The Ippos King: Wraith Kings Book Three

by Draven, Grace

  “If we're still alive, then you want something,” she said. Captives were troublesome to hold, expensive to keep alive. Even paid handsomely to take them captive, Chamtivos said nothing about ransom for her or Serovek. She wondered who'd paid the warlord and why. Her first guess was Ogran, but a lowly tracker in the service of his lord didn't possess the funds needed to entice someone like Chamtivos to attack a margrave and hold him prisoner.

  Chamtivos beamed his approval. “I like the way you think, Kai woman. Those bastard monks will pay a fortune to have their brother returned to them. You and the margrave? Well, he's someone's inconvenience, and you're a challenge. The two of you will offer me and my men a good bit of entertainment before we get rid of you.”

  His foreboding explanation didn't surprise Anhuset. She was astonished he'd allowed her and Serovek to live this long, but their time ran short. If she didn't find a way to escape and help the margrave do the same, they'd die, and she suspected their dying would be prolonged and gruesome.

  The warlord, frustrated by her indifference to his ominous hints, gave up his attempts to bait her. He walked away, pausing briefly to speak with another man, their voices too quiet and distant to make out what they said. They soon parted, Chamtivos toward the tent she'd spotted earlier, the other man toward her.

  He carried a cup in one hand. She expected to see a weapon in the other, but there wasn't one. Like Chamtivos, he crouched down just out of striking distance in case she tried to lunge for him. Tall and rangy, he moved with a feline grace. Blessed sanity stared back at her from his eyes. As one of her captors, he was her enemy, but he didn't make her recoil the way Chamtivos did.

  “Water,” he announced, holding up the cup. “Dasker poison always makes a person thirsty once they're awake. I'll give you a drink, but if you try to bite me, I'll make you eat the cup.”

  His warning, issued in a mild-mannered tone carried no less impact than if he'd snarled it at her. Given half a chance, she'd kill him in her bid for freedom, but were their positions reversed, she'd have told him the same thing. And she was terribly thirsty, her tongue practically sticking to the roof of her mouth every time she spoke. “No biting,” she said. “I swear it.”

  They studied each other before he nodded and carefully tipped the cup to her lips. She drank, resisting the temptation to guzzle the water and spill half of it down her chin. Once she emptied the cup, he set it aside.

  “I'd give you more, but to drink your fill now will only make you vomit it all up later. Let the poison's effects fade a little more, and I'll bring you another. Do you have to piss?” Puzzled by and wary of his consideration, she nodded. He whistled and called out names. Three men answered his summons, all carrying either a bow or crossbow. Each one nocked an arrow as they drew closer. “I'm going to partially unbind her,” he told them. “If she even twitches toward me, shoot her.”

  Grim nods and drawn bows aimed at Anhuset made her pray she only twitched in the right direction.

  “Don't make me regret my kindness by kicking my ribs in or my jaw loose,” her dubious benefactor warned as he worked at her bindings. “Forget modesty and take care of your needs. Try anything else, and they'll turn you into a pin poppet.”

  “Understood,” she said.

  He worked the straps loose, freeing her wrists from her ankles. Blood rushed back to her fingers, and she stood on wobbly legs, still dizzy from the poison's lingering effects.

  Relieving her bladder in front of onlookers didn't bother her. Running off into unknown wilderness just to hide your bare arse from others was foolish when you were on patrol or guard duty. She was no fine lady to worry over such notions, though the reality of having three broadheads trained on her while she answered nature's call wasn't to her liking.

  Her partial freedom only lasted as long as it took her to finish. She was once more escorted back to her spot in the mud where Chamtivos's man retied her in the same position, though this time he didn't do it so tight that her fingers went numb. She glared at the gag cloth he held up. “Don't tell me you expected differently,” he said, one eyebrow arched. “If I had a mouth full of teeth like yours, I'd be gnawing on my bindings every moment I wasn't observed.”

  He knotted the gag at the back of her head and left her with a pair of guards, taking the same path that Chamtivos had to the tent. Was Serovek in there as well? It was the only place in the camp itself big enough to hide a person. Everyone else had pitched small lean-toes hardly big enough to cast a square of shade or didn't bother with one at all. That tent served more than just the purpose of luxury for the group's leader.

  She'd have to bide her time and strategize a way out of this dilemma before Chamtivos decided to enact whatever entertainment he had planned. It would mean leaving Megiddo behind, but the monk had something neither she nor Serovek did: value. He'd be safe for a short time.

  Cramped, cold, and hungry, she shifted from side to side to keep the blood flowing through her limbs. Several escape plans played through her mind, each one ending with her either shot, skewered, or dismembered for the attempt and Serovek still held captive. She gave up temporarily, allowing her racing thoughts to settle. Her guards didn't talk to her or pay her much attention. She listened to their idle conversation. And learned.

  For all his swagger and self-importance, Chamtivos wasn't particularly well liked by those who followed him. These were peasants and yeomen under the command of a nobleman's youngest son. They'd been loyal to his father and transferred that loyalty to Chamtivos out of respect for his dead sire. She wondered how many of them knew or suspected their current leader had committed both patricide and fratricide to seize the position he now held. The two guards set to watch her questioned whether the effort in attacking their party and taking Megiddo hostage had been worth the sacrifice of the seven men who'd died in the attack.

  Anhuset could account for three of those deaths. She wondered how many of the remaining four Serovek had been responsible for. If he were lucky, none. Otherwise, whatever punishment Chamtivos chose to mete out to the margrave, it would be brutal.

  She pretended to nap so her guards would assume her asleep and loosen their tongues even more. The remainder of their conversation was as dull as listening to grass grow, though she learned that the man who'd given her water was Chamtivos's second-in-command and named Karulin. From what little she'd gleaned from her interactions with both men, Karulin seemed more suited to the role of leader than Chamtivos, and she wondered why so measured a man had chosen to serve one so malevolent and erratic.

  Made groggy by boredom and cold, she snapped alert at the approach of a new visitor. Anhuset lifted her eyelids enough to observe the man who greeted her guards and paused to loom over her, wearing a nasty smirk.

  Conversation ceased, replaced by an expectant hush. She forced her muscles not to tense, and kept her eyelids lowered as she waited to see what her observer might do. He didn't carry a weapon unless one considered the stench wafting off him deadly enough to kill a person with a single whiff.

  He unlaced the front of his trousers, and Anhuset nearly gave herself away by the disbelieving snort she swallowed behind her gag. Did he think to rape her? With the way she was bound, he'd have to exercise considerable effort to get her clothes out of the way without cutting them off her. He'd fail and die for trying. She was bound, not helpless.

  Her disgusted snarl held an equal amount of shock when instead of a rape attempt, he pissed on her. She rolled away, barely avoiding a face full of the reeking yellow stream.

  Howls of laughter rang out from her guards, and saliva filled her mouth as her stomach heaved. The stench of urine flooded her nostrils as she fought to hold down the bile creeping up her throat. Whistles and catcalls joined the laughter. Her tormentor grinned and swiveled his hips in a lewd motion, waving his dripping prick at her. He finally tucked his bits into his trousers and replaced the placket, then strutted back and forth in front of the growing audience, raising his arms to coax more cheers from their ran
ks, as triumphant as any conquering hero claiming victory over the vanquished.

  He'd signed his own death warrant with that act of humiliation. Anhuset swore to herself no matter what it took or how long, she'd kill this man, carve him up into small pieces, and toss his remains into a midden for the rats to feast on.

  Unsatisfied with his shallow victory and the attendant cheers from the crowd, the idiot chose not to walk away from the scene. Instead, he moved closer to her, leaning down to say something or maybe spit on her. She didn't wait to find out and used all her strength to lunge forward and slam her forehead into his face.

  Bone crunched and screams replaced the gloating snickers as the raider fell backwards, hands clutched to his face. Blood seeped through his fingers, cascading in rivulets over his knuckles as he rolled on the ground, bellowing in agony.

  Still seeing stars from the hit, Anhuset wasted not a moment in protecting herself as best she could, tucking her head between her arms and curling even tighter into the fetal position as punches and kicks rained down on her head, shoulders and back from those who sought to punish her.

  An angry voice rose above the snarls and curses accompanying the blows. “Back off before I geld every last one of you.”

  They obeyed instantly, and Anhuset, never a religious sort, thanked any gods listening for the respite from the battering and for the return of the one the guards called Karulin.

  “Explain,” he demanded. “Lie, and you'll regret it.”

  Both men spoke at once with a few from the crowd interjecting their accounts before going silent under Karulin's glare. A chorus of gasps went up when he tugged Anhuset's gag down to her neck without hesitation or concern he might lose his hand. His nose wrinkled when he caught the smell on her. “Are you bleeding anywhere or having trouble breathing?”

  She was tempted to say yes and beg him to untie her so she could check, but instinct told her he'd know she was lying, and his warning to her guards echoed in her mind. “Just a few bruises,” she said.

  He nodded and left her to see to the man whose screams had weakened to pitiful moans. Anhuset couldn't make out what Karulin said, but when he returned to her, he eyed her with renewed caution and a faint approval she was certain she didn't imagine. “It seems there's no part of a Kai that isn't dangerous,” he said. “You shattered Lewelis's nose and knocked out three of his teeth. You'll have a knot on your brow for the doing, and you stink worse than a dead weasel, but you didn't come out the loser.”

  Soaked in piss, tied like a hog, and held captive by a mad bastard eager to make her the focus of some future and no doubt violent game didn't feel much like winning, but at least now Chamtivos's men would think twice before trying to make sport of her a second time.

  Chamtivos returned from the tent to join their little gathering. After listening to Karulin's summary of events, he tutted, gave Anhuset a once-over glance filled with revulsion, and left her to help Lewelis to his feet. He listened to the man's complaints of her ill-treatment of him with an attentive expression and a few sympathetic nods. Even she gasped along with the others when he suddenly pulled a knife and slashed Lewelis's throat in one swift arc.

  Chamtivos turned away before the body hit the ground, and once more she caught a glimpse into the cruelty-laced madness lurking behind the boyish façade. She stiffened when he walked toward her. The crowd backed away, except for Karulin, who eyed his master as warily as he did Anhuset.

  The warlord wiped his blade clean on a bystander's sleeve. That person dared not utter a word of protest. “The Kai woman is my captive,” Chamtivos said in a strangely cheerful voice. “Not yours. Mine. And while she lives, I think of her as one of my possessions.” He offered them all a sunny smile that made everyone take at least two steps back. “I don't like people touching my things without my permission. Do it again, and you'll join Lewelis there, feeding the vultures and the worms.”

  His gaze settled on Anhuset. “You're a vicious cunt,” he told her. “Ogran was right when he said you were worth three humans in a fight. Day after tomorrow promises to be an exciting day indeed.” The maniacal glee in his voice sent splinters of ice through her veins. She didn't ask him to clarify or expound. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction. He'd only drop more obtuse hints as a way to torture her, hoping to seed her fear and drink it like a poisoned nectar. Instead she focused on his last statement. Ogran.

  Her suspicions had borne out. He might not have the funds to bribe a warlord to murder a margrave, but he was just as involved in its planning.

  Chamtivos gestured to the group in general. “Get her rinsed off. It's bad enough having to look at her. I don't want to have to smell her too.”

  He strolled away but not before Anhuset spotted blood on his clothes and his hands. Dried blood that didn't belong to the dead Lewelis. Her heart thudded heavy. Serovek.

  She clenched her jaw under the dousing of ice water, nearly breaking her back teeth in the effort not to screech from the shock of cold pouring over her. The shivers she couldn't control. They worsened every second until she almost convulsed from muscle spasms. At least she no longer smelled like a dead human's piss.

  Karulin came to her rescue yet again, this time carrying a blanket. “My gods,” he muttered as he dragged her to a dry patch of ground. “You're a lot heavier than you look.”

  You're just a sad, weak human, she thought, unable to stop her teeth from chattering long enough to speak.

  Rescuer he might be, but Karulin was also cautious. He draped the dry blanket over her wet form, then pulled another strip of cloth from a pocket of his tunic. This time he didn't have to say anything for the attending guards to knock arrows and take aim.

  “Chamtivos says no food. He doesn't want to waste provisions on you.” Karulin looped the gag cloth through his fingers as he spoke. “But you're allowed more to drink if you want it.”

  Something in the way he dropped his chin and stared at her made her hesitate in accepting the offer. It wasn't what he said but what he didn't say that decided her. The water wouldn't just be water. “I'm not thirsty.” She reared back when he leaned forward to tie the gag cloth over her mouth. “Why?”

  As she guessed, he understood the rest of her unspoken question. His features hardened though his voice remained mild, vaguely bored. “I believe in a fair fight. What's to come won't be fair.”

  He knotted the cloth just above her nape, muzzling her before she could interrogate him more and pulled the blanket firmly around her shoulders. He stood with the same lithe grace that hinted at speed and agility. “No one will bother you tonight. You have my word.”

  He was as good as that word. No one accosted her for the rest of the day and through the night. Only once was she moved, and then by Karulin himself who untied her enough so she could heed nature's insistent call and also ease the painful kink in her back.

  Dawn came with a thin frost glazing everything exposed to the open air. Anhuset's hair crackled as she curled in on herself for any scrap of warmth. Her ears were numb as was the tip of her nose and her hands. The blanket she huddled under offered little in the way of a barrier between her still damp body and the morning cold. As a Kai, she actively avoided the sun. Now she eagerly looked forward to its rise and the heat it offered.

  A flurry of activity at one end of camp near the tent made her peek out from the blanket's cover. She forgot about the cold and discomfort, the bruises and backache. Chamtivos emerged from the tent, followed by two of his men carrying a limp, bloodied Serovek between them. His feet plowed shallow furrows in the dirt as they dragged him to a waiting horse. Dark hair, matted with what looked like blood partially obscured his features, but not enough that she didn't see the swelling misshaping his features or the way both of his eyes were blackened and scabbed shut. A thread of crimson drool stretched from his mouth before breaking to splash on the ground.

  Her emotions spun in a whirlwind. Relief that he was alive, rage at his mistreatment. In her mind, she cried out his name, a wailing t
hat would have carried for leagues had she given voice to it.

  As if he heard her, he slowly lifted his head, turning it in her direction. She growled long and low behind the gag. Her guards tensed and drop their hands to their knives at their belts. There was no way he saw her, not with those eyes. His face, once handsome by human standards, was a horror of welts, cuts and purple bruises. He looked like Magas had danced on his face with all four hooves.

  Anhuset glared at Chamtivos as he gave instructions to the pair holding the margrave. The warlord left them to heave their burden onto the horse and approached her. “Stand up, princess,” he said. “We're going for a ride.” He waited impatiently for her guards to release the bonds that kept her hunched before shoving her toward a second horse. Instead of freeing her legs so she walked instead of shuffled and could mount the horse on her own, they lifted her, tossing her across the saddle like a sack of grain, feet hanging off one side of the animal, her head and shoulders off the other. The position caused pressure to build behind her eyes.

  Chamtivos squatted so they were eye level with each other. “Remove her gag,” he ordered an unseen lackey. Karulin joined him, and it was his hands that carefully untied the gag and tossed it aside. Anhuset thought the warlord's unexpected consideration strange until he told her “Riding a horse like this will make you sick, and I don't want you choking on your own vomit before I've had a little fun with you.”

  You'll be choking on your own blood when I'm finished with you, she wanted to say. Instead she asked questions she doubted he'd answer in any meaningful way, but she had to try. “Where are you taking us? Why did you beat the margrave?”

  He chuckled, rubbing his hands together like a child anticipating a treat. “You'll see. As to your second question, the margrave refused to tell us how to break the enchantment protecting the monk. We used a little persuasion. He's much more stubborn than he is intelligent.”