The Dragon's Rogue

Chapter 23

I looked upward. Tall ragged cliffs topped with oddly shaped and rounded stone protrusions towered above us. They would definitely be an impairment to our movement, but we continued forward anyway pushing past an ever tightening path between rocky outcroppings.

Soon, Illaise joined the procession, taking the lead. I watched with relief as her lead warriors joined her, each with an intact bundle around their neck. She halted more than once to study the sky, often enough that I took to studying it as well. What was it she looked for?

Oddly, though I could still scent the Quatori infrequently, after Illaise joined us they seemed to retreat. It made little sense since we were not traveling any faster, indeed the difficulty of the pass had forced us to slow considerably. I was forced, however, to forgo speculation when we reached an opening between cliffs and peaks. A natural-walled fortress stretching at least a mile into the distance and twice as wide before narrowing into cliff sides once more. It was as though it had been scooped out by the great hand of a giant. None of the side walls looked particularly passable, a few cracks looked as though they might provide similar passes as the one we had just come through.

In the center of this natural pit was a conglomeration of wood and stone, too disastrous to be anything naturally made. Well, it did look rather like a great landslide, except that the placement was wrong, it was too far from any of the walls to be such a thing. Around it swarmed moving bodies, they came and went into a cavity, barely visible from our distance.

Shifters. I couldn't tell from where I stood if they were possessed or not, and Madion had indicated that there would be both. I watched them speculatively. There must be some form of passage within...or more likely beneath that rubble.

Adda was there somewhere. The pull I felt toward her, the need to get closer had intensified through the rocky cliff side. Now I nearly burst with it. She was in there, and she was alive. Hope flared within me, a wild and reckless urge to storm forward and do what I could to rescue her. The feeling was not mutual however. On her end of the bond there was little hope, it was there, but very much muted from my own. She knew I was there, but mostly she felt a deep tiredness, and now fear. She didn't want me to approach...in fact, she didn't want me there at all.

For many long seconds I stood still, trying to separate her emotions from my own. I was disappointed that she wished to see me go, but that was Adda, always the protector. Always my protector. It would concern her to her core that someone would risk themselves on her account. With a tinge of regret I closed myself off from her feelings, blocking her growing desperation that seeped into my well being. Illaise was using her hand signals again, giving orders to her men. I needed all of my wits about me, I couldn't afford to be distracted by Adda now.

She sensed my closure, I thought, for never before had the bond transmitted words, only emotions. But as I withdrew my focus and forced my awareness away from our link her voice echoed within my mind.

"No."

***

Illaise's plan seemed to be a simple and direct hit upon the camp's forces. She did not give directions beyond that, and I had no way to ask. Suspicion flowered within me however. Infiltrating the mouth of the passage, the route to Adda, would take more than a direct attack on the milling mass of creatures down there.

The group slunk around the cliff walls and protrusions. Two warriors had been left near the crevice we entered at, to dissuade anything from following us in. I felt a flash of sympathy for my Alpha, he might very well be one of the creatures that the sentinels had to dissuade.

More signals and the rest of the wolves spread out, creeping along the edges and walls. There was a predetermined plan, I decided, watching the warriors move with precision. They knew exactly where they were going, and they had the focus of wolves with purpose.

A purpose I had not been included upon. The most that Illaise did was to gesture I was to follow her before dropping toward the ground and shifting. As a wolf she hunched against the ground, scooting and shuffling forward as wolves might stalk prey. But she wasn't aiming for any animal, she was aiming for the opening. Anticipation, and something darker, a fear and a certainty that I could not handle what was to come settled upon me. I frowned at Illaise's silver fur crawling in a direct line toward the camp's center. Even with my dart launcher...and the satchel, we stood no chance. So what was the crazy fool of a woman doing?

I followed, with much more difficulty. There was not much cover away from the canyon walls. In fact, the entire area within the camp's boundaries had been stripped of foliage, if indeed much had ever grown there. I hunched toward the ground, careful to shuffle forward only when it seemed as though the working men and women at the camp were suitably distracted.

Dusk crept its dark fingers out upon the evening sky, but light from the sun had long ago left the hollow. It appeared from the angle of the cliffs that the camp would avoid direct sunlight for most of the day. Only noon would the sun's course take it to where it might shine directly down. It was an ideal location for the Quatori and the monsters they were creating. Especially since a great deal of the camp appeared to be underground. I supposed that Illaise had known this, it explained why aiming for an approach in bright daylight was pointless. But it still felt off, a little too suicidal on her part.

I shuffled forward again, careful not to dislodge the loose stones around my feet. We were a long distance from the busy center still, but the incline was such that a stone might topple downward and land at one of the creature's feet. Movement caught my gaze, along one of the other banks. Another member of the pack, one of the wolves that bore a bundle around his neck crept in a similar manner toward the opening. From my height on the slope I could see him clearly. I tried not to think of the implications of what that meant for my own visibility. Maybe from the pit of the valley we were less obvious.

Illaise had outpaced me, her silver fur peeking out from behind one of the few shallow undulations in the rock and dirt. And it was because I was so far behind her that I saw the attack as it took place. A shifter, one of the possessed monsters leaped from a half hidden pit a distance away, ramming itself into Illaise's side before she had a chance to react.

An eerie, wailing cry rose through the encampment. A warning...or maybe a signal. From all around the walls possessed shifters appeared. I had no opportunity to mull over where they were coming from, only that we were greater fools than I believed...because this was a trap.