by Jaide Fox
Hooking one leg over an armrest, he settled more comfortably, dropping an arm along the other rest and drumming his fingers on it impatiently while he waited. When Solly appeared again, he glanced at him questioningly.
Solly shook his head. “From the sound of it, I think she’s building a barricade.”
Talin frowned. “I do not understand women,” he growled. “One moment, they are as sweet as honey, and the next they are threatening to cut your heart out.”
“She did not find the dagger?” Solly asked uneasily.
“She had not when I left, else I would probably have it in my back now,” Talin retorted. “She hurled everything else she could lay hand to at me. I confess, I had not thought she had such a temper. In general, she is so sweet, so gentle and loving.”
Solly cleared his throat. “I did try to warn you, Sire, that she would not take the deception well.”
Talin studied the man in fuming silence for several moments. Finally a morose expression replaced the anger. “I lost my head,” he mumbled.
“Almost literally,” Solly retorted, drawing another glare.
Since the maid arrived just then with the clothes he’d demanded, Talin decided to ignore that assault to his dignity. Grabbing the clothing, he sent the maid off to fetch him a tankard of ale to take the chill off. “And food. Real food!” he called after her as she took off again.
Standing, he ignored Solly’s amused look and adjusted his loincloth. Apparently, it wasn’t actually his, for he had some difficulty corralling his soldier and friends, who kept trying to escape whenever he moved. After a moment, he gave up the effort and grabbed the tunic she’d brought, looking it over suspiciously before he thrust his arms into it. This, too, he discovered, belonged to someone else, for he found he couldn’t put his arms down once he’d managed to shrug into it. Uttering a growl of frustration, he flexed his arm and back muscles. The tunic split down the back, but he managed to get his arms down.
Disgusted when he saw he couldn’t fasten the thing, he grabbed the breeches she’d brought and examined them. Those, at least, seemed to belong to him and he pulled them on and fastened them. “Any word from our spies?” he barked at Solly as he dropped into his seat once more.
His left testicle fell out in the process, strangling on the loincloth as it was pulled taut by his movements. Nausea washed over him. Grinding his teeth, he slipped a hand beneath his waistband, examined the injured one carefully and stuffed it back into the loincloth.
Solly’s amusement vanished. He shook his head. “Nothing.”
Glancing around the great hall, Talin discovered the carpenters had been busy. Most of the windows were covered by shutters. He caught a glimpse of moonlight, however, through one that still allowed a view of the sky. “I should not have sent them when we had no doubt already been spotted,” he muttered, his anger turning inward. “But I had not thought, with so many new soldiers arriving, that two more would attract notice. The moon will set soon. We should go now when we can do so without attracting attention to ourselves and then disguise ourselves and enter the encampment in the morning.”
“We?” Solly asked, alarmed. “Sire! You can not risk capture. The people need you.”
“I need to know if the man children are of any real threat to us, and, if so, how great a threat,” Talin retorted grimly.
Chapter Fourteen
His trunks, Talin discovered when he decided that Aliya had had long enough to recover her temper, had been dragged out into the corridor. After staring at them in surprise and dawning outrage for several moments, he stalked to the door. It was bolted, or still barricaded, from the inside.
He hammered on the door with his fist. “Aliya! This is childish. You are my concubine. You can not lock me out forever!”
He waited several moments. When he heard nothing, he pressed his ear to the door. Inside, he heard furtive movements that told him the room was indeed occupied. “You have defied your king and your husband, for you and I both know that you are well and truly mine! You may be sure that I will expect a full apology before I even begin to consider pleasuring you again!”
Something heavy struck the door even as he put his ear to it, certain the panel was just too thick to allow him to hear her. “You and I and now the entire palace!” she screamed at him furiously. “I could cheerfully slay you!”
His lips tightened. “They would have known anyway! We are man beasts. When a male has marked his female we sense these things, know them.” He hesitated for a moment. “You said yourself that everyone believed as much already.”
Another heavy object crashed into the door. Again there was no sound of shattering pottery or glass and he deduced that she had run out of light weight missiles of that nature. He waited for many moments, wondering if she would reconsider. He was angry enough to stalk away right then, but it had been days already. He was not going to be accountable for his actions if she continued to spurn him.
“Very well,” he growled finally. “Soon I will go off to war. We will talk when I return. If I return,” he added for full effect.
He heard brisk footsteps approaching the door on the other side and tensed, wondering if she meant to snatch it open and try to crack him over the head with something, or if the threat of death—his--had had the desired effect.
“If you go off and pick a fight with my father, I will never speak to you again as long as I live!”
That wasn’t precisely the response he had expected and it took him several moments to realign his thoughts. “I did not start a war with your father! It is he who provoked this dispute.”
“And you returned the insult by making me your whore!” she snapped. “You may go to him and say that I have accepted my fate and wish that he will make peace.”
Talin ground his teeth, uncertain of which part of that speech infuriated him more. “You are my concubine!” he growled finally.
“It is the same thing.”
“It is not!” he bellowed furiously. “I have had many laymen in my time, but I have not once taken a concubine! You are my first wife … after the queen, which I have not taken,” he added conscientiously.
She was silent for several moments. “I do not believe that even a king should have the right to take two wives,” she ground out finally.
“It is our custom! And what is more, it is not only the king who does so!”
“It is not my custom. And I can not feel that I am bound only to one man, when he is not similarly bound.”
For the first time since they’d begun the quarrel, Talin felt real fury grip him. “If you do not want the blood of many on your hands, do not even consider that as a possibility,” he murmured, his voice almost deadly quiet now.
She was silent for so long that he thought she would say nothing else. Finally, she said, “Why should I worry about the blood of your people, when you mean to let the blood of my own?”
Uttering an impotent snarl, Talin whirled and stalked back down the tower stairs to the great hall.
Deciding she had been the victor in that round when she heard Talin stomp off, Aliya turned on her heel and rejoined her ladies. They sat in silence for some time, focused upon the needlework Lady Leesa had had the foresight to pack when she had been scrambling to gather Aliya’s belongings. After some time had passed, Lady Beatrice uttered a snorting laugh. When she did, Lady Leesa let out a giggle.
Aliya sent them both a cross look. “I do not know what it is that you find so humorous,” she said irritably.
Lady Beatrice shrugged, but after a moment uttered another snorting laugh. Again, Lady Leesa echoed it.
“What is it that you find so amusing?” Aliya demanded, beginning to be angry about the whole thing since she was still angry with Talin anyway.
And uneasy about the threat, for that matter, regardless of the fact that she’d challenged him over it.
“He will withhold his favors,” Lady Beatrice muttered on a gurgle of laughter, whereupon Lady Leesa fell to laughing unt
il tears began to flow down her cheeks.
Aliya managed a faint smile, but in truth she didn’t find the threat particularly amusing. She felt a blush heat her skin in spite of all she could do, in fact, for she had found the threat rather distressing. It was not as if she felt that she could not live without his lovemaking, but he had pleasured her and she rather thought she would enjoy it even more the next time. Besides, in spite of everything, she had felt a wonderful sort of closeness afterward that she had liked almost as much as the other.
She was angry with him, and she not only felt that she had every right to be when he had deliberately deceived her to seduce her, she also felt that she was the one who deserved an apology.
Unfortunately, she had had time to discover that Talin was pigheaded. Now that he’d announced the threat to half the palace, he was going to be very reluctant to back down, even if he did come to accept that it was his fault and he should be the one to apologize.
She certainly wasn’t going to, though it wasn’t altogether because she felt that she was completely right and he was totally wrong. As difficult as it was to accept, she knew she had been guilty of bad behavior as well. Only a few moments ago he had provoked her until she had yelled at him and thrown things like a common fishwife instead of behaving with the dignity of her station.
He was an infuriating man! There was no doubt about it. He brought out the very worst sort of character flaws in her, faults she had not even been aware of having before. She was not going to apologize for her own behavior, though, unless he apologized for provoking her to begin with. She had a feeling that meant that there were going to be a lot of cold, lonely nights ahead for both of them.
* * * *
By the light of the setting moon, Talin and Solly left the palace, turning toward the valley where they had last seen the army of the man children. The moon had set long before they reached the location, but neither had any real need of the moonlight to see that the valley was now empty. Where before there had been many men, horses, cattle, wagons, tents--all the things the man children deemed necessary to make war--now there was only trampled grasses and mud from their passing.
After flying around the area in wider and wider circles for a time, they finally spotted the bulk of the army many miles east of their previous encampment. Leaving them for the moment, Talin and Solly struck off in search of the nearest hamlet and settled there, shifting into their man forms. When they’d managed to locate and ‘borrow’ clothing that would help them blend in, the left the village and found a place in a wooded area to spend the remainder of the night.
By sunrise, they were headed cross country toward the army. They emerged from the woodlands onto a narrow track before they came within sight of the encampment and followed that until they reached the spot where they had seen the army.
The encampment itself, they discovered to their surprise, had already been abandoned save for a handful of servants and guards. They had not even reached the guards, however, when the mystery was solved.
The army had moved off to engage an enemy.
Still puzzled since Talin had been under the impression that the army was marching on his own kingdom, Talin and Solly approached the guards to offer their services. After looking them over suspiciously for several moments, the guard finally addressed Talin. “You have experience in warfare?”
“Some. We are mercenaries.”
“What engagements?”
Talin searched his mind for some of the battles fought in the past five years and claimed experience in a half dozen he thought were remote enough the likelihood of running into other participants was remote.
The guard frowned at him suspiciously. “I was at Medenhallow myself,” he muttered finally.
Talin lifted his brows in surprise he didn’t have to feign. “Were you fighting for King Mervin? Or King Anslar?” he asked.
“King Anslar.”
Talin nodded. “We were fighting for King Mervin. One would think we would have met on the field.”
The guard shrugged. “As to that, I suppose it would be unlikely given the size of the armies on both sides,” he acknowledged grudgingly. “Well, as you can hear, you have missed the first battle, but we can use every man we can get. Find a place to bed down and be sure to speak to the pay master this evening.”
Talin nodded. “Who is the enemy?”
The guard grinned. “Today? The clan of the wolf. When we have wiped those devils from the face of the land, then we will be marching once more.”
Talin and Solly exchanged a speaking glance as they strode through the encampment. Once they were out of earshot of the guards, Solly spoke. “What do you make of that?”
Talin frowned. “Princess Aliya said something to me, but I will admit that I had my mind on other things and did not give it much credence anyway. She said that she feared she was being used as the excuse everyone had been looking for for many years.”
“Excuse for what?” Solly asked in confusion. “To start a war with the clan of the wolf? I can not even see a connection.”
Talin shook his head. “To begin a great war between the clans of the man children and the clans of the man beasts,” he said grimly. “I had thought it odd that they had stopped to gather so far from my borders. Now it begins to make far more sense. They are certainly marching upon Goldone to make war, but they mean to do their best to wipe out every clan of the man beast between. And, if they succeed, they will turn from Goldone and march on the others.”
Solly looked stunned. “Sire! You speak as if you think they have some chance of success.”
Talin shrugged. “They have always outnumbered the man beasts, for they breed like rats, but I am certain there is something beyond their usual arrogance and the numbers they’ve mustered that makes them believe they can succeed, else they would not have launched such a campaign. I think, before we return to Goldone, we need to discover what has given them this sense of invincibility if we can.”
Chapter Fifteen
Since they had no intention of remaining for any length of time, they did not follow the guard’s advice and find a place to settle. Instead, they walked through the encampment and out the other side, following the sounds of battle.
The sun was high overhead by the time they finally reached the first signs of conflict. A man beast of the wolf clan lay dying amongst the bodies of his foes. Blood dripped from torn flesh, coated the ground liberally, and even dripped from the foliage of the trees and bushes nearby. Grim faced, Talin knelt beside the man.
“What means this?” he ground out, grasping the man beast’s jaw and shaking him slightly when he saw the man was hardly aware of him. “Why have you not healed?”
With an obvious effort, the man beast focused upon him. “Can not,” he managed to rasp hoarsely. “Poison.”
Talin shook the man again as his eyes glazed, but he could not rouse him to speak again.
“Poison?” Solly echoed, dismay evident in his voice. “There is no poison to do such a thing.”
Talin studied the dead man and then glanced around at the men he had killed before he had fallen. He saw nothing to explain the situation. It had been a vicious fight. To a man, including the man beast, all were torn and bloody from head to toe. “I am not at all certain the man knew what he was saying,” Talin said slowly. “He was grievously wounded. Mayhap it is only that they attacked him so viciously, and dealt him so many wounds that he bled out before he could recover?”
Solly sent him a speaking glance. They both knew that that was unlikely, possible, but not probable.
Finally, without another word, they moved onward. The sounds of battle did not become louder as they progressed through the wooded area, although the signs that at least a part of the battle had taken place in and around the edge of the forest grew progressively more evident. They saw why when they finally emerged on a small knoll.
The battle had moved off beyond the smoldering ruins of what had once been the palace of the king of the cla
n of wolves but it was also obvious that the fighting, for the day at least, was mostly done. The dead and dying lay everywhere, crumpled, curled into fetal positions, sprawled bonelessly.
Among the man children were the man beasts--many of them.
Feeling vaguely ill, Talin glanced at Solly. Solly’s expression was one of disbelief. “They are everywhere,” he muttered. “The man children have slaughtered the clan of the wolf. I would not have believed this if I had not seen it myself.”
For a time, they merely stood watching the battle still raging in the distance. Finally, Talin began to scan the full scope of destruction. On a rise to the west, he saw a group of men on horseback. One held the standard of the King of Anduloosa.
He struck off in that direction, picking his way around and over the fallen. Solly joined him after a few minutes. “It would be easier if we flew,” Solly commented after a few moments.
“Mayhap,” Talin said grimly, “but then they would be warned and would either flee to protect the king, or, more likely, attack, which would make it difficult to speak to King Andor.”
“Sire! You will speak to him of peace over the bodies of so many man beasts, only because the princess demanded it?”
Talin sent him a furious glare. “I will speak to him of peace because my concubine asked it of me,” he growled. “As sickening as this is, it has nothing to do with us. The clansmen of the wolf are not our brothers. But he is her father. She cares for him. If I can make peace for her sake, I will.”
Solly frowned. “Do you think he will consider it?”
“No.”
“Then I do not know why you would risk your life for a cause you know is lost before you even try. King Andor started the war by insulting us. I do not believe it was an oversight, whatever the princess thinks. I think it was very deliberate.”
“It was. We were baited. They knew we would be too proud to ignore such a blatant insult.”
“They?”
Talin glanced at his captain. “King Andor may or may not have devised this entire scheme on his own, but he is not alone in it. If they had gathered an army such as this, do you think it would have gone unchallenged? The neighboring kingdoms would have seen it as a threat and they would have moved to stop it before they amassed an army of this size. He used his daughter. By announcing far and wide that a tournament was to be held to settle her in marriage, he made certain that the heir of every kingdom had an excuse to gather that seemed unthreatening. And at the same time he saw to it that those who were deliberately slighted could not be unaware that they had been singled out for insult--the man beasts.
