Emma scanned the sky worriedly. The sun was already halfway toward the horizon and sunset. She had no idea how long it might take them to get through the area that was making Aydin and Colwin uneasy, but she hoped they could pass it before the sun set. The only thing scarier than being in a really scary place at all was being there after dark!
Apparently, Colwin and Aydin were of a similar frame of mind. They began to move a little faster once Colwin had armed himself the best he could. Emma burrowed her face against Aydin’s back, hoping not to see what an ogre looked like. They’d only been traveling a little more than an hour, however, when Aydin stopped so abruptly she knew even before she lifted her head that she was going to see something nightmarish.
She smelled it before she saw it, the most ghastly odor she’d ever smelled wafting from a living thing. It was the color of something dead—a nasty grayish color—and it looked sort of like a cross between an ape—with the mange—and a hideous ugly man.
It grinned at them, showing a double row of rotting, broken teeth. “Come here, little ponies,” it crooned in a gravelly voice. “I’m hungry. Or you can just give me that tasty little morsel on your back and I’ll consider letting you pass.”
Emma screamed.
It galvanized everything in the narrow gulch. Ogres appeared from behind every rock, it seemed. Colwin, using the sling he’d made with a strip of her underskirt and the rocks he’d collected, launched a hail of missiles that had the ogres running and ducking for cover even as he and Aydin launched into a full out run.
“Hang on, Emma!” Aydin bellowed, lifting his sword as he charged straight toward the towering blob of flesh that had blocked their path. The thing tried to jump aside when Aydin swung at it, but it was too slow to avoid the blade. It screamed as Aydin’s sword bit so deeply it nearly severed the arm, countering with a blow with its other arm that staggered Aydin.
Because he didn’t duck to avoid it because Emma was right behind him.
Emma tried to duck, however, and when Aydin lost his footing, she lost her grip on him and tumbled off, hitting the rocky ground so hard it stunned her. The instinct for survival had her bounding up without the time it would’ve taken her mind to assess her situation. Something slammed into her even as she rose, an arm snagging her around the waist. She caught a flash of flying golden hair and registered that it was Colwin who’d scooped her up and then a dizzying blur as he tossed her onto his shoulder.
Aydin, she saw, had regained his feet. He bucked, slinging his hind legs into the air and slamming both hooves into the ogre’s face. The ogre’s head rocked back on it’s neck and it toppled backwards. Emma could see ogres converging on him from every direction, however, even as Colwin rounded a bend in the gulch and cut off her view.
“Aydin!” she screamed. “Colwin, you have to go back!”
He ignored her demand, racing along the dry bottom of the gulch at a pace that was dizzying. In a moment, she saw Aydin charging around the bend, dodging the rocks the orgres were undoubtedly lobbing at him.
He was hurt. She could see he was favoring one leg, could see blood trickling from his head and his chest and arms from the rocks.
She was in distress herself, though she’d been too terrified at first to feel it. Jouncing along on Colwin’s hard shoulder, though, it felt as if she’d cracked ribs. She could barely breathe and even before she’d caught sight of Aydin, the world had begun to narrow and grow dark.
She was still hanging upside down across Colwin’s shoulder when she surfaced toward consciousness again, but she discovered Colwin had stopped. He dragged her from his shoulder, curling his free arm across her shoulders as she slipped toward the ground and then knelt with her and settled her gently on the ground. She struggled to lift her eyelids and was relieved to see Colwin’s and Aydin’s worried faces swim into view.
“Where are you hurt, dearling?”
Warmth wafted through her at the endearment. She frowned, though, trying to pinpoint where she hurt when she hurt everywhere. “Can’t breathe,” she gasped finally when she tried to take in a deep breath and discovered she couldn’t without pain.
“It’s the gods damned dress!” Aydin growled.
One of them rolled her onto her side and she felt the laces being loosened. A few minutes later, she felt the tug and pull of the dress being removed and lifted her arms to help. She discovered to her relief that she actually could breathe a lot easier once it was gone.
A hand lightly stroked her ribs.
“Better?”
That was Aydin. She wondered if it had been his hands checking her ribs. She tested her lungs carefully and found that it didn’t hurt nearly as badly to drag in a breath.
“Yes,” she grunted.
“Bruised, I think. I can’t feel a break.”
She opened her eyes wide as memory abruptly flooded back and struggled to get up.
Colwin held her down. “You are safe.”
“They’re gone?” she asked shakily. “You’re sure?”
“We didn’t stop until we were.”
Emma stared at both of them and abruptly burst into tears.
Colwin glanced at Aydin uneasily and got up. Emma flung her arms around Aydin before he could escape, clinging to him tightly and burrowing her face against his chest. He hesitated for a moment and wrapped his arms around her. “It is alright, dearest. You are safe now.”
“I was so scared!”
“I know. It is alright now, though.”
She sniffed, suddenly remembering she’d seen that he was hurt and pulled away to look at him. “You’re hurt.”
He shook his head. “Bruises, a few small cuts. It is nothing that will not heal quickly. We were fortunate they are slow beasts.”
Emma shuddered, suddenly remembering things she hadn’t even been aware that she’d noticed at the time—bones. It had looked like human remains, skulls grinning up at her from among the rocks.
“You hurt your foot,” she wailed.
“Not badly,” he assured her.
“Is Colwin hurt?”
“He is only bruised—we are all only bruised and scraped.”
She shuddered. “It could’ve been so much worse!”
“But it wasn’t.”
But it could’ve been! There’d been dozens of them! And Aydin hadn’t had anything to defend himself with but his short sword and Colwin hadn’t even had that much! Just the club and the rocks!
“Do you feel well enough to keep moving? We need to find water before we make camp for the night.”
Sniffing, Emma leaned away from him and mopped at her face with her hand. She didn’t want to let go of him, but she knew he was right. In any case, the further they could get from the ogres, the better she’d like it. She nodded, but she had to make her hands unclench from him.
“I will carry her,” Colwin said. “It will be easier on your ankle.”
Emma had been about to object strenuously. She wanted to cling to Aydin still, wanted to reassure herself by holding him. She’d been so afraid he wouldn’t make it, so terrified that Colwin would leave him behind to save her.
She knew that was why he wouldn’t stop. She knew if it hadn’t been for her he would’ve been beside Aydin, fighting with him.
She started crying all over again when she realized that Aydin had almost died because of her.
Colwin looked at her uncertainly, but he helped her onto his back. “He will be alright,” he said gruffly. “I do not think it is broken.”
Emma tightened her arms around him. “I didn’t want anything to happen to you either,” she said tearfully. “You almost got killed—both of you and it was all my fault!”
Colwin made a sound of irritation. Reaching around, he pulled her off his back and cradled her in his arms instead. “That is not true, Emma!”
She coiled her arms around his shoulders, burrowing her face against his neck. “It is true! You wouldn’t be in this mess if it wasn’t for me and … and if it weren’t for me yo
u wouldn’t have tried to go this way … and you wouldn’t have left him if you hadn’t been worried about getting me to safety.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said after a long moment. “And neither would Aydin.”
Sniffing, Emma lifted her head to look at him. “You wouldn’t?”
His gaze flickered over her face. He shook his head. “I do not like to think about what would have happened to you if I had not gone after you.”
Despite the reassurance, Emma was still so shaky when they finally came upon a small pool of water she could barely stand when Colwin set her on her feet.
“Let us get these scratches washed up, huh?”
Emma blinked at him, but she didn’t object when he led her to the edge of the pool and helped her into the water. The moment she stepped into the water, though, she felt every stinging abrasion she’d hadn’t been aware of before. Releasing a hissing breath, she lifted her arms and looked at them.
Both palms and forearms looked as if they’d been through a meat grinder. She couldn’t see her legs, but she didn’t have to to know they were in pretty much the same condition. Her ribs, she discovered, were already beginning to turn black and blue from the bruising.
No wonder she’d felt like she hurt in too many places to count!
She looked up to discover Colwin had a cloth in his hand. “This will sting, but I need to be sure there is nothing in the scratches that might get infected.”
She nodded. To her surprise, he cupped her chin and very gently dabbed at it—and it still hurt like hell! He studied it frowningly for several moments and then rinsed the cloth and touched it to her forehead.
She sucked in a sharp breath, flinching, but gritted her teeth and closed her eyes until he’d finished washing the knot on her forehead. She opened her eyes again when he stopped and discovered he was studying her face. He met her gaze for a moment and lowered his head, brushing his lips lightly along hers.
It warmed her and not merely in a sexual way. Actually, not really in a sexual way at all, she realized. It was more like the offer of comfort and it warmed in her just that way.
She saw that Aydin was studying the two of them when Colwin gave her the cloth and moved away and the sense of comfort vanished like mist. He met her gaze for a long moment and then returned his attention to his own wounds. They’d stopped bleeding, but there was dried blood near the hairline on his forehead.
Instead of focusing on her scrapes and scratches, she moved toward him, moving around him to examine his back. There was a mass of bruises already forming from the rocks he’d been pelted with and several wide swaths of scratches. Rinsing the cloth, she carefully wiped at them with it.
It wasn’t actually much of a relief to see that most of the blood came away and that the scratches weren’t that bad. The deep bruising was evidence enough of the force of the blows. She was pretty sure she’d gotten most of hers from simply falling off of his back—her own clumsiness. He’d caught the brunt of the assault while Colwin was busy trying to get her to safety.
The urge to cry swept over her again, but she tamped it. The guilt welled once more, but she couldn’t dismiss that or the feeling, almost of panic, that assaulted her when she allowed herself to think of how closely they’d all come to being a meal for those horrible things.
There was no point in dwelling on it, she knew. As they’d said, it didn’t happen. She should just be grateful that it hadn’t and try to put it behind her.
It had made one thing very clear to her, though. The fear of loss wasn’t something she could easily put behind her. She didn’t think she could keep lying to herself that she was only intrigued by Aydin and Colwin, sexually attracted to them, found them charming.
If she hadn’t begun to care, deeply, about them, would she have felt that awful sense of devastation at the possibility that one or both of them might have died?
Chapter Nine
Although Aydin generally did the hunting when necessary, Colwin left her and Aydin to set up camp and went off to see what he could find to feed them. Emma glanced at Aydin from time to time when he didn’t seem to notice her, fighting the need she still felt to cling to him, but he almost seemed more withdrawn than he had before.
She sighed. She’d sort of hoped that the battle with the ogres might have swept their little disagreement from everyone’s minds.
It occurred to her, though, that Aydin was undoubtedly hurt far more than he was willing to let on. He hadn’t objected when Colwin had volunteered to hunt in his place.
That didn’t make her feel any better. It only made her want to cling to him more.
It was the fear that he’d reject any overture she might make that kept her rooted to the pallet they’d made of brush and her underskirt, watching him surreptitiously.
It seemed to irritate him more, making it clear that he was aware even though she’d thought she was being subtle.
“Tell me about the legend,” she said finally.
He sent her a sharp glance and then returned his attention to the fire he was tending. She’d begun to think he wouldn’t say anything when he finally spoke.
“I do not recall it with great clarity. It was something I heard as a youngling. It happened long ago … before the hoonans began to build their great castles and the walls to protect themselves. In those days, the tribes of hoonans and the tribes of centaurs lived as nomads—most of them. They would live off of the land and when they had stayed in one place and hunted until the game was scarce, they would move on to another place. There were tribes of centaur, however, that were different. They called themselves the civilized tribes. They built cities and farmed and kept animals as we do now.
“The old ones say they built cities far more grand than anything that we have built, that they had wondrous machines that did all sorts of things, almost like magic.
“As the hoonans became more numerous, they became more aggressive, began to war with the centaurs over the best places to settle, over the food, began to make slaves of the centaurs they captured and force them to do the labor they no longer wanted to do.
“They made war on the civilized tribes of centaurs until they decided they had had enough of dealing with the hoonans. One day, they simply took all the marvelous things that they had made and vanished. It was said that they had found a hidden valley where they could build their cities and keep all of their wondrous inventions for themselves without having to worry that the hoonans would steal from them what they wanted and destroy what they didn’t understand.”
Emma frowned, digesting the tale. It almost reminded her of the legends of Atlantis—a people that were so much more advanced than everyone else that it was almost as if they were magical—except that there was no ‘sinking beneath the sea’. “And the ogres were part of the legend? They guard the city?”
He shook his head. “A part of the legend, yes—I suppose they did guard the secret entrance in a way, but they do not really guard it. According to the legend, the secret passage that leads to the valley of the lost tribes lies beyond the valley where the ogres dwell.”
Emma shuddered. “I saw skulls—all sorts of bones. I guess not very many people make it past them.”
Aydin’s face hardened. “Hoonans would not be swift enough.”
Emma studied his face. “You’re angry with me.”
He surged to his feet abruptly. “I am angry with myself!” he growled, stalking from the campsite.
Emma watched him uneasily, fighting the urge to follow him, knowing she shouldn’t when he was obviously struggling with his temper. She got up anyway. She discovered that he’d gone to the pool where they’d bathed earlier.
He stiffened when he heard her approach, turning to give her a look that made her pause.
“Why?”
He closed his eyes, sucking in a calming breath. “Go back, Emma. I am in no fit mood for company.”
She hesitated, but she knew he was blaming himself for the attack, maybe blaming hims
elf for the fact that she’d gotten hurt.
“I wasn’t hurt.”
“You were nearly killed!” he snarled at her. “It is only by the grace of the gods that you were not—and Colwin’s swift intervention!”
Emma swallowed with an effort. “You told me I shouldn’t worry about what didn’t happen,” she said tentatively.
He rubbed his neck and then scrubbed a hand over his face. “Go back to the campsite, Emma.”
Emma chewed her lip. She moved toward him, however, instead of away from him, sensing he needed the same reassurance that she did. “Could you … just hold me for a little while?”
He caught her upper arms in a bruising grip before she could blink. “I am a centaur!” he ground out. “Do you have any inkling of just how fragile you are, little human? Any idea at all? Or just how badly I want to fuck you? If you did you would not be standing here asking me to hold you. You would be running as fast as your short little legs could carry you in the other direction!”
Emma felt her breath catch in her throat. “No, I wouldn’t. I would’ve run to you.”
He stared at her blankly for all of two seconds and then abruptly crushed her tightly against his chest. “I warned you, Emma,” he muttered against her hair. “Tell me to stop—now!”
She wiggled against him until she could get arms around his waist and lifted her head to nuzzle her face against his throat. He caught a fistful of her hair and dragged her head back so hard she felt a twinge of pain, but the moment his hard mouth connected with hers everything receded but the feel of his mouth, the taste of him. Despite the almost punishing forcefulness of his kiss, her blood sang in her veins. Heat rose inside of her like a lava flow, scalding her, pounding at every pulse point.
She kissed him back with fervor to match his, realizing instantly that this was what she’d really wanted, more than just being held. Connecting with him in the most intimate way she could to feel his life force as a part of hers.
He dropped to his knees when he broke the kiss, burrowing his face between her breasts and then capturing the peak of one in his mouth and pulling at it so hungrily she thought she might pass out from the sheer glory of it. She grasped his head, threading her fingers through his silky hair, holding him to her as he fed on her with ravening need.
Dark Stallion Page 10
