The Warrior's Pet(37)

Giselle

Giselle sat in the transport with Sabin at her side. She did her best to not look too grim for the boy's sake. One of the warriors flipped a switch on the hovering wagon and a shrill pulsing sound accosted Giselle's ears.

"Holy Hell." Giselle's hands flew to her ears.

Giselle saw Sabin speak to her his face scrunched in concern but she couldn't hear what he said over the high-pitched whine. She shook her head and pointed at whatever the warrior had flipped on.

"It's loud." Giselle said to Sabin.

The boy along with several warriors looked at her in surprise as the caravan started forward. Apparently she'd said that louder than intended. She was clearly the only one affected since no one was cringing or holding their head. She would just have to make the best of it. Giselle tore off a bit of material from a cleaning cloth and shoved it into her ears. It helped but didn't deaden the awful sound entirely.

If Giselle thought they moved fast before, she was wrong. She felt like she was on the back of an open air race car. If the circumstances weren't so harrowing this would have been exhilarating. Giselle was a bit of an adrenalin junky. She looked over at the lithe black and tan striped manx. It was amazing how they moved swiftly keeping pace with the smaller hovering chariots, referred to as rota.

The wind whipped in her hair as the landscape passed in a blur. They were lucky they had moved out of the marsh land and the jungle which would slow their progress, but the rolling grassland posed its own problems. The open terrain offered little to no cover.

The day wore on and the mountain range on either side of them started to close in again on either side of the valley. There was a commotion. The warriors goaded their manx and the transports faster, but Giselle couldn't hear what they were saying back and forth. Based on the warriors' expressions it wasn't good.

Giselle turned and looked towards the back of the caravan. Her eyes widened as she saw the rapidly approaching Scelus Cadi horde. They outnumbered Kagan's men easily two to one, not counting the Toufik who didn't fight.

The rear of the caravan tightened ranks. Amazingly the band of rota spun around to face the enemy while still moving forward with the rest of the caravan. Even the manx riders did an agile leap and pivoted midair so they now faced backwards on the swiftly moving beasts.

Giselle gasped as she watched the bevy of one-man rota start firing at each other. Giselle stared in amazement and horror as a laser hit one of the rota at the end of their caravan. The vehicle was entirely obliterated. Shrapnel flew every direction.

"Oh God."

The rider was lost, there would be no saving the warrior from a blast like that. Kagan's warriors were returning fire in equal measure taking out the enemy. But would it be enough?

Giselle nearly cried out as a spray of dirt rained sand and debris into the transport.

"Sabin get down!" She hollered as she shoved the boy between two crates onto the wagon floor.

The warriors were doing a good job keeping the enemy at bay but the center of their caravan was still at risk. Giselle could hear the skirmish over top of the muffled whine but couldn't make out the orders the warriors skirting the transport were yelling at each other. She huddled over top of Sabin while keeping a watchful eye on the conflict.

The way the Cadi on both sides fought in a tight regimented formation wasn't a great tactic against such modern weapons, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Kagan's warriors were trying to protect the cargo transports, so they didn't have a lot of options but the enemy could've fared better if they spread out. Vigdis was a fool and probably didn't care how many men he lost using such an ill conceived formation.

Giselle heard a deafening noise and saw the rota two lines back explode. Something hit Giselle's arm, and she looked down to see a gash in her cloak. A long swath of blood welled up an instant later. Giselle looked down to Sabin and was relieved the boy was unscathed. She opened a crate and pulled out several blankets, piling them on top of the boy.

Sabin said something while staring at her arm. Giselle nodded and shrugged out of her cloak. The gash along her arm wasn't too bad it would stop in a minute, adrenalin numbing the pain. The intense hormonal rush also had her sweating. Giselle tied the arms of the cloak around her waist creating a wrap dress, rather than putting the stifling thing back on.

The transport jolted careening hard to the left.

Giselle righted herself and looked to see one of the manx nearby weaving. The poor beast's flank was scraped up from where he jostled into the transport, but beyond that the manx looked uninjured.

The rider however was collapsed facing the rear of the striped beast. There was blood all down the warrior's side though he appeared to still be breathing. Giselle looked to the other warriors, but they were too occupied defending against the enemy.