Emerging Legacy Read Online Free

we’ve
decided we can spare one of you.”
    Spare one of us...?
    Suddenly, Kelyn understood. Spare the profit, leaving the slavers free to use and discard an unlucky youth. She gave the others
a panicked glance, seeing her friends drugged, seeing Gwawl still tightly tied,
knowing herself to be no closer to freedom.
    But she had her staff. The staff that supported her on the
trail, that saved her from bruises when her pack mates picked up their own
casually acquired quarterstaffs and set to causing trouble, that protected her
from the attack of everything from unexpected rock fall to irate predators. And
if her clumsy feet were tied, they weren’t drugged, either.
    The leader reached for Frykla.
    Clumsy Kelyn.
    Their only chance.
    Their last chance.
    Kelyn cast her self-doubts aside and exploded upward in
front of her friend, staff whirling deftly in spite of tied hands — and when the
men laughed, she planted one end of the staff and cast herself around it,
slamming her feet into one barrel chest, knocking the man into his buddy. She
landed in a crouch, lifting the weighted end of the staff to sweep it against
the leader’s shins. Down he went with a cry of surprise, turning the slavers
into a tangle of stinking, choi-besotted limbs. The surprise only lasted a
moment — it was long enough for Gwawl to launch himself into the fray, loop his
arms over one man’s head to jam the tight ropes against his throat and pull the
man back onto himself.
    Gwawl might have been smaller than the slaver, and he might
well have trouble breathing beneath the man — but the slaver was now his shield,
and both the other men immediately turned to Kelyn.
    She grinned at them, a fierce grin, and unleashed the
ululating hunt cry that until now had only echoed through the mountains in
practice — the cry that declared her prowess and confidence and intent. She didn’t
wait for their move — she leaped at them, her stance as wide as she could manage
in the ropes, and she turned the staff into her shield, whirling it so quickly
it became nothing more than a blur. “ I’ve decided,” she snarled. “We
can’t spare any of us — but we can spare all of you .”
    One of the slavers snarled right back at her. “You bi — ”
    That’s when Kelyn heard it. Another snarl altogether, deep
and throaty and full of menace. She glanced at Gwawl, protected under his
choking human shield, and she dove for the overhang, miscalculating enough to
land right on top of her befuddled pack mates. “Down,” she said to them as
they tried to heave her off. “Down, down, down .”
    They stayed down. Kelyn twisted to look back to the
clearing as a huge shadow passed before the overhang. A great webbed paw
slapped one man, a hind paw scraped across the man on top of Gwawl, and the
immense dappled white rock cat snatched the leader up in his jaws and bounded
right out of the clearing.
    Silence.
    Kelyn sat up; the others disentangled themselves. Gwawl
pulled his arms free and dragged himself out from beneath the dead weight of
the equally dead man atop him, and crawled over to join the others. The fire
had been kicked to sparks; night was nearly upon them.
    But the slavers were gone. The hunt pack was free.
    Gwawl looked at her and murmured approvingly, “It takes more
than brawn to make a powerful hunter...or warrior. And anyway, you saved the
clumsy for last.”
    Kelyn moved quickly out into the clearing, using the last
bit of fading light to grab knives from the slavers, and to snatch up the meat
scattered beside the dead fire. She gave Gwawl one of the knives and they went
to work on the ropes. She glanced at their stuporous pack mates. “Will they
even remember what happened?”
    Gwawl grunted as his ankle ropes parted, and stretched his
legs with pleasure. “Who knows? Does it matter?”
    “No,” Kelyn said, settling in for a long night of huddling
beneath the overhang to watch over her drugged friends, guarding against the
return of the rock