With a cocked thumb, he gestured toward the door. “Harmon is your man?”
Kristin knew Zachary would love that question, their circumstances notwithstanding, and she vowed he’d never hear about it—or know what her answer had been. “Yes,” she said with a lift of her chin. There was always the chance the men in the village wouldn’t trouble her if they thought she belonged to someone else. Even among bandits there was a code where such things were concerned.
Hakan laid the palm and splayed fingers of one hand over Kristin’s belly, and while she flinched, she forced herself not to try to wrench away. “Make child?”
She shook her head. “No. I—I can’t make children.” She wasn’t about to explain why; it was none of Hakan’s business.
The shrewd leader looked surprised, then downright contemptuous. “No make child, what use?” he asked.
Kristin’s responses were necessarily limited. This guy wouldn’t care that she could put on a party for two hundred people or write a sparkling article for the social pages of a magazine or newspaper. Nor would it matter that she played a mean game of tennis.
To his way of thinking, and that of the rest of his culture, women were good for two things—cooking and making babies.
“I can cook,” she lied.
Hakan’s expression revealed frank skepticism. Again, Kristin had the feeling that if Zachary had been there, he would have laughed. “You go Jascha,” he decided. “We take money. Guns.”
For all that she’d just been given a reprieve of sorts, Kristin was vaguely insulted. She held on to her temper, reminding herself that this was no time to indulge in tantrums. “What about my friend?”
Hakan smiled, revealing large yellow teeth. “Jascha pay much for him. More for him than for you.”
“Could I see him, please? My friend?”
Hakan’s lip came down like an automatic garage door, and the smile disappeared. “No!” he raged. And for a moment Kristin thought he was going to strike her.
Although her every instinct called for it, she refused to cower. “He won’t be any use to Jascha if he’s hurt,” she reminded Hakan in a reasonable tone of voice as he turned away to open the door. “Please. I want to see him.”
The man turned and studied her for a long moment, and she thought she saw something like respect flicker in his eyes. Whatever the emotion was, it was gone in the space of a heartbeat.
“Come,” he said tersely. “You see Harmon.”
Silently thanking a friendly fate, Kristin stepped toward the door. Hakan took her arm and thrust her outside, into the last blazing brightness of the sun. In just a few hours it would be dark.
While the other rebels looked on in silence, Hakan led Kristin across the village to another hut, opened the door and gestured.
Because she’d just come from darkness into blazing light and was now going into gloom again, Kristin had to pause a moment on the threshold to let her eyes adjust. When they had, she saw Zachary lying half-conscious on the floor.
Kristin turned her head and looked Hakan straight in the eye. “Untie my hands,” she ordered.
The rebel leader paused a moment, probably stunned by her audacity. Then, remarkably, he reached down and loosened the thongs binding her wrists together. His face left no doubt in her mind that his leniency had distinct limits. “You try to run away, we kill,” he said.
Kristin nodded and turned toward the only man she’d ever loved. “I need cold, clean water and some cloth,” she said to Hakan. And then she went and knelt beside the prone form on the dirt floor of the hut. “Zachary?”
His hand locked around hers. “Princess.” He breathed the word, rather than speaking it. His eyes didn’t seem to focus, and his face was covered with dried blood. “Did they hurt you?”
Although Kristin wanted very much to cry, she knew it would be the worst thing she could do. She kissed his forehead. “Looks like you got the worst of it,” she replied gently. “Are any of your bones broken?”
Zachary thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No. But they probably will be soon. When we get to the palace, princess, tell Jascha I kidnapped you—”
Kristin felt her throat tighten. “No. That would only make it worse for you.”
“It’s going to be bad for me any way you look at it, Kris.” His fingers entangled themselves gently in her hair, his thumb soothed her pulsing temple. “There’s no reason for you to suffer if you can avoid it. And if you can save Jascha’s pride, you’ll also save that shapely little rear end of yours.”
She wrapped her arms around him, held him close. “Oh, Zachary, I’m so sorry for getting you into this. I was such an idiot, believing in fairy tales—”
The door creaked open, and a woman came in with a basin of water and a piece of cloth. By the time she and Zachary were alone again, Kristin had gathered her frail composure.
Gently she began to wash the blood from his face, too stricken by the cost of her foolishness to talk.
Zachary laid a very dirty hand to her cheek. “Princess, I can handle anything but seeing you hurt. Now promise me you’ll mollify Jascha in any way you can.”
Kristin ran her tongue over dry lips and shook her head. “No. I couldn’t live with myself—”
Zachary’s voice was suddenly harsh. “Listen to me. You won’t live at all if you don’t tell Jascha that I forced you to leave the palace. You think you know the man, but I know the culture, and the prince’s honor won’t be worth spit if he doesn’t avenge this.”
She let her forehead rest against his. “Okay, Zachary,” she said, wanting only to calm him. But even then she knew she couldn’t betray him to protect herself. “Okay.” She kissed his forehead. “Whatever you say.”
He smiled and kissed her lightly on the lips. “Of course, if we get a chance to skip out, we’ll take it,” he whispered. “Be ready, princess.”
Kristin nodded as Hakan came in and pulled her roughly back to her feet. He tied her hands behind her back again, as much for Zachary’s benefit, she thought, as his own, and then pushed her toward the door.
There were so many things Kristin wanted to say that she didn’t manage to voice one of them. She just looked at Zachary for a long moment, then allowed Hakan to drag her out into the hot sunshine again.
She was taken back to the other hut and, when the same woman returned to keep an eye on her, her wrists were unbound. She was allowed to wash her hands and face in cold water and given a small dish of rice and a bowl-like cup of tea.
Since there were no chopsticks, or utensils of any kind, Kristin ate with her fingers. She was hungry, despite everything, and if the chance to escape presented itself she didn’t want to be in a weakened state.
Her knee was hurting again, now that Zachary’s aspirin had worn off, but Kristin had other things to think about.
Perhaps, she reflected as she drank the strong, flavorful tea, she could reason with Jascha. Cultural dictates aside, he was a gentle, sensible man. He’d attended college in the United States and, of course, he’d dressed like an American then, though now he seemed to be embracing Cabrizian ways again. Surely Kristin could make him see that a marriage between the two of them would have been a mistake anyway, and that there was nothing all to be gained by punishing Zachary.
By the time Kristin huddled up on the skins to sleep that night, she’d convinced herself that Jascha would forgive her and Zachary both, and let them go back home in peace. Believing that was the only way she could have gotten any rest.
When she awakened to a chilly morning, however, all her doubts returned to haunt her.
Once, she’d truly believed that she knew Jascha. She would have put her very life in his hands. Now, however, logic told her that Zachary was right. The prince had been conditioned by centuries of tradition, and one socialite probably wasn’t going to change his mind.
Kristin was given more rice and tea, but this time she couldn’t eat or drink. She could think only about all the horrors that might well lie ahead.
It was about ten o’clock, she judged, when she saw Zachary being led from his hut. Like her, he was bound, but his manner was inexplicably cocky. He caught her eye and grinned.
She glowered at him, silently reminding him that he might at least have the good sense to be scared, and his grin stretched from one side of his dirty, bruised face to the other, showing his strong white teeth.
I love you, Kristin thought desperately as she was lifted into the back of another Jeep. And isn’t this a hell of a time to think of it.
8
Another rusty bolt bruised Kristin’s cheek as she bumped along in the back of the rebel Jeep toward almost certain doom. The bright sunlight was frying her, her head and injured knee were both throbbing and her stomach was threatening revolt, but her mind was on Zachary, not herself.
He wanted to take the blame for what had happened, to spare her from Jascha’s rage. She wondered if Zachary knew he still loved her, or if it was a secret his subconscious mind was keeping from the rest of his brain.
Despite everything, Kristin smiled. Zachary loved her. Maybe, if by some miracle they got out of this fix, there was a chance of making their relationship work.
Because present reality was so painful, Kristin let her mind wander into a rosy future, where she and Zachary were married. In her fantasy they were furnishing a large split-level house with a view of the ocean. Zachary was teaching, and she was pregnant and hard at work on the book about Cabriz….
Cabriz. Kristin was jolted back to the floor of that filthy Jeep just as it came to a screeching halt.
What now, she wondered, biting her lower lip. They couldn’t have reached Kiri so fast—that would take hours more. She waited, fighting down a wave of panic, until someone came and lifted her out of the vehicle.
She looked around, dazed. There were only two Jeeps now, instead of twenty or more, and Zachary was handcuffed to the roll bar of the other one.
Only then did Kristin realize that the rebels couldn’t just drive boldly up to the palace door with their prisoners, no matter how valuable. She and Zachary would be hidden until a deal had been struck, and that could take days.
She was both relieved and fearful. The more time that passed before the two of them were turned over to Jascha, the better the chances of their escaping. On the other hand, the rebels could get bored and decide to play a few games of their own.
The driver of the Jeep Kristin had been riding in jabbed her in the back with the tip of a rifle barrel and ordered her to move. She stumbled into the woods toward a hut and prayed that her captor loved his wife.
The doorway was covered only by the tanned hide of some animal, and this curtain was pushed aside as Kristin approached. A tiny Cabrizian man smiled at her, showing broad gaps between his teeth, and gestured for her to come in.
She risked a backward glance and saw that Zachary was behind her. He gave her an almost imperceptible nod, and she stepped into the darkened hut.
Something made with cabbage was cooking on a little oil-powered stove in the corner, but there was no other furniture except for the inevitable pile of skins where the residents probably slept.
To Kristin’s surprise, her hands were untied, and she was given water in a cup made of some smoothly polished wood. With trembling fingers—only a little sensation had returned—Kristin held the cup to Zachary’s lips.
He resisted for a moment, then sipped. His face and hair were filthy, and every visible inch of his skin seemed to be covered with abrasions, bruises and cuts. Kristin knew he was in pain, but he was too stubborn and too proud to complain.
Although the apparent owner of the house had slipped out, one of the two rebel soldiers who had escorted Kristin and Zachary into the hut was still in evidence. He lost patience and, with a muffled exclamation, slapped the cup from Kristin’s hand.
Flames of fury licked to life inside her, and Zachary must have seen their reflections in her eyes.
“Hold your tongue, princess,” he said evenly, just as she was about to tell her captor what she thought of his manners. “This guy’s not an insolent waiter biding time until he gets his big break in the theater. He’s a trained killer.”
Kristin averted her eyes and hugged herself, fighting down a rage that was born more of fear and panic than anger.
Since his hands were bound and there was a gun trained on his head, Zachary could offer comfort only by words and the timbre of his voice. “We’ve got to stay calm, Kris. It’s our only chance.”
At this the guard grew angry and shouted at Zachary in such rapid dialect that Kristin failed to understand it.
“He wants me to go outside,” Zachary explained with a philosophical sigh as he turned toward the door. “Remember, princess—don’t needle these bozos. They’re all about five seconds from lift-off as it is.”
Kristin swallowed. “I’ll be careful,” she promised.
And Zachary was led out, but she was alone for only a moment. When her guard returned, he handcuffed her to a rusted metal ring lodged in the dirt floor of the hut, restricting her movements so that she could only lie on the smelly skins. She watched him with wide, fearful eyes—his thoughts were plainly visible in his face.
He was wondering if he could get away with raping her.
He must have decided not to risk angering his superiors, because he left the hut, shoving the hide curtain aside with a furious motion of one hand as he passed.
The small man returned almost immediately, but he didn’t frighten Kristin so much as the guard had. He’d smiled at her earlier, and she’d seen no irony or hatred in his face.
He knelt beside the skins and spoke to Kristin with gentle patience. He wanted to know why she’d been limping.
Under the circumstances, kindness was an unexpected weapon, and Kristin had no defense against it. She wept softly and told him about the injury to her knee, knowing all the while that he understood nothing beyond the gesture of laying her hand to the offending joint.
He found a knife somewhere and cut a slit up the leg of Kristin’s blue jeans, then laid the fabric aside to look at her knee. He prodded the swollen flesh with a careful finger, then crept away into the shadows.
By that time her knee was hurting so badly that Kristin was afraid she’d faint. When her host returned and held a cup containing some warm liquid to her lips, she raised her head and drank.
Sleep consumed her almost instantly, dragging her down into its black, healing folds and secreting her there.
When she awakened, the pain in her knee had subsided and the smell of boiled cabbage was dense enough to choke her. She sat up and squinted, trying to see through the smoky shadows.
Zachary was sitting with his back to the opposite wall, his knees drawn up, holding a bowl to his mouth with cuffed hands. “Feeling better?”
Although her knee was definitely improved—when she touched it gingerly with her free hand she found that the swelling had gone down—Kristin was far from her best. “Just terrific,” she answered. “My hair is matted and probably full of bugs, and my skin is so dirty it’s a wonder someone hasn’t written ‘wash me’ on my forehead. I’m hungry enough to eat anything that won’t try to crawl away from me, and one of my wrists is chained to an iron ring. All in all, Zachary, I’d say ‘better’ isn’t the way I feel.”
The thin moonlight seeping into the hut through various cracks and crevices showed that he was grinning. “You’re bitching. With you, that’s a good sign.”
Kristin sighed. “What’s in that bowl?”
“Some kind of cabbage and fish concoction. Want some?”
“Every part of me except my stomach is voting no,” Kristin answered, brushing tangled hair back from her face.
Zachary chuckled then called out in Cabrizian, and the little man came in. He beamed at Kristin, went to the small, smoky stove, and dished up some soup.
The stuff looked, smelled and tasted terrible, and yet Kristin could hardly keep herself from gobbling it down the way a hungry dog w
ould.
“How do I tell him I have to go to the bathroom?” she asked, once the hunger pangs had stopped gnawing at her middle. Since her host was still smiling at her, she smiled back.
Zachary spoke the dialect deftly, but his request made Kristin lower her eyes and blush a little all the same.
Their gentle guard went out and returned moments later with a rusted tin can.
Kristin looked at it in horror. “He doesn’t mean—?”
“He’s got orders not to release us under any circumstances,” Zachary put in helpfully.
Looking at him more closely, she saw that his feet were hobbled with rope, as well as tied to the same iron ring that held her virtually immobile. “But I need privacy,” she sputtered.
“I need a steak dinner, a hot bath and a back rub,” Zachary answered. “We’re even, princess.”
“Hardly,” Kristin snapped back, her earlier charitable thoughts fleeing as she considered her predicament.
“This doesn’t have to be a problem, your ladyship. I’ll turn my head,” Zachary offered reasonably, “and Ward Cleaver here will step outside.”
Kristin looked in desperation from one male face to the other and finally nodded her capitulation. Her choices were, after all, limited.
“What about those goons with the guns?” she asked, once she’d taken care of the humiliating business and her birdlike host had carried away the can. “Are they around somewhere?”
Zachary shook his head. “They’ve been gone for hours. It isn’t likely they’d want to be in this neck of the woods when Jascha’s soldiers come to pick up the spoils of battle.”
Kristin had to work up her courage to ask, since she was so afraid of the answer. “When do you think that will be?”
He shrugged. “My guess would be dawn, since both sides are probably anxious to make a deal. But it could be days, or even weeks, if negotiations hit any kind of snag.”
Kristin nodded toward their happy jailer. “This guy seems pretty friendly. Maybe if you talked to him he’d see reason and let us go.”
Escape from Cabriz Page 11
