Blood Charged Read online

  “Off to check on something with Raptor.”

  Sardelle pushed herself up. She didn’t think she had been asleep that long, but full darkness had fallen. The cold earth didn’t make a comfortable bed, but she had been so tired from the day of marching through snow—and using magic to clear it—that she had been asleep before her head touched the pack. She hadn’t heard Ridge leave and swept out with her senses. Ah, there he was. Jogging back toward the group.

  “Well, I couldn’t find a way out to that mountain,” Duck said. “There are pools all over the place, and they’re hotter than lava to the touch. I tried to find a place where you could walk between them, but Deathmaker was right. The limestone or calcium or whatever that whitish gunk is makes up a thin layer, and there’s water beneath it if you break through. I didn’t see a landing pad around that mountain, but I’m figuring you have to fly out there somehow.”

  “You do,” came Ridge’s voice from the trees. “Sardelle, I’m in need of your assistance again. Could you convince that balloon to come visit us?”

  “Balloon?” She yawned and crawled out from beneath her tree. She couldn’t see anyone in the darkness, but sensed people’s positions. Tolemek and Apex hadn’t moved, or killed each other yet. That was good.

  Up and to the northwest, Jaxi supplied.

  Thank you. “All right. I see it.”

  “I’d like for it to have a hot air problem and be forced to the ground nearby, if that’s doable.” Ridge found her and wrapped an arm around her. “Sorry, it’s probably not polite to wake you early and ask for favors without a hug.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek too.

  Sardelle leaned into him, happy for the warmth, then rested her cheek against his chest while she examined the hot air balloon more closely.

  “How come we don’t get hugs when he wants favors from us?” Duck asked.

  “I think there’s a rule against officers hugging other officers,” Ahn said.

  “There’s a rule against physical relationships and displays of affection,” Apex said, “but I don’t believe friendly hugs are mentioned in the regulations.”

  “That’s more than a friendly hug. I’m fairly certain he’s touching her butt.”

  Sardelle was concentrating on the balloon and trying to ignore them, but caught herself flushing anyway.

  “I am not,” Ridge protested. “That’s her hip. I think. It’s dark out here tonight.”

  “Actually, it’s neither,” Sardelle said, deciding to go along with the teasing rather than try to protest it.

  Ridge found something softer to squeeze than her hip, and she sensed his grin even if she couldn’t see it. “So, I see.”

  “Am I correct that you don’t want the balloon damaged?” she asked.

  “Yes, we can patch it if need be, but that’s going to be our ride out to the mountain.”

  “What about the pilot?” Sardelle started nudging the large balloon in their direction, forming channels of air, similar to what she had done to divert that giant owl familiar back on Galmok Mountain.

  “He’s not invited,” Ridge said.

  “What I mean is that I wouldn’t care to bring him down into our midst to see him shot in front of my eyes.”

  “We can gag him and tie him to a tree. That ought to hold him for a few hours. That should be all we need.”

  “All right. I should have his craft down in a few minutes if you want to hide to ambush him.” Once he got closer, Sardelle might be able to convince him to fall asleep so a violent ambush could be avoided. Then again, he had already realized his balloon was fighting him more than it should. He would be alert when she funneled out some of his hot air, forcing him to land.

  “I’ll take care of that,” Tolemek said from his tree. He rolled to his feet, something in his hand. One of those little leather balls.

  The hot air balloon came into sight over the treetops. Sardelle blew out the fire in its burner, eliciting a startled protest from the handler. She funneled air out of the balloon, too, and it descended rapidly. The wind came up, fighting her, and she struggled to keep it from getting caught in the trees. Unfortunately, the unwieldy craft defied her, and the balloon snagged on the skeletal branches of a birch. Several snaps sounded, and she thought the balloon might fall to the ground, but enough large branches caught to support the weight of the pilot and basket.

  “Sorry,” Sardelle whispered, embarrassed by her lack of accuracy.

  Tolemek handed his ball to Ahn. “I have a feeling you’ll be better at hitting that target than I. Push that indention before you throw it.”

  “Got it.” Ahn jogged a couple of steps and chucked the ball.

  It arced up toward the tree and landed in the basket.

  The pilot, alternating between trying to relight his burner and push the branches out of his basket, didn’t notice it land at his feet. A minute later, all of his activity stopped.

  “Nice work,” Ridge said. “Now, who’s going to climb up there, extract the pilot, and get the balloon down without ripping it into a thousand pieces?”

  No one rushed to volunteer. The balloon was a good twenty feet up in that tree.

  “It depends, sir,” Duck said. “Are hugs involved?”

  “If a hug from me is what it takes to motivate you, Lieutenant, I suppose in this situation, I’d consider that a fair trade-off.”

  “Maybe he wants a hug from Sardelle,” Tolemek said.

  “Er.” Duck shifted his weight, the snow crunching beneath his feet.

  Sardelle had a feeling that might have been an acceptable reward at one time, but now he was uncomfortable at the idea of her coming close. Ridge had been once, too, she reminded herself.

  I’ll do it for a nice oiling of my blade.

  From whom?

  Anyone with a gentle hand. That Apex is handsome when he’s not being surly about pirate boy.

  “Jaxi and I will handle it,” Sardelle said.

  You forgot to mention my oiling.

  I’m not sure this group is ready to hear about your quirky needs.

  They’re not quirky. You like being oiled now and then too. I’ve seen it.

  Sardelle resisted the impulse to explain the difference between massages and having one’s blade protected from moisture. She was busy lifting the unconscious pilot from his basket and lowering him to the ground. Ahn stood at her shoulder, her rifle ready in case he woke up. But Tolemek’s smoke had worked again, and the man remained inert.

  Jaxi handled the branches and the balloon, repairing rips as she went. Sardelle relit the coal in the burner, and by the time the basket touched down, it was almost ready to take off again. Her head ached by the time she finished all of these tasks. The thirty minutes of sleep she had gotten hadn’t been as refreshing as she had hoped.

  “Apex, Duck, tie the prisoner, please.” Ridge walked to the basket and inspected it as much with his hands as with his eyes in the dark. “This isn’t very big. We’ll all be hugging and touching butts. At least it’s not a long journey.” He removed a rope and tied the basket to a tree. With the burner running again, the balloon was threatening to rise.

  “Are we going to wait to go in?” Sardelle asked, hoping for a few hours of sleep before breaking into an ultra modern and secure Cofah laboratory.

  “Yeah.” Duck yawned. “I could get more excited about butt touching after a nap.”

  “An appealing notion,” Ridge said—whether he referred to naps or butt touches wasn’t entirely clear. “But this fellow might be missed. We better go in now. Maybe we’ll finish our mission in thirty minutes and celebrate by finding an only mildly heated hot spring to lounge in after that.”

  Nobody did anything more optimistic than snorting. If things were going to be easy, the two elite troops wouldn’t have been captured. Or killed.

  “Grab your gear,” Ridge said, his voice more sober. “It’s time to go.”

  Chapter 12

  The railing of the basket was digging into Ridge’s ribcage. He wasn’t
sure whose elbow was in his back, but it wasn’t Sardelle’s. She was plastered into the corner beside him. The entire team had fit into the basket, but not comfortably, and the balloon hadn’t budged, merely hovering above them with placid indifference when they removed the rope anchoring it to a tree.

  “Guess we shouldn’t have done all those push-ups,” Duck had said. “It made our muscles grow too heavy.”

  “More likely all that beer you swill made your belly grow too heavy,” Apex muttered.

  Fortunately Sardelle, or maybe Jaxi, had done something, causing the balloon to swell until it appeared ready to burst, and the basket had floated into the air. Now they were drifting slowly toward the mountain, across the steaming pools and through air that stank of sulfur and decomposing things. The moon was poking through the clouds, a development Ridge wasn’t enthused by, since anyone watching from the mountain would be able to notice the balloon—and the abnormal number of people stuffed into the basket.

  Hot eddies rose up from below, creating strange air currents that tugged at the balloon. Pools and mud pots burbled as the craft passed over them, and, after hearing Tolemek’s warning, Ridge knew he wouldn’t want to crash. The wicker basket would make a poor shield to keep near-boiling water from seeping inside.

  Without warning, a geyser erupted in front of them. They were floating more than fifty feet above the ground, but the top of the water jet reached far above them. The breeze blew the steam and water droplets toward the balloon. The basket rocked precariously as people shifted away from the spewing hot water.

  “Stay steady,” Ridge said, not leaving his rail. “Even out the weight.” He raised a gloved hand to protect his face from the spray—it was a fine mist at this distance, but the tiny specks still burned. “Sardelle, take us around that, please.” He didn’t know how long the geyser would keep erupting, but the balloon was heading straight for it.

  “Working on it,” she said, her voice tense.

  “Thanks.” He wondered if he should apologize. Just because she had magic, didn’t mean hot air balloons would be a simple thing to navigate. But if she didn’t maneuver them away from the jet soon, they would pass through it, and find out just how much power propelled that water. Ridge’s knuckles tightened as he imagined his men being knocked from the basket, flung out like dolls, to drop fifty feet and land in those bubbling pools.

  “Got any concoctions that will turn that thing off?” Ahn asked.

  “No,” Tolemek said. “Had someone informed me that this was our destination, I might have brought more useful tools.”

  “More likely specimen kits for collecting samples of that weird green stuff growing around the pools down there.”

  “Anyone ever tell you that you have freakishly good eyesight, Ahn?” Ridge asked, though he kept glancing through his gloves to that geyser. More spray was hitting his clothing now, and the hot water bit like acid where it struck flesh. Someone jerked away from what must have been a big splash and cursed.

  “Yes, they have,” Ahn said. “And I’d like to take this moment to thank you tall, looming people for protecting me from the water.”

  The breeze gusted harder, and Ridge realized why Sardelle was having trouble directing them away from the geyser. She was moving them against it, trying to curve around the spraying water. If they went the way the wind wanted to carry them, in the same direction that spray was blowing, that would be an unpleasant trip.

  The balloon pushed into the wind. Sardelle wiped her brow. Sweating in this cold weather? It was hard to imagine using one’s mind could be that taxing, but he appreciated that she was working that hard for them.

  They drew even with the geyser and inched past it. Some of the tension ebbed from Ridge’s shoulders. So long as Sardelle’s concentration didn’t give out, so the wind couldn’t push them into it, they should be fine. Seconds after the balloon cleared the geyser, the spray died down. Within a few more seconds, it disappeared completely. Only a steaming pool below signaled that a geyser existed at all.

  Duck snorted. “Now it goes out.”

  “The timing was… precise,” Tolemek noted.

  Ridge frowned over Ahn’s head at him. “Are you saying your people can control when these things shoot off?” Did that mean someone inside already knew his team was out here and sneaking in on a stolen balloon?

  “I have no idea what these scientists can do. I would not think that possible without magic, but this is not my area of expertise.” Tolemek sounded stiff, as if he resented being lumped in with these people.

  Well, Ridge could soothe his ruffled feathers later. Maybe they could bond over another snowball fight.

  “Even with magic, controlling the geysers would be difficult if not impossible,” Sardelle said. “That’s usually the case when it comes to nature.”

  Ridge remembered the avalanche she had dug him out of. She had later admitted she had tried and failed to divert the snow slide.

  “Neither Jaxi nor I sensed magic being used,” she added.

  One of the mud pots belched loudly below, the stink in the air intensifying.

  “Let’s just get to that mountain as quickly as possible,” Ridge said, then, realizing that sounded like an order, laid a hand on Sardelle’s to let her know he appreciated all she was doing for them. He had to remember that neither she nor Tolemek were his troops, sworn to obey senior officers in the duty of the king. They had volunteered to come along.

  Sardelle leaned against his shoulder. He didn’t know if that was a sign of understanding or acceptance, or if it meant she was tired. She wasn’t talking in his head at the moment.

  He left his hand on hers and, as they drifted closer to the mountain, watched for lights or some sign that another person waited outside, prepared to receive signals from the balloon observer—there had been a light and mirror kit in the bottom of the basket, presumably for that purpose. But he didn’t see a soul.

  “Anyone out here?” he murmured to Sardelle.

  “I sense people inside, but not outside.”

  “Still no dragons, right?” Ridge smiled, meaning it as a joke, but not entirely. If they had nearly been taken out by a geyser, he didn’t want to imagine how vulnerable they would be to something that could fly and breathe fire.

  “Trust me, I’ll let you know if a creature believed extinct for the last thousand years plucks at my senses.”

  Ridge gazed toward the mountains rising to the north, the same ones they had been flying along and through since leaving the sea. In focusing on this mound among the geysers, he had neglected considering watchtowers or outposts that might overlook the area from those peaks. He thought of the old legends that always had dragons living in caves in mountains. But if Sardelle didn’t sense anything, he would trust that there was nothing out there.

  “We better go down soon,” Duck said, “or we’ll overshoot the mound and end up landing on a geyser.”

  “Can you magic us down there?” Ridge asked Sardelle.

  She leaned past Ahn and dumped the coals into the ashbin to put out the flames heating the air.

  “Or we could do it that way,” Ridge said.

  “I’ll try to bring us down on that little strip of gravel next to the doors,” Sardelle said.

  They were above the mountain now, and Ridge could see a ledge about six feet wide that circled the conical base. Or outpost. Or laboratory. He wouldn’t know what to call it until he had the tour. He could also make out a couple of vents near the top, each spewing puffs of smoke. Nothing that might be a window or peephole had come into view, though. He wondered if it was too much to hope their approach wouldn’t be noticed.

  “Not much of a target,” Tolemek said.

  “It’ll have to do.” Sardelle had her eyes closed as the balloon dipped down.

  Ridge decided not to find that alarming. Sorcerers could see with their minds, right? “If you land us on it without tipping the basket into that pool, we’ll make you an honorary Wolf Squadron pilot.”

 
; Another geyser erupted, this one farther out and not as boisterous as the first. Maybe they were simply natural occurrences after all. Ridge still didn’t see a road or path of any kind leading to the metal double doors, but he couldn’t imagine venturing out there on foot even if there had been one.

  The corner of the basket scraped against the rocky side of the miniature mountain, jostling everyone against everyone else. Sardelle was erring on the safe side, and Ridge couldn’t blame her for that, but he hoped nobody on the other side of that wall would be able to hear the scrapes and bumps.

  “When the colonel promised butt touching, he wasn’t kidding,” Duck said. “Watch out for Raptor. Her guns are poky.”

  “As the commanding officer, and presumably the most mature person present, I’m going to resist the urge to make a lewd comment,” Ridge announced. They scraped the wall again, but they were only eight feet from the ground now. Almost safe. From the balloon flight anyway.

  “Who told you that you were mature, Zirkander?” Tolemek asked.

  “Perhaps I should have said advanced in years.”

  “Perhaps.”

  With another soft scrape, the balloon settled onto the ground. The corner was tilted upward, resting on the slope of the mountain, but Ridge couldn’t fault Sardelle’s aim, not when a bubbling and gurgling pool lay less than a foot away in the other direction.

  He climbed out first, landing on packed gravel. Sardelle had said nobody was out here, but he kept a pistol in hand, nonetheless.

  “How does one deflate the balloon without having it smother the basket and fall into the water?” Tolemek wondered, eyeing the black-and-gray material above them. It hadn’t yet lost the swell of its shape, but it probably would before long. “Do we need to leave someone here to make sure we can get away again once we’re ready to leave?”

  “There must be something inside that can take the workers away from here if need be,” Ridge said. “After all, this thing came from somewhere in there.” He didn’t want to separate the team and start leaving people behind anyway.