Aquilla held out his arms to make room for the man, but no one came near him. The Avitras surrounded him on all sides. Aquilla threw back his shoulders. “You see! This is the prize we brought back from the frontier.”
Anna and Penelope Ann stared at the man with their mouths open. Penelope Ann swallowed. “Did you....?”
Aquilla puffed himself up even more. “What do you think? This is going to seal my place in history. I’m the first Alpha ever to bring back an Ursidrean captive.”
He crowed in triumph, but Anna’s heart sank. So this was an Ursidrean, the first she’d ever seen, but being in the same room with him shamed her. She had nothing to do with his capture, but she could barely look him in the eye. She was supposed to be Avitras now, too. She left the Lycaon to make her home with Avitras, so why couldn’t she celebrate their triumph over their enemies?
Anna’s mind whirled. Aquilla, Alpha of the Avitras faction, had captured an Ursidrean from the frontier between their territories. This could lead to war. Why did she ever leave the Lycaon?
Aquilla was too full of his own pride to notice anybody else. He waved to his men. “You can leave him here.”
The guards exchanged glances, but he spread his arms to usher them toward the door. “Don’t worry. He’s harmless. He’s not going anywhere. You made sure of that.” Aquilla laughed, and his voice grated on Anna’s nerves.
She cast another look at the prisoner. Blood darkened one of his nostrils and the fur on the side of his head. He held himself perfectly erect and stared straight back into her eyes, but she couldn’t help notice the discolored patches on the skin of his arms and neck. The Avitras did their best to subdue him before they brought him back.
Penelope Ann broke the silence. “What are you going to do with him? You can’t keep him here.”
Aquilla turned away. “I’m going to interrogate him until I find out which of their rotten breed killed my brother Erius in the war. Once I find that out, I’ll hold him for ransom until the Ursidreans turn over the murderer. Then I’ll have my revenge.”
Penelope Ann let out a shaky breath, but neither she nor Anna could take their eyes off the prisoner. “Do you have to keep him here? Isn’t there anywhere else you could keep him?” She hesitated. “I was hoping...”
Aquilla swept her up in his arms. “I know you were hoping we could spend our first night alone together. I feel the same way, but I can’t let this opportunity pass me by. I’ve been burning for revenge against my brother’s killer for years. Now the perfect means to accomplish that has fallen into my lap. I couldn’t let it slip away.”
Anna swallowed hard. For some reason, she kept her eyes locked on the Ursidrean’s face, and his gaze never wavered from her eyes. How did he know to look at her? What trick of the light told him his stare played on her heart strings in that room full of people who cared nothing about him? “He didn’t exactly fall into your lap, did he? It looks like you beat him up pretty bad. He didn’t come over to the Avitras of his own free will.”
Aquilla laughed again. “No need for your jokes now.”
“Who’s joking?” Anna barely heard her own voice.
Aquilla collapsed on the couch. “Give me that food, my love. I’m starving.”
Chapter 2
Penelope Ann set a wooden bowl in Aquilla’s hands. He leaned back on the couch and scooped nuts and seeds into his mouth while he kept his flashing eyes on his captive. The Ursidrean never moved a muscle.
Aquilla chuckled over his meal. “You’re right. He didn’t fall into our laps. We noticed a band of the lumbering brutes across the valley while we were patrolling the border. They’re so stupid, they didn’t notice us.”
“Is that when you got the idea of holding one of them for ransom?” Penelope Ann asked.
“I actually got the idea on the flight up there,” he told her. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I only just got the idea that, if I got my hands on one of the stinking creatures, I could force him to tell me which of his hairy comrades killed my brother. I’ve been brooding over this ever since the war ended. Not knowing who killed him drives me mad—almost more than knowing the murderer is walking free under the Angondran sky instead of rotting in a shallow grave the way he should be.”
Anna stood in the same spot. The Ursidrean held her gaze with unwavering attention. The one time she glanced at Aquilla, the sight of him eating his evening meal made her sick to her stomach. Looking at the Ursidrean calmed her in a way she couldn’t understand. He stood straight and still, with no fear for his future. His wounds didn’t touch him.
She trusted his solid form and watchful eyes. She never trusted the Lycaon or the Avitras this way. Nothing bad could happen as long as he held her gaze that way. She dreaded the moment Aquilla started questioning this prisoner, but she dreaded leaving the room and breaking that eye contact with him more.
Penelope Ann and Aquilla kept up a friendly chat about everything that happened since he left in search of Frieda. They even discussed Aquilla’s sleeping habits on the journey to the frontier. Penelope Ann’s voice drifted into Anna’s consciousness. “Did you find that Border troop you thought was lost?”
“We found them,” Aquilla replied. “They were miles away from their posts. We questioned them for three days, but we never got a straight answer out of them about what made them deviate from their patrol. I’ve got a good mind to strike the whole patrol and send them back to remedial training.”
“Is that really necessary?” Penelope Ann asked.
“I can’t trust them,” he replied. “If they can’t stay within their assigned patrol and have no reasonable explanation why they left it, I have no choice but to strike them. They left a whole stretch of border unguarded. Anything could have happened during that time. The enemy could have walked right over our border, and we would have been caught unprepared.”
The Ursidrean’s eyes brightened up, and one eyebrow twitched upwards.
The conversation paused. Then Penelope Ann murmured. “How can you eat with him staring at us like that?”
Aquilla chuckled. “I’m hungry.”
“Can’t you send him somewhere else?” she asked. “Does he have to stand here in our house?”
Aquilla set his bowl aside. “Looking at him makes me happy. You don’t know how satisfying it is to know he’s here, in our power, for a change instead of haunting our border, waiting to strike when our Guards’ backs are turned. I can do what I want with him, and he can’t do us any harm.”
“I wish you’d get rid of him,” Penelope Ann muttered.
Aquilla kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll get rid of him sooner or later, but right now I need him around. Now let’s stop talking about him. I want to relax and enjoy my first night back at home.”
Anna heard her own voice coming from somewhere outside herself. “He looks hungry.”
Aquilla snorted. “He’s not hungry. Look at him. Does he look like he’s fading away?”
She couldn’t stop herself. She walked to the counter across the room and picked up the other bowl of food. Penelope Ann prepared it for herself, but Anna held it out to the Ursidrean.
He gazed down at the mixture of nuts and seeds. Then he smiled at her and shook his head. Her cheeks burned.
“You see?” Aquilla called out. “He’s not hungry or tired or weak. He’d like you to think he is, but these Ursidreans are a tough breed.”
Anna couldn’t stand the Ursidrean gazing into her eyes and smiling at her that way. He didn’t really smile. No one could smile in his situation. But a fire burned in his eyes when he looked at her. He didn’t look at the Avitras men that way, and he didn’t look at Aquilla or Penelope Ann that way. What was he thinking when he looked at her? She tore her eyes away, but there was nowhere else she could turn.
Aquilla and Penelope Ann cuddled on the couch. If the Ursidrean hadn’t been there, she would have sat on the floor, but she couldn’t settle down. Nervous s
hivers racked her body. She clenched her hands together to stop them shaking.
She turned first one way and then another in a desperate search for something to do with herself. Every time she looked at the Ursidrean, she found him looking back at her. Every time she looked at Aquilla and Penelope Ann, she found them immersed in each other, which made her even more uncomfortable. How long would they linger on the couch? She was supposed to sleep there tonight.
She made a circuit of the room and stopped at the counter again. She picked up the water jar and held that out to the Ursidrean. “Are you thirsty?”
He regarded her with a distant intensity, almost as though he was seeing her for the first time. Then he took the jar out of her hands and lifted it to his mouth. He drank more than she expected. He must have been thirsty. He handed it back to her with a sigh. “Thank you.”
Aquilla watched the whole episode from the couch. “Be careful. You’ll give him ideas.”
Anna blushed and turned away, but she couldn’t stay in that house a moment longer. She strode across the room to the door, but just before she stepped out into the night, some mysterious power compelled her to glance back over her shoulder.
He still stood in the same place, immoveable, like a mountain dropped into her living room from the clear blue sky. And still he stared directly at her. He paid Aquilla, his captor, his tormentor, no attention whatsoever. Even when she hurried away into the dark, he gazed at the empty doorway where she disappeared.
She hurried through the village, going nowhere. She ran as much to get away from him as to get anywhere else. She passed a dozen lighted windows. She could ask at any one of them for a place to spend the night and expect a welcome. Her neighbors would understand Aquilla and Penelope Ann wanted the house to themselves for his first night back after weeks away.
But she didn’t want welcome at any of those houses. She wanted....What did she want? She couldn’t put her finger on it. She didn’t want to go back to Penelope Ann’s house—that was certain. The last thing she wanted to see was......him. But not him. She did want to see him, but she didn’t want to see him standing there, a captive. She didn’t want to see him standing there on display while Aquilla and Penelope Ann nuzzled on the couch. She blushed even now at the thought of it.
But him—she didn’t blush at the thought of him, alone by himself. The image of him standing in front of her with that straightforward look on his face gave her a sense of peace. If only she could erase the house around him and leave him standing that way in the middle of the forest with no one around but her. And then what?
She stopped on one of the platforms between the houses and watched the lights winking on and off again. She could name every person in the village, but those lights didn’t beckon to her tonight. They left her cold and cast out.
Then she spotted the same group of Avitras Guards who brought the Ursidrean to Penelope Ann’s house. They filed one behind the other, back along the tree branches, back toward the house. Anna’s blood ran cold. What were they doing?
She hated to return, but she couldn’t trust Aquilla or his men with that prisoner around. Whatever they did with him, she had to see it for herself. She had to bear witness to this moment. She couldn’t say exactly why.
Chapter 3
Anna hurried by a back route back to Penelope Ann’s house, but the Avitras Guards veered off and went a different direction. They didn’t return to Aquilla. Anna sighed with relief, but at that moment, voices bubbled out of the house and called her back. She couldn’t keep running away.
A deep rumbling voice answered Aquilla, and a shiver went up Anna’s spine. She hurried to the door. Aquilla stood in the middle of the room, face to face with his captive. “Who are you?
The man looked him squarely in the eye. “I am an Ursidrean.”
Aquilla’s eyes flashed. “I know that. Tell me who you are. What is your name?”
“My name is Menlo,” the man replied.
“What is your position in the Ursidrean army?” Aquilla asked.
“I am not a member of the army,” Menlo replied. “I am a geographer assigned to the border patrol.”
Aquilla’s arm shot up. Anna flinched, but he didn’t strike the Ursidrean the way she expected. He simply waved his arm. “We both know that’s nonsense. Every Ursidrean is a member of the army. You have a militaristic society. Men, women, and children get inducted into the army from an early age, so don’t give me any fairy tale about being a geographer assigned to the border patrol.”
Menlo cocked his head to one side. “Who told you that?”
Aquilla waved his hand. “Everybody knows it. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
“When?” Menlo asked.
Aquilla glared at him. “I’ll ask the questions here. Don’t step out of line, or you’ll wish you’d never been born. Keep your place if you know what’s good for you.”
Menlo said nothing, but he never took his eyes off Aquilla’s face.
“I saw for myself during the Ursidrean campaign how every Ursidrean participated in the battle,” Aquilla went on. “Even young children fought alongside their parents.”
“That was during the first war,” Menlo replied. “The Avitras invaded our territory and laid siege to our city. We all had to fight for our lives.”
“Your society operates as one enormous army,” Aquilla returned. “You prepare for battle from your youth. You might as well admit it now and tell me your position.”
“I already told you I’m not a member of the army,” Menlo murmured.
Aquilla’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. “Are you telling me you never fought in any war?”
“I never said that,” Menlo replied.
Aquilla jabbed his finger at him. “I knew it! You are a member of the army.”
“I fought in the last war,” Menlo admitted, “but I haven’t been in the army since.”
“You’re on the border patrol,” Aquilla shot back. “That’s the army.”
Menlo shook his head. “We’re assigned through the civil Labor Pool. I reported to the Labor Pool after being discharged from my squadron. They looked up my Academy records, and when they found out I had training in geography, they assigned me to the team mapping out the borders. I’ve been doing it ever since. I haven’t even had any combat training.”
Aquilla snorted. “You wouldn’t need any after the time you spent fighting the Avitras on our own soil. You can’t cry me a river about women and children fighting for their lives that time.”
Menlo narrowed his eyes. “I read history books. The Avitras provoked the second war the same way they provoked the first one. They breached our border, but we drove them back and fought them in their own strongholds where they couldn’t harm our defenseless civilians.”
Aquilla gritted his teeth, but Menlo cut him off. “After the war ended, we made a peace treaty with the Avitras. Our Supreme Council cut back the border patrols between our territories. That’s what left us open to invasion from our supposed allies.”
Aquilla dropped his voice to a menacing snarl. “How dare you blame the Avitras for your own brutality? How dare you come into my house and beg for sympathy—from me?”
“Who begged for sympathy?” Menlo asked.
Aquilla didn’t hear him. “Do you know why you’re here? Do you know why you’re bleeding on my floor tiles right now instead of laughing over your bubbling sanctity in your own country?”
Menlo watched him with patient reserve. “I’m sure you will tell me.”
“You killed my brother!” Aquilla burst out. “You murdered him, and now you’re going to pay the price.”
“I?” Menlo asked. “I killed your brother?”
Aquilla waved his hand. “What difference does it make? An Ursidrean killed him. That’s all that matters. I’ll never rest until I pay every single one of you back for it.”
Menlo arched his eyebrows. “What makes you think an Ursidrean killed him? You
people have seen precious little of Ursidreans. You know next to nothing about us.”
“Who else could have killed him?” Aquilla shot back. “He died in the war.”
“Anybody could have killed him,” Menlo replied. “He could have been killed by friendly fire. He could have stepped in front of a cannon as it was going off.”
Aquilla fixed him with a terrible glare. “You’re a prisoner here. Don’t you understand what that means?”
“It means I’m bleeding on your floor tiles right now instead of laughing over my bubbling sanctity in my own country, whatever that means,” Menlo replied. “So your brother died in the war. What of it? My brother died in the war, too. And my mother and my little baby nephew and my great-uncle were all wiped out by the Avitras when they closed up the mouth of refugee shelter outside Harbeiz. You don’t see me taking Avitras prisoners and dragging them back to Ursidrean territory for revenge.”
Aquilla didn’t answer. Faster than thought, he flew across the room and struck Menlo in the face with both fists. Menlo buckled under the blow, and when he collapsed onto the floor, Aquilla fell on him with feet and fists flying. He pummeled the fallen man with blows even after the heavy frame lay still and bleeding at his feet.
Once, Menlo rallied under the hail blows to fight back. He grabbed Aquilla by the ankle and pulled him off his feet. The house shuddered when Aquilla hit the floor, and Menlo brought his elbow down hard across Aquilla’s neck.
Menlo struggled to get up to press his advantage, but he was too big and bulky to move fast enough. The Guards’ rough treatment and Aquilla’s blows slowed him down enough to allow Aquilla to recover from his fall. Menlo got onto his hands and knees and moved toward him, but Aquilla flipped around and locked his legs around Menlo’s waist. With one twist, he sent Menlo crashing back onto the floor, where he kept the upper hand.
Rohn (Dragons of Kratak Book 1) Page 42
