Oberon's Dreams - By Aaron Pogue Page 0,2

block.

Corin turned the other way and three quick steps brought him to the tent’s edge. A guard he’d noticed earlier was gone, drawn by rumors of Ethan Blake or by the uproar Corin’s first mate had caused in the center of the camp, so Corin sheathed his dagger and turned his attention to escape.

But Iryana stopped. She planted her heels and hauled back against him with more strength than a girl her size should have possessed.

Corin spun on her. “Are you mad? We must run!”

“You must run,” she said. “I may still find a kinder master on the block.”

Corin licked his lips, weighing his arguments while precious time slipped by. Then, ten paces back, Razeen dove through the exit Corin had made. Slaves dragged behind him, clinging to the big man’s legs in utter desperation, but he barely seemed to notice.

His attention was all on Corin and the girl. While one hand still rubbed at his blinded eyes, Razeen stabbed the other after the fugitives and cried, “Thieves! Enchanters at the tent of trade! Get after them! Kill them all!”

Corin met Iryana’s eyes and shrugged. “It’s up to you.” Then he turned and ran.

CHAPTER TWO

Corin glanced back once as he passed the edge of camp. Iryana chased him, but after her came guards responding to Razeen’s cry. All along the camp’s edge, they came boiling from the lanes between tents like ants from a spoiled hill. Corin pounded across the sand, his black cloak flapping after him.

The girl came alongside him, running hard despite bare feet and bruises. Corin tossed her a grin. “You came after me!”

She growled, “You left me little choice, but it barely matters. They are already catching up, and the desert is their home.”

“I know,” he said. “Just run.”

They ran. They topped a dune with less than thirty paces’ lead on the closest pursuers. But there below, just beyond a rough outcrop of stone, waited two saddled camels.

At Corin’s side, Iryana gave a startled cry of relief, but a moment later she groaned. “We won’t have time. The guards are too close. There are too many!”

Corin threw a glance back, risking a spill down the sandy slope. He looked just in time to see the line of white-robed warriors top the dune behind them.

“Looks like just the right number to me,” he said. “But where in Ephitel’s wretched name is Blake?”

She caught Corin’s sleeve as he turned back to the camels. “Is this him?”

Where she pointed, another figure was just now cresting a smaller dune to their left. It was the man who’d drawn so much attention at the auction block. Now the bright-red sash clung to his sweat-slicked torso, but despite the splash of blood on his bare skin and the complement of angry sheiks pounding along behind him, he was grinning.

“Blake,” Corin said, equal parts relieved and irritated.

“They’ll cut us off!” Iryana screamed. She stopped, still ten paces from the camels, and looked around frantically. To their right, the sands climbed into a sheer, nearly concave dune. “We’re trapped!”

Corin said nothing, though she was clearly right. Still, he coaxed her into motion again, almost dragging her down to the camels. She struggled so much that the tardy Blake was able to reach the beasts one step ahead of them.

Blake paused as they arrived, one hand on the reins, and narrowed his eyes at Iryana.

“You brought her out?”

Corin busied himself handing her up to a seat on his own camel, showing no regard for the angry mobs rushing down on them from two directions. “I couldn’t let them sell her off.”

“You should have let them sell her off!” Blake shouted, scrambling into his saddle. “All you needed was a word! And after all, she is the one who ran.”

“These slavers are not gentle men.”

Blake spat. “Neither are we. Gods on high, Corin! All you needed was a word.”

Corin stood unmoving, holding his first mate’s gaze as the first of their pursuers arrived. They were the sheiks who’d followed Blake from the auction block, a smaller crowd. But orders rang among them, barked in the strange language of the sands, and they fanned out into a loose circle surrounding the fugitives.

A moment later the second force arrived, all those who’d come swarming from the camp behind Corin and Iryana. There must have been at least a hundred, every one among them armed. Most of them fell into ranks outside the ring of sheiks already watching, but a handful of soldiers from the second force pressed through