The Queen’s Herald would do anything to keep Ava under his control, and the fact that he was actively looking for her was a bad sign.
Desperate men did desperate things.
Rangar obviously thought his problems would disappear if he produced her.
He was probably right.
And she had made the choice to bargain herself for their lives and safety, betting on the same calculation.
He heard muttering up ahead, like Rangar talking to himself, and he crept the last stretch of path to hide the sound of his steps.
He reared back at the change in scene from only a few minutes ago.
Farr was dead, lying in an expanding pool of blood from his throat.
Ava was slung over Farr’s mount and Rangar was looping her bound hands through the shortened stirrup on one side.
“The only way,” Rangar was saying. “Just have to chance it.” When he turned, he had the flare canister in his hand, the lid off.
He tilted the canister and swung his arm, and a thin spray of luminous blue liquid flew through the air.
Some of it hit Luc in the chest, and there seemed to be a thunderclap, a lightning strike of cold, white light, that threw him backward.
He landed hard and scrambled to his feet to find a thin line of fire blocking his way to Ava.
It was spreading so fast, running like water just as the general had said.
But he wasn’t burning, he suddenly realized. The flare had hit him, thrown him back, but he wasn’t even scorched.
Ava had sewn protection against flare fire into his shirt.
She hadn’t been confident about it, but once again, she proved she had no reason to doubt herself.
He pulled off his shirt and began to beat the flames so he could get to her.
Suddenly Oscar and Deni were on either side of him, the protective vests Ava had made them for tonight off, helping him beat the fire.
It took them almost half an hour to douse it completely, and by the time they did, Rangar was long gone.
“He’s got Ava?” Oscar looked at the charred body they’d found once the flames were out.
“That’s Farr,” Luc said. “Rangar stabbed him in the throat and then threw some of the flare liquid up the hill.”
“Why?” Deni stared at the blackened corpse in horror.
“Because he knew he wouldn’t get far with Ava if we were after him, and he didn’t want Farr going back with tales of how his whole mission was rendered useless.” Luc started jogging toward where they had hidden their horses, and Oscar and Deni followed.
“Where’s he taking her?” Oscar asked.
“The river, to wherever they’ve set up their headquarters.” Luc wanted to catch them long before they reached the riverbanks.
“The Queen’s Herald is looking for her?” Deni asked as they swung into their saddles.
Luc gestured to Deni’s vest, which he’d put back on, and then to his own shirt. Neither of them were even singed. “If you were a greedy, power-hungry ruler, wouldn’t you do whatever you could to have her?”
They found the flare canister two hours later.
Dawn had yet to break, although it wasn’t far off, but the luminous blue was easy to see in the darkness.
“Why did he leave it?” Oscar wondered.
“Maybe it was slowing him down,” Luc said. “He was worried about it spilling or dropping.” He picked it up and wrapped it in his shirt, then put it in his saddlebag.
It worried him, though. That Rangar would give up such a powerful weapon.
He’d sent Deni back to the general, to give her an update on the situation, and it was just him and Oscar chasing Rangar across the plains.
The smell of fire shortly after they found the flare canister worried him enough that they followed it to its source.
It was nothing more than a scout camp, the coals in the fire pit still glowing.
“He must have stumbled across the scout camp.” Luc circled the small area. “He didn’t want to be seen with the flare canister on him. He must have worked out a story that doesn’t suit him having one.”
“So he just left it on the plain? Out in the open where anyone could have found it?” Oscar sounded grim.
“He doesn’t care about anything except saving his own ass.” Luc caught sight of the churned up earth of many hooves, and felt his heart sink. “And having Ava to present to the Queen’s Herald is the ultimate ass-saver.”
At least that meant she was would be kept safe. For now.
But Rangar would have spun his story to the scouts and it looked like they had been persuaded to escort him on his journey.
“Let’s go.” Luc leaned down to see which path they’d taken, and he and Deni galloped in the direction of the river as the sun rose behind them and turned the plains pink and orange.
They found the base camp easily enough.
The smoke led them right to it.
They had burned the pontoons they’d used to get their equipment over the river, and they’d burned their supply wagons and their massive wooden slings.
“Why?” Oscar’s horse danced nervously around the smoke-hazed camp.
“Rangar’s told them we’ve decimated the Jatan border units and taken the hills and the flares. They may have decided it was too dangerous to trust we hadn’t taken Bartolo, or maybe they’d heard we had, and that lent veracity to his story.”
“They’ve taken Ava, and they’ve destroyed everything that would slow them down.” Oscar slid off his horse and led her to the river bank to let her drink.
Luc looked over the river, but there was no obvious route that he could see. They’d split up, breaking into groups to make themselves a more difficult target, and Ava could be in any one of those units.
Finding her would be impossible.
Except he knew where they would be taking her, and he had long been planning to go there himself.
“Where is she, do you think?” Oscar came to stand beside him.
“Not sure where she is now, but I know where she’ll be by tonight, or tomorrow morning.”
“Fernwell?”
He nodded. “Fernwell.”
“So what do we do?” Oscar eyed the river as if expecting Luc to say they needed to cross and give chase.
“We go down to Bartolo, make sure we have actually taken it, and wait for the general. She won’t be far behind.”
And then they would march on Fernwell, and get his lover back.
Chapter 37
There was a delay in her getting brought to the palace.
Ava gathered it was because Rangar wasn’t initially believed.
She didn’t blame whoever had dismissed his story as farfetched, because it was—a mixture of half-truths and outright lies that somehow pointed most of the blame at the murdered Captain Farr.
She clung to the idea it was lies layered on lies, because he had also told her that he had burned Luc and the others with flare fire, and she refused to believe it.
Refused.
Someone eventually believed him, though. And now they were scrambling.
She could hear the panic in the voices of those around him.
They were in trouble, and she wondered how Herron had heard she was here.
The Queen’s Herald would not react well to the idea that his prize possession had been under his nose for two days and he hadn’t known it.