by JANRAE FRANK
An awed sound rippled through those watching. Johannes, arriving too late to intervene, gawked for he had never seen Jeord bested at anything.
"This never happens again," Aejys snarled to Jeord. "Next time I'll snap your fool neck! Understand?"
Jeord mumbled.
"Understand me?"
"Yes."
Aejys released him and Jeord moved off to finish his work.
"Are you all right?" Tamlestari asked, reaching for Aejys.
"I'm fine," Aejys said, shrugging away from the girl before she could touch her. "Take care of him," she indicated the small green, "then come to my tent."
"Yes, of course," Tamlestari said.
* * * *
Hanadi fell into step beside the lapsed paladin. Aejys walked with a strong sure stride until the tent flap closed, blocking the view of the outsiders. Then she dropped down on her cot and the color faded from her face.
Tamlestari, coming in behind them, caught her hand and Read the pain in the healing arm. "It's never going to heal right if you don't stop doing things like that," she scolded.
"I didn't have a choice," Aejys answered tiredly. "If I had not intervened they might have questioned my authority. Furthermore, I hold this company together. I don't want it deteriorating into warring factions before we even reach Shaurone, much less Rowanslea. And I need them to understand that the prowess of my people, and by extension the women in my household and Hanadi's units, is equal to their reputation. I'll have less trouble that way."
"She is right, girl," Hanadi said, "To be the leader she must be the strongest and smartest. Not just the coffers. Money speaks in cities, but strength speaks on the road when most of the help is hired. We have three factions here, my people whose allegiance is to me first and Aejys second. Johannes people whose allegiance is to him first and Aejys second. And then we have those who are members of Aejys' household or wish to be and have hired on in hopes of being taken into her household after this is done. They give their primary allegiance to Aejys."
"I was told by Aroana herself, speaking through her priest, to hire these people," Aejys said tiredly. "So there is a reason for it."
"Assuredly so," Hanadi said, starting to get Aejys out of her mail hauberk. "Let us see that arm. And the side too."
The wounds were cracked and chafed around the half-healed edges. Tamlestari smeared on a salve. "Maybe if we padded it more the hauberk would not irritate them. That's half the problem, I think."
"There are extra blankets in the supply wagon," Hanadi told her.
"That would do it. Cut one up into pads. That will make the hauberk a bit tight, but not uncomfortably so..."
* * * *
Tagalong had arrived in time to see Aejys force the big man off the smaller one. She had been watching Jeord try and push his weight around for some time. So she trailed after him.
"That bitch nearly broke my neck," Jeord grumbled, rubbing his neck.
"That bitch is yar employer," Tagalong said amiably. "This the first time ya worked fer a woman?"
"What if it is?" Jeord said suspiciously.
"Ya do know I'm second in command?"
"Yah, second bitch," Jeord said and guffawed.
Around him his companions looked uneasy and started moving away from him. They read from Tagalong's stance that the dwarf had come looking for trouble and the big dull-witted Jeord was about to find it.
"I don't like yar attitude, gritch," Tagalong said. "Maybe yar one a them cockglans bastards I been hearin' about ever since I came west."
Jeord turned red. A crowd had gathered – the same ones that had circled Jeord earlier. Several people laughed at him: the big man being backed down by a dwarf woman.
He gave a roar and grabbed at Tagalong. She deftly avoided him, snagged his wrist, and doubled him over with an armbar. Then she gave him two swift kicks in the side. Tagalong released him and he staggered a few steps before righting himself and charging back at her. His big fists hammered down at her. Tagalong charged in under them, catching him in the stomach before he could adjust to her new location. Then she reached in between his legs, her hands closing on his balls through the loose cloth of his trousers and she wrenched them. Jeord collapsed with a scream, writhing. A smaller man than Jeord, but broad through the chest and similar in build to him, knelt beside him.
"Mei ajan, forgive Jeord," he said, "Though he is big and strong and good with his weapons, he is not very bright. He is easily misled. But I will keep him out of trouble from now on."
"An' who are ya ta speak for him?" Tagalong demanded harshly.
"Ragnar, his brother."
"Too bad ya can't pick yer relatives." A touch of rue entered her voice. Tagalong knew that her own more aristocratic relatives applied the same statement to her.
Beside Ragnar, the recovering Jeord nodded agreement with eyes wide.
Tagalong glared around her at the rest. "Now, who's next?"
"This one, I think, maybe?" Jaqui's small hand held a longsword, the blade just under a mon's chin. At his feet lay a dagger that he had dropped when her blade touched him.
"Any of ya don't like it, get out, and get out now! Ya can go pull yar wages an' go back an' get eat by some of the things that been followin' us. This time tomorrow we'll be at the monastery of St. Tarmus the Willodarian at Lorendon Crossing. Ya step outta line there and the monks will have the bears eat ya. The ones they don't get I will, understood?"
"I will keep my men out of trouble," Johannes said approaching. "I spoke to them. Cautioned them. But thought it best to let them see for themselves."
"Surely," said Hanadi, arriving just then, "Even the stupidest of them knows now to follow orders and to walk the narrow path between heaven and hell."
Jaqui grinned, re-sheathing her sword. That brought a sigh of relief from the mercenary, which changed to a grunt as her foot connected with his bottom and she sent him sprawling on his face. "Next time, bucco, you draw on someone's back I'll carve my name on your cheeks! Both sets!"
* * * *
"You have heard nothing more about Laeoli?" Tamlestari asked as they gathered for a counsel before breaking camp.
Hanadi shook her head with slow expressiveness. "Very little. Ladonys regained full consciousness two days ago. She saw Laeoli fall into the river. It may be that she has thus preserved herself and lays hidden, licking her wounds."
"That's the only hope I have left," Aejys said. "If Margren arranged this," her voice tightened with anger, then softened as her hand went to the gray scarf on her arm, "my vow forbids me vengeance." What good is honor, Aroana God, if it means I can neither save nor avenge my child.
"Then add another hope to that one," Hanadi said. "Assuming she lives, hope that Margren's people do not find her first, for assuredly they too search for her."
* * * *
Mephistis held court in a small, private audience room down a long hall from Chamber of Hecatomb. Two throne chairs near a small fireplace dominated the room. Their fan-shaped backs bore Margren's secret crest, the dragon and rowans, with the dragon's claws descending to form the arms. Margren sat beside him, her face a study in anticipation. Bodramet accompanied by two guards forced a young Sharani peasant to her knees before Mephistis, manacling her wrists to her ankles before stepping back to assume a position of attentive waiting. Behind and to the left side of them stood four more guards. Bodramet ran his amaranthine eyes – devoid of whites, pupils and irises, hungrily over another pair of captives: a pair of young, auburn-haired Valdren males, nude but for their heavy shackles.
Mephistis stroked the peasant's hair, drinking in the fear in the trembling of her body. "You should be far enough along in the change, my dearest, to manage this," he purred, nuzzling the woman's throat, feeling the delicious throbbing of her pulse as he ran his rough tongue along the artery. He extended his hand to Margren, drawing her from her chair. "Link and follow me, then take one of those for your own." He indicated the Valdren pair.
Mephistis caressed
Margren's face with languid sensuality. "Taking blood this way can heal almost any wound."
"It's like being a vampire..." A hot eagerness underlined her words. She placed her hand on the back of Mephistis' neck in link.
Mephistis laughed. "No, they are like us. Sa'necari devour life in many, many ways. This is just..." he paused to touch her again, "a very pleasurable one. To become sa'necari is to attain the highest, most powerful transformation our necromancers and banewitches have been able to discover. All the powers of the undead possessed by the living."
Margren gave him a look that told him she was utterly and completely his. But then, he told himself, she had always been his – ever since the winter that he first encountered Aejys and Margren, the former ten and the latter just six years old. He found Margren hiding in a torn up snow fort the castle children had built in the keep's garden before traipsing off after Aejys and abandoning the smallest child. Eleven-year-old Mephistis comforted Margren, luring her deep into the nearby bushes where he took blood from her. Margren remembered it only as a dream; an oddly warm, comforting dream. Every year afterward he came to her again at winter's solstice in the garden at night, taking blood from her and in her ninth year sharing his own. It was the taint of his blood in Margren's body that caused the unicorn stud at the high meadows to drive her off each year.
At ten, Margren's body as well as her veins opened to him and he took her sexually. Then three years before the war, he revealed himself to her on Dragonshead as something more than a pleasant solstice dream.
Mephistis turned his attention back to his captive, kissing and nuzzling the girl who had begun to whimper. His fangs extended as he felt the girl's pulsing artery beneath his lips. A ticklish itch crawled down his tongue, twining in his throat. His fangs entered the artery, sending a warm gush of blood into his mouth. The girl gasped sharply at the pain, stiffening, then going limp as her heart stilled.
Margren's low moaning drew his attention and he lifted his mouth from the dead girl's throat, blood dribbling down into his beard. He smiled at the glazed look in Margren's eyes. "Bring her that one," he told the guards. "Bodramet, you may rite the third as reward for bringing us this catch."
The youth twisted, struggling vainly against the guards who threw him face down before Margren. Mephistis caught the youth by the hair, wrenching his head around until he could not move. The second youth screamed as Margren's fangs extended and she threw herself hungrily onto his companion. Blood filled Margren's mouth, she slurped, drinking greedily, letting the warmth and electricity of the blood send tingles of ecstasy racing through her.
Mephistis stroked Margren's head fondly, watching her drain the youth dry. "Sylvan blood is one of the finest vintages in all the world," he murmured.
The body, a gray and shriveled husk now, fell away as Margren released it.
* * * *
Isranon heard the soft, sad strains of Juldrid's lute before he had walked far into the dense woods near the hunter's trace that led from the bluffs to the valley. He wondered what Margren had done to her this time ... or had his prince done it? A sick anger coiled in his stomach as he lifted the flute to his lips and began to play. Isranon let the music announce his presence to that he did not come suddenly upon her and frighten her. He shouldered his way through a tangle of trembling aspen and a tighter knot of evergreens until he could see her.
Juldrid wore the black of mourning, which made her look very pale. He wondered what she was mourning over. Rose crouched beside her, listening and, from time to time, patting her shoulder comfortingly. The little nibari's intercession had allowed Isranon to get closer and closer to Juldrid over the past months.
He settled cross-legged a short distance from them. He found the rhythms of the song she played and joined her in them. Juldrid gifted him with a small, sad smile, and nodded. Then she began to sing. Isranon's grasp of common was limited since it was rarely spoken in Waejontor, yet after a while he realized it was a very old song about rape and grief, suicide and the fall of houses. It made him shiver.
As always they played until dark when Juldrid rose to leave. This time Isranon took a chance and caught her arm. She flinched, her eyes widening with fear, but he did not let her go until he could get the words out. "Mephistis raped you, didn't he?"
"Yes."
Isranon released her arm and Juldrid fled. He prayed he had not ruined their tentative relationship. He dropped back to the ground, feeling numb now as he retreated into the silences. Having his fears confirmed did not make it better, if anything it made it worse. Rose crept up to him and laid her head in his lap.
"All sa'necari are like that," she said, confirming his beliefs. "But you are not sa'necari."
Isranon lowered the flute again without beginning another song. "I know that. A lion must be a lion, or the others devour him ... and yet ... I feel for her." In Waejontor women were property, except among the sa'necari whose women were sometimes strong enough to eat their mates.
"She carries his child as well as the one Margren put there. Two sons for your prince."
Two heirs for his prince, what a wondrous thought! But such a tragic way to get them. Isranon pitied Juldrid. He put the flute away. Rose turned her head to the side, waiting for the touch of his fangs. Instead he began to undress her.
"If I got a child on you," Isranon said. "By law, they would not be allowed to harm you." Sa'necari born were too rare and only their longevity made up for it. He hoped that, having not crossed the line in the rites, he would prove more fertile than the others. And taking a non-sa'necari increased the chances. "Will you allow me to try?"
Rose arched up, presenting herself to him and shrugging out of her dress. "You are the only one who bothers to ask... I have had many sa'necari inside me, whether I wished it or no. I love you, Isranon."
"And I, you." Isranon realized that he was trembling as he opened his own clothing and Rose's soft, gentle fingers closed on his cock.
CHAPTER EIGHT. CALLTHUNDER
A soft rustle of movement woke Aejys in the last hour before dawn. Her right hand, beneath the pillow, slithered instinctively to the Aroanan Rune sword leaning against the cot. Her heart quickened with a rush of adrenaline that preceded strong action. She controlled her urge to act in favor of identifying the threat first. The recklessness of youth had long ago been schooled out of her by experience. She cracked her lids just enough to see without giving any sign of wakefulness. In the pre-dawn darkness she could not make out anything. Then a warm wet tongue swiped across her face as a sudden heavy weight was added to hers overturning the cot. Aejys crashed to the ground in a tangle of blankets. She lost her sword as she struggled to free herself of the bedding and the cot that had come down on top of everything. She could feel the thing's huge body moving half beneath her separated from her by the bedding; could smell its oddly familiar muskiness. With a tremendous heave the creature came free of Aejys and the blankets. It rose on all fours and shook itself, then turned glowing green eyes on the lapsed paladin. It shoved a wiry muzzle into her face; its rough wet tongue covering her mouth, nose and cheeks with slobber. "Hey!" she shouted and the next lick caught her inside the mouth. Aejys spit, her eyes snapped open and she stared into the grizzled face of the shadow hound.
"Damn it, Brundarad!" Aejys cursed. "We're not that close!" With an effort she shoved free of the huge beast and sat up. She wiped the slobbery wetness from her face with a corner of the nearest blanket.
Brundarad settled on his haunches, head tilted, regarding her with knit brows and an expression that Aejys swore had to be offended puzzlement.
A small laugh from the door turned Aejys' attention. Hanadi stood there, framed by firelight that touched the edges of her dark hair with the orange of flame, the faintest of smiles on her lips, which quickly disappeared behind her usual polite mask.
"What has happened?" Aejys asked, a tremor of concern touched her for although her forces were, in their own ways, experienced, she could not yet gauge how well they woul
d meet the kinds of threats she only now began to suspect, much less realize, Margren could throw at them. A commander always planned for contingencies; but Aejys knew too well that many times the situations that developed where not those expected or planned for. Survival was more often nothing more than a throw of the dice no matter how capable the commander or how strong the units. There was no such thing as an invincible army: some fell harder and others easier, nothing more. Each time myn died in her command, Aejys cared. She remembered her newest dead slain by the manticores the week past. She had not known them personally, but she cared. And in the seconds between her question and Hanadi's answer her mind raced through all of that.
"Brundarad, he has scented the monastery's guardians," Hanadi said. "They have been observing us since moonrise." She knelt beside the shadow hound, draping her arm around his neck and holding him close. "All your myn must be alerted to show no fear of them. They will scent that and possibly be provoked by it. Also they must harm no animals, no matter how small or how large and frightening. And the deer must not be hunted."
Aejys nodded as she righted the cot and shoved the bedding into a rumpled heap atop it. "I have been here before. As you have?"
Hanadi's polite inclining of her head was all the answer Aejys got.
"I will have Tag alert them, Hanadi. You speak to your own people?"
"Of course."
Aejys shoved the tumbled bedding back some more, then sat down on a clear spot and pulled on her boots. "Fetch Johannes. I want to brief him myself on what to expect and the code of behavior our situation demands. I don't need any loose bravos causing trouble. On second thought, wake the camp. Quietly. I'll address them all before we ride."
