by Nathan Long
“By the Seven, it’s horrible!”
“The white skin! The red hair!”
A tall, bald guy with a braided beard edged toward me, holding a cutlass and dagger.
“Kill it, friends. Or we are all doomed.”
“No you’re not doomed! Now just shut up and listen to—”
They didn’t listen. They just came in, screaming and slashing. It was too tight in there to draw my ridiculous sword, and I didn’t want to anyway. I didn’t want to hurt these guys, I just wanted them to not kill me.
Braid Face got to me first, and he was good, slashing with the cutlass to get me off balance, then stabbing at my blind side with the dagger, but all my months of gladiator training down in Doshaan hadn’t been for nothing. I kept my feet under me and caught his dagger hand as it came in, clamping hard on his wrist, then whipped him around at the rest of ’em like he was a giant rag doll.
Guys staggered back with his knees to their jaws and his feet to their ears, but the guys with the crossbows were hanging back and aiming. I made to throw Braid Face at one of ’em and dive at the other, hoping my big-and-scary act would throw off their point blank aim, but before I could let go, a skinny pirate with a bandage around his middle limped into the room, waving his arms.
“Hold, friends! Do not fire! She is no demon! She is a friend! Hold!”
I looked around, still holding Braid Face by the wrist like he was a sack of laundry, and saw that the skinny pirate had a chin beard and a pencil-thin mustache, and the face of a hot-rod devil.
My heart started beating like a big bass drum. “Lhan?”
CHAPTER TEN
BESIEGED!
The skinny pirate looked up at me, a lopsided smile cracking his face. “Mis-mistress Jae-En! It is you. When I heard your voice, I could scarcely—”
“Lhan!”
I scooped him up in a big hug and held him tight—not too tight, ’cause of his bandages, but tight enough. He winced, but hugged back. I kissed him, hard and deep. It wasn’t the freshest smooch ever. His mouth tasted like dirt and stale water, and mine probably wasn’t much better, but I didn’t care. He was alive and here and so was I, and I poured all the hoping and praying and crying I’d been doing since we’d been seperated into that kiss, trying to fill him up with it so he’d know how much I’d missed him, and how glad I was to be with him again. He gave as good as he got. He made my toes curl.
Finally we came up for air and looked at each other, grinning like idiots.
“Mistress, you live. I feared—”
“Not half as much as I feared! I thought I was gonna get back here and find out those fucking priests had—” I blinked. “Hey. You look terrible.”
I’d been so staggered to see him again I hadn’t noticed much more than the bandages, but Lhan looked like a zombie—gaunt, unshaven, dark under the eyes, and that bandage was disgusting, all black with dried blood and crusted yellow around the edges.
“Jesus, Lhan. What happened to you?”
Lhan swallowed, then looked around at the rest of the pirates, who were all standing around staring at us. They were as skinny and bashed up as he was. I stared back. I’d completely forgot they were there.
Braid Face got up from where I’d dropped him and pointed at Lhan, his eyes cold. “He happened to us. The fugitive. If not for him, the priests would not have come for us. Our ships would not have burned. Our men would not have died. We would not be trapped on this rock without water or food. And now he brings demons among us.”
Lhan bristled. “Mistress Jae-En is no demon! I’ll not deny the evils I have brought down upon you by my presence, but Jae-En is not one of them. She is flesh and blood just as you are, Lo-Zhar. A brave warrior from distant lands, and my… my great friend.”
Lo-Zhar wasn’t convinced. He took a step forward, his sword held low. “Well, perhaps it’s time for you and your ‘great friend’ to go back to ‘distant lands.’ Maybe then the priests will leave us alone.”
Lhan drew his sword and stepped in front of me. “I have already said I will give myself up, but you will not touch Mistress Jae-En. She has done nothing to you.”
Lo-Zhar kept coming, his guys filling in behind him. “Nothing but knock my men flat and pull my arm from its socket. You will both go out, and—”
“Hold, Lo-Zhar! What is this fighting?”
I looked back as another handful of pirates piled into the room from the door behind me, blades out and all business. I put my back to Lhan’s, ready for a last stand, but then I saw a big burly guy at the head of the new gang, holding a mace the size of a butter churn, and a little woman in a red bull-fighter jacket beside him, glaring past me toward Braid Face.
“Kai-La!”
She blinked, then refocused on me. Burly did too.
“’Tis the barbarian girl!”
“The strong sister!” Kai-La lowered her sword and gave me a hug. She was skinny too. I’d remembered her being built like J-Lo with more bootie. Now she was more like Angelina Jolie on crack. “Where have you sprung from?”
“And what foolish notion inspired you to share our doom?” Burly clapped me on the shoulder. He’d been as big as a fullback when I first met him. Now his armor was hanging off him like a bad Halloween costume.
“I came to see….” I swallowed. “I was afraid you were already dead.”
Lhan laughed bitterly and looked toward Lo-Zhar, who was giving Kai-La and her gang the stink eye. “We are already dead, mistress. And as Lo-Zhar has said, it was I who have killed us.”
Kai-La slapped her hand on her flat chest. “And I have said that only makes you a pirate like the rest of us.” She turned blazing eyes on Lo-Zhar. “We are all fugitives here! We all have a price on our heads! And so we must all band together against those who would destroy us, not fight amongst ourselves like shikes over a carcass. Do you hear me, Lo-Zhar?”
Lo-Zhar looked as sullen as a gangbanger in the back of a patrol car, but eventually he nodded. “Aye, Skelsha. But you best keep them away from me. Hunger makes my temper short.”
“Then you should try eating your pride. That is a meal that would fill us all.” Kai-La laughed, then turned and motioned for me and Lhan to follow. “This way, sister. Pay no mind to the growling of toothless vurlaks.”
Lhan stepped back from Lo-Zhar, then sheathed his sword and offered me his arm like we were off to cotillion. “Aye. Come, Jae-en. Let us show you our palace in the sky.”
A few yards down the low-ceilinged hallway, a door opened into a big room that looked like it had been a storage cellar at one point. Now it was a refugee camp, with rows of bedrolls laid out on every inch of floor, and little cook fires dotted around, though I had no idea what they were cooking. Nobody in that room looked like they’d eaten in a week. And half of ’em were as torn up as Lhan. I saw more slings and bandages and stitched wounds than I could shake a stick at.
There were a handful of openings in the walls of the room. Half of ’em looked original, with door posts and lintels, but the other half looked like they’d been dug out by hand.
Lhan noticed me looking, and nodded toward the holes. “The pirates have made extensive additions to these catacombs since they appropriated Toaga, all those centuries ago. There are tunnels and rooms all through the rock. None, alas, goes all the way to the ground. Not anymore. Those were sealed up long ago as a security measure. Ha!”
He laughed, bitter, and it turned into a hacking cough. He clutched his ribs. I held onto him until it passed.
“Goddamn it, Lhan. Y’all gotta get outta here. You gotta get fixed up.”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Impossible. Would the priests land and make a fight of it, we might win, but they are cowards. They have no stomach for meeting us steel to steel. They would rather float in safety beyond our reach and let us starve to death.”
“There’s no food at all? Not even upstairs?”
Burly shrugged. “Pirates are not known for planning for the future. There w
as some, but most was on the ships.”
“And no water?”
“There is a great cistern, built by the old kings to catch the rain. But it has not rained for more than a moon, and it is nearly empty.”
“And what water there is….” Kai-La made a face.
Lhan motioned me toward one of the carved-out doors. “But if you thirst, if you are hungry, I have a little left to share. I would not have you think us all as ungracious as—”
His knees buckled as he said it, and his eyes rolled up in his head. I caught him before he hit the floor, then laid him down.
“Lhan! Lhan, are you okay?”
Kai-La knelt beside us. “He took a bolt as we were rescuing those who fell in the priests’ first attack, and I fear the wound festers. He will not let us see it, though, so I know not.”
I looked down at him, tears filling my eyes. “Goddamn it, Lhan. Why you gotta be such a fucking hero?” I looked up at Kai-La. “Where’s his bed roll? I’m gonna have a look at this wound, no matter what he says.”
She shrugged. “There is little point. We are doomed here. You will only delay the inevitable.”
“You’re damn right I will. For as long as I fucking can.”
She turned to Burly. “Find our medicine bag.” Then she stood and motioned to me as he hurried off. “Come. Lhan-Lar has taken a cell for himself in the old dungeon. I will show you.”
I picked Lhan up in my arms and followed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
REUNITED!
Burly came into the cell as Kai-La and I laid Lhan on his bed roll. He handed me a leather pack. “There is needle and thread, and some salves and bandages, but I’m afraid there is no water here fit to clean a wound.”
I pulled my canteen off my shoulder. It was still half full. “I have some, thanks.”
Kai-La rose and joined Burly at the door, then looked back. “I know you will do as you will, but you would do better to let him drink that than to wash his wounds with it. Neither will save his life, but a drink will sooth him more.”
“Go fuck yourself. He’s not going to die.”
“Then he will be the only one.”
She walked off down the hall and I got to work. It took way too long. His bandages were so glued on with dried blood that I had to use his dagger to cut them away, and what I saw underneath made me wonder how he was still alive. He had scrapes and bruises all over, but the main wound was in his side, just under his ribs, and it smelled like a dead skunk. It had been neatly sewn up a while back, but it hadn’t been cleaned in way too long, and was so inflamed now it was popping its stitches.
Lhan opened his eyes as I choked out a sob. “You cry, beloved?”
I wiped the tears from my eyes. I was so mad my hands were shaking. “Why shouldn’t I cry? Look what being a hero got you!”
He looked down at the wound and pursed his lips. “Hero? I was the cause of the massacre. I deserve worse.”
“Bullshit. You don’t deserve any of this.”
I gave him some of the water to drink, then got to work. Fortunately, I’d done this before. I’d had basic first-aid training in boot camp, and more advanced stuff in Ranger school, plus I’d spent years riding Harleys back and forth across the states, and had plenty experience patching up myself and my pals after some nasty wreck or bar fight. As long as there weren’t any internal injuries I was good. I just hoped the arrow in his side hadn’t punctured his guts. If it had, I was lost—and so was he. He gasped as I started to cut the stitches, then smiled like a skeleton.
“Ah, Jae-En. I feared I would never see you again. It seems impossible that you still live, that you escaped the priests. The Seven have answered my prayers.”
I kept cutting. “I didn’t escape.”
“I—I don’t understand.”
“They sent me back. To my world. I—” I had to stop cutting and swallow. “I thought I was stuck there. I thought I’d never… never…”
Lhan frowned. “You… you came back? But I understood you wanted nothing more than to return to your own world.”
“I—I did.” I looked down at him. “But I changed my mind.”
Lhan’s confusion melted into a look of wonder. He tried to sit up. “Oh, mistress. Oh, Jae-En. Oh, ow—”
I eased him back down, shaking as much as he was. “Even when I came back I thought it was impossible. I thought you were… I thought you’d….”
Then I did lose it. I put a hand over my eyes and tried to hide the tears that were streaming down my face. Lhan gripped my other hand and squeezed with all his might, which right about then wasn’t so much.
“I thought the same of you, Jae-En. But against all odds we have found each other again, and what e’re occurs now, however brief our time, I am content, as you are at my side once more.”
I snorfed and wiped my nose with my hand, then looked him in the eyes. Despite how sick and starved he was, they were still the same as they’d always been—warm, smart, sly and sweet all at the same time. “Yeah,” I said. “Ditto.”
I leaned down to kiss him, but as he raised up he winced and clutched his side and I remembered what we were doing. I pressed him back down.
“Time for that later. Now stay still.”
He tried, but as I went back to cutting the stitches he flinched again and I nearly stabbed him. Maybe he’d be better if he was talking.
“Tell me how you got here, Lhan. From the beginning. When they grabbed me.”
“I would rather not remember… my shame.”
“Tell it anyway.”
I cut the last stitch and the wound opened up like a diseased mouth. It was horrible, but at least it didn’t go deeper than the muscle. I breathed a sigh of relief and started washing it out as best I could with the water from my canteen. He clenched up like a fist.
“Come on. Start talking. From the beginning.”
“V-very well. I—I remember waking to see the priests reaching for you, and tried to rise, but there was a horrible lethargy.”
“Yeah. They drugged us.”
“Aye. But still you fought. It took all of them to hold your limbs. I think it is that which saved my life.”
I looked at him. I fought? It was news to me. “What do you mean?”
“There was one, with a knife. I believe he meant to cut my throat, but he turned to help the others, and went with them to carry you to the balcony, leaving me alone.”
I opened up a pot of goop from Kai-La’s medicine bag and held it out to him to smell. “What’s this?”
He sniffed, then wrinkled his nose. “An astringent, for clean healing. Be sparing. It stings.”
I slathered it on like it was peanut butter. He twitched and yipped with pain.
“Mistress!”
“Keep talking.”
Tears were running down his cheeks. “You are cruel, Mistress.”
“Yeah, I know. Go on. You said they left you alone.”
“Yes. I—I knew it was my only chance. I fought the drug, forced myself to stand, then found my sword and made it to the corridor, where it was easier to breathe.”
I got a needle and thread out of the kit, sterilized the needle using Lhan’s lamp, and started sewing the wound back together.
He gritted his teeth. “I meant to return and rescue you, but before I had recovered, he with the knife and another came looking for me. I fell upon them from the shadows, but the drug had me in its clutches. I did not fight well. They wounded me.”
He touched a scar on his sword arm. It was long and fresh, but healed and clean—not like the rest. “I could not lift my sword, so I fell back and hid in…” He blushed. “In a secret room.”
I smiled at that. I’d been in that room. I knew why he was blushing.
“Go on.”
“Again, I meant to return to you immediately, but my head was muddled, and as I struggled to bandage myself I… I lost consciousness.” He punched his leg, and almost tore my stitches. “An unforgivable weakness!”
&nb
sp; I grabbed his arm. “Hey! Stay still! What happened next?”
He turned his head and went on. “What happened next is that I woke to Rian-Gi shaking me, and I discovered that it was morning.” He hid his face. “Your pardon, mistress, the shame of it is still unbearable.”
I rolled my eyes. “Lhan. You passed out. You can’t control that.”
“Can I not? The mind controls the flesh. The flesh does not control the mind.”
“Yeah yeah, so then what?”
“Then Rian saw to my wounds and begged me to leave, for he feared the priests would return and find me there.”
I bit my lip, not sure I should tattle, but then I caught myself. I didn’t see any shame in what Rian did. It was the priests who were the murdering bastards, not him. “They did return. That’s how they learned you were with the pirates. That’s how they followed you here. Y’see. It’s not your fault after all.”
Lhan looked up at me, and his face went in about six directions at once—shock, horror, anger, sadness—okay, only four. “Rian-Gi talked?” And then. “Of course. Of course he did. Any man would. They know their business, those villains. Did… did they kill him?”
“Not him. His boyfriend. Rian talked to save him, but they killed the poor guy anyway.”
Lhan closed his eyes and I stitched him up in silence for a full minute, then he shook his head. “You are wrong, Jae-En. It is my fault. It is I who killed Wae-Fen. And I who brought about Rian’s torture. For it is I who foolishly told him my plans. Had I kept it from him—”
“They would have tortured him anyway. And killed Wae-Fen. Come on, Lhan. You can’t blame yourself for the church’s evil shit.”
“I blame myself for knowing we were the subject of their scrutiny and not keeping away from my friends. My lack of proper caution allowed them to catch you, to torture Rian-Gi, to murder Wae-Fen and, by the One, I have hurt these poor pirates worse than all the rest. Thirteen ships burned, hundreds of men dead. Lo-Zhar is right to wish to cast me out and kill me. I am like a plague victim who kisses his children. I harm all I love. All I touch!”
