The Last Warrior

by Susan Grant

  He yanked it out. Liquid and blood sprayed.

  “Don’t!” Elsabeth was there, a cloud of red hair and wide, angry blue eyes. Hands flat on his shoulders, she pushed him back down to the pillow, her hands warm on his bare flesh, her sweet scent intensified by the sweep of her hair against his jaw. “You pulled the IV out.”

  “IV?”

  “Yes. It’s short for intravenous. It sends medicine directly into your bloodstream.”

  He drew the circle of Uhrth in the center of his chest to ward off bad luck. “Sorcery.”

  “What you’ve been brought up to believe is wrong. We Kurel don’t practice sorcery, or magic. We practice medicine.”

  “Science—” he started to say with distaste then stopped. Keep your head. His response had been automatic, like a reflex. Was it any different than the way the Kurel glared at his army? He and the Kurel might be aligned in their fight with Xim, but sanctuary or not, he was in their custody and at their mercy. Best to give the appearance of behaving and gain their trust.

  In case he needed to break it.

  Elsabeth snatched his wrist to peer at his arm. “You’re bleeding,” she scolded.

  “I was having a dream. An eel was wrapped around my arm…” It all sounded silly now.

  “Science, not sorcery, is the reason you’re alive this morning—with both legs still attached.”

  The tassagators. His legs. Instinctively, he went hunting for them, taking inventory. Two complete limbs. “I’m indeed whole.” He let out a quick amazed laugh. “They seem utterly insufficient words, but thank you, Elsabeth.”

  “Thank Chun. It’s his handiwork.” She smiled, though, at his sincere words.

  He wondered if she was aware how much her rare smiles transformed her face. Capable of taking a man’s breath away, they were. But he held his tongue rather than tell her. Getting to know a Kurel woman required an entirely different protocol than what he was used to. “I am in his debt. And in yours, despite what you say.”

  Xim’s suspicions were accurate about one thing: the dark arts were thriving unchecked in the ghetto. But whatever had been done to Tao, magic or otherwise, it had left him in remarkable condition. His wounds should be throbbing, swelling and have him wracked with fever by now. Every major injury he’d ever suffered came with the sweats. It was expected.

  But not here in K-Town.

  He couldn’t help thinking of how the plague had roared through the capital like a deadly wildfire, taking so many lives, including those of his parents, but no Kurel. These IVs and potions were the reason. But did the benefits justify the crime?

  “I have to treat the wound, Tao.” Holding on to his biceps, the tutor sat down on the mattress, pressing gauze to the crook of his arm. “Hold still.”

  He certainly wasn’t going to run away. Not half-dressed with a very pretty woman sharing his bed, sitting so close he could feel the heat radiating off her body. Her sheer proximity—her scent, her curves, her mouth—commanded his attention, to say the least. But her intentions weren’t sexual. Not even remotely. Her entire focus was devoted to a break in his skin to which he’d not have otherwise spared a second thought.

  Her ivory skin was scrubbed and clean—not like the dancer at the feast with her face paint and heavy lashes, or like the females who frequented the encampments, hard-worn and jaded from having visited too many men’s beds. Nor was she like the daughters of the king’s men or older officers, his father’s contemporaries, who had been introduced to him during his brief returns to the palace over the years. None had conjured in him more than a passing interest. All were now lost in a blur of stilted, boring conversations made while sipping expensive liqueurs and wearing stiff ceremonial uniforms.

  In his defense, he’d been at war and focused on war during those visits, devoted to service to his kingdom and fairly certain he’d not be alive to see the end of it. He hadn’t been looking at any women as marriage candidates, or perhaps he might have viewed them differently, considering each as the possible woman to whom he’d be faithful for the rest of his life, the woman who would share his bed, her body, their children.

  Thoughts of the vineyards filled his mind, the sprawling white house with a ribbon of smoke rising from the chimney, the lush gardens, sounds of song and laughter cascading through the serenity of the hills where he’d live, surrounded by family.

  Never going off to war again.

  The idealistic stuff of daydreams, perhaps, but such dreams had kept him going for countless years through hellish experiences no human should have to suffer, offering solace on the darkest of terrifying nights, when there was none.

  When there were no women like Elsabeth to offer him comfort—or to pluck him from the jaws of death. No woman he’d known would have risked guards, arrows and tassagators to save his sorry ass, nor possessed the courage to try.

  Now she was dabbing ointment inside his elbow. He’d spent less time on a dislocated shoulder. “I am fine,” he assured her as she continued to fuss over him.

  “The smallest wound can kill if infection sets in. I can’t let you die. I won’t. Too much hinges on your life now.”

  Her concern would have been flattering in any other situation, but he knew she only desired to use him to seek vengeance against Xim. He took the gauze from her fingers and tossed it to the table in contempt. “I will not be part of an ill-thought-out power grab.”

  “It’s not ill-thought-out. It’s been three years in the making.”

  “Whom do you hope to install on the throne in Xim’s place?”

  “You,” she said with quiet urgency.

  “What? No, Elsabeth.”

  “Ask Markam. He agrees.”

  Tao remembered all too well the strange conversation he’d had with Markam at the homecoming. The man had been feeling him out, gauging his interest. “Perhaps not ill-thought-out, but just as potentially destabilizing, Elsabeth. For all your passion, you’re hopelessly innocent about the consequences of what you and the other rebels aspire to do.” He girded himself against an onslaught of memories: the screaming in the night, the corpses in the morning. The lingering, nauseating musk. If humans were the enemy instead of the Gorr, the violence would still be nightmarish. And then the Gorr would come, ready to exploit the human civil war.

  He waved away her attempt to wrap a bandage around his elbow. The Kurel and her gratuitous nursing. “I’m fine.”

  She pushed up off the bed, taking the bottle of liquid off its hook and placing it on a low table, stopping the incessant dripping from the end of the tube. The IV. “Chun warned me you’d be a terrible patient. You’d want to be up and about before you’re ready.”

  “In the Hinterlands, if you weren’t up and walking quickly, you’d slow down the others.”

  “Weren’t there camps for healing? Hospitals?”

  “If there were, they’d be Gorr bait. The Furs could smell an injured human from miles away. Their ability to smell blood was one of their most lethal traits.”

  “What were they like, the Gorr? No one will ever talk about them.” She dragged a footstool next to the bed and sat on it.

  “Pray you never have to know. That none of the people here do.”

  Her jaw was harder. “The real answer, Tao. You’ve lived outside the walls, and I…” A lantern on the bedside table illuminated her face, her slender neck. Almost bashfully, she hugged her knees and confessed, “I’ve only dreamed it. I want to know what it’s like out there. And not a made-up version. I can get that from a book.”

  Books. Not only did potions abound in the cottage, but also books and more books. They lined the shelves and were piled on tables, more of every size and color tucked into nooks and crannies everywhere he looked. It was insanity. “What do you do with so many books? What does any Kurel?”

  “We read them. I’ll teach you.”

  He dismissed the idea. “I’ve read a book before.”

  “You,” she said. “You read a book?”

  “And can’
t see the point of doing any more of it. One of my men found one of the things and brought it to my tent.” Tao had sat alone with the old battered book as night fell, rifling through the pages, looking for enlightenment in the indecipherable marks and finding none. Yet, a Kurel like Elsabeth wasn’t satisfied with one book; she required hundreds. “Have you read them all?”

  “Many of them. What ones I haven’t gotten to, I will one day.”

  “Elsabeth, you’d be better off getting out and experiencing what the world has to offer than burying your nose in paper.”

  “There are whole worlds between those covers. Entire universes.” Her eyes grew so dreamy he could almost believe it—if he hadn’t already tried it for himself.

  “What more can be gleaned from ink on paper that a man can’t learn with his own senses?”

  “You tell me. You’ve been out there. Tell me. What lies beyond the walls?” Her voice dropped as she leaned forward, her hair falling forward over her shoulders. “Tell me about the Gorr.”

  He’d never met a female with such interest in venturing outside the walls for no other reason than excitement. The camp followers were with the army, true, but to them it wouldn’t matter where they were as long as they could eke out a living by serving the soldiers.

  “They resemble us in the body, but that’s where any similarities end. They’re covered with fur like a dog’s, and they’re driven by a lust for blood in a mindless, soulless way we humans can’t understand.” He told her of how they preferred to travel in packs and live in caves or in dense brush—their dens—where they hid their young. “Only the alphas in the pack are clever enough to strategize and plan above and beyond basic survival, and they’re the only ones who can breed.”

  “Why would anyone raise young in a war zone?”

  “They saw the Hinterlands as their lands, their home, and we the invaders. To us, a war zone. To them, their home. All a matter of perspective.”

  “To bring children into that kind of world is unconscionable.”

  Tao held his tongue. How the Gorr felt about their children had been immaterial to him.

  Apparently, not to Elsabeth. He could hear the dismay in her voice. She kept talking in the face of his silence. “Since the Gorr don’t differentiate between the helpless and the combatants, I take it your army didn’t, either.”

  “We had to take out the dens. Pups and all.”

  She recoiled. “Are there no rules in war? No laws of decency?”

  “I have no sympathy for these creatures, Elsabeth, as harsh as that seems. They were monsters. Hell-bent on our extinction. The young were just as dangerous, even the smallest pup.” The disconcerting howls in the night came back to haunt him, countless pairs of glowing orbs up in the trees, Gorr waiting, ready to pounce and strike. “Maybe ten percent were alpha, no more, although there seemed to be more of them at the end, after we’d killed off so many of the lesser Gorr. They’d taken up a last-ditch defense of their kind, but it was already too late. If it weren’t for their eyes, we’d have defeated the damned Furs long ago.”

  “Why the eyes?” she asked, hugging her knees.

  “The eyes… They charm you. Be-spell you. If you let them hold your stare, you’ll lose your mind. Many of my men who were killed dropped their weapons willingly and all but asked to die.”

  Her disturbed gaze lingered on his for a moment longer. “Mercy,” she whispered, her expression part horror but more fascination, as if he’d just shared a particularly scary bedtime tale.

  It’s not real to her. Despite Elsabeth’s insistence that she wanted a real answer, to her and to everyone at home it was the same: the Gorr were the stuff of nightmares and old soldiers’ yarns.

  She rose, wiping her hands on her skirt. “I imagine you’re hungry. I made stew.”

  The abrupt change in subject sent awareness of his empty belly careening into him like a fully loaded weapons cart. Why hadn’t he noticed that the cottage was filled with a savory aroma, heavy with spices that all at once smelled foreign and made his stomach growl with hunger? Whatever the Kurel had pumped into his body had done nothing to quell his body’s need for food.

  Elsabeth left his side for a kettle bubbling on an iron stove. Stirring the contents, she lifted a spoon to her lips to taste. “Just right.”

  Long, curling strands of hair hung down her back as she prepared to serve the meal. He fancied he could wrap each lock around a finger and it’d hold its corkscrew shape. Then he pictured that fiery hair tangled and damp from their lovemaking, spread out on a pillow—and her, warm and lush and spread out under him. His loins tightened at the thought.

  A wasted thought. No matter what her ulterior motives were for wanting him healthy, he was certain her hospitality wouldn’t extend that far.

  He pushed up to a sitting position, his head still swimming, and instinctively noted several escape routes—a front and rear door as well as windows—four in this room alone, two pairs of them. A ladder went up one wall. To the roof? The scrape of the spoon against the sides of the kettle mixed with the distant, muffled sound of doves or pigeons. The soft, mournful sound magnified the silence. It was nearing morning, but the ghetto was still asleep.

  Crutches were propped against the wall closest to his bed, but he’d soon be walking without aid. He had to be. Those he’d left behind in the palace needed him as much as Xim needed some sense knocked into him. For the king to think that he—a man he’d known since childhood, his top military officer and his brother-in-law—lusted after the Tassagonian throne, to believe it enough to have him killed, it was madness.

  So much for Tao’s dreams for a quiet retirement.

  Elsabeth carried two bowls to his bed, one for him, which she placed on a tray in his lap, another for herself. She sat on a footstool dragged close to his bed. “The elders will have to be told you’re hiding here. It’s up to them to decide if you can stay. If I keep your presence a secret, I could be banished.” She paused in the middle of stirring her stew. “I’ve invited the elders to dinner. Tonight.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  “You have to make a good impression.”

  “Don’t worry. I will.” Tao glanced around for a crust of bread, or a hand-plank with which to shovel the stew into his mouth, but a delicate little spoon was all he had at hand, the same kind Elsabeth was using. He picked it up, pinching it between his two fingers. “Silly thing. Almost useless.”

  “It’s a spoon.” She said it as if she thought him unbelievably backward for questioning it.

  “I know. But look at it. How can a man expect to get enough to eat?”

  “Our men do just fine eating with utensils.”

  “Your men read books and work with numbers—and treat wounds with potions. They don’t expend enough energy to need more food than they can eat with…this.” He scowled at the little spoon. Still, he could not afford to be put outside the ghetto gates, or cause Elsabeth to suffer the same fate. I must learn to adapt to the ways of my hosts. He dredged the utensil through his stew, only to find her watching him attempt the feat with a sort of repulsed yet enthralled curiosity.

  He’d show her.

  A sinfully small amount of the stew fit on the spoon. It was chunky and brimming with meat and vegetables. He sucked some into his mouth, and was halfway to digging up more when he was hit by an explosion of heat. It set his tongue afire and shot up his sinuses. “What in all Uhrth,” he croaked. “Water…”

  Elsabeth jumped up, returning not with water but with milk. “Goat’s milk,” she said. “Drink it down. It’ll quench the heat.”

  He chugged all that was in the glass and expelled a gust of air. “There’s enough spice in this stew to burn a village. I thought you said it was ‘just right.’”

  “It is.” She was trying hard not to laugh at him. “For a Kurel. Our food is considered spicy by some.”

  “Some?” He was wiping his eyes, his mouth still on fire. That won him another smothered laugh. Could he not maintain his di
gnity around this woman? “I thought you were a peace-loving people. This is a dangerous weapon. You promised Markam to keep me alive. Where’s your sense of responsibility? Where was the warning?”

  “I can arrange for you to be fed baby food—bread and milk…”

  “Bah!” Like grabbing hold of a sword for battle, he lifted the spoon. “If I am to live like you, that means eating like you.” Pausing to say a prayer, he then wolfed down mouthful after burning mouthful until he’d cleaned the bowl. Eyes and nose tearing, he sat back in bed, sweating—but not from fever. From breakfast!

  “More?” she asked.

  “Yes, please,” he rasped. “I haven’t eaten in days, and by Uhrth, I won’t let a little spice stop me.”

  After he’d eaten his fill, his eyes and nose watering, Elsabeth cleared the dishes and returned with two cups of tea to her perch on the bedside footstool. He lifted the impossibly little cup to his nose. It smelled like mint and grass.

  “It’s safe,” she assured him.

  He snorted. “‘Just right,’ I suppose.” It did taste pleasant, but what he really craved was a glass of chilled ale. Who knew when he’d next have the chance? He was, for all intents and purposes, dead. A general without an army, corralled by people who refused to fight. A Tassagon Uhr-warrior stuck in the heart of K-Town with a woman who’d rather be anywhere else on this world but in his company.

  Tao wondered if Markam was at the palace laughing at that fact? Probably. It would be just his friend’s sense of mischief to set him up like this.

  Except the reality of the matter was sobering. He was a fugitive, his sister, Aza, was at risk if she dared protest the king’s actions against him and his army was in danger of being used as a weapon against other humans, his officers executed if they refused. Frustration burned in his gut at being so stymied.

  Consigned to K-Town, he’d be able to do little to help the kingdom from such an awkward fallback position—let alone help Aza. But he wouldn’t stop trying. He’d survive to see his sister and his kingdom safe.

  He had no time to devote further thought to ale and tea; he had a meeting with the elders to prepare for. But Elsabeth’s attention had shifted outside, gauging the amount of darkness left. “I’ll leave for the palace at suns-up,” she said.