by Sara King
Twisting as far as she could in Dragomir’s grip, Victory saw Whip standing beside the brute, staring at her as if she’d grown tentacles from her nose. Then she realized that a good portion of both thighs and part of her rear was showing, where Dragomir’s hand had been caressing it. Blushing furiously, Victory did her best to tug the shift back down to her knees, as much as she could while hindered by the steel-plated arm that held her.
“We weren’t doing anything!” she cried in Imperial. Then, flushing harder, she amended, “I mean, he was accosting me! Didn’t you see it?”
Whip, who has always been more softspoken than her sisters-in-arms, lowered her head with a small grin playing on her lips. “Glad to see you feeling better, Princess.”
“This was his doing!” Victory cried, slapping the brute on his muscular chest. Then, in the native tongue, she snapped, “Let me up! Now! Before I pound your kidneys into pudding!”
Dragomir sighed and released her. “You’ve got about the best timing on the planet, Thor,” he growled, getting up. “The polite thing to do would’ve been to turn the hell around and go back home.”
Thor snorted. “I would have, but this one, here,” he tugged Whip’s chain, “wanted to make sure all those weird sounds her very good friend, here, was making weren’t somehow caused by you smothering her to death with your mouth.”
Victory blushed harder and started wiping the hair back from her face, smoothing down her shift as she tried very hard to ignore the stare that Whip was giving her.
Dragomir grunted and retrieved his horse. “How is she…” He gave Whip a wary glance. “…holding up?”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure she’d rip my eyes out of their sockets, if she had her hands free, but other than that, she’s been pleasant enough.” Thor gave Whip a knowing grin, and Whip narrowed her eyes at him but said nothing. Turning back to Dragomir, he said, “So where were you two headed before…uh…?” He gestured at the muddy patch of ground.
“The market,” Dragomir growled. “The wench ate my breakfast this morning.”
Thor’s eyes widened. “Uh-oh, wench.” Thor gave Victory a serious look. “Don’t mess with his food. He gets cranky.”
“Call me a ‘wench’ again and you’ll lose a testicle, you musclebound oaf,” Victory snapped.
Thor raised both brows at her. “Feisty little thing, isn’t she?” If he thought it strange she could speak flawless Native Barbarian, he never mentioned it. Victory narrowed her eyes, looking first at Thor, then at Whip, who remained quite thoroughly helpless despite a very docile attitude.
“You told him,” she cried.
“Of course,” Dragomir said, throwing the reins over the horse’s head and leading the smelly beast over to her. “He’s my brother. You think I would I drop a Praetorian on my brother without so much as an, ‘oh, by the way…’?”
“It’s my life!” Victory cried.
Dragomir shrugged. Thor, for his part, seemed to be looking her over, analyzing her the same way someone would inspect a business partner of dubious intent. “So you fix her yet?” Thor asked. “She certainly looks a bit more…relaxed…than she was when she got here.”
Victory choked, even as Dragomir chuckled. “Just one, brother.”
“Her core,” Thor said flatly.
Dragomir actually got a sheepish look.
“Gods,” Thor said. “There are entire levels of hell for what you’re doing.”
“It was an accident!” Dragomir cried. It was the first time Victory had heard the big man get defensive. “She had a spark and I wanted to, uh…”
“…let it out to play?” Thor suggested.
Dragomir shoved a big finger at his brother. “You mind your own damn business. I said I’d heal her. How I go about it’s up to me.” He shoved past Thor, dragging horse, goat, and human along with him.
“Do you want me to kill him, milady?” Whip called, her voice utterly pleasant.
At this point, Victory would have been happy with a decent pair of shoes. “Just keep your head low, do as your told,” Victory said. “Perhaps you can lull the oaf into doing something stupid.”
“Already my plan, mistress,” her Praetorian said, bobbing her head and smiling like they were talking about bunny rabbits and rainbows. “Perhaps we can add the brother to your collection. He is quite…” she looked up at Thor, considering. “…Pleasing to the eye, milady,” she finished.
Victory laughed, delighted. “What a wonderful idea. Perhaps we can teach them to carry a sedan chair.”
Whip’s smile was genuine. “A matched set, milady.” She beamed up at Thor, nodding.
Victory giggled.
“Don’t pretend you weren’t just discussing how to kill me,” Dragomir said, eying her over his shoulder.
“No, something much worse,” Victory said. She gave him a measuring glance. “Just how much can you lift, anyway?”
Dragomir shrugged. “Two-fifty easy enough, though I can get three and a half off the ground if I have t—” He stopped, giving her a suspicious frown. “Why?”
Snickering, Victory said, “No reason.” To Whip, she said, “They would be perfect.”
“We could hitch them to a cart and dress them in thongs,” Whip said.
Victory scoffed. “Thongs?” Smiling at Dragomir, she said, “Why waste the material?”
“Their talking is making me nervous,” Thor said. “I think I’m gonna go sit down here a few minutes, let you two go on ahead.”
“Agreed,” Dragomir said. “I will see you at dinner?”
“That was the idea.”
A minute later, they were out of earshot, plodding along beside Dragomir’s huge black horse. Irritated, given no other real alternative, Victory trudged along behind the goat, falling into a morose silence. Dragomir tried several times to initiate some form of conversation, but Victory ignored him utterly, waiting for the moment when her brother and his armada would drop from the sky to ruin his morning.
Dragomir eventually stopped trying, and they walked in silence back to the little cluster of sod-and-stone hovels huddled together along the river feeding out of the valley. Off to one side, there was a smaller cluster of blankets and tables spread out on the ground, with people sitting around them doing various chores like knitting, weaving, carving…
Dragomir went right to the tiny cluster of blankets and stopped at a young boy sitting beside a cluster of cages. Inside the cages were various fowl, mostly unattractive shades of reds and browns.
“I need laying hens, Fell,” Dragomir told the boy. “How many you give for a good milk goat?”
The boy—he couldn’t have been more than six or seven—got out of his chair and came over to walk around the goat, eying it thoughtfully. “She’s in milk right now?”
“Just milked her this morning,” Dragomir said.
“Five hens,” the boy Fell said.
Dragomir snorted and started walking to another blanket.
“Ten,” the boy cried. “And rights to breed her back to a buck of our choice in the fall.”
“Twelve,” Dragomir said, “And I get to keep a doeling if there’s twins.”
“You keep a doeling, we’ll expect a dozen hatching eggs back in the spring.”
“Fine,” Dragomir said. He handed over the goat’s lead. While the boy was tying the goat to his chair, Dragomir started lashing chicken cages to his horse.
Victory’s mouth fell open as she watched the exchange. Never in her life had she suspected that children of that age could make financial decisions, let alone hold his own in a bartering exchange.
“Mom’s gonna want the cages back,” the boy said, coming to help the Emp.
“Have her send one of you boys over tomorrow,” Dragomir said. “Maybe another twelve hens, if she’s thinkin’ of starting her own herd.”
The boy’s brown eyes grew suspicious. “You gettin’ into the poultry business?”
“No,” Dragomir chuckled. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, indica
ting Victory. “I just found myself with two more mouths to feed, both of whom refuse to eat goat.”
The boy seemed to see Victory for the first time. He gave her a disapproving look. “Won’t eat goat? What’s wrong with her?”
“A lot, actually.” Dragomir shrugged.
The boy grunted and helped him finish packing the chickens. “Could always sell her. I hear they get good money for slaves in the cities.”
“Could probably buy a whole herd of goats,” Dragomir agreed. He looked back over his shoulder at Victory. “Or maybe even a cow.”
Victory felt her face flush and she looked away.
But the boy snorted. “I was thinking five or six cows. Enough to get yourself settled, if you can keep ‘em alive through the winter.”
Still looking at Victory, Dragomir said, “I’ll have to think on it. They cause me much more trouble, though, and I’m going to have to start making other arrangements.”
“How ‘bout I arrange for you to pull a cart,” Victory said in Mandarin, meeting his eyes glare-for-glare. “Minus the thong.”
Dragomir frowned at her.
Once the chickens were packed, the boy patted Thunder appreciatively on the rump. His gaze, however, was nervous when he looked back up at Dragomir. “Mom’ll probably send Rachel over with the mule. She’s been sick real bad. Bad cough. Having trouble breathing. We’ve been kinda hopin’ you’d take a look at her, but Mom didn’t wanna intrude, seein’ how you just got captured by the Imperium and all…”
Dragomir frowned. “Send her over tonight.”
Relief flooded the boy’s face. “I’ll go tell Mom you said so. It’ll take a couple hours to get Rachel wrapped up and on the cart.”
“The cart?” Dragomir asked. “Is she really that bad?”
The boy Fell bit his lip, and Victory saw fear play across his honest face. “The gal next door said she thought Rachel was gonna die yesterday. She’s doing better now, but she can’t really move much.”
The Emp glanced off in the direction of the river. “I’ve got to say a few words to the weaver first, but wait for me and I’ll just go with you now. You or your brothers can come get your cages anytime.”
The boy babbled his thanks and started packing up the remains of his tiny impromptu shop into the back of a mule-drawn cart.
Looking disturbed, Dragomir led his chicken-laden horse and his barefoot princess back through the cluster of huts, stopping outside a hovel that was a bit larger than the others, rivaling Dragomir’s own for size. There was a small, weather-worn blanket hanging beside the front door that proclaimed in faded black letters, WEEVUR. Victory snorted. Peasants, she thought.
Beside the sign was a rocking chair with some odd contraption sitting in front of it, wrapped in what looked like primitive yarn.
Inside, Victory heard the sounds of an argument.
Frowning, Dragomir wrapped the reins of his horse around the T-shaped post out front, then ducked inside, giving Victory no option but to follow.
A big man had a tiny woman pinned against a wall, trapping her on both sides with big palms pressed flat against the stone behind her. “Get off of me!” she screamed, straining to get around his arms and failing. “Please. I’ve got friends.”
The man was chuckling, his voice low and husky as he said, “Oh, come on, sweets. Everybody knows you ain’t got a man…”
Dragomir crossed the living-room in two steps, grabbed the fellow by the back of the neck, and yanked him off of the woman. Completing his turn, he whipped around and sent him crashing into the opposite room, spilling a table of colorful yarn in the process.
“He a friend of yours, Dora?” Dragomir asked, watching as the man got to his feet with a roar.
The woman against the wall, seeing Dragomir, let out a relieved sob and scurried behind him. “Thank you,” she babbled. “He’s a resistance fighter, passing through. He’s been here before, but this is the first time he caught me alone…” Across the room, the man righted himself and picked up a broken chair leg, snarling.
“You better leave,” Dragomir growled as the big man approached, the makeshift weapon in his white-knuckled fist. “Now.”
“I don’t think you know who you’re dealing with, man,” the man growled. “The lady offered her services. I paid. I was taking what I was owed.”
Then, as the man stepped into the light, Victory saw it. She remembered the same exact sneer, as he humped her helpless body in the mud and cold. She gasped and backed to the very end of her chain. When it went taut, she crouched low and wrapped her arms around her ankles, fighting the images that were pounding upwards into her consciousness from the Void deep below.
She caught Dragomir’s eyes flicker towards her, a tiny frown on his face, before he glanced back at the man with the club.
“Dora is a weaver, not a whore,” Dragomir said. “Whatever she sold you, you obviously mistook her intent.”
“I’m a fighter for the Cause,” the man growled. “I’m entitled to enjoy myself a little.”
“Where I come from,” Dragomir said coolly, “We string up rapists by the balls and leave them in a tree for the crows to eat.”
The man snorted and gestured at the door with the chair leg. “You think I’m afraid of you? I’m a warrior. And you’re what…” He looked Dragomir up and down, disdain clear in his face. “A farmer?” He laughed. “Get the hell outta here, man. I’ve killed a few hundred Praetorian in my life, and I’d hate to have to scatter your brains across the room.”
“Really?” Dragomir said, cocking his head. “You must be real proud of yourself, then. I’ve only ever killed one.”
The man gave him an uncertain look. “You’re a farmer.”
Dragomir just smiled. “Get out of the woman’s house. Now.”
For a long moment, the man didn’t move. Then, slowly, he lowered the club and made a disgusted sound. “The whore’s probably diseased, anyway.” He threw the weapon aside and started trudging for the door.
He stopped when his eyes met Victory’s. “Holy hells,” he whispered. “You got her?”
“Not sure what you mean,” Dragomir said. Even though he spoke pleasantly, Victory felt him tense.
“We just got done with a raid,” the man said, lust filling his piggish brown eyes. “I’ll give you sixty thousand, cash, for the traitor bitch.”
“That’s a lot of money,” Dragomir admitted. He started helping Dora to right the furniture that had been tossed about in the struggle.
Victory froze at the casual consideration in his voice, every one of her fears suddenly surging into the forefront in a wave. Whimpering, she crawled backwards, away from the man, at the extent of her leash.
“Oh, come on, honey,” the big man cooed, coming towards her. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her onto her feet, shoving her into the wall behind. “Daddy only wants to play.” An instant later, he had jammed his hand up her shift, his clammy fingers gripping a breast. Licking the side of her face, the man said into her ear, “You want me inside you again, don’t you, honey? Just like last time?” She smelled his rotten breath again, overpowering her, and she screamed.
Victory had never seen Dragomir move so fast.
In one instant, the Emp was standing across the room, righting a table, and in the next, he had the man splayed out on the ground outside, face bleeding, eyes glazed, his arms and legs unresponsive, moaning as he tried to get to his feet. Dragomir kicked him again, all but rolling him under the horse.
“You touch either of these two again,” Dragomir snarled, as his big horse danced around the man’s head, “And I’m finding you a length of rope and a good solid tree. Now get the hell out of here.”
The man rolled, groaning, out into the street, then somehow found his feet and, staggering, wove away from the hovel, looking over his shoulder with a look of real fear pinching his bloody face.
Eyes still on the road, Dragomir helped Victory back to her feet and hugged her close, big arms tight around her back. “Y
ou gonna be all right, Princess?” he asked softly, holding her to him. As soon as he said it, Victory felt the warm energy-blanket surrounding her again, and she relaxed into it with a grateful shudder. “You said he’s been here before, Dora?” Dragomir asked, frowning as he watched the man limp away.
“Only ‘bout three times a month,” the weaver said with a grimace. She was still shaking. “Always buys little things, too, like a hat or a pair of socks…kind of like he’s makin’ an excuse, ya know?”
Above Victory, Dragomir’s gaze darkened. He still hadn’t released her from his embrace. “How long he been coming to see you?”
“Three or four months,” Dora said. “Never thought much of it—I’ve always had friends over, before. But now…” She wrapped her arms around herself and looked out over the road with a nervous look.
“I should’ve killed him,” Dragomir growled. “He’ll be back.”
Dora’s eyes widened at the Emp, nervousness in her face. “You can See it?”
“You don’t get au much darker than that,” Dragomir said. The Emp cursed. “I’m a coward. I apologize. I would’ve saved the world a lot of hassle if I’d just quietly finished him and dug him a hole.”
Dora scoffed. “A healer doesn’t kill people.” Then she hesitated, her eyes flickering up and down Dragomir’s big form. “Well,” she amended, “…in their right minds, they don’t kill people. I’ll just find someone to stay with me, ‘round time for his next drop-in. Maybe get one of the Cooper kids to stay with me…”
Dragomir glanced down at Victory, a thoughtful expression on his face. “I actually think I have something that would work even better than that.”
“What?” Dora asked, giving him a suspicious glance. “Look, I told you, Drago, I ain’t sleepin’ with no Emp in my bedroom. No offense, but that stuff gives me the jitters.”
Dragomir heaved a huge sigh. “Don’t worry,” Dragomir said, “It’s someone else. That is, if I can get her to cooperate.” He gave Victory a long look, appearing to be in some sort of mental deliberations, then said, “Go get Thor and tell him what happened. Stay with him for a few hours, until I get back. I’ve gotta go help the Cooper girl. Sounds like she’s got pneumonia or something.”
