The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War #2) - R. F. Kuang Page 0,139

had nothing to say. Chaghan was right; she’d known he was right, she just hadn’t wanted to admit it.

He cocked his head to the side. “Did you think he’d fall in love with you if you just did what he asked?”

“Shut up.”

His expression turned vicious. “Is that why you’re in love with Vaisra? Do you think he’s Altan’s replacement?”

She rammed her fist into his mouth.

Her knuckles met his jaw with a crack so satisfying she didn’t even feel where his teeth punctured her skin. She’d broken something, and that felt marvelous. Chaghan toppled over like a straw target. She lunged forward, reaching for his neck, but Kitay grabbed her from behind.

She flailed in his grasp. “Let me go!”

His grip tightened. “Calm down.”

Chaghan pulled himself to a sitting position and spat a tooth onto the ground. “And she says she’s not a dog.”

Rin lunged to hit him again, but Kitay yanked her back.

“Let me go!”

“Rin, stop—”

“I’ll kill him!”

“No, you won’t,” Kitay snapped. He forced Rin into a kneeling position and twisted her arms painfully behind her back. He pointed at Chaghan. “You—stop talking. Both of you stop this right now. We’re alone in enemy territory. We split up from each other and we’re dead.”

Rin struggled to break free. “Just let me at him—”

“Oh, go on, let her try,” Chaghan said. “A Speerly that can’t call fire, I’m terrified.”

“I can still break your skinny chicken neck,” she said.

“Stop talking,” Kitay hissed.

“Why?” Chaghan sneered. “Is she going to cry?”

“No.” Kitay nodded toward the forest. “Because we’re not alone.”

Hooded riders emerged from the trees, sitting astride monstrous warhorses much larger than any steed Rin had ever seen. Rin couldn’t identify their uniforms. They were garbed in furs and leathers, not Militia greens, but they didn’t seem like friends, either. The riders aimed their bows toward them, bowstrings stretched so taut that at this distance the arrows wouldn’t just pierce their bodies, they would fly straight through them.

Rin rose slowly, hand creeping toward her trident. But Chaghan grabbed her wrist.

“Surrender now,” he hissed.

“Why?”

“Just trust me.”

She jerked her hand out of his grip. “That’s likely.”

But even as her fingers closed around her weapon, she knew they were trapped. Those longbows were massive—at this distance, there would be no dodging those arrows.

She heard a rustling noise from upriver. The Hesperians had seen the riders. They were trying to run.

The riders twisted around and loosed their bowstrings into the forest. Arrows thudded into the snow. Rin saw Augus drop to the ground, his face twisted in pain as he clutched at a feathered shaft sticking out of his left shoulder.

But the riders hadn’t shot to kill. Most of the arrows were aimed at the dirt around the missionaries’ feet. Only a few of the Hesperians were injured. The rest had collapsed from sheer fright. They huddled together in a clump, arms raised high, arquebuses unfired.

Two riders dismounted and wrenched the weapons out of the missionaries’ trembling hands. The missionaries put up no resistance.

Rin’s mind raced as she watched, trying to find a way out. If she and Kitay could just get to the stream, then the current would carry them downriver, hopefully faster than the horses could run, and if she held her breath and ducked deep enough then she’d have some cover from the arrows. But how to get to the water before the riders loosed their bowstrings? Her eyes darted around the clearing—

Put your hands up.

No one spoke the order but she heard it—a deep, hoarse command that resonated loudly in her mind.

A warning shot whistled past her, inches from her temple. She ducked down, grabbed a clump of mud to fling at the riders. If she could distract them, just for a few seconds . . .

The riders turned their bows back toward her.

“Stop!” Chaghan ran out in front of the riders, waving his arms over his head.

A sound like a gong echoed through the clearing, so loud that Rin felt her temples vibrating.

A flurry of images from someone else’s imagination forced their way into her mind’s eye. She saw herself on her knees, arms up. She saw herself stuck through with arrows, bleeding from a dozen different wounds. She saw a vast and dizzying landscape—a sparse steppe, desert dunes, a thunderous stampede as riders set out on horseback to seek something, destroy something . . .

Then she saw Chaghan, facing the riders with his fists clenched, felt the sheer intent radiating out from his form—we’re here in peace we’re here in peace I am