Red Heir - Lisa Henry Page 0,52

“We want the prince!”

“It’s the redhead!” Scott sobbed out, and oh, Loth was going to kick him right in his lopsided balls if they managed to survive this.

The bandit leader dropped Scott in a heap, apparently satisfied, and then kicked him for good measure. He turned to his men. “Well? Capture the redhead!” he yelled. “Kill the rest!”

“There are two of them!” one bandit, who had an eyepatch, called out. “Two redheads!”

“Then take them both!”

The one-eyed man darted forward and grabbed Quinn, twisting an arm up his back and dragging him away, away from Loth, and much to his surprise, Loth found himself off and running. Except, instead of heading away from the danger, which had been his lifelong default, Loth was running towards the bandits, and the overriding thought in his head was save Quinn. Was this what bravery felt like, he wondered, or stupidity? He hadn’t had much experience with either.

The rest of the bandits, who’d been shuffling their feet and staring at the body of their comrade, seemed to pull themselves together and ran forward in a roaring, thundering wall of leather armour and weaponry, swords drawn and at the ready. There were six of them, not counting the man Calarian had already killed, and they were all armed to the teeth. Loth wished he had a sword.

Wait. He did—sort of. He clasped at the handle tucked into his belt.

Dave opened his mouth and bellowed, and Loth saw the two men heading for him falter. He didn’t have time to see how it played out over there though—he was too busy grabbing his meat cleaver and diving into the fray.

Nobody had ever told him that battles were so... messy. They weren’t choreographed from afar, like sweeping dances. There was no single battle occurring at all where bandits met rescuers: just a series of scrappy individual fights. Loth caught a knee in the stomach and swallowed a mouthful of grass and dirt, before catching his assailant in the side of the neck with the meat cleaver. It wasn’t the death blow he’d intended—the blade glanced off the guy’s collarbone instead of splitting flesh—but it must have stung like fuck because the guy screamed and flailed back. Loth swung the cleaver again, and this time there was a wet sound and the blade was dripping and bloody when he yanked it back. His stomach lurched, but he ignored it, intent on finding Quinn. He’d done enough damage for his attacker to let go of him, and he had the faint reassurance that at least they wanted him alive.

That gave him an edge, he realised. It meant he could try and rescue Quinn at least, because someone was trying to hurt him, and the very thought of it made Loth burn with rage.

Loth had always thought the expression seeing red was just a metaphor, but his ears were filled with the sound of his blood pumping, and he was unaware of anything except that they were threatening Quinn. It was enough to make him scramble to his feet, cleaver held over his head as he surged forward, screaming at the top of his lungs. He couldn’t have told you what he was aiming for, he just slashed wildly, hitting nothing. “Quinn!” he shouted, “Save him—”

He was cut off when an arm grabbed him around the waist, lifted him, and slammed him into the ground, driving all the breath from his body.

It was Ada. She held him in place, then sat on him for good measure. “Sit down, you bloody idiot, before you hurt yourself.”

“But—Quinn—bandits—”

“Dealt with.”

Loth blinked and lifted his head and tried to make sense of the scene in front of him. The bandits were gone, all bar one, their leader, and Dave was holding him aloft while Calarian kept an arrow trained on him.

The rest of them were scattered around the ground, dead or unconscious. “What happened?”

Ada rolled her eyes. “I took one out because I’m a dirty fighter, Calarian shot one of them while you were waving your little knife and screaming like an idiot, and then...” The look she gave him was pure evil. “One of them threatened Pie. And well, Dave.” She grinned and shrugged.

“Dave?” Loth croaked out.

A hand stroked Loth’s arm and he heard a voice he wasn’t expecting. “He didn’t take his dragon being threatened well. Remember we wanted to find out how far Dave could throw Scott?”

Loth turned his head to find Quinn sitting in the dirt next to him, dust and blood