by Betina Krahn
“There!” she cried, pointing to the grass at the bottom of the ledge. “A s-snake! A huge one!” Her entire arm trembled as she punched her finger accusingly at the place. “There it is! It’s still there . . . I can see it.” A shudder racked her as she announced: “I s-stepped on it!”
Saxxe straightened out of his defensive stance, looking around the sloping hillside. A snake? There was no other source of immediate peril, so he sheathed his dagger and strode a bit closer, craning his neck to see through the knee-high grass. There it was: a prime, well-fed snake that had crawled out of its den in the rocks to do a bit of sunning.
“Well, don’t just stand there!” she commanded. “Do something!”
“Do what?” Saxxe leaned back on one leg, watching Thera channel her fear into imperious anger. He had seen it happen before several times, he realized, but never quite so plainly. For the first time, he truly understood: when she was frightened, she reacted by taking charge and giving orders.
“Kill it, for Heaven’s sake!”
Her command had a truly desperate edge. The more frightened she was, the fiercer and bolder her orders became, he realized. It made a bizarre bit of sense, somehow. Every time he’d expected terror and tears from her, he’d gotten a sharp-clawed cat who hissed orders instead.
“Well? Are you going to do something or not?” she demanded.
He tucked his thumbs in his belt and edged nearer, giving the snake a closer look. Letting out a low whistle, he backed up a step. “That’s a big one, all right. I don’t mind telling you, demoiselle, I don’t much care for snakes. Treacherous creatures. You never know what you’ll get into when you tangle with one. Why, I remember once in the caverns of Crete . . . Gasquar and I came across a snake as big around as a man’s—”
“Curse you, Rouen,” Thera choked out. “This is no time for one of your idiot tales! Just kill the vile thing before it gets . . . one of us!”
He paused, drew in his chin, and shook his head gravely. “I don’t know, demoiselle. Snake fighting can be a dangerous business. Before I tangled with it, I’d need to know I’d be well paid for the effort.”
Her eyes narrowed as she realized where he was leading. “You’re already being paid to protect and escort me to M—my home!”
“True. But nothing was said about snake fighting. I’d have to have an additional reward for that. Say . . . another night of pleasure.”
Another night? There were two snakes in the grass in front of her now!
“Spit and roast you, Rouen,” she ground out. “I’ll do no such—Aghhhh!”
The snake was moving . . . straight toward her perch. She screamed and thrust back as far as she could against the rock behind her.
“Another night of pleasure, Thera of Aric. It will either be a night with me or a quick kiss and cuddle with your legless friend here. But then, I seem to recall you once said you’d prefer a snake’s kisses to mine. . . .”
Thera’s heart raced and her stomach churned as she watched those fat brown coils unwinding and sliding toward the edge of the ledge, looking for all the world as if they were headed straight up the rock toward her place of refuge. Closer and closer it slithered. She looked up at Saxxe’s broad shoulders and glowing eyes . . . and was furious with him.
“All right! Another night of pleasure.” Her throat constricted and she was barely able to squeak out, “Now do something! Hurry! ”
With a fierce grin, he brandished his dagger and curled into a crouch. “Stay where you are . . . keep back,” he called, and she flattened further against the ledge. He charged through the grass with a great bellow, and she screamed. Then at the last moment, he halted and made a lightning-quick stomp. There were thrashing sounds, then all went deathly still. Her heart convulsed in her chest. He was holding the snake’s head in one hand, letting its thick body writhe in his grasp . . . and he was grinning.
“Well, that wasn’t too bad a fight,” he said, sheathing his unused dagger.
Wasn’t too bad a fight? It wasn’t a fight at all! Chagrin burst red-hot against her skin as she watched him look the vile beast in the eye, shrug as if in apology, then whirl it above his head and send it sailing into the grass far down the hillside.
“Y-you picked it up?” she demanded hotly, rising from her huddled perch. She’d been had. “You just reached down and picked the cursed thing up?”
“I didn’t get a good look at it, at first” he said with a less than penitent expression. “It turned out to be a fine, fat rat snake. Not dangerous at all, really, unless you happen to be a field mouse. A fine bit of luck, eh?”
“Luck?” Her eyes widened and her fists clenched. “You knew all along, didn’t you—you greedy, unprincipled cur!” Climbing down from the ledge, she shoved furiously past him and stalked back around the hillside with her face aflame.
Saxxe’s laughter lapping at her back was the last straw. He had taken advantage of her ignorance to coerce yet another wretched night from her. This was the last—the very last—time he would do such a thing to her. She swore it on Mercia’s sacred scrolls; she wouldn’t be held for ransom again, no matter what the cost!
She marched straight to Sultan, hiked her tunic well above her knees, and jammed her foot into the tall stirrup. It took several hops, but she managed to catch on and push up to a seat behind the saddle, where she sat with her back as straight as an arrow shaft.
Saxxe had a feeling she was saving her anger up for him, but he couldn’t help the small smile that overtook him. Taking advantage of her fear of snakes was a canny, opportunistic, and mildly despicable thing to do . . . a bit of work any mercenary would have been proud to claim. It was a relief to know he hadn’t gone totally soft where she was concerned.
She now owed him three long nights of pleasure: a considerable obligation and not the sort of debt a wealthy father would wish to see satisfied. It was more the sort of thing a wealthy father would wish to payoff in silver . . . large, spendworthy pouches of silver. And it couldn’t be much longer, three or four days at most. If he could just keep his distance from her . . .
As he strode back up the hill, he stopped dead at the sight of her sitting astride his horse with her tunic pulled taut over her ripely curved buttocks and tucked around her shapely thighs. His gaze slid down her naked lower legs and his hands curled around the remembered feel of them.
It was another infuriating dilemma: did he walk in order to keep a distance between them, or did he pull her from his horse and make her walk? Growling irritably, he climbed onto the saddle and gave Sultan a knee to set him moving . . . having forgotten all about making her say “Prithee please.”
Chapter Ten
When they finally stopped for a rest and a drink, it was nearing sunset. Saxxe studied the sky and the abundant tree cover and announced that they would make camp there, above a wide spot in the still-flooded stream.
“Make camp here? We cannot stop now . . . there is plenty of daylight left,” Thera insisted in a ragged voice. “We could locate Lillith and your braggart of a friend at any time now . . . it can’t be much farther.”
Saxxe halted in the midst of a broad, muscle-rippling stretch and turned a narrow look on her. All afternoon he’d suffered her disdainful propriety. She had taken great pains not to touch him or speak to him in any way, except to demand they go faster, and her stubbornness had begun to wear on him.
“There is water and dry wood here, and trees for shelter. We’ll go on after we’ve had a hot meal and a night’s rest. Not before,” he said firmly.
“I don’t need to rest,” she declared, ignoring the aches in her legs and back that said otherwise. “I need to travel on . . . toward Lillith and my home. And I hardly think you’ve been overtaxed this day. You’ve done nothing but sit on your horse, take naps under trees . . . and take advantage of another’s fears and misfortunes.”
She gave him a scathing look. She’d had all afternoon to nurse her irritation and bolster her nerve, and now intended to have what she w
anted: a quick end to this wretched journey.
“Lust may be your favorite of the Deadly Sins, but I can say with certainty that you show remarkable aptitude for sloth as well. All I’ve had to eat all day are a few berries—which I picked myself, along the way—and a handful of oats.” Her eyes glinted like blue Damascus steel. “It occurs to me, Rouen, that I am not getting much value for the exorbitant price I am paying for your services.”
He reddened beneath his dark beard and copied her arrogant pose. She’d conveniently forgotten about the times he had hazarded life and limb to rescue her, and about the way he had fed and revived her and warmed her . . . just as she’d forgotten about the debt of pleasure she already owed him. However, she had managed to remember his gentle, teasing revelations of the night just past, and now used them to gore him. And for some reason he couldn’t just shrug off her disdain as he had before.
“So you think you’ve been ill served and neglected, do you?” he said, ire rising. “Well, perhaps you will do better yourself.” He turned to his horse to retrieve his bags and the hares he had taken earlier. “Here’s your supper.” He dropped one fat, gutted rabbit on the ground before her and leveled a vengeful half smile at her.
“You cannot be serious,” she said, backing up a step.
“I assure you, I am. And you will need something to drink.” He turned back and fished about in one pouch to produce a crude metal cup, which he tossed onto the ground between them. “Never let it be said that I didn’t provide.” He swept a hand toward the stream. “There is plenty of water that way, demoiselle.”
“See here, Rouen. You promised to escort me and that means providing for me.”
“I am escorting you. And providing food for you.” He turned away and began searching the ground for downed branches and bits of firewood.
“If I cook it!”
“Yea, if you cook it.” He paused, watching her stare at the rabbit with undisguised horror. “I suppose you’ll need something to skin that. Here—” He drew one of his daggers and sent it thudding into the ground beside the carcass.
“S-skin it?” She blanched.
“Before you cook it . . . unless you have a taste for singed hair,” he said with a glint in his eye. “Trust me, demoiselle, that is a taste that takes getting used to.”
“This is absurd. I’ll do no such thing.” She turned on her heel and strode off into the bushes, then returned in time to see him removing the last of the skin from his hare and sharpening a stick from the pile he had gathered.
She plopped down on a nearby log, her arms tucked adamantly around her waist, trying not to watch as he used the striking steel to set some grasses afire. He added twigs and larger branches, and soon the smell of roasting rabbit wafted across the small clearing. Her mouth watered and her stomach growled.
“Hungry?” he said, making a show of tending and checking his meal.
“Nay.” Starving was more like it.
“Having trouble, demoiselle?” He cocked a look toward her untouched meat. “I could arrange to help you,” he said solicitously. “For a price.”
Sitting on the wrong end of a hornet couldn’t have brought her to her feet quicker. A price? The insufferable lout! Not again. Never again.
She sank to her knees and picked up the knife in one hand and the hare in the other. The knowledge of what she had to do made her feel a little sick, but she swallowed her stomach back into place, muttering: “It’s you or me.”
She flinched as she made the first cut, then closed her eyes, seized the fur, and pulled. Nothing happened, and she opened her eyes and tried again, then finally picked the cursed thing up for better leverage. She tugged, then yanked hard, and the carcass popped out of her slippery hands and landed in the dirt a pace away. She gasped and blinked. For a moment her chin quivered with frustration, then she pounced on the hare, straining and pulling with a vengeance . . . persevering until her supper began to relinquish its furry coat.
By the time she finished, the creature still had the odd patch of fur here and there and a puffy tail, but she told herself she could just eat around them, and she cut a stick and sharpened it to make a spit.
She looked up from her work to find Saxxe standing nearby with a stack of branches in one arm and the striking steel in the other. “You’ll need a fire.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She pointed to the flames crackling nearby. “That’s—”
“My fire,” he said.
She was stunned at first; she couldn’t imagine that he would be so barbaric as to deny her access to a fire. It was the most basic of human sufferance . . . sharing the means of warmth.
“Fine!” she declared, snatching the steel from his hand and sinking to her knees by the stack of branches. How difficult could it be to lay a fire? She’d seen her palace servants do it a thousand times.
More difficult than she had guessed, she soon learned. She huddled and struck and blew on the sparks until her fingers cramped and her back ached and she was light-headed from blowing. It took half an hour just to set a bit of dry grass alight . . . a good while longer to feed the flame into coals hot enough to cook.
When she finally did get her pathetic dinner over the flame, her eyes stung from the greenwood smoke and her hands trembled from strain. After a few moments, she sat back with a feeling of relief and looked up to find Saxxe lolling on his side by a glorious fire, tossing the bones from his meal aside and licking his fingers with exaggerated relish. When he saw her looking at him, he smiled cheerily and raised a bone in salute. Glowering, she turned back to her meal.
The bottom of her meat and the stick on which it was spitted were both on fire.
“Nooo!”
Panicking, she picked up a branch and tried to beat out the flames . . . which sent both meat and stick crashing into the fire. Smoke and ash billowed in her face and she jolted back, coughing and fanning herself, until she realized her hard-won supper was going up in smoke. Seizing a stick, she poked and prodded the meat out of the flames. As she assessed the damage, the pungent smell of singed rabbit hair rose from the half-charred wreck.
An odd noise from Saxxe’s direction caused her to jerk around, and she found him sitting with his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking violently as he made muffled, hiccuplike sounds. The wretch was laughing at her! She sat for a moment on her knees, her face flaming and her throat tightening . . . feeling small and inept and vulnerable. Then her royal pride caught fire and she refused to give in to such humiliation.
“I skinned and cooked it. By the saints, I’ll find something to eat on it,” she muttered furiously. She began pulling off the ash-covered outer part and discovered some nicely cooked meat below.
It was a bit dry and a little burned in places . . . but if she held her breath and didn’t look too closely . . . it was almost tasty. Better yet, it was filling. And best of all, it was all hers . . . debt free. She had done it herself. She carved and nibbled and gnawed, not stopping until she had eaten every part that wasn’t too blackened or too raw.
Saxxe sprawled on his side, watching her devour her scarcely edible meal. He had expected her to rant and rail and berate him, then to demand, and finally to dissolve in tears and give in to his offer of help for a price. But she hadn’t. She had gutted it out . . . stuck with each dirty, disagreeable task until she finished it. And now she was enjoying the fruits of her own labor, perhaps for the first time in her life.
His righteous ire was eroding. She had surprised him just now with her tenacity. She was pampered and arrogant beyond any female he’d ever encountered. But there were hidden depths inside Thera of Aric . . . resilience, a quick wit, and a remarkable strength of will for a woman so young. He watched her sitting back, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand and licking her fingers. Yet, for all her self-possession, there was a girlishness about her that roused protective impulses in him, and an artless sensuality about her that he found irresistible. He watched her intently, studying every movement, hungry for anoth
er glimpse inside her.
The question of who she was and what she was doing charging off into the high wastelands of Brittany returned to him with new urgency. Was she indeed going home? Or to meet a forbidden lover? Or—a new thought struck him—to participate in some dynastic intrigue?
Dieu! She was a puzzle—one he ached to solve. As she arched her back, he caught a glimpse of her body through her thin garment and smiled wryly. That was not all he ached to do. She pushed to her feet and he called after her.
“Where are you going?”
She halted and looked at him, her guard rising.
“For some water. I believe you did suggest it,” she said loftily, lifting the cup in her hand. When she turned back toward the stream, the sound of his voice slowed her.
“You’d better take a knife, demoiselle. You never know when . . . or against what . . . you may have to defend yourself.”
He was declaring that he didn’t intend to come to her rescue again, she realized. Not without a healthy price. Well, she had managed to feed herself. She could certainly manage to draw a bit of water. But after a moment’s hesitation, she did turn back for the dagger.
By the lowering light, she picked her way down the gentle slope. Choosing a sheltered spot among some rocks, she lifted her tunic and waded into the stream. In the soft evening light, it seemed peaceful. Swallows swooped in the sky and frogs sang in the distance. Mud laid down by the retreating floodwaters covered the smooth stones on the stream bottom, and as she ventured farther out, she relished the way the mud squished between her toes. For a few moments she felt oddly content, kicking around in the water, answerable to no one for these unfettered moments.
Then she turned and found Saxxe standing on the bank not far away with his fists on his hips. His scowl caused her shoulders to rise defensively. “What do you want?” she demanded, but even as the words left her lips, she realized that his dark look was aimed past her. She followed his gaze toward something behind her, something emerging from the shadows beneath an overhanging tree. There it was . . . in the water . . . a sinister dark ribbon, floating.
