Free Brave Men Die: Part 3 by Dan Adams Page B

path into the courtyard, and Laura watched intently for the elder mage and anyone else who was planning on crashing. When she had walked into the office on the fifth floor at the Academy and had requested to speak to the senior mage, she had made a note of every person that she passed, whether mage or acolyte. They were all suspicious, all jealous. She wouldn’t give them the opportunity to take this away from her.
    Laura only heard the footsteps approaching from behind her the moment before the blade sank into her lower back. She gasped in pain before a hand muffled her building scream and pulled her down to the ground. The assassin pulled the knife from her back as blood slid down her legs and Laura looked frantically around to locate her assailant.
    The man stood over her menacingly, blade dripping with her blood as her life ebbed away. He knelt down beside her, leaning forward. As he moved closer his face moved out of the shadow and her eyes went wide as she recognised him. But instead of whispering in her ear, he put a hand on her breast and whispered an incant that incinerated her in seconds, leaving no trace that Laura Dennison ever existed as the wind scattered what little ash remained on the spot of her murder.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    The Nails were somewhere in the Derelict Plains, Castor had no real idea where. Probably somewhere in the middle. He hadn’t seen the map for days but what else was it going to tell him. They were behind enemy lines and out here, everything was a threat.
    The men were exhausted. They needed to rest, recuperate, sleep. They just needed one day when someone wasn’t trying to kill them.
    Hydrus led the unit into a small copse of trees that would offer them very little protection if anyone came by and searched it. The crescent moon filling the night sky exposed between the drifting clouds wouldn’t help them go unseen. They needed darkness. There was a small depression in the middle of the trees that Hydrus ordered the wounded take the horses into to try to get them out of sight. The rest of the unit dispersed and settled themselves on the outskirts of the copse, lying on their bellies and peering out into the darkness.
    Castor found what cover he could and stared out into the darkness. Somewhere out there Pyxis was searching for them. Probably half the Empire was searching for them, after what they had been doing to their supply lines. He placed the loaded crossbow beside his hand and looked out from underneath the branch.
    The unit maintained silence as they kept up their vigil. There was no telling what was out in the night. Castor swore he saw movement out to his right and took hold of his crossbow. By the time he was in position the night had gone still and he had nothing to shoot. He swore that it wouldn’t happen again and he kept the crossbow close to his fingertips.
    His heart beat faster as the hours went by, his imagination jumping at the shadows and the rustles he heard behind him. Castor had to keep telling himself it was just another one of his men. There was no way the enemy could have snuck up on them. Pyxis couldn’t be that close.
    It was very early in the morning, still well before dawn, when Volans approached carefully from behind him. Sneaking up on his belly, he was careful not to stand and create a man-shaped silhouette that would have stood out amongst the thinly spread trees.
    ‘Castor,’ he called softly, tapping him on the shoulder.
    Castor turned his bleary eyes on the lieutenant.
    ‘Hydrus wants you to lead a group of men out there and investigate one of the shadows he keeps seeing.’
    ‘Is it really a threat or is it in his head?’
    ‘Who knows until you go out and investigate? I’ve seen my fair share of moving shadows out there tonight. Who can say if any of them were real?’
    Castor rolled his eyes and slowly scurried his way back from the edge of the tree line toward the waiting group of men and back up to Hydrus’ location. With the six men he was