Sovereign Read Free

Dark Bloods might not follow. But getting past the line marching toward them would prove difficult if not impossible—Bloods were anything but slow.
    “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear your response,” the Dark Blood said. “Are you sure? All of us?”
    Jonathan, where are you now?
    The sentiment that accompanied the question had become more bitter than inquisitive as of late. But she hadn’t always neededJonathan to survive. She’d been his guardian once, when her skill as a fighter had been unquestioned even by Roland himself. Her veins flooded with new resolve, fueled by anger. Their quest to follow Jonathan and bring life could
not
end here, regardless of the odds.
    The sword of a fallen Blood lay on the ground three paces away. She still had nine arrows in the quiver at her back. Two more knives were sheathed against her thighs. And if no way for escape presented itself, there was the sword.
    The calm calculation that had served Jordin so well at Roland’s side slipped for an instant as an image filled her mind: Jonathan spreading his arms wide, crying out for Saric to kill him as she screamed, powerless, from the cliff above. Saric’s blade arcing down into the chest of the only man she had ever loved, before or since.
    She swallowed, mouth dry. Was this her fate as well?
    Then so be it.
    She whipped the knife in her left hand underhanded and watched it bite deeply into the eye of the Blood who’d spoken. His smirk exploded in a spray of blood. With a full-throated scream, she snatched the bow and arrow from her back.
    Triphon’s roar joined her cry, and he flew at the Bloods who’d first attacked him. She spun to face the new arrivals, dropped to one knee, notched an arrow, and sent it into one of the three who were now running from the same direction she’d come. A second and a third arrow, in rapid succession.
    Her arrows found bodies but failed to take down two of the Bloods.
    Jordin faced a critical decision. They’d have to split the Bloods—surrounded, they stood no chance. She’d have to deal with the two approaching from the rear, but she also had to find a way past the line beyond Triphon.
    She let a final arrow fly toward the two Bloods sprinting for her, already bringing their blades to bear. They seemed utterly oblivious to the threat of death—what was death to the dead?
    Without waiting to see her arrow find its mark, she twisted and came to her feet. Five arrows left.
    She strung one on the fly and started forward, angling left. Triphon had taken down one of two Bloods he had engaged and was lunging at the other like a bull. If she could break through the line of Dark Bloods between them and the wasteland beyond, forcing them into two fronts, they’d still have a chance.
    The ten had become twelve, all at a full run fifty paces distant and closing, thinner on the left than the right.
    “Split them!” she cried and tore forward, shooting as she ran. She sent four arrows into the three warriors farthest to her left without precision, only caring that she stalled them enough to break past them.
    One arrow left. She flung her bow over her back and ran at a full sprint toward the two stumbling on her far left. She had to reach them. Get one of their swords, engage from behind. It was the only way.
    But that way was cut short by a terrible sound behind her. A wet
thunk
followed by a sick
grunt
.
    The
thunk
she knew to be a blade cutting deep into flesh. It was the
grunt
that made her start. She knew the voice.
    Jordin twisted her head back. Triphon had killed the two Bloods he’d set upon, but a third had reached him from behind. Her arrow hung from the Blood’s side, but it hadn’t put him down.
    Triphon’s arms were thrown wide; his grimacing face tilted to the sky.
    A sword protruded from his chest.
    Jordin pulled up hard, stunned. The night stalled, ripped beyond the boundaries of time. Triphon was severed nearly in two, held up only by the Dark Blood whose sword was buried in his