Her belt. And the dagger that was sheathed in it. Neither had been in the neatly folded pile of her clothing.
“I thank you for cleaning my clothing,” she began.
“They would have been unwearable had they waited for you to do it.”
“I thought perhaps . . . is there someone else here who . . . does for you?”
He gave an inelegant snort. “The only person who frequents these heights is a rapscallion who disappears whenever the spirit moves him. Which means whenever there’s something he’d rather I deal with.”
Despite the words, there was a rueful affection in his tone; although legend held him a man who walked alone, Kane the Warrior had at least one friend, it seemed.
“Then you will be the one who knows the whereabouts of my dagger?”
He gave her a long, silent look. “An interesting weapon,” he said, answering yet not answering her question.
“It is . . . important to my people.”
“You were to use it, I presume?”
Jenna blinked. “Use it? For what?”
Kane shrugged. “To kill me, of course.”
Chapter 3
“KILL YOU?”
Her startled exclamation seemed genuine.
Or perhaps, Kane thought, she was simply very good at playing her part. She certainly wouldn’t be the first woman to be very good at such things. Nor the last. He’d met a few, in his other life. And he doubted that much had changed since he’d last dealt with women.
“That is why you’re here, is it not?”
She sat down at last, on the log beside the stones ringing the outer fire. He saw her tremble, whether from fear or weakness from her injuries, he didn’t know. She stared up at him.
“By the heavens, why would you think that?”
He shrugged negligently. “ ’Tis the usual reason people look for me.”
“I’m surprised anyone would have the courage to even try to kill Kane the Warrior.”
“No one has, since I’ve been here.” He eyed her coldly. “No one has made it this far.”
Her effort to divert him from that subject was immediate. “Have you made so very many enemies, then?”
He felt the old weariness begin to steal over him, the lassitude that had so often tempted him to offer himself up for the killing, just to be done with it. A simple walk out of these mountains, a calling in of the promise that should he leave them, he would cease to be, had never seemed more tempting than at this moment. He resisted the urge to do it right now, to turn and walk away, and never come back to this place that had become his only haven.
“ ’Tis all I have made in my life,” he murmured.
He shook his head, trying to fend off the ugly feeling. He found the woman called Jenna watching him, her eyes so wide and vividly blue it put him in mind of the mountain sky in summer just before dusk, when it darkened to a blue never seen in any other place. Until now.
There was something in those eyes that made him uneasy, some trace of something soft and warm, something that was somehow threatening to him. More threatening perhaps, than even the razor-sharp blade she had carried.
“I have no wish to kill you,” she said quietly. “Quite the opposite.”
He went still, every warning instinct he possessed clamoring to life. He’d learned long ago that people who approached him voluntarily, if they did not have his death in mind, had only one other reason.
They wanted him to bring death to someone else.
As swiftly as a hawk’s strike, he felt the coldness sweep through him. The icy calm, the assessing aloofness that he’d thought himself done with forever. It was so very strange, he thought, this being able to look at himself as if from a distance, to analyze, to poke at what should be painful and feel nothing.
He’d been here in this place for years, trying to rid himself of this, of this coldness that separated him from others, that enabled him to look at them with such dispassionate calculation. Were they to be asset or hindrance? Would they help him achieve his goal, and thus deserve to live, or would they be in his way, to be killed and tossed aside without a second thought? For a lifetime that had been his credo, the principle by which he’d lived, driven into his very soul by the man who had perfected it.
For years now he’d hidden out here in these mountains, searching for a healing. And now this red-haired, wide-eyed woman had, in the space of a moment, shown him there was no healing for the likes of him. With a single utterance she had reduced his hopes, his conviction that he had, indeed, come a long way from that vicious, brutal man, into dust.
He was Kane, and so would he ever be.
He turned his back on her and walked into the woods, knowing even the warmth of the morning sun was not enough to save him from this chill.
JENNA SAT ON the log, shivering. It wasn’t cold, here in the sunlight, yet she shook as if she sat atop Snowcap.
There was a coarse blanket on the ground beside the fire; she reached for it and pulled it around her. She caught a scent, faintly wild and male. And only then realized this must be where Kane had been sleeping; she had literally put him out of his bed.
There were men who would not have allowed that, she thought. And of late she had learned there were men who would not have cared that she was unconscious; she was female and of only one use, and her participation was not necessary. Kane apparently fell into neither of those categories. But she was no closer to knowing what one he did fall into. No closer to understanding him at all. In fact, she was farther from it than ever.
What had she said that had put that look in his eyes, that cold, vacant, dead look? She’d seen too much of death of late to use the term lightly, yet there seemed to be no other; Kane’s clear gray eyes had gone flat and empty, as if she’d somehow killed the soul inside the man.
And she didn’t know what she’d done. She’d not even begun her entreaty, had not yet said a word about why she had truly come here.
Panic gripped her; what if he didn’t come back? He had looked, in that moment before he had turned and walked away, like a man who could easily do just that. He looked like a man who had lost all of value to him. Or like a man who had never valued anything, including himself. Who could walk away from everything without even a glance back over his shoulder.
The storyteller had warned her it would be difficult to deal with Kane. More difficult, in fact, than if he had been the myth some thought him. Myths were immune to human failings. Kane, he’d said, was not. “Some wounds never heal,” he’d said in that sometimes infuriatingly vague manner. “And he carries many.”
She knew that to be true, now. There had been pain in Kane’s face, in his voice, in his posture when he’d spoken of enemies. But when he’d left her just now, there had been nothing. No pain, no anger, no emotion at all. It was, she thought, coming back to it again, a dead man who had walked away.
She would have preferred his anger. She had disrupted his life; she knew that. If nothing else, she had noticed that about this place; except for the occasional call of the wild things and the whisper of the breeze, it was the quietest place she’d ever been. She imagined days could pass, one after the other, with a mind-numbing sameness that could, to an uneasy mind, pass for peace. Perhaps it was that which she had taken away simply by coming here; perhaps it was that loss that had provoked him to anger.
But what had caused that total extinguishing of the light from within?
She thought of going after him, but she doubted she could manage much distance. And if she found him, she had no idea what she would do. How could she, when she had no idea what she’d said that had sent him into the shadowy forest?
He would come back, she told herself, trying to think logically. Where else would he go? He didn’t seem to have many possessions, surely not enough that he would take their los
s lightly. She herself had few things that were of value to her—and her idea of value no doubt differed from many—but those she had, she treasured. From what she’d seen, Kane had even less, so little that what he did have must be important to him, she thought.
Or did the sparseness of his possessions only mean it would be easier for him not to come back? The storyteller had come to them with little, a few belongings in a sack, no more. He had said he preferred to travel lightly; possessions tied you to a place, kept you there when it might be better if you moved on.
She’d been afraid then that her people would lose the one small joy remaining to them, the joy of listening to the storyteller around a fire, spinning his tales in that mesmerizing voice, been afraid he would move on when he realized how little safety they could promise him. As if he’d read her fears, he had smiled gently and assured her he would be there as long as he was needed.
She wished he was here now. He could be so maddening, yet she always felt better when she talked with him. He always seemed to ease her fears, and often in his seemingly innocent tales and allegorical stories, she found an answer she hadn’t even been aware of seeking.
But she could find no answer now. Nor could she physically go after Kane. Nor did she know what she would do or say to a man who looked like the walking dead.
She had to assume he would return. Whatever she’d said or done, she simply could not believe that a single woman had, with no effort at all, driven away a warrior with Kane’s reputation. He would come back.
He had to come back.
“I’VE SEEN MORE cheerful faces at burials.”
Kane stopped walking. It was his only reaction to the voice that came from above him; he seemed beyond anything else. He was almost sorry it was Tal. Had it been one of the men from the warlord who hunted him, he could have brought this miserable existence to an end once and for all.
He heard a rush of sound, and Tal dropped down beside him, from whatever tree limb he’d been perched on, no doubt looking at the world with that faintly amused smile.
“Forgive me, my friend, but you do seem a bit grim this fine morning.”
“If you want to beg forgiveness, it should be for disappearing like the wizard I’m half convinced you are.”
Kane had tried for the bantering tone they usually adopted, but it fell short. He avoided looking at his friend, but sensed Tal’s eyes narrowing, knew they were taking on that piercing intensity that made Kane think he was seeing through to his soul. It usually made him uncomfortable; his soul wasn’t one that could stand up to the kind of scrutiny Tal seemed able to perform. But today he felt nothing.
“What has she done?” Tal asked softly.
Once Kane would have parried the question with a denial, or a question in turn, asking the man what made him think the only “she” he could be referring to had anything to do with it. But he’d learned in short order that when fixed on something, Tal would not be gainsaid, and dissembling was useless; he saw everything with those fierce, changeable eyes. And often saw patterns where Kane saw only chaos.
“Nothing. Yet,” he said, his voice a dead-sounding thing even to himself.
“Yet?”
He looked at Tal then, knowing the man would see, knowing it would save him much in the way of explanation.
“She’s come to ask me to kill for her.”
Tal’s dark brows lowered. Kane withstood his gaze like a man on a rack, his jaw set, his eyes never wavering as the other man’s searched, probed.
“Are you certain?” Tal asked, his voice low.
“You know as well as I there are only two reasons people search me out. I do not believe she is a murderess.”
“She is not,” Tal agreed, with that certainty that Kane usually found irritating; this time it was strangely comforting. “But are you assured that is her aim?” he asked again. “Perhaps she wishes something else from you.”
Kane smiled, a smile he knew was humorless and cold. “What else have I to offer anyone?”
Tal’s eyes shifted, from the fierce gold of a predator to the misty green of the forest around them. “More than you know or would ever believe,” he said in an oddly distant, quiet voice. Then, before Kane could react, he added in normal tones, “What will you do with her? Send her away without listening to her?”
Kane took in a breath. The coldness was, to his surprise, receding. Or perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised; Tal often had a most unsettling effect. It was difficult to describe, but he’d encountered it often enough to have given up trying to deny that it happened.
“It’s what I would like to do,” he admitted.
“But?”
Kane sighed. “She’s come a long way from her home. Further than anyone ever has. She’s endured much, she who looks too fragile to have ever withstood such harshness.”
“And it hardly seems fair to turn her away so coldly, does it?”
“What does Kane care of fairness?”
Tal smiled suddenly. “When you begin to speak of yourself as if you were someone else, I know you have reached the end of your arguments.”
Kane’s mouth twisted. “What would you have me do?”
“Whatever you can live with, my friend.”
IT WAS LUCKY, Jenna thought, that roasting a pheasant over a fire was a simple task; preparing food had never been a talent of hers. She knew the rudiments of the task and had managed to find some herbs with which to rub the bird’s skin, and some edible tubers to bake in the coals, but even that had taxed her skills. Justus had been the adventurous one when it came to that, always trying new foodstuffs, delighting when they met with accolades, and laughing good-naturedly at the rare failures that made his guests discreetly fill up on large chunks of bread.
It swept over her like the wind rushing down from Snowcap. She would never hear that laugh again, just as she would never feel the warm comfort of her mother’s embrace. Nor would she see the antics of Jack the miller, whose silly faces had made the children laugh, nor would she hear Kayla’s beautiful voice raised in song.
She resisted the urge to call their names, the seemingly endless list of the dead. But it took all her fragile strength, and she had none left to stop the shudders that gripped her. She refused to weep, but she could not stop the shaking. She told herself it did not matter, there was no one here to see, no fierce warrior who would no doubt glare in disgust at her weakness. And perhaps there would not be; he had been gone a very long time. Perhaps her long, harsh journey had been for naught, and she was truly defeated before she began.
Perhaps it was a fruitless effort already. Hawk Glade could well have been overrun by now, its protection broken through at last, although the warlord Druas seemed content for the moment with weekly raids on anything and anyone found moving outside the glade, doubtless to weaken them for an easy kill. Even if she were to survive the journey home, there might be no home still standing when she arrived. And if she returned empty-handed, that would be the end result anyway, and she would have the deaths of an entire people on her conscience. She would not even be able to face her own inevitable death with dignity, not with the shadow of having to answer for her failure hovering.
She hated this feeling, of having her fate in another’s hands. She’d hated it when the attacks had begun, and they’d realized they were at the mercy of the warlord. And she hated it even more now, when she could do nothing but helplessly wait for a man who might never return, and who might not even listen to her if he did.
But most of all she hated this sense of desperation. And the more time that passed, the deeper it became, until she felt she was going to fly apart.
She leapt to her feet, wobbling as her ankle protested.
“It will never heal if you don’t stay off of it.”
She stifled a yelp and spun around, barely remembering not to do it on h
er injured side.
“It is not fair,” she muttered, “that any man your size can move so quietly.”
“I’m surprised you did not hear the rumbling of my stomach.”
Jenna drew back, startled not so much by his words as by the wry glint of humor she thought she saw in his eyes. But it was gone so quickly she couldn’t be sure.
“I . . . I hope you’re not angry, I found the bird . . .”
“Angry? At eating something I have not had to cook myself? Unlikely.”
Jenna couldn’t help staring at him. What had happened to the laconic, almost curt man who had left here this morning? Hope surged in her, but she couldn’t help being a little suspicious of the change.
He said no more, but ate his portion of the meal with a certain relish that made her feel oddly pleased. When it was done, she sat in silence for a long moment. She had been concentrating so hard on willing him to come back, she hadn’t really dealt with what she would actually say if he did.
And then he stunned her by taking it out of her hands.
“Begin, Jenna of Hawk Glade. Tell your story so we may get this over with.”
It was less than she’d hoped for, but more than she’d expected; at least he would listen. She pondered for a moment where to begin, then decided. She must convince him of why the Hawk clan should be saved, before she asked him how to go about doing it.
“What you have heard of Hawk Glade is true. It is a place of peace and magic, of fruitful life and happy people.”
“Nothing less than a miracle,” Kane said dryly.
Jenna refused to let him sway her from her task. “My people had fled a bloody, ancient war, had journeyed far and endured much before they were led there. Perhaps they deserved a small miracle.”
“Perhaps. Led there?”
She nodded. “They were weary, ready to give up. Then a bird appeared, circling overhead. It came low in the sky, then cried out and flew toward the setting sun. Moments later it returned, and did so again. And again. My ancestress took it as a sign, and led her small band west.”
Fire Hawk Page 4
