The Gypsy King

by Maureen Fergus

  And one large bubbling pool of what looked to be clean water.

  Leaving muddy, squelching footprints on the smooth, black rock, Persephone eagerly made her way to this pool. Dipping her toe in, she was delighted to find it not just warm, but as hot as any bath Cookie had ever had her prepare for the merchant. Hotter, even! With a sigh, Persephone thought back to the endless pails of hot water she’d had to lug to the merchant’s room, and how she’d yearned, in her childish way, to be allowed—just once!—the unimaginable luxury of bathing with warm water, in a tub, in private, instead of standing in the yard trying to clean herself as best she could with a rag and a pail of ice-cold well water.

  Well, here was her chance.

  Feeling almost giddy, she looked around to make sure she was truly alone. Then she hastily peeled off her filthy shift, rinsed it so that she wouldn’t muddy herself again after bathing, flung the shift onto a nearby rock and eased herself into the pool.

  “Ooooooh,” she breathed, closing her eyes in ecstasy. “Ahhhhhh.”

  The water stank like rotten eggs but it was gloriously hot and clean. Pinching her nose shut, Persephone dunked her head below the surface over and over just for the thrill of being completely submerged. She floated on her back; she clung to the sides and kicked her feet. Pretending she was a grand lady in a private bath, she called to her imaginary maids to bring her more hot water, perfumed soaps, a goblet of fine wine! Then she laughed at her own silliness and paddled at the water with her hands. She’d never felt so free in her entire life—she’d never felt so clean.

  As the clouds parted and the sun began to shine, Persephone thought what a wonderful way this was to begin her new life as a free woman.

  Then she heard it.

  The sound of something big, noisy and clumsy approaching fast.

  CLIP, CLOP, CLIP, CLOP, CLIP, CLOP.

  “Oh, no!” she wailed.

  There was no time to escape—no time even to grab her shift—for the next instant, Fleet rounded the corner at the bend in the river and spotted her. Neighing joyfully, he fixed his loving eyes upon her and clip-clopped across the rock toward her as fast as he could, pausing only once to try to kick Cur in the head to prevent him from reaching her first.

  After greeting them both with all due affection and watching them wander away to explore the nearby bush, Persephone warily turned her attention to Azriel. He was just as filthy as he’d been the last time she’d seen him— filthier, perhaps—and his expression was inscrutable. As he slowly walked toward her, she saw him make note of the fact that her shift was lying some distance from the pool, and she flushed hotly when she saw his gaze briefly drop from her face to the water in which she crouched with nothing but her hands and a few bubbles to cover her nakedness.

  Neither of them said anything until he walked right up to the edge of the pool, dropped his pack, unbuckled his sword and began unbuttoning his shirt.

  “How’s the water?” he asked.

  Persephone didn’t answer him because she couldn’t. All she could do was stare up at him with her mouth hanging open. He couldn’t think that … he couldn’t possibly mean to.…

  “I hope it’s nice, because I could use a good soak. As it happens, I’ve not had a very pleasant day thusfar,” he continued in confidential tones as he peeled off his shirt.

  Persephone inhaled sharply at the sight of him wearing nothing but boots and breeches.

  Then he pulled off his boots.

  And stood up.

  And reached for the laces at the front of his breeches.

  “Stop!” she cried.

  “Stop?” he echoed, looking down at her in mild surprise.

  If Persephone’s hands hadn’t been gainfully employed trying to cover up her private parts, she’d have buried her face in them. She’d never seen a half-clothed man before and for some reason, the sight of this particular half-clothed man was making her feel very confused. She knew she shouldn’t be looking, shouldn’t be letting him see her gaze sweep across his bare skin, but she couldn’t help it. With his broad shoulders and taut stomach he just looked so … so … strong, and she felt an unexpected, unwanted thrill of excitement uncurl in her belly at the memory of their first meeting, when he’d held her against him and she’d felt his long, lean body against hers. Squeezing her eyes shut, she gave her head a desperate shake. Even the thought of him completely naked was enough to shatter what was left of her composure.

  “I’m sorry I tried to run away, all right?” she blurted, her words coming in a breathless rush. “I’m sorry! Just … just hand me my shift and—”

  “Your shift?” interrupted Azriel. Frowning, he cocked his head to one side as though deeply confused. Then he gave a scandalized gasp, leaned very close and murmured, “Why, Persephone, do you mean to tell me that at this very moment you are wearing nothing at all?”

  She scowled and dropped lower in the water. “I’m wearing my dagger,” she muttered, doing her best to sound threatening. “So … you’d better just back away and … and hand me my shift.”

  Wordlessly, Azriel walked over, picked up her shift and walked back to the edge of the pool.

  “Here you go,” he said, dangling it so high above her that she’d have had to climb out of the pool to reach it.

  Persephone scowled again. “Are you enjoying yourself?” she snapped.

  “Not as much as I could be,” he replied.

  The sudden heat in his voice sent a shock wave through her, but before she could react to it, he smiled disarmingly and set down the shift. “Get dressed,” he said. “We’ll discuss the matter of your broken promise—and its consequences—once we’ve made up some of the time that your wilfulness has cost us.”

  “I’m not getting dressed until you turn around and … and go away,” she muttered.

  For a brief moment, it looked as though Azriel might refuse—might insist upon watching her climb naked out of the pool. Then he gave a gentlemanly bow, picked up his shirt and boots, turned and headed down to the river. Persephone waited until she saw him wade in and start rinsing off, and then—her mind brimming with thoughts of the many hideous and painful things she would do to him if he dared to sneak a peek—she scampered out of the pool, snatched up the wet shift and tugged it on so fast that she tore one of the sleeves half off the bodice.

  She started to swear but broke off at the sudden sound of Fleet whinnying in panic.

  “Persephone, wait!” bellowed Azriel from his spot in the river.

  But it was too late—she was already sprinting through the bush toward her horse with her dagger in hand. Seconds later she found him—trapped at the river’s edge by three enormous, barking black dogs. They were sinewy, evil-looking creatures with slit eyes and amputated tails, and when Persephone burst upon the scene, the nearest and largest of them turned and stared at her with glittering yellow eyes.

  Instinctively, Persephone backed up. As she did so, she tripped, fell and landed so hard that her teeth snapped down on her tongue. In unison, the two smaller dogs leapt for her throat. As they sailed through the air, three things happened at once. First, Fleet’s horror at seeing his beloved Persephone under attack instantly overcame his terror of being drowned or eaten. Galloping full force at the dogs—eyes rolling and deadly, trampling hooves flying—he caught the largest one with a powerful kick to the hindquarters that sent him sprawling face first into the dirt. Second, Cur burst from the trees beside Persephone and slammed into the nearest of the leaping dogs. Finally, Persephone—one arm flung over her face to protect her from the dog that was still bearing down on her—stuck out her dagger and braced her arm so that when the dog landed, he found himself not burying his teeth in the tender flesh of her neck but impaled upon her dagger by the force of his own momentum.

  In the stunned silence that followed, the largest dog— the one who’d been kicked in the hindquarters—struggled to his feet and awkwardly slithered into the far bushes. Fleet—whose brains, guts and nerves had been entirely used
up in his one shining moment of bravery—noisily trumpeted his terrible grief at the apparent demise of his adored mistress and galloped off in the opposite direction.

  One heartbeat later, a dripping, shirtless Azriel burst into the clearing. At the sight of Persephone struggling feebly beneath the dog—blood pouring down the side of her shift so fast that it was pooling on the ground below her—he let out a hoarse cry. Sprinting over to where she lay, he heaved the dog aside, dropped to his knees and began frantically searching her blood-soaked shift for the fatal wound.

  “I can’t find it,” he cried desperately as he ran his hands up and down her body. “I can’t find it!” Leaning over her, he gripped her shoulders hard and gave her a shake. “Persephone, please—I may be able to help you but you must tell me where it hurts!”

  “My … tongue,” she replied thickly, shoving him away with what Azriel must have thought was surprising strength for a girl who’d lost that much blood.

  “Your tongue?” he said blankly, staring at the front of her blood-soaked shift as though trying to figure out how such a minor wound could have resulted in such a gruesome mess.

  Determined to put up a brave front in spite of the fact that she was trembling so hard that she could barely keep her teeth from chattering, Persephone rolled her eyes and said, “Really, Lord Common Sense, I should think it obvious that the blood isn’t—”

  Her throat closed abruptly when she saw the skid marks in the dirt.

  Skid marks that could only have been made by Cur and the beast he’d attacked—skid marks that indicated the two grappling animals had not slid to a halt at the river’s edge, but had gone right over it.

  Jumping to her feet, Persephone ran to the riverbank. When a quick scan revealed no sign of Cur, she stepped back, took a running leap and would have flung herself into the chill, fast-moving water to swim off in search of him if Azriel had not managed to grab a handful of her long, beautiful hair.

  “Ow!” she shrieked, stumbling backward against him.

  “Sorry,” he said, as he deftly transferred his grip to her biceps.

  “Let go of me!” Persephone demanded, giving her arm a sudden yank in the hope of putting him off balance.

  “No,” he said, unmovable as a monolith. “Persephone, you must listen—”

  “No, you must listen!” she cried as she drove her heel downward toward his foot. “I have to go after Cur! He saved my life!”

  “And lost his own in the bargain,” said Azriel, moving his foot at the last second so that Persephone’s heel landed on a sharp pebble instead of her intended target.

  She grunted in pain. “You cannot know that for a certainty,” she said as she leaned backward in a vain attempt to drag Azriel into the water with her.

  “No,” he agreed, “but I do know these things for a certainty: if your dog is not a strong swimmer, he is already dead. If he has somehow managed to survive, he will find you. If I allow you to jump into this river you will drown, succumb to the chill of the water or hit your head on a submerged rock. I cannot allow that to happen because you are—”

  “Your slave?” she said scornfully, thrusting her chin out at him.

  “My responsibility,” said Azriel, who seemed to be getting annoyed.

  “Well, so is Cur,” she reminded swiftly. “You promised you would take care of my animals, remember?”

  “You promised me something, too, Persephone— remember?” said Azriel.

  “You said we’d discuss that later,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Cur requires your help now. So unless you are a faithless liar on top of being a no-account thief with an extraordinarily high opinion of his own good looks, you had best get a move on and—”

  “E-nough!” growled Azriel, whose eyes were suddenly blazing like blue flames. Ignoring the way that Persephone shrank from him as though she were afraid of getting burned, he grabbed her by both arms and roughly pulled her close. “I may be a no-account thief, Persephone, but you are a reckless little fool,” he hissed. “For your information, that dead beast over there was an army tracker, and if he is here it means that those who seek us are dangerously near at hand. So unless you have an especial desire to find out for yourself what a gang of bloodthirsty New Men will do to a piece of fresh meat like you, we must go—now.”

  “But I can’t just leave Cur—”

  Evidently deciding that the time for discussion was over, Azriel took hold of Persephone’s arm so that he could drag her along behind him whether she liked it or not. Quick as a feral cat, she sank her teeth into his bare forearm. When he released her with a bellow of pain, she turned on one heel and tore headlong into the bushes. With another bellow, Azriel tore after her. Veering back toward the river, Persephone threw a quick glance over her shoulder to see if she had enough of a lead on him to be able to—

  “Oof!”

  She ran smack into a soldier. He was dressed in black from head to toe, stank of old sweat and held a bow in one hand. He appeared so profoundly shocked by the sudden appearance of the blood-caked beauty before him that all he could do was stare goggle-eyed at Persephone, who stood rooted on the spot, staring goggle-eyed back. Then, a fraction of a second before the New Man recovered his wits, Persephone recovered hers. Whirling around, she blindly pelted back in the direction from which she’d come. She hadn’t gone three steps before she ran right into a still-shirtless Azriel.

  “Soldiers!” she cried as his arms instinctively closed around her. “Run!”

  Her directive was really not required, for the next second, the New Man behind her gave a shout and an arrow flew past Azriel’s head. Spinning around with Persephone still in his arms, Azriel set her down, placed his hand on the small of her back and shoved hard. She needed no encouragement to run. Another arrow flew past them, and another, and now she could hear dogs barking and other men shouting, their voices filled with excitement, their weapons clanking. The noises got closer with each thudding heartbeat and somehow, they seemed to come from all directions at once.

  “They … have us surrounded!” gasped Persephone as she and Azriel burst into the clearing. “What … what are we going … to do?”

  Instead of wasting his breath on an answer, Azriel grabbed her hand and, as two black terror dogs burst out of the bushes behind them, he ran full tilt toward the water’s edge and launched them both into the chill, fast-moving waters of the river below.

  NINE

  “YOU’RE SURE IT’S HIM?” asked General Murdock, taking another dainty nibble of the fresh liver the steward had prepared for his dinner. A military man through and through, General Murdock nevertheless insisted upon the trappings of fine society. Simple things, like clean stockings, a comfortable bed, linen hand towels with supper. Meals served on fine china, at the proper hour, no matter what the circumstances.

  “Oh, it’s him all right, General Murdock, sir!” bellowed the excited young soldier. “He killed two of our tracking beasts, but the one what got away caught the scent sure and clear. It’s him from the night you was nearly roasted alive, sir. And now he’s in the river! And he’s got a girl with him! A girl, sir!”

  “Interesting,” said General Murdock, half to himself. Above his weak chin and small mouth, his long, thin nose twitched as he chewed and chewed and chewed. “And is the man a Gypsy?”

  “Big and bluff enough to be, sir!” replied the soldier, who was still bellowing, “but he jumped into the river afore we could catch him and properly examine him for the mark.”

  “I see,” said General Murdock, nodding thoughtfully. “And where are the others?”

  “The others, sir?” asked the soldier eagerly.

  Swallowing the liver, General Murdock tore a small piece of bread from the loaf before him and took a nibble. “The others who were with him on the night in question,” he clarified.

  A little of the excitement drained from the soldier’s face. “Sir?” he said.

  With his unusually small hands, General Murdock carefully brush
ed the crumbs from his thin lips. “Before we set out, I explained to all of you new recruits that it was inconceivable that the destruction wrought upon our camp could have been effected by fewer than half a dozen men. I explained that our objective was to find and finish them,” he reminded. “You have thusfar reported having located one man, but I must assume you’ve also found the others, for I cannot imagine that you would be so foolish as to interrupt my dinner to report with such enthusiasm that you have failed in your ultimate objective.”

  The soldier suddenly looked unsure of himself. “Ah. Well, sir, as … as I’ve said, there is, um, also a girl—”

  “Even if she is something more than a plaything,” interrupted General Murdock, turning his attention back to the liver on his plate, “do you think it likely that she is capable of doing the mischief of five men?”

  “Well, uh—”

  “And where is the prisoner?” asked General Murdock dispassionately, as he sawed off another tiny piece of liver and placed it in his mouth.

  “I … I don’t know,” stammered the now-miserable soldier.

  “Mmmmm,” said General Murdock, closing his eyes.

  The soldier didn’t know if his general was savouring the taste of the liver or musing over his incompetent responses, but he did know that he’d blundered badly and that his only hope of escaping a punishment as torturous as the one those sleeping sentries had endured was to keep his foolish mouth shut.

  Determinedly, he clamped his lips together.

  At length, General Murdock swallowed and opened his eyes. “So,” he said as he carefully smoothed a long, thin lock of mousy hair off his forehead. “What do you think we should do?”

  The soldier’s mouth popped open at once. “Do?” he blurted.

  “If, in fact, this man is one of those who set fire to my tent, and if he is in the company of no one but a girl,” said the General, “then I should think it obvious that we’ve been deliberately deceived.”