Demontech: Rally Point: 2 (Demontech Book 2) by David Sherman Read Free Book Online Page B

name?”
    “I’m Guma.”
    “You’re in command?”
    Guma looked at the others, they looked away. “As much as anyone,” he said as he looked back at Spinner.
    “Poor refugees?” he asked. “You are arrayed more like bandits sitting in an ambush.”
    “If we were bandits sitting in ambush, you wouldn’t have been able to sneak up on us like you did.”
    “So you didn’t expect anybody to come along now, that’s all,” Spinner retorted. “But you were in position if anybody did.”
    “Defensive position, we don’t plan to ambush anybody.”
    “How do you explain the peddler’s wagon. Who did you steal it from?”
    “The peddler is part of our party.”
    Suddenly Silent shouted, “No!” from behind the women and children.
    An arrow whizz ed past Spinner’s head.
    There was a yelp and inarticulate shouts, then Silent called out, “I’ve got him.”
    “Hold!” Spinner shouted. “Be calm! Nobody gets hurt if everybody stays calm.”
    “That goes for you too!” Silent snarled at a half-grown boy struggling in the crook of his arm. The giant held a bow in his free hand taken from the boy. “This whelp thinks he’s ready to be a fighting man,” he said, not yelling but loud enough for everyone to hear. “That kind of thinking can get people unnecessarily killed.” He looked around and saw a woman with a anguished expression wringing her hands. “Is this one yours?” he demanded.
    The woman whimpered as she nodded.
    Silent put the boy on his feet and gave him a shove in her direction. “Keep better control of your sprat before he gets himself in trouble he can’t get out of.”
    The woman ran to her son and hugged him tightly then looked at Silent. Silent nodded curtly.
    One of the other Royal Lancers tried to take advantage of the distraction and started to grab for his sword. Not everyone was as distracted as he thought—an arrow thunk ed into the ground inches from his hand. He froze and looked up, his face white. Five horsemen had drawn arrows pointed at him, the one who had shot was already drawing another shaft.
    “The next arrow kills,” Spinner announced.
    A young woman who had stood silently sobbing near the group of men covered by Spinner and his horsemen suddenly screamed and bolted. Half blinded by her tears, she stumbled through the six men who still sat or lay as they’d been when Haft and his men came upon them.
    One of Haft’s men, a Kondive Islands sea soldier, suddenly shouted, “Wanita!” He broke ranks and galloped after the woman. As soon as he was close enough he bounded out of his saddle and grabbed her. His momentum carried both of them to the ground.
    “Wanita!” he exclaimed, and held her face in his hands. He kissed her. She struggled to break away, but he held her close and cried the name again and again.
    Suddenly she stopped struggling and looked into his face. She gasped. “Pisau! Is it really you, Pisau?” she said in a language only one of the others understood. She rubbed a wrist at her eyes to push away the tears.
    He kissed more of her tears away. “It’s me, Wanita,” he said in the same language, his voice almost unable to get through his constricted throat.
    “Pisau!” she cried and threw her arms around his neck. “I thought you were dead!”
    “And I you, my love!”
    Tension broke as everyone, including Silent, who broke off from searching the camp, gathered around the two where they rocked on the ground with their arms holding them close, murmuring to each other as they kissed.
    After an embarrassing moment Spinner cleared his throat. “Do you know this woman, Pisau?” he asked in Frangerian.
    The Kondive Islander broke his face away from the woman’s and grinned up at the Frangerian Marine. “Know her? She’s my wife ! I searched for her when the Jokapcul took Zobra City. Someone told me he’d seen her killed. I never would have left the city without her if I’d thought she was still alive.” He turned back to his wife and