He was half-submerged in the water and running his fingers through his wet hair when he saw Seana.
She stood in the grasses near where he had piled his clothes and armor. Behind her the leaves of the trees glittered in the sun.
They stared at each other and his breath caught in his throat.
She brought a hand to her cloak, untied the loop and let it fall to her feet. She lifted her armor over her head, the leather pulling at her shirt and exposing her pale belly for a moment. She dropped her belt. The knives and axes clattered.
Her gaze did not leave his.
She grabbed the bottom of her shirt and pulled herself out of it.
He felt a tightening in his groin at the sight of her bare breasts and the smooth curve of her soft belly.
She kicked off her boots and then slipped out of her pants.
His gaze was drawn to the triangle between her legs and he swallowed.
She came to him through the grasses, her feet leaving shallow impressions in the sand. When she was in front of him, she dove beneath the water, her hair streaming against her pale back and buttocks.
Then her hands found his knees and ran up his thighs and he felt himself getting hard with desire. Her fingers traced him, then pressed up his belly; she rose against him, her breasts pushing into his erection, into his belly, into his chest. Then her lips were on his.
His breath raced out and he pulled her tight to him.
After, they lay in the grasses, the sun warming their bare skin, drying the water and sweat. They lay on his cloak, and the grasses itched his skin where his legs stretched beyond the old wool. She curled at his side, her head nestled in his chest. Around them grasses filled with the twittering and looping songs of finches. He inhaled, wondering what she would smell like in this moment – maybe lilac or roses or sweet grasses – but she had no scent. He could only smell the grasses and the water and the pines.
He sighed. “This moment…”
“It can’t last,” she said, rising. Her wet hair trailed on his chest.
“Stay with me a bit longer.”
“I wanted one last memory of what I once dreamed. I am finished with these lands. With all we do. I am returning. To the North. To the clans. To where I really belong.”
“You and I,” he said. “I know you feel it. We are meant to be. When we strip everything else away, all the struggle, all the suffering, the cold, the wet, the hunger, there is only us. The way the world is meant to be.”
“But we can’t live in a world where nothing else exists, can we? All of this makes us.”
“I can accept the world if we can to return to moments like these. When we lie with each other, the world is perfect. Everything else falls away.”
She laughed. She had risen and pulled her trousers back on. “What’s the dream and what’s real?”
He made to grab her hand but she stepped away. “We are real. What we have, that feeling between the two of us, is more real than anything else.”
“Apparently not more real than a handful of gems.” She brought her shirt to her nose and then made a face before pulling it over her head.
“So, what, Seana? I’m supposed to give up everything I have fought for – this band, the coin, and the gems – to return to the North with you? There is nothing there.”
“If that’s how you see it.” She stepped into one boot and then the other.
“What are you afraid of? Why are you running away?”
“Who’s running away? I’m returning to where I belong.” She tossed her cloak over her shoulder and picked up her armor and belt. “I’ll be waiting with the others.”
“Then why are you here with me now? Why do you even stay at all?” Spear called after her. “Why, if not for us?”
Seana stared at him. “For the girl. For Valda.”
“So you chase the gems, too. How are you any different than me?”
“Those men are monsters. They deserve to die. That’s why I stay. What they did to her family and at the farm house. Valda needs justice.” Seana disappeared into the trees.
“And I need coin,” Spear called after her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SPEAR COULD NOT find his way back to the others.
The trees pressed at him from all sides, their trunks black and oppressive, their branches weaving out the sky. He had wandered into the forest seeking to clear his head after his encounter with Seana. So he had walked in among the trees, away from the stream where her hands had found his body, away from where their love-making weighed down the grasses, and away from the bright warmth of the alien sun.
He had walked on, lost in his thoughts, replaying their love-making and their parting words in his head. He had walked until he realized he was lost. By then, he could not hear the stream and the sun, masked by the canopy, hung straight overhead unmoving, giving him no indication of east or west.
He had no idea where he was in relation to their day camp or even the stream. He was lost in these woods. Would the others eventually come look for him? Would Seana?
How could she not?
For the past several months she had threatened with leaving. He finally understood she was going to leave and he could not stop it.
What was it that had drawn them together in the beginning? Who had changed?
He did not understand her or anything anymore. They were bandits. They robbed pilgrims and merchants and gathered coin. That is the life both he and Seana had chosen. Now, she no longer wanted the coin. She wanted to return to the North. She wanted it so badly that she was willing to leave him. Suddenly, something was wrong with him because he was chasing down his fortune.
Did she not understand who they were? What did she hope to find in the North? Did she not see that coin would give them what they wanted?
The sun shifted across the sky, and the shadows nodded to give direction. He cut south through the tangle of trees until he heard the coursing of water over stones. Clouds gathered from the west, a giant dark wall. Another storm would be on them. He could imagine all the complaining from Bones and Longbeard. Ungrateful fucks. Why did he have to put up with men like them?
He found the trail that ran along the stream and followed it in the direction of the meadow. He was sticky with sweat again.
Maybe he should just give it all up and return to the North. Maybe Seana was right.
But even then, how long would before she brought another complaint about the way he lived his life? Maybe it was better to turn away like Shield had done. Retreat from the world. Walk into those snow-capped mountains and die alone.
Eventually, Spear found the meadow.
Seana sat with Longbeard, feet dangling in the cold stream. Kiara and Little Boy were prying a stone from one of the horses’s hooves. Biroc slept, wrapped in his cloak.
Only Bones shuffled over to ask Spear where he had been. “Longbeard been mumbling that you ran off with the gem. That’s what he’s been saying.”
Spear shrugged. “His days are numbered.”
“Someone’s days are numbered,” replied Bones. “The girl. She’s been doing her fair share of mumbling.”
Val sat by herself on a log. Her body was lit with a shaft of light through the trees.
“We’re wasting time here,” she complained as Spear and Bones approached her. “They’re getting away. We could have had them by now and been over with this.”
“Is all this worth it to you?” Spear asked. “All the blood won’t make your family come back.”
“You keep coming to me with this. Endlessly. Leave, then. I don’t care. I’ll kill them myself, or find someone else who will do it without all this.”
“You got two heads. Is that not good enough?”
“Go away. I’ll finish the rest of them. The fat one. The one with the bloody rotten teeth. I’ll have their heads.”
“Who is ‘the one with the bloody rotten teeth’?” Spear asked, his stomach suddenly tightening. “What’s he look like?”
; “The leader of them. He’s the one I want the most. A putrid festering beast.”
“That sounds like Cruhund,” moaned Bones. “We have to kill him?”
“He was one of them?” asked Spear. He paused to catch his words, to not let them tumble out too quickly. “He was one of the ones that attacked you?”
“They’re all the same to me. Monsters,” said Valda.
Bones followed Spear away from the girl and back to the horses. “We’ve got to kill him now? Cruhund? I’ve heard stories. Murders his own men! Hope she’s planning on paying more than one ruby for his head.”
“I want more than his head,” said Spear. “I want his keep.”
Bones shook his head. He stood close to one of the horses, one palm on its flanks. Its flesh quivered beneath his touch. “You are crazy! Hunting down his men one by one out in the woods, or when we’ve got the numbers, is fine. But going after Cruhund at his keep is impossible! He’s got a small army at his feet, and what are we, not even a dozen? How are we supposed to do that?”
Spear laughed. “He took what was mine. Little fucking upstart! Turned my own men against me! Stole my woman! Now he thinks he’s king of the fucking world! Why stop at his head?”
“Suicide mission.” Bones’s palm ran quickly over the hair of the horse. It was getting agitated. Its ears flattened.
“Every man can be killed.”
“That’s not what I wanted to hear,” said Bones. “This is crazy!” The horse bit at Bones and it was all he could do to leap back.
“This is our chance to change everything, and only one man stands in my way. But not for long.” Spear stared at the trees but was unable to see through the dark tangle to where the keep perched in the cliffs. He could get everything in one fell swoop – the gems, revenge on Cruhund, and the keep from which to build his army. Once again the name of Spear Spyrchylde would be carried on the curses of the wind.
“You’re going to get us killed!” warned Bones.
But Spear did not hear his companion’s words. All he could hear was the rising wind and the whisper of his name in the leaves of the trees.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
A WALL OF clouds had consumed the mid-afternoon sky and an unnatural darkness hung over the land.
“No way we’re getting across that bridge,” said Bones, shaking his head. “No chance in hell. Look at all them. You’re going to get us killed, Spear.”
Spear and the other bandits hid in a clump of bushes on the crest of a hill overlooking a wide wooden bridge that spanned a small ravine.
On the other side of the bridge, a group mercenaries camped. Two men held a lazy watch at the far end of the bridge. The other former soldiers were napping or sitting in small clusters, their swords and spears within easy reach. The men wore a mix of armor, most of it earned in the legions of Dhurma and all of it in varying states of disrepair and decay.
Spear gazed from one cluster of bandits to another. With the light, the mercenaries had become shadows, men whose faces were lost in darkness. He could almost imagine himself down there, as though he looked upon on his own ragtag band. Spear strained through the gloom, but he did not see Cruhund among them.
“How many do you think there are?” asked Bones swatting at the gnats that swarmed black around them.
“More than a dozen,” said Biroc. He knelt with a his bow strung across his lap. He rotated an arrow between his fingers. “But could be more that we don’t see.”
“I like it better when we outnumber them,” said Bones. “A fair fight is overrated.”
“Maybe we should go back for the horses,” added Biroc. “Give us an advantage.”
“Maybe we should get our horses and ride back to Grymr’s,” suggested Bones. “We’re fools to be trotting around with gems and bags of coins and talking about attacking a dozen armed men for no reason.”
“Girl, do you see the ones we’re after?” asked Spear.
Valda pointed out a man sharpening a knife in a lean-to, fat rolling out of his black armor. Even as far away as they were, Spear could discern the stitching of the wolf on his black armor. Dark stains covered the leather, blood so deeply soaked it would never wash out.
“Do you see the one with the rotten teeth?” asked Spear. “Cruhund? Do you see him?”
Valda shook her head.
Spear cursed. Where had Cruhund gone? Was it possible he had already retreated to the keep?
“We’re not even going to make it halfway across the bridge,” said Longbeard. “They’ll see us and even if they don’t cut us down with arrows, they’ll pin us down on the bridge. No room to maneuver. We should get out of here while we’re still ahead.”
“I’m not giving up now,” said Spear. “Not when we are this close. We wait until dark and then sneak across the bridge. They won’t know we’re among them until our knives are dripping. This is about more than just the heads. We got a chance to take the keep.”
“I say we get out of here.” Bones could not hide the sudden trembling in his hands. “We’ve got two gems and that bag of coins from the farmhouse. More than enough.”
“I think we should talk to them” announced Longbeard.
“Are you crazy?” asked Bones. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m saying we’ve got a choice,” said Longbeard. “We don’t have to blindly rush down this path that Spear has picked. Just because he agreed to it being about five heads doesn’t mean we can’t be finished at two heads. What’s the point of all this? A handful of us running around the borders pretending we’re something were not? One Eye’s got an army. We need numbers if we are going to survive here. We’re weak. It’s only a matter of time before we slip up and get killed because we are outnumbered. Kings of nothing, we are! We should be joining up with those men across the bridge, not fighting them. Strength in numbers. We’d almost come in as equals. Then we could take these lands.”
“So you’d jump sides?” asked Biroc. He clutched his single arrow tightly in his fist.
“Sides? What sides?” Longbeard pointed at the mercenaries across the ravine. “How are we any different than they are? Outsiders, cast out by the clans, living by the skin of our teeth. We should be banding together.”
“Fucking Cruhund leads them,” said Spear. “He’s a traitor. A dog slinking in the gutter. I’d never bend my knee to him.”
“And who gutted Black Arrow?” asked Longbeard. “You weren’t a traitor for stabbing the man who led us?”
“He was a fool and he brought it on himself.”
“If that’s the only requirement for a murder…”
“I see what you’re doing. I see what you are angling for. Come at me if you want! Or if you want to join those dogs across the bridge, you go ahead!”
“Maybe I will. Stand with some men for a change.”
“And when we come across that bridge, I’ll cut your heart out just the same!”
“Shit!” cursed Seana. “Someone’s coming!”
Behind them at the bottom of the hill, a dozen men on horses moved up the trail.
“Looks like there’s one of the missing heads,” said Bones.
The lead rider wore black armor with the wolf stitching. He was a lean, craggy-faced man who rode tilted so far forward on his horse it looked as if he might pitch over the animal’s head. The men behind him were a grizzled bunch, and by the dents on their helmets and the scuffs and cuts on their armor, it was apparent they were veterans.
“That another of them?” Spear asked Val.
She nodded.
“How we going to do this?” asked Biroc.
“We’ve got the same odds with these ones. We can take them,” said Little Boy.
“Just until the moment the men across the bridge hear the fighting and then we’re in it deep,” Spear gnashed his teeth. His gaze flitted between the two parties of men that they were suddenly squeezed between.
“Too deep,” said Longbeard. “We should parlay. Offer ourselves to them. They won’t
turn down strong swords.”
“Shit, they see our horses!”
One of the riders had called to the others and they all stared off into the trees to where Spear and the others had left their horses. Shields were raised and gazes surveyed the brush.
“Biroc, arrows at the riders below,” said Spear. “Thin them out right away. Then you and Seana arrows to the bridge. Hit the first ones that try to cross the bridge. I know you won’t be able to hold them off for long, but buy us enough time to deal with these men below so we can get back to our horses.”
Biroc’s first arrow missed. But its quivering thunk turned the heads of the mercenaries below and the second arrow sunk into the back of one of the men and he tumbled from his horse to the ground.
“Let’s go! On them now!” Spear crashed through the bushes, each step a leap as he raced down the hillside towards the horsemen. In one arm he held his spear and with the other he shouldered his shield.
It would only be a matter of moments before the men camped across the bridge heard their companions. If the two forces of mercenaries were able to join, becoming two dozen against eight, Spear and his crew had no chance. Survival depended on Biroc being able to hold the men at the bridge long enough for Spear to clear the way to their horses. With their horses, they could at least hope to outrun the mercenaries. On foot, they were doomed. They would be hunted down like animals.
Branches whipped against his face as he descended the hillside. Roots cracked beneath his feet and he slipped a few times but quickly surged back to his feet. His breath rose to a roar. Then he was down the hillside and on the trail and among the mounted mercenaries.
Spear lifted his shield and caught the crushing blows of swords, shuddering blows that jolted straight into his heels. He jabbed with quick strokes. He tried to drive the metal spearhead into the flesh of the riders, while still hiding behind his shield. He should have attacked from the edges but instead had leapt into the middle of wildly turning horses.
Five Bloody Heads (The Hounds of the North Book 3) Page 11