Her face was completely ashen again when she looked up at him again, and her gold-flecked eyes were stark and wide with the strain. He could see her shaking with the effort.
“Well then, it is quite lucky for you that both Katari and Opichi love the thrill of adventure,” she gasped. The pain then took its toll, and she fainted.
Chapter 5
When Katari became aware, it was first of the utter darkness. Next, she came to feel the sense of warmth that had seeped into all of her bones. She wiggled her toes. The strident pop of a pine knot in distant coals told her that she was near a fire.
In a rush, her memories returned. She was not at her village, and not in her family’s lodge. Instead, she was in an unfamiliar forest with people not of her tribe, and in dire circumstance. She remembered Nicholas’s drawn face and how the packing of her wound with the hot, pine poultice had stripped her of awareness with a white bolt of agony.
The clearness of her mind actually surprised her. If she was awakening, and not in a fever-delirium, maybe the medicine contained within the pine sap had begun its healing magic. She felt a surge of hope. There was still a mighty ache in her leg for sure, but it had dulled significantly.
Something was tickling the back of her neck. Maddeningly, in fact. Thinking it perhaps a leaf, or a bug, she reached up tentatively and encountered hair that, although soft, was not her own. It was curly.
She gulped. It was Nicholas’s beard. She drew her hand back swiftly when he mumbled groggily in her ear, obviously in a dream-sleep.
Katari realized that his giant body was the very source of the comforting warmth that she now enjoyed. They were spooned together like man and wife under the protection of the bedroll. Her back was pressed firmly into his chest, and her rump into his groin. One large arm was slung across her hip, tucking her in and against him. The arm was heavy, yet she did not mind the weight. It was oddly comforting.
The top of her head only reached his chin. That was why his beard teased her so. Katari did not understand why these white fur traders were such a hairy lot. Her own white mother was not hairy by any means. From what she understood, her grandfather Lucas had not been hairy either before his death, and he was a man well through mid-life.
Many of the white Dutchmen whom she had made trade with while in New Amsterdam were clean-shaven and well-attired. Perhaps the Coureur de Bois were, in truth, decedents of the shaggy brown bear. Admittedly, she had to appreciate such a man’s size and strength, though. It was impressive, and likely quite useful to a woman, or to that woman’s tribe in general. She wondered if he had the cunning to match his brawn.
Lying quietly in the circle of his arms, Katari focused on the intimate feeling of a mature man holding her. It was quite new to her, and in many ways, exceedingly pleasant. Nicholas’s broad chest rose and fell steadily against her, and the heat of his body seeped into her like life-blood. She felt very safe and protected. She could now make out the lump that was Opichi not more than two feet in front of her. It appeared that both of her travel-mates were fast asleep.
But, by this point, Katari did not feel sleepy at all. The tickling of the Coureur de Bois’s beard continued, however, to the point where it was just too distracting to remain still. She attempted to wriggle down a bit, but the result of her efforts put her rump much more firmly in contact with his male parts. She stilled with the realization.
Nicholas must have felt her movement in his sleep, for his arm tightened around her waist, drawing her even closer. He was mumbling again, dreaming. “Tellement sucrés.” So very sweet.
Katari’s eyes went wide when one of his large hands ventured upward, sweeping under her tunic to caress the bare curve of her breast. The sensation sent a trail of goose-bumps from the base of her spine to the back of her neck, at the very spot she was feeling the heat of his breath now. Her heart rate accelerated rapidly.
Was he still in dream-sleep as he did this to her? His mumbles made her believe that he was. Even though it was wrong of her, Katari did not wake Nicholas to tell him that he touched the wrong woman. She closed her eyes and sneakily allowed the lovely sensations to continue. Her left nipple puckered and tingled when his fingers brushed against it, and she had to contain a shiver.
If he woke, she could easily feign sleep. She wanted him to continue doing the things he was dreaming about with his woman. But…what if Opichi was his woman? It did not seem so, yet she had not openly asked the other girl, being so involved with her injury. She did not want to anger someone as kind and helpful as Opichi.
Katari’s rampant thoughts were brought to a quick halt when Nicholas’s dream became more intense. His lips found the curve of her neck and kissed it softly. His male parts had grown thick and pressed fully against her backside. Although Katari had not lain with a brave, she knew what that such a growth meant. The male hand on her hip drifted downward toward the place on her that was suddenly aching.
When that hand touched her, she remembered very quickly that her leggings were now gone. His fingers met bare flesh. The intense sensation caused such a surprising jolt, that she both squeaked and squirmed in the same instant.
Nicholas jerked awake, and she immediately heard his sharp intake of breath. “Katari,” he whispered. “I am sorry; I swear to you that I was sleeping. Are you well? Did I..?”
“I am well,” she whispered back. “I believe that my fever has broken.” She ignored his unspoken question, and tried to push away her feeling of disappointment as he wiggled away, putting space between them again.
“You were unconscious and shaking terribly when we took our rest. I only sought to warm you,” he continued with his explanation, in a voice that sounded both gruff and strangled.
“It worked well, Nicholas,” she assured him. “You are a very kind man.”
Katari could almost feel his relief at her words. He relaxed next to her, making sure that the bedroll still covered her, but that there was distance between them. She didn’t want him to feel so relieved. She wanted him to come back against her, but knew that she could not ask for such a thing.
Although Katari did not claim to know much about men, Nicholas - and his male parts - must surely still be thinking of his very special dream woman. She chewed her lip in frustrated silence, and then tried to will herself to feel sleepy yet again. But the strange and achy loss that pulsed through her body stubbornly remained.
~~~~~
His heart was beating at the rate of a rabbit sprung free of its snare. The pressure that had built inside his laced-up breeches was sheer agony. Silently, Nicholas swore to himself in as many ways as he could think of, and in several languages, until the pulsing within began to calm.
Ever since the moment he had viewed Katari’s bared thighs and her hair spread out in the leaves as if an offering for a man, as if for him, he had thought of little else. It angered him, to feel like a boy in the first throes of lust for the unknown pleasure of a woman. Nicholas Belline was more than full grown, well into the height of his manhood. He’d lain with a handful of different women in his time, none of them all that memorable. What was it about this one?
The dream was still fresh and vivid upon him. In it, they were back at the stream, and Opichi had gone away into the woods. Katari’s tunic had vanished, and she lay, bare and ripe in the waters, as if embodying the very tale of mermaids who tempted men at sea. Her black hair floated out behind her like a fan, and her dusky nipples jutted through the water’s surface, drawing him quickly and eagerly down next to her.
In his dream, the stream water was not cold, but deliciously heated. Her skin was even hotter when he dared to touch it. Silken. A hint of a smile curved her lips and she stared up at him with those strangely tinted brown-gold eyes. Her look said that she knew him. That she wanted him. The water closed over them both, and he pulled her naked body flush with his. In seconds, his manhood was raging with desire and need.
At that moment, he was jolted roughly from the dream and into stark reality. Katari’s r
ipe body was next to him, but she had certainly not invited him to touch her in such a base manner.
It was humiliating. All the more reason to seek a solution to the problems they faced, now that it seemed for sure that Katari would survive. Nicholas lay awake until the sun rose, watching the steady rise and fall of Katari’s shoulders beneath the bedroll.
~~~~~
Katari knew that Opichi must certainly be some form of wife to Nicholas. They argued incessantly as only long-time mates or siblings were likely to do. Katari had acquired a headache in her determined attempt to understand their exchanges.
After a long morning’s ride astride a mount with Nicholas, her woman’s parts had become chafed on the pommel, even though Opichi had spared her a new pair of leggings for riding. Her bandaged leg still ached enormously. She knew it needed to be re-packed with the remaining pine pulp soon, and she did not look forward to the process.
Apparently, Opichi had spilled some bit of pine tar on Nicholas’s one, good map. Unless they continued to hug the course of the Hudson River, which they had been since fleeing New Amsterdam, they were primarily venturing into unknown territory, and one that was filled with the sometimes hostile Iroquois.
Katari’s Minsi tribe dwelled several weeks ride to the south. Opichi’s people were likely a full month’s ride to the west and north. From what Katari could understand, it seemed that the girl could no longer remember exactly how to return there. She had been stolen nearly two and a half years prior, when she was only 13.
Chaos between the Dutch and the English rode their eastern shoulder. However, Nicholas still felt strongly that they should return to the city along the sea. He told Opichi that once they had reached the outpost known as Beverwijck located less than a day’s ride north along the Hudson, they would then chose a course of action. He wanted Katari fully recovered, and her wounded leg looked at by a White medicine man. Nicholas also claimed that their provisions needed to be restocked sufficiently. He was tiring of muskrat and dried jerky.
Nothing would please Katari more than returning to New Amsterdam, even if it meant reentering the Dutch-English carnage. She was at war with no one. She only needed to know what had happened in the wake of the dray accident. Was she the only injury? Was her twin brother searching for her? Did he fear her dead and gone?
It hurt her mind to dwell on in overmuch. The very thought of Grey Wolf wounded or dead made her sick. Now Opichi and Nicholas were speaking of some man who smelled like flatulence – yet again. She tried to focus on the newly emerging leaves and the scent of moist, forest earth, the telling of spring. The trail had become much steeper, and even rocky at points, although she could still smell the Hudson River somewhere close to their east.
Such distractions did not work for very long. Katari’s patience was worn completely through. “Assez! Alah!” she finally barked in both French and Lenape. Enough!
“If you want to argue like this incessantly in my ear, Nicholas, perhaps you and Opichi could ride together on this horse as one giant and ornery being. Speak of your dirty flatulence somewhere else.”
Opichi huffed and muttered something about Katari’s sharply bossy tongue. Nicholas made a strangled sound in his throat that sounded too much like laughter being choked upon. Miffed, Katari nudged their horse forward in a faster trot, yet it was a move that ultimately went awry. Her leg ached all the more from the increased bouncing, and the hairy man’s damned beard was scratching at her neck yet again.
~~~~~
Attitudes were going south in a hurry. Yet, the trio continued their ungainly but determined ride onward to the north. Nicholas was pleased to see the trail widening where other riders from the west had previously merged with it. There were many fresh hoof prints, and other signs of recent travel. Countless men in the pelt trade – Natives and Whites alike - would be on the move now, traveling both too and from their outposts throughout the coming summer and fall. He just was not sure what the disturbance at New Amsterdam would mean for the fur trade efforts in Beverwijck.
However, Nick was sure that there would be no snuffing of the insistent European desire for beaver hats of all shapes and sizes – it was the rage of many different countries overseas. The frontier beckoned to all those who had the physical endurance to bear it, and held a love of the freedom of the wilds. Nick was just that man.
He had become a master at fitting in with whatever race or nationality he lived with for those temporary occurrences. The fur trade itself was a common tongue and linked everybody in some way.
Nicholas Belline reveled in such a way of life. The day he had been caught stealing by the grizzled supplier in Lachine, and placed into service as an engage, had truly been the luckiest day of his life. In New France’s southern Great Lakes area, he had made a solid name for himself, both in the quality and number of his furs, and in his trade ability.
And then, there was his so-called attractiveness to the various women residing in the outposts. It was an attribute that he did not exactly revel in. Such magnetism for the opposite sex had also earned him the sort of jealous male competition he was certainly not in need of. It just was the way it was. In truth, Nicholas did not want a woman nagging at him the way Opichi was doing right at this very moment. But females seemed to find a method to place their needy persons right into his path.
Like the one sitting before him, nestled against the very place he didn’t need her to be flush against. This, apparently, was the part of his temperament that he could not control very well, at least not in Katari’s case. Nicholas could not cease glancing down at her, or breathing in her uniquely enticing scent, or noticing the way little hairs curled at the base of her neck, escaping her beautifully thick, black braid.
He had watched her plait the long strands that very morning, with slender, artistic fingers working quickly and with ease, all while weaving a thin strip of beautifully dyed cloth into the braid. With stars in her eyes, Opichi had asked that Katari do the very same thing for her – and she wanted an exact replica.
There was something about Katari that stood out from any other woman Nicholas had ever encountered. She was bright, confident, and forthright in her thought and deed. She knew that she was beautiful; for the knowledge shone clearly in her golden-flecked eyes. And yet she did not flaunt it, or gloat upon it, or use it in any sort of female guile. It pulled at him – insistently - in ways Nicholas did not fully understand. But he surely recognized what it was doing to his lower half. He shifted uncomfortably in the saddle.
In response to his movement, Katari’s rounded little bottom stirred, as well. Within moments, she had slid right back against his aching groin. He gritted his teeth, and wondered, in fact, if the sly little Kat could be doing it to him on purpose.
Chapter 6
Grey Wolf lifted and held a woman’s elegant necklace to his chest. He drew in a deep breath. He was a man and could not cry at this moment for his lost sister. But the agony speared through his heart like nothing he had ever experienced. The pain of his broken ribs and his dislocated shoulder paled in comparison.
The necklace was beautiful. The beadwork was exquisite and well-crafted with shells of color the likes of which he had never before seen. While waiting in the background of the merchant’s store, Grey Wolf had watched Katari covet the necklace, and had seen the delight cross her features when she lifted the heavy choker to assess its weight and the value of its ornamentation.
There was no doubt, it was a very expensive trinket, even ridiculously so. Yet, he had quietly slipped back and purchased the necklace when Katari was in the Governor’s gardens with the Jesuit man. His sister deserved such a fine prize for all that she had contributed to their successful trading venture. She had proved highly skilled at both the translation and the barter that usually, only experienced men engaged in.
Katari possessed the ploy of a beautiful woman, and the cunning of a warrior. All races of men, even the most hardened ones, gazed upon her with a surprised look of longing, much to White Lyn
x’s extreme irritation. With Katari’s aid and influence, each brave in their trading party possessed the coin necessary to return to the Minsi village triumphant, and wealthy enough to provide impressive bride gifts to the families of the women they had chosen.
He knew that White Lynx had wished to obtain Katari’s favor on this trip of adventure and joy. White Lynx had failed. Grey Wolf had failed. Their journey had turned into a disaster no one had foreseen. How could he survive without his twin? How could he even return to his family village?
Just this morning, however, their group had learned a crucial piece of information. An ox with a broken leg had been discovered several hundred feet away from the scene of the dray accident. It was said to them by a nearby merchant that there had been a body trapped in the leather rigging and that a man had freed that person, and borne him or her away into the crowd. And that the man – a White man - had been traveling with another Native woman as well.
It had to be Katari who the man freed. Did this one fact mean that she was, indeed, alive? If so, who had taken her? Grey Wolf and Father Allouez had been on a mission to visit every White medicine man in the city, looking for a woman with injuries, but to no avail. There were not many wounded from that night, other than the dray accident and a few smaller skirmishes.
The English takeover had not been a violent occurrence. In fact, it was told among the people that there was not a single shot fired. He thought that the ways of White warfare were much different from the ways of his own people. If Grey Wolf’s village had been overtaken, and twenty arrows were aimed at his throat, he would still not surrender to the enemy. He would die with honor, as a warrior.
Today, the fallen Governor known as Stuyvesant had marched from the city with his band of remaining Dutch soldiers, with his head held high, but his pride brought low by the swift control of the English King. It was an odd sight, and Grey Wolf wondered if the man even felt the shame of his retreat.
Savage Journey Page 5