Mask of Dragons Read Online Free Page B

party. 
    “What now?” muttered Adalar. The last thing they needed was to start quarreling amongst themselves.
    He hurried towards Sigaldra before the confrontation could erupt into violence. 
     
    ###
     
    Sigaldra wanted to raise her bow and shoot someone. She would have settled for the pompous boy of a knight on his horse in front of her. 
    She was so angry.
    Not specifically at Sir Rufus Highgate, though he did annoy her. The anger never left her for a moment, not since she had departed Greatheart Keep with what few fighting men the remnants of the Jutai nation could muster. 
    The Prophetess had taken her sister.
    They had taken Liane, scatter-brained, solemn Liane. Liane, who had the power of the Sight, which was the reason why the wretched sorceress who called herself the Prophetess had taken her. 
    Liane, who was the only family Sigaldra had left in the world. 
    They were all dead, all the others. Her mother, dead of exhaustion long before the Jutai had left the middle lands with the Tervingi. Her brothers, slain in battle against the Malrag hordes that had slaughtered the holds of the Jutai one by one. Her father Theodoric, the last hrould of the Jutai, killed battling a balekhan of the Malrags. Their ashes rested in her family’s ancestral urn in Greatheart Keep. 
    One day, Sigaldra had thought that Liane would add her ashes to that urn. She had thought that Liane, or maybe Liane’s children, would place Sigaldra’s body upon the pyre and add her ashes to her family urn, mingled with the rest of her ancestors. 
    Instead, Liane was gone, taken by the Prophetess and her champion, and Sigaldra would die alone and forgotten…
    The rage blazed through her. 
    No. She would get Liane back. Sigaldra would find the Prophetess and kill her. She would save Liane from whatever miserable fate the Prophetess intended for her, and bring her back safely to Greatheart Keep. Sigaldra would save her sister, no matter what she had to do, no matter who she had to kill.
    And right now, this idiot boy of a knight was in her way. 
    “Are you deaf?” said Sigaldra. 
    “I assure you, madam, that my hearing is quite sound,” said Rufus. 
    “Splendid,” said Sigaldra. “Then you know that you cannot camp out here. We are laying an ambush for the valgasts. If you camp outside of the ring, you will be alone and vulnerable when the valgasts strike.”
    Rufus shook his head. He was handsome enough for a boy, but she wanted to smack that look of annoyance right off his face. “I will not.” 
    “Why not?” said Sigaldra, trying not to grind her teeth. 
    “My baggage contains many valuable items,” said Rufus. “I will not camp amidst the others, where thievery is likely rife. For that matter,” he waved a hand at the mounted men behind him, who looked at Sigaldra with thinly-veiled contempt, “my men require pasturage for their horses, who need to graze. We will camp some distance from your…arrangement,” he glanced at the ring of pavilions, “while we await Lord Mazael.” 
    “Lord Mazael left me in command here until his arrival,” said Sigaldra, “and I say that you shall camp in the ring with the others.”
    Rufus hesitated, glanced at his followers, and then looked back at her. “When Lord Mazael arrives, he can make his wishes in the matter clear. Until then, woman, I advise you to mind your own concerns.” 
    “Woman?” said Vorgaric, tapping the scarred steel head of his hammer against his callused palm. “You had best speak to the holdmistress of the Jutai with a bit more respect, boy.”
    Rufus hesitated, and one of the knights behind him scowled.
    “Boy?” said the knight. “The son and heir of Lord Robert Highgate will not endure such impudence from a barbarian wild woman and her collection of elderly cripples.” 
    Sigaldra’s eyes narrowed, and she might have ordered something she would regret, but Adalar’s voice cut into the confrontation. 
    “Sir Rufus, welcome!” said Adalar,