern talking-to. Cameron killed the smirk he felt forming and turned his eyes back to the road.
“Do you think we’ll make it in time?” she yelled over the sound of their horses.
Cameron swallowed bile and hoped he sounded more cavalier than he felt. “We’d better! We’re the only backup Phelan’s got.”
Wasn’t that the truth.
