By now Selwyn had to have received word of their army coming toward his country. It wouldn’t take much for him to learn who they were and why they were coming.
Christian’s first priority was to protect the woman in his arms.
One life should never take precedence over the many.
It shouldn’t. But in the case of Adara, he would sacrifice them all to keep her from harm. Sighing at the realization, he kissed the top of her head and released her.
“We have much to do tonight.”
She looked at him suspiciously. “Why do I have the feeling that something isn’t right with you, Christian?”
He forced himself to betray nothing about what was to come. “How so?”
Her dark eyes were probing. “I know not. But I sense that there is something you are hiding from me.”
She was a woman of high intuition. Nay, he corrected. She was a woman who knew him far too well.
He cupped her tender face in his hand. “Fret not. I am only concerned about the men I am sure are waiting in the mountains to ambush us.”
“Ah, is that all? For a moment I thought you might actually have something of great importance troubling you. But what’s a few hundred maniacal zealots out to kill us for their treacherous usurper? Nothing, truly. I now wonder what could have possibly had me concerned.”
He laughed at her humor. She was spectacular and brave in a way very few women were. How he had been fortunate enough to have her for wife, he didn’t know, but he was eternally grateful for it.
Lutian was headed for them. Christian turned her loose with her fool while he went to speak more to Ioan and Corryn about their plan.
If Adara ever learned what he intended to do, he had no doubt she would be calling for his head on a pike. It was why he must plan carefully and quietly.
Come the morrow, she most likely would never forgive him.
Adara couldn’t get rid of the feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Christian spent most of the night plotting with Phantom and Ioan.
It was long after dark while she lay in bed, waiting for Christian. She could hear the reserved sounds of the men outside as they made ready for their beds. All any of them could speak about was the battle they expected on the morrow.
It left her terrified. What would happen? All these months, the idea of war had been a vague one. Now it was all too real to her. In her mind, she saw the faces of the men she had grown attached to. Tomorrow any one of them could be dead.
And it would be all her fault.
That thought was sobering and frightening. She was asking all of them for a sacrifice none of them should have to make.
“Damn you, Selwyn,” she said under her breath, hating the man who had forced them to this.
“You’re still awake?”
She turned her head to find Christian drawing near. “Aye. I was wondering if you would retire this night.”
“We had much to discuss.”
Adara didn’t say anything more while he disrobed, then joined her in the bed. As was his custom, he lay beside her and kept his hand on her stomach so that he could feel their baby moving.
“He’s active tonight.”
“Aye,” she said with a smile. “He’s much like his father and ever on the move. He has been tossing about for hours now.”
Christian stroked her distended stomach with the tenderest of touches. “I can feel his foot against my hand.”
“I can feel his foot against my bladder.”
He laughed. “Does he hurt you much?”
“Nay, not at all.”
Christian leaned forward at that and placed a light kiss to her stomach before he settled down to sleep.
Adara took his hand into hers and held it close while she listened to his breathing become steady and deep. Many times she would lie awake and listen to him while she wondered what he dreamed of. Tonight more than ever before, she was curious. Did he dream of a future with her or of a time when he would leave to help his brothers-in-arms?
He continually told her that he intended to stay, but part of her refused to believe it. His family was his Brotherhood. How could she hope to compete against their loyalty?
Letting out a deep breath, she closed her eyes and forced herself to join him in the arms of Morpheus. Tomorrow would be a long day and both of them would need their strength.
Adara came awake slowly. As she’d done many times over the last few months, she scooted across the mattress, seeking the warmth of Christian’s body.
He wasn’t there.
Opening her eyes, she realized her bed was empty. His armor gone. But more than that was the quiet from outside. There was no armorer hammering. No people chatting. It was ominously silent.
Her heart pounding, she got up without dressing and rushed to the flap of her tent wearing nothing but her chemise. She threw the thick canvas back to see a small group of men outside with Lutian.
There was no one else around.
“Lutian?” she called as a sense of dread consumed her. “Where is Christian?”
He passed a sheepish look to the other soldiers before he headed toward her. He didn’t speak until he stood directly before her. “He’s gone, my queen.”
“Gone where?” But in her heart she already knew.
“They rode ahead to fight. We are to take you on to Taagaria so that you will be safe.”
Her head spun. Nay! How could they have left her like this without any word? “He didn’t say good-bye to me.”
She saw the guilt on Lutian’s face. “He thought it best.”
Tears filled her eyes. “Best for whom? I had a right to know what he had planned.”
“My queen—”
”Nay!” she snapped. “Do not try and placate me when you are ever as guilty of this as he is. How dare the lot of you decide something like this for me? I had a right to know and I had a right to see him off to battle.”
“I know, my queen, but—”
”There are no buts in this, Lutian. None. Should he die this day, I shall never forgive either of you!” Angry at the lot of them for treating her as a child, Adara took a step back intending to return to her tent and to refuse to leave it until Christian returned. But no sooner had she moved than she heard the sound of hooves approaching.
Could it be Christian and the army?
The thought had barely completed itself before she heard a strange sound. It was an odd whirring noise.
“Arrows!” one of the knights shouted an instant before one embedded itself into his heart.
Hissing, Lutian grabbed her and pushed her into the tent, then onto the floor.
“What is happening?” she asked him.
“I know not, my queen. I know not.”
She heard the sound of the men calling orders to each other outside as more arrows rained down upon their camp. Three fell into her tent, landing far too close to them.
Still the hooves came closer until she knew their attackers were in the camp. The arrows stopped and were replaced by the sound of men fighting with swords. Her stomach knotted in fear.
“We have to escape,” she told Lutian. It was their only hope.
She grabbed the dagger from his waist and cut a slit in the back of the tent to see that they were surrounded.
Biting her lip, she realized she had no choice. They needed to get to a horse and ride away from here. With Lutian right behind her, she rushed from the tent as quickly as she could, given her condition. Men battled and fell all around.
As she approached the makeshift corral, she realized that all the horses had been freed. Angry and scared, she turned, only to come face to face with a man on a large black stallion.
She looked up at his face, then felt her heart sink.
It was Selwyn. His beady black eyes stared out from the slits of his helm as he laughed at her. He removed the helm so that she could see the sneer he raked over her body.
“So you found your prince,” he said coldly. “Good. We’ll mak
e sure to have him present when we carve his seed from your belly. Take her!”
Seventeen
“Something’s amiss,” Christian said as he surveyed the rising mountains around them and saw no trace of the army they had suspected would be waiting for them. By now there should have been a call, a glint of sun on armor…
Something.
But nothing gave away the enemy’s position. It was as if they weren’t there.
“Do you see something?” Ioan asked.
Christian shook his head. “And therein is my problem. There’s…” He let his voice trail off as a sense of doom possessed him. Why had he not thought of that earlier?
“Phantom?” he called, then waited for the man to ride apace of him. “How well do you know Selwyn?”
He shrugged. “Since he murdered my father and tried to kill me, we were never overly friendly. Why?”
Christian ignored his question and sarcasm. “Is there any other place where they could be waiting for us? Another position that would be more advantageous to them?”
Phantom shook his head. “This would be the most likely.”
“Aye, the most likely. The only likely place.” Christian cursed at their stupidity.
“Why are you upset?” Ioan asked.
Christian felt a muscle in his jaw begin to tic. “Because he knew this was the only place to attack us.”
Falcon looked bemused. “And how is it bad that he’s not here to slay us?”
Phantom’s face mirrored the dread Christian felt. “You don’t think he…?”
“Aye, cousin, I do.”
“What?” Ioan and Falcon asked at the same time.
“How do you win a chess match?” Christian asked them.
“You capture the queen,” Falcon said at the same time Ioan cursed as he finally understood Christian’s fear.
Ioan looked ill. “You don’t think they waited for us to leave, then marched on Adara?”
Christian didn’t bother answering. He wheeled his horse about and spurred it toward their camp. He knew to the depth of his soul that that was exactly what they’d done. His heart pounded as fear took root inside him and grew to titanic proportions.
He had to get back to Adara.
“Please let me be wrong,” he whispered over and over again as he raced back to camp.
For the first time since he was a boy, he prayed. He breathed every prayer he’d ever been taught while he urged his horse to fly over the rocky terrain.
But those prayers caught in his throat as he drew near the camp and saw the bodies of his fallen men. They lay scattered about the ground like abandoned dolls. Christian threw his head back and bellowed in agony and rage at the sight of them.
He jumped from the back of his horse even before it stopped, and rushed toward the tent where he’d left his wife sleeping just a short time before.
It was empty. There was no trace of Adara anywhere.
“Damn you!” he shouted as pain ripped through him. How could he have been so stupid?
He left the tent to see Ioan, Corryn, and Phantom reining to a stop in the center of the carnage before they dismounted.
“She’s gone?” Phantom asked, his tone angry.
“Aye.” Sick to his stomach, Christian’s gaze fell to the sight of a man wearing a bright yellow jerkin.
Lutian.
He rushed to the fool’s side, aching over the fact that he had been loyal to his queen unto the end. Poor Lutian. His face was covered in blood from a beating, and it was obvious from his injuries that he had fought valiantly to save her.
Christian fully expected him to be dead.
He wasn’t.
“Fetch water!” he called to Corryn as he realized the fool was still breathing, although very shallowly.
Corryn ran to obey while Christian carefully lifted the fool up and took him into his tent. He lay him on his cot so that he could rest comfortably. Lutian coughed as his eyes blinked open.
“Christian?” It was the first time Lutian had ever called him by name.
“Aye, my friend. Rest easy.”
Lutian’s gaze was filled with agony. “They took her. I tried to stop them, but—”
“I know, Lutian. It’s not your fault. I’m the one who left her here unprotected.”
Corryn joined them with a skin of water for the fool. Christian helped him to drink a bit, then turned to Ioan, who stood behind him. “Regroup the army. We’ll march on them—”
”Nay!” Lutian sputtered as he choked on the water. He pushed the skin away from his lips. “Selwyn left me alive only so that I could tell you that if your army doesn’t retreat immediately, he will kill Adara.”
Phantom scoffed. “If you retreat, he will kill her anyway,” he said ominously.
Christian’s mind whirled as he considered his options. “Did he say anything else, Lutian?”
“He wants you to give yourself up to him. Your army is to withdraw and in three days hence you are to go alone to St. Sebastian’s Abbey to turn yourself over to him. He has left men behind to watch and if by nightfall you fail to set off toward the abbey and the army fails to withdraw from their borders, Adara dies.”
Phantom and Ioan erupted into curses while Christian thought the matter over. There had to be a solution to this.
“I say we march onward,” Phantom growled. “What guarantee do we have that she lives? He’s a sneaky bastard who is just as likely to have already killed her.”
Christian wasn’t so sure. “He needs Adara to control her people and to add legitimacy to his son’s claim for the throne. Given that, I doubt he’s killed her yet.”
“Then what do we do?” Ioan asked. “It sits ill with me to be held hostage by any man.”
Christian stood up and let his thoughts whirl as an idea began to take form. “Our options are few. We either need to get to Adara before she reaches the city or we need to be able to break her out before they hurt her.”
“The land here is too flat and open to march for long,” Ioan said. “There’s nowhere to ride in secrecy. They’ll see us coming after them.”
Lutian sighed. “We are still a week from either Elgedera or Taagaria.”
“Nay,” Phantom said as he stroked his beard thoughtfully. “We are week out for a thousand men. For a small group of a dozen or less—”
“We could be there in a few days,” Christian said as he followed Phantom’s line of thought. “What are you thinking, exactly?”
One corner of Phantom’s mouth quirked up as he exchanged a knowing look with Lutian. “I was merely thinking that what we need to do is steal our lady away from them.”
Christian frowned. “Steal?”
Lutian smiled, then winced as if pain had cut through him from his damaged ribs. “Aye, there are many in Elgedera who hate Selwyn and who know the back alleyways of the city better than the rats who live there.”
Phantom looked to Lutian. “Is the Grand Vizier still in charge of the alleyways?”
Lutian nodded.
Christian was completely confused. “Grand Vizier?”
Phantom gave a light laugh. “He rules the thieves of Elgedera and he owes me favors still.”
“So what’s your plan?”
“Retribution, Brother Christian, grand retribution.”
“They withdraw.”
Adara stopped trying to work the ropes free from her hands as she overheard a messenger speaking to Selwyn. On the back of a white mare, she rode with her hands tied before her, between Selwyn and his general.
Selwyn laughed. “So the prince is craven after all.” He looked at her and sneered. “Or mayhap you’re not worth fighting for.”
She scoffed at him. “If you truly believed that, you wouldn’t have threatened him. He only does what you said because he has no wish to see me harmed.”
Selwyn curled his lip at her before he turned back to his messenger. “What of the bastard imposter? Does he ride with the army?”
“Nay. We saw him head out
toward the abbey alone just as you instructed.”
Selwyn’s smile turned insidious. “Are the assassins in place?”
“Aye, my lord. They will kill him the moment he enters the abbey’s gates.”
Selwyn looked about with pride and delight beaming on his oafish face. “I want his head delivered to me after they sever it from his body.”
“I shall see it done.”
Adara’s heart hammered at their words. Surely Christian wouldn’t be so foolish as to fall for such a trap. Nay, she had faith in him. Even so, there was a part of her that didn’t trust Selwyn not to have more treachery lying in wait for all of them. God have mercy on them all.
Terrified for her husband and child, Adara forced herself not to show her fear to her enemy. She would be strong for Christian.
“Have you nothing to say, Majesty?” Selwyn asked her.
She feigned supreme nonchalance. “What would you have me say?”
“I would expect you to beg for the life of your husband.”
She gave him an arch stare. “I would rather die than beg anything from you. Besides, I know you better. There is nothing on this earth that could make you spare his life.”
“You are an intelligent wench and would have made a fine match for my son. Too bad you refused to see our cause.”
“I might have seen your cause, had I not seen your heart first. I have faith in God that no one as foul as you will remain in power.”
He drew back as if to strike her, then hesitated. Adara knew he didn’t dare such an affront under the watchful stare of his men. Even though they were Elgederion soldiers, they were still aware of her power and position as the Taagarian queen. As the Elgederion queen. She might not be able to command them, but they were honor-bound to make sure no harm befell her in the absence of their king.
She looked at Selwyn smugly. “Aye, Selwyn, I carry the next Elgederion king inside me. Strike me and your men will revolt.”
He scoffed at her. “We have no proof of your word. For all we know ’tis a bastard you carry.”
“I am the queen of two nations and as such my word is above contestation by you. I am legally married to Christian and this is the child he claims. It must gall you to know you have failed.”
Return of the Warrior Page 23