Spirit Gate

by Kate Elliott

She shifted. The feel of her body, helpless in his grasp and moving against him, got him going again, burning and full. She sensed it, and twitched her buttocks right up against his groin until he groaned and begged her to stop, or let him land and have done, they could just find a clearing and land and no one would be the wiser.

  “Oh. Oh, no,” she said with a laugh as Tumna found a draft and rode it up. “This is amazing! You know, you can’t serve the Merciless One if you’re too hasty. How I despise men who are hasty. Surely you aren’t going to be one of those? I thought you were strong enough to take your time.”

  “I’m strong. I’ve bided my time this long, haven’t I?” He was sweating so much that beads ran down to sting in his eyes.

  “Bided your time in Argent Hall? It’s true, Marshal Yordenas is a slimy worm. I didn’t like him, and I’ll tell you something in confidence. If you promise not to say.”

  Then she did it a second time, and it was killing him with his trousers so tight and nothing to be done up here, and Tumna slipping out of the updraft into a glide over the trees, the first real height the eagle had gotten so he daren’t land now and lose all that effort. Best keep his mind on other things.

  “I promise not to say. I hate Yordenas. Always have. Arrogant sneering bastard.”

  “He really is a worm. He’s got a limp prick.”

  “Heh! No. Truly?”

  “Truly. No milk in him, I’m telling you. What a disappointment! But I can tell you’re nothing like that. You’re as full a man as I’ve snuggled up to in a long while. Tell you what.”

  It was hard to talk because he was so horribly aroused between the smell and shape of her and knowing he was going to get something Yordenas couldn’t have. It was like the sun shining right in your eyes, blinding you. It was agony. “Ah. Ah. What?”

  “Look at that view!”

  He could see the view anytime. It was the view of her that was something new.

  She went on breathlessly. “Let’s see your message delivered, and us on our way back to Olossi with enough time in the day, and I have an idea about how to get those trousers off you while we’re still in the air. Want to try it?”

  Just thinking of it was almost enough to push him over the edge. “The hells. What do you think?”

  She laughed. “Careful, now. You don’t want to be spilling your milk too soon, do you? Here, now. Tell me a story.”

  “Don’t know any stories.”

  “Tell me about where you grew up.”

  “Nothing to tell.”

  “You got to be a reeve. That must be something to tell.”

  “Not much. I hated the village I grew up in. It was full of prating, mewling farmers and foresters and carters who would go on and on about what we owed the gods, and good manners, and where I should serve my apprentice year when all I wanted to do was serve the Thunderer, and how a man ought to behave when that wasn’t what I wanted at all and I didn’t see what business it was of theirs to be telling me what to do!”

  “They’re like that at the temple, too, the old bitches. Always ordering a person about.”

  “Heh. Yeh. Then there was some trouble over the headman’s daughter and the rights to the best parcel of land, but of course they would all plot against me, so after I—well, anyway, after that I left and walked all the way to High Haldia. I’d heard a man could get work in their militia, and I don’t mind saying I was strong enough to do their kind of work. I was good with a staff, always was, ever since a boy, and good with a bow, did a lot of hunting along the river when I was a lad. That’s all even though they wouldn’t let me serve my apprentice year with Kotaru, but I showed them by thrashing every one of those who did, in all the villages nearby. But anyway, they didn’t take kindly to me in High Haldia, for their captain was jealous of how good I was with the staff, better than any of his men, although of course he wouldn’t admit to it and had to spew some other such vomit about why I wasn’t fit for their puny little militia. I thought I’d have to work felling trees again, which wasn’t to my liking, I’ll tell you, even though a man has to eat, but it came about that a consortium of merchants was looking for guardsmen to accompany a caravan upriver to Seven and up the Steps to Teriayne. That wasn’t bad duty, even though the caravan master was a real prick about everything and let me go as soon as we reached Seven. I spent a while there doing this and that. One thing led to another, and next I knew I was sent with a supply train up to Iron Hall and after that Tumna chose me. That was a surprise! I showed them, didn’t I?”

  “You showed who?”

  “All those who said I wouldn’t amount to anything. But I showed them!” He was juiced, the words flowing into that sympathetic ear, and the story of his many grievances at Iron Hall tumbled out as Tumna labored upriver parallel to West Track. How the arms master had picked on him, and made fun of him in front of the others, just because the man didn’t like that one time he had gotten in past his guard and scored a hit to his shoulder. How that hireling girl had told him off when he’d made her an offer, and damned if anyone would speak to him that way, but he’d shown her, hadn’t he? You didn’t treat a man with so little respect and expect him just to walk away. How he’d gotten passed over when it came time to appoint a new wing leader, which ought by rights to have gone to him but after all the marshal had favored that bitch of a northerner out of the high country, probably because she was milking him not because she was anything special as a reeve even if the rest of them did sing her praises just because she had a creamy way of talking sweet to them all. And then she’d pretended to be kind and sorry afterward, the way you would scratch a dog’s head when it was whining, not that he ever whined even when he got cut the short end of the stick. Anyway, it wasn’t his fault that man assaulted him. You didn’t have to take that kind of nasty shit-talk from common farmers just because you were a reeve and ordained to keep the peace, as the veterans were always droning on about. Reeves ought to be treated with respect and not shoved and cursed at and called rude names. So it wasn’t his fault that the man had pushed too far, and he’d retaliated with perfectly reasonable force. Not his fault at all, no matter what anyone else said. They were overreacting, just because the man died when after all it was his own bad temper that had done him in. You’d think they would have taken that into account, but it always seemed the marshal—everyone, for that matter—weighed in against him whenever there was trouble.

  “You’ve an eloquent way of telling your tale,” she said. “I do feel I know you better now. How do you like it at Argent Hall?”

  “It’s a little better,” he said grudgingly. “There’s a good group of reeves there who have taken a liking to me, but I must say that Marshal Yordenas is a disappointment. He’s weak. Too puffed up with his own importance. If the lord commander hadn’t appointed him marshal, he’d never have risen so far.”

  “The Commander of Clan Hall? Appointed Yordenas as marshal? I thought reeves elected their own hall marshal—Oh . . . of course, I’d forgotten about the lord commander’s part in all this.”

  “Hard to see how you could overlook it, considering this is his army.” Because he had a sharp gaze honed from years as a reeve, he gestured to make sure she saw the sight coming into view where West Track cut across open country. “There they are. Tumna usually would cover this distance faster than she did today. That’s about two days’ march we’ve covered just since midday. I don’t want you to think she’s like other eagles, she’s much better, but the weight slowed her down.”

  Her body tensed, but there was nothing sexual about the way she felt against him now.

  “What?” he asked suspiciously. “What’s wrong?”

  She relaxed, and gave that twitch against his groin that made him suck in breath between clenched teeth, thinking of how hard it was to wait to devour her.

  “I just didn’t expect so many,” she said.

  From the height, it was an impressive sight as Tumna circled in to seek a landing site. It was the only army Horas had ever se
en, certainly, although he understood that the northern army being fielded was twice this size, the one they were going to throw against Toskala and Nessumara after they finished off the city of High Haldia. The vanguard was out of sight where woodland concealed the road, but the body of the beast stretched a fair way back with men marching in ranks of six with six abreast, each of these cadres separated from the next by a banner and sergeant, and three such sergeants to a company with its triple banners and captain, and six companies to a cohort, each cohort assigned a marshal and badge according to the taste and whim of their commander. Six cohorts had been sent against Olossi, although the mounted Flying Fours had been split into foraging groups, one of which was riding two days ahead as their strike force while the rest were split into cadres and subcadres roaming up and down the road, scouting or probing out on raids into the nearby countryside.

  “I thought . . .” She paused.

  “You thought what? I’m not stupid, you know.”

  “No, no,” she agreed, resting a hand on his right thigh, right up close to his groin, stroking it just enough to set the flame burning higher. “That’s why I know you can answer me. The one thing I’ve never understood. What’s in it for Olossi’s council?”

  “The hells. You are just a Devouring girl, aren’t you? More tits than brains.”

  She giggled, and gave another of those killing twitches. “Is that what they say about us Devouring girls?”

  “Not most people. Most people would give me a good scolding for you know how they will blab on about the duty we owe to the gods and how we each serve and how every service maintains the balance and the many streams that flow in the world. But I say, who would serve the Devourer and give for free what they could be getting coin for, if they didn’t want a lot of filling up of what’s otherwise empty? Eh?”

  She laughed, genuinely amused, and for an instant he was furious, thinking she was laughing at him somehow, and then he realized that of course she was agreeing with him.

  “A lot of filling up, you like that, don’t you?” He pumped against her buttocks, wishing they weren’t both clothed although in fact that kilt and vest she was wearing didn’t cover much.

  “I do like a real man filling me up, that’s true. But I so rarely meet one. I guess Olossi’s council will be getting the same treatment, eh?”

  “Not at all. Heh. They’re getting nothing. They just think they’re getting a good milk, but they’ll just get a stiff shaft and nothing to show for it, which is all they deserve. ‘Greed makes of men rank fools.’ ”

  “So it does. Whoo-ah!” She actually gripped his hips, tensing with fear, as Tumna came down fast to land with a bump and a thump in the grass close beside the road. Then she laughed.

  The soldiers kept marching. They had long since learned to ignore the reeves who came and went. Horas ran his hands up and down her lithe body while he still had her hitched against him, but here damn it anyway came a captain wearing the lord commander’s colors riding right toward them, on a mission, just as he was. He unhooked her, and she sidled fast out of reach of Tumna’s beak, not that the eagle would do anything to her if he didn’t command it done. Tumna was strong, and that mattered, but she was balky and slow to obey, and her balkiness had gotten worse over the years, worse luck for Horas, who never seemed to get much good fortune come his way although the Devouring girl stood there waiting to see what he wanted her to do, with a dumb, expectant look on her face that got him all hot and bothered again just as the captain rode up and halted at a prudent distance and looked them over.

  “Reeve Horas?”

  “Eh, yeh. Captain Mani. Who do I report to today?”

  “Who’s that?” asked the captain with an ugly frown and a curt tone.

  “No need to bark at me like that!”

  The captain gave him a look that Horas wanted to scrape right off his face, but he held his temper in while the captain gave the girl a second look. “Who’s that? And why’s she here?”

  She raised both hands palm-up in the manner of a pilgrim come to worship at the temple. “I’m the Devouring girl hired on by Marshal Yordenas at Argent Hall. Maybe you heard of me.”

  “I didn’t,” said the captain.

  “It’s a long story,” she said with a lazy smile, “but maybe we can talk about it at length, later.”

  “Hey!” objected Horas. “You’re mine!”

  She had a way of lifting her eyebrows that made him feel he was already in the saddle. He flushed.

  “I belong to the Devourer,” she said.

  “I’m not interested,” said Captain Mani. “Except in what you’re doing here.”

  She shrugged. “Marshal Yordenas of Argent Hall set me to kill a reeve out of Clan Hall who came nosing around. But the reeve got away, so I was out on West Track looking for him when Reeve Horas here found me on the road and kindly let me know that the Olossi council had already caught the reeve and put him in their dungeon. So I asked for a lift back to Olossi.”

  “To do him in?” asked the captain.

  “If need be. I like it said that I finish what I start. Reeve Horas offered me a lift to Olossi, and I took it. Naturally, it meant I had to come on this part of the errand first.”

  The captain turned his stare on Horas. “I suppose you hoped to peel and pound the nai root on the side, eh? On your way back to Argent Hall and Olossi?”

  “None of your business what’s done in the hand of the Devourer!” How these tight-lipped bastards made him want to slug their sneering faces!

  Captain Mani shook his head with a grimace of disgust. “Keep it in the temple, then. That’s where it belongs. Move sharp. The lord commander saw you come in and is wanting your report.”

  That shrank him down to size. The lord commander was not a nice man, or a patient one. Not that Horas was afraid of anyone or anything, but still, the lord commander wasn’t to be kept waiting.

  “All right, then. She can wait here under guard of Tumna.”

  “I’d like a drink and a bite to eat if there’s anything to be had,” she said, with a sly smile, probably thinking to earn a little coin with a few quick milkings while he was off giving his report.

  “She’ll come along where I can keep an eye on her,” said the captain. For once, Horas figured this was a man who would keep his hands dry.

  “All right,” he said grudgingly. He commanded Tumna to stay. With a downcast gaze, the woman followed as he slogged over sun-bleached, heat-dried grass toward the road, keeping pace with Captain Mani. They didn’t speak. A drum rattled out a rhythm, repeated twice, and the beat was echoed in both directions up and down the line. Soldiers faltered, and came to a halt, then set down their weapons and made themselves comfortable on the road. They drank, chewed, lay back to nap, and there a quartet formed a square and began rolling dice. Men did stare at the Devouring girl as they crossed the road and pushed into the forest on the other side. Some even licked their lips. It was good to know men envied you for what you had. He thought of slapping her on the butt where everyone could see, but then Captain Mani gave him such a look that next thing he knew his hand was in a fist and it took all his control not to punch the thin-lipped bastard.

  The first rank of trees beyond the road were growth come back after an initial felling, not yet sturdy enough for heavy building. Past this strip of woodland lay open ground stretching all the way to the river’s edge, which was here steep because of the way the swift-running current cut under the land. Downstream, a herd of horses had been loosed to graze. Closer, cloth had been strung between trees as a roof, and gauzy curtains hung to make walls that undulated as the breeze groped them.

  “Stay out here,” said Captain Mani to the Devouring girl. “Reeve, go in, as you’ve been commanded.”

  He looked at the woman, but she was staring toward the horses with eyes narrowed and mouth pursed tight just like all those women when they told him to go milk himself. He hated that look. The captain coughed sharply, and he hurried over to the enclosure a
lthough it didn’t seem there was a door, only places where curtains overlapped, allowing entry if you fingered them aside and slipped between them. The grass here by the river was still moist and green, curling around his knees. The thin curtains curled around him as well, as he pushed the cloth away from his face and found himself in the shade facing the lord commander.

  The lord commander was an attractive man with a northern look to him, a light-brown complexion, broad cheekbones, and dark-brown eyes with lashes as long and pretty as a girl’s. His beard and mustache had a trim look to them, not a touch of gray, and his black hair was braided in three loops. Mostly, Horas noticed the rich cut of his clothes, the kind of things a reeve could never afford. Best-quality wide trousers were tied over a colorless silk shirt so fine it seemed to shimmer. Over the shirt he wore a sleeveless, knee-length jacket the same dark blue as the trousers and embroidered in the same color thread down the front, the kind of decoration rich men wore to show they had the money to pay a craftsman to do painstaking work that most people would never come close enough to notice. Thrown over all this was a gold cloak so light and fine that he boiled with envy. When would he ever possess such fine things? It wasn’t fair.

  The lord commander stood beside a table on which a long map had been unrolled, weighted at the edges with cunning ivory carvings the like of which only rich men could afford. He was speaking to four underlings, punctuating his comments by tapping on the map with an arrow.

  “The march on Olossi is our first volley into the south. If you deliver the town to us, then we’ll see about your reward. But from today, you captains are on your own with this campaign. We have to return to the north by the end of the day. There’s too much going on there, more resistance than we expected at High Haldia—”

  He broke off as Horas walked into his line of sight. With a sweeping, scornful gaze and a harsh frown, he took the reeve’s measure.

  “You’re from Argent Hall. I expected you sooner. What’s your report?”

  The lord commander had the kind of power that made you tuck your head even though to be spoken to in that way really made a man want to growl back. Horas hated the way he sounded when he replied, like a squeaking boy caught licking sugar cakes by the meanest of his aunties.