by K S Augustin
“Breakfast,” he said when he was next to her. His hair was damp, most probably from a morning swim, the locks clumped into dark, silky tendrils. His eyes sparkled with humour and good cheer.
Gamsin felt her customary scowl threatening to reappear.
“I’ve already cleaned and scaled them,” he told her. “If you could get my pannikin, I’ll begin the cooking.”
Continuing her thoughts, she was also certain his backpack was magicked. She preferred the voluminous canvas bag that she wore across her body, doubling as receptacle, pillow and umbrella. It also had the advantage of easy access to its contents. But Ankoll preferred a large, more shaped bag with two straps that he wore over his shoulders. Despite the fact that wearing such a thing emphasised both his height and the breadth of his shoulders, Gamsin didn’t like it for two reasons—one, it offered too-easy access to its contents without the bearer being aware of it; and two, it seemed too small to hold as many wonders as it did.
Gamsin picked up the heavy pannikin that was drying upside down next to the fire and put it on the embers, rotating it back and forth a little so it was embedded evenly in the heat. When she turned around, Ankoll had already withdrawn a jug and several small pots. She knew the jug contained oil and the pots contained different herbs. With a hum, Ankoll seasoned the fish and set them sizzling on the iron plate.
“Don’t you mind,” she asked fifteen minutes later, in between mouthfuls of crisp-fried herbed fish, “that I’m not the one cooking?”
“Do you like cooking?” Ankoll asked.
“Well, no.”
“But I do. Consider it payment for your guidance.”
“I haven’t done much guiding yet,” Gamsin said wryly.
“Our journey’s still young.”
“That must be Tendraf Village,” Ankoll said, referring to his leather map.
Gamsin looked through the trees and down at the nest of buildings sheltering in the valley below. They had spent almost two weeks following the wide stream, only diverging to take a higher trail four days ago. Ankoll said it was better for tracking if they remained elevated.
“We should buy more provisions,” he commented. “And perhaps some horses.”
There was some tilled land stretching out away from the village but, from the number of buildings, Gamsin could tell that this was mainly a trading post. That was good. Visitors could remain reassuringly anonymous in a more populated area. It was the small farming hamlets she really worried about. She remembered Folon and shivered.
“We need to be careful.” Her tone was abrupt as she turned away. Ankoll looked up at her from his squatting position and began rolling up his map. “People in trading villages are always on the lookout for easy marks.”
“Perhaps we can just buy some provisions and transport, and leave,” he suggested. “We don’t have to stay in the village if it makes you uncomfortable.”
Ankoll was depending on her guidance, Gamsin reminded herself, and her guidance was telling her that unfamiliar territory should be approached with caution. If it was Mishlow City, she would have bounded past its perimeter with joy, reading the alleys and lanes as one would read a treasured book. But this was Tendraf Village, a place of strangers.
She nodded. “I would prefer it if we didn’t stay.”
“Another night beneath the stars.” He grinned. “That suits me well.”
It took them three hours to cover the ground to the village. The cropped, rocky slope of the hill gave way abruptly to the grassy scent and crackle of growing stalks of grain as they reached flat land and joined the main road into the village.
Gamsin sent a small sideways glance at Ankoll walking beside her, looking for possible vulnerabilities.
His problem was that he stood too straight, walked too assertively. With a shuffle and a bend, she could easily blend into a group of farmers bringing in their produce to market, but trying to hide Ankoll would be like trying to hide a gold brick in a bag of copper coins.
“Could you, ah, hunch over a bit?” she was finally driven to ask.
“Hunch?” His look was startled. “Why?”
She looked at him then waved her hand “It’s nothing.” It was probably too late anyway. She was sure people from the village had already spotted them trekking down into the valley and drawn their own conclusions.
To be fair, it wasn’t just his posture. The expression on his face was also of little help. Those lips of his were always on the verge of a smile, as though he was open to the experiences of the world. It was, in a word, unnatural. People who weren’t aristocrats never walked around with such a guileless countenance. Normal people—like her—knew the world for the brutal, selfish place that it was and took pains to protect themselves against it, though not always successfully. Even the few lords she’d snatched glimpses of in Mishlow City had looked petulant and sullen. In comparison, Ankoll’s cheerfulness could be construed by the cynical as idiocy.
She wondered if there was a disguise spell he could put on himself. She hadn’t thought of it before; she would have to bring it up when the trading post was safely behind them.
They fell in behind a band of merchants on the road and entered Tendraf Village without incident.
Gamsin thought she would feel some relief at entering a minor population center. After all, this was more familiar ground to her than the open countryside, but she couldn’t dismiss a shard of distaste as she passed the town’s outer buildings. All of a sudden, she wanted to be back in the forest, walking by the stream and listening to Ankoll’s off-key whistling.
“It’s already late afternoon,” she remarked in a low voice. “We should get to our business and leave before nightfall.”
He nodded. The provisioning store was attached to a barn, the thick padlocked door open for business. They entered the cool darkness and Gamsin let Ankoll do the ordering, content to stand silently by while her gaze skimmed the cracked-open, large wooden barrels containing salted goods and dark glass jars full of leaves and liquids. As the store owner and Ankoll continued to talk, Gamsin moved back to the door, watching the passing traffic with an alert eye. Her unease was unwarranted, she finally decided. There was no nervousness about the people walking around the town. They milled casually, combined into conversational groups then broke apart again—the normal texture of a town going about its own business.
Her ears pricked up only at the end, after the sound of coin changing hands, by Ankoll’s a-little-too-indifferent tone.
“Would you know where I might find a piglet for sale?”
The store owner pocketed his money. “For growing or for eating?”
Ankoll looked quickly at Gamsin, probably envisaging them walking through the forest with a snuffling pig in tow. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion and disbelief.
“For eating,” he said with a smile.
“Farmer Banton’s wife sometimes sells some young’uns.” He jerked his head in a direction farther into the village. “Try the square.”
“We should get going,” Gamsin reminded him as they left the store. “Do we really need a pig?”
“I feel like cooking a nice loin of pork,” he remarked, making her wonder whether it was a deliberate ploy of his to unnerve her at every possible turn.
It took time to walk to the square, and time to find Farmer Banton’s wife. Yes, she had two piglets left and would be happy to kill and gut an animal for them, but that would take an hour. Gamsin gritted her teeth while the woman and Ankoll bartered, watching anxiously as the sun’s orb touched the top of the nearest hill. If they left it too late, the farrier would close his shop and they would be forced to spend the night in the village.
In the end, they made it just in time, and that’s when the trouble started.
The farrier was a ruddy, thick-set man, with a calm but implacable air. Gamsin had met his type before. He wasn’t greedy but, likewise, he wasn’t given to many tender feelings either. His calculating gaze told her he’d been in the trade for a long time. The
y were going to be in for a rough round of negotiations.
Yes, they would like two horses, geldings would be fine. And yes, of course, they would need saddles. And saddle blankets. And stirrups. And bridles. And maybe some feed for the first day’s riding.
As the farrier led out two saddled animals and was calculating the total, Gamsin checked her purse and pulled Ankoll to one side, away from the trader and a small knot of his friends who were obviously waiting for the deal to be done so they could all wander over to the tavern together.
“We don’t have enough money,” she told him in a low voice.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” he replied with a grimace. In the spirit of their upcoming adventure, he’d forgotten about money. If ever Gamsin needed reminding of the unworldliness of sorcerers, here it was.
“We can buy one horse now and one later…”
He shook his head. “I have something else to trade.”
She thought Ankoll would pull a small wonder from his magical backpack—a bottle of perfume or an unpolished gem—and wasn’t prepared when he approached the farrier and said, “Perhaps I could help heal some of your sick animals?”
Her eyes widened in alarm. Conversation immediately ceased. The farrier narrowed his eyes.
“Do you call yourself a healer?”
“I can help heal animals, yes, although that’s not all.”
Gamsin rushed up to him, grabbing his arm. “We should leave.” She turned to the men. “He’s been a bit touched by the sun,” she told them quickly. “Brain fever, I think.”
Her words came too late. She saw a flourishing of fear and hate on their faces, a storm of repugnance erupting in mere seconds. To her dismay, the farrier reached for a broom handle, picking it up and brandishing it with menace.
“We thought we’d rid ourselves of your kind long ago,” he snarled, his eyes flat with disgust. “Causing trouble, laying curses. We killed our last witch in the time of my grandfather and don’t want any like you coming back.”
It was her fault. She should have told him about the superstitions that now abounded in her world, centuries after he’d turned his back on it. It had never occurred to her that he would have insulated himself so thoroughly that he was ignorant of modern beliefs.
Ankoll ducked the first inexpert swipe but Gamsin wasn’t so lucky. One of the farrier’s friends strode up to her and punched her in the face, knocking her to the ground. She hit the floor in a flurry of straw and stars then, after the blackness cleared, everything seemed to move in slow motion.
She saw Ankoll turn, anger filling his face when he saw her. She wanted to put her hand up, tell him she was all right, but the words stuck in her throat. He turned back to the men, and she could already see him changing into dragon form. His face elongated into a reptilian shape, sprouting spikes along his head and down the back of his neck. His shoulder blades grew, the bumps stretching the material of his shirt until they burst through his back, extending like bolts of dark lightning and unfurling into large glistening wings.
The men screamed and cowered into the depths of the stable as they confronted the bronze dragon, and the horses reared, their eyes rolling white with fear.
Gamsin shot to her feet, ignoring the spikes of pain that shot through her cheek. Without thinking, she let a thief’s instincts guide her. She grabbed the two tethered geldings, released them and threw herself onto the back of one. Ankoll’s backpack was still leaning against the wall, but there wasn’t time to reach it. Leading the other horse, she galloped out of the stable, happy to leave the men to their fate. After a small hesitation as she cleared the building, she headed back to the square.
Farmer Banton’s wife was too shaken by the approaching animals, and the wild look on the young rider’s face, to let out more than a strangled shriek as Gamsin reached down to pluck the newly gutted piglet from the blood-stained work table.
Then Gamsin was off, riding into the dusk, with the legs of the carcass lying across the saddle, bouncing in time to the horse’s rhythm.
Would they come after her, she wondered as she urged the horse up the hill slope. Or would the dragon keep them busy till it was too late for pursuit? She wasn’t worried about the beast. She’d seen the efficiency with which it devoured animals, the ruts of its talons in the stone at Ankoll Keep and the glitter of a predator in its large blue eyes.
Gamsin gave a short laugh into the approaching night as she topped the slope and reined in the horses, then winced as her skull throbbed in protest. She touched the left side of her face tenderly, feeling heat and the start of some swelling.
Despite the pain, she had enjoyed herself and tried to confine her smile to the uninjured side of her face as she watched the village below.
The dragon had used its breath, for she could see flames billow out of the stable and lick at its walls and roof. The night’s wind carried faint screams of panic to her ears. She should feel sorry for those people but, in truth, could work up little sympathy for burly men who used their bulk and numbers to harm others. She’d been struck, violated, ignored for all of her life, with few to come to her rescue…until now.
She turned the horses and headed deeper into the forest.
“Help me, Gamsin.”
The voice was Ankoll’s.
Gamsin looked around. It was late afternoon and she was at the top of Ankoll Keep. Ankoll was naked by one of the balusters, sweat gleaming on the smooth brown skin of his body as he shook with violent tremors. Together with his voice, his gaze pleaded with her.
“The dragon took over and is fighting me for dominance. I need you again, Gamsin, to help tether me to humanity.”
He dropped to his knees, his head bowed and his hands clasped tightly in front of him. “I’m afraid that if I give in…I will never be human again.”
She went to him and he pulled her down to the floor. “I don’t want to abuse your trust but the need is quickening in me,” he rasped. “Forgive me.”
His kiss—sudden, consuming—was searing and direct, an act of command completely unlike his previous embraces of her but, instead of feeling repulsed, Gamsin found an equally ferocious urgency rising in her. More than the faint ripples of fear that lapped at her mind, the idea that someone depended on her—needed her, protected her—sent the blood singing in her veins.
He pushed up the skirts of her gown and she felt his sweat-slicked hands brush her bare skin. Felt the tremors in his fingers as he stroked her tight curls, conjuring wetness from her. With a growl, he parted her legs, licking at her, capturing her nub in his mouth and letting it graze across his teeth.
Gamsin bucked, yelling out against the intense sensations cascading through her body. She could feel the trembling of his body through the short tongue strokes he delivered, the grip of strong hands holding her close. This wasn’t just him, she realised, but also the dragon, eager for pleasure and satiation. Then all rational thought fled as wave upon wave of pleasure coursed through her, tightening her muscles and restricting her breathing to loud, spasmodic gasps.
She had not yet subsided when he entered her in one fluid stroke. She gave one short cry, then held his head in her hands and looked deep into his eyes. She tried to steady her breathing. The dragon was there—she could see it—glinting behind the blue of his intense gaze. He thrust into her and she met each one of his movements with an unrestrained response of her own.
No! The pressure began building again, turning her limbs to water, and she let her hands slip through his hair. As if in another world, she heard Ankoll’s breath roughen. Her fingers grasped his locks, closing into fists. Her head moved from side to side, eyes shut, as she captured the resurging coil of an imminent orgasm. When she exploded again, he joined her, his throaty yells mingling with hers.
The pleasure went on for years, eons, then slowly subsided. Ankoll’s dark hair was damp and plastered to his face as he looked down on her, his smile tired…but entirely his own.
“Thank you,” he sighed.
; In a primal female movement, she gathered him to her and they fell asleep on the still-warm stone floor of Ankoll Keep.
Chapter Seven
Gamsin woke from her fitful sleep at the sound of someone approaching. Wisps of an elusive dream—sudden visions of Ankoll Keep, an image of Ankoll’s bare skin gleaming with sweat, echoes of her own cries—haunted her, but slowly slipped away as her wakefulness increased.
After riding for two hours, she set a small hidden camp deep in the forest, tethered the horses and, after a fruitless wait, fell into an exhausted sleep. The old Gamsin would have been happy at the outcome of their endeavour. She may have lost Ankoll and his magical backpack, but she’d gained food and two sturdy horses. She could sell one at the next village and turn a tidy profit. Except…she wasn’t old Gamsin anymore.
Whether she liked it or not—and, at the moment, she wasn’t liking it very much—she was changing. The two horses didn’t mean so much without the banter and companionship of Ankoll. True, he might be a sorcerer, but there was an innocence about him that brought out feelings in her she had thought long dead and withered. It was strange to have somebody so obviously capable depend on her for anything and she knew that answering this need could easily lead to the destruction of everything she’d worked hard to be.
And those vestiges of strange and vivid dreams unnerved her. She knew she dreamed of Ankoll and knew there were bonds of deep intimacy involved. But what did they mean? The vividness stayed in her mind even as the details vanished. Yet another mystery for her to untangle.
A twig snapped and, by the dim light of a small sheltered fire, Gamsin saw Ankoll step through the shrub. He had on a pair of breeches, but was bare-chested and—wonder of wonders—carrying his backpack, one strap slung over a broad shoulder. Still in shadow, Gamsin allowed herself the luxury of running her gaze over the sculpted flexures of his chest and torso, and felt an unfamiliar sense of lust rise in her.
