by Ann Lawrence
“What other matter brings you here?” Nilrem asked Ardra.
“Samoht is camped on the border. Did you know?” Ardra leaned forward and knotted her hands into tightly clenched fists.
Nilrem followed her gaze but shrugged. “Is he? Alone?”
“Nay! He comes with an army.” She began to pace and wring her hands. “Oh, ‘tis said he comes to await the birth of his first child.” Her tone was sneering. “His Selaw mate was not good enough to dwell in his Tolemac palace. Nay, she must be returned to her mother in Selaw once she was breeding. He treated her like a mare, taken to stud. I despise the man!”
Lien wanted to rub his aching temples, but bruises prevented him—and would alert her that he was awake.
She planted herself before him. “I know you are listening.”
He opened his eyes. She was very close and practically quivering with emotion. “Is Samoht your master?” she spat out. “You bear his symbol. He comes to take my lands, my fortress. Some say he covets me as well.” Her head bowed. No color rose on her cheeks, but he sensed she was deeply mortified. Then he saw a single tear run down her cheek. “He could not even wait for Tol’s death to come.”
“Samoht? Tol?” Lien struggled up on his elbow. What had he landed in?
Nilrem took a deep breath and answered for her. “Tol is Ardra’s lifemate. He is ill.”
Nilrem’s tone said it all. Tol’s illness was terminal, Lien interpreted. “Can’t you heal him?”
Nilrem caught his eye and gave one quick shake of his head. If Ardra caught the gesture, she did not react. “What else may I do for you?” Nilrem took Ardra’s hand and gently rubbed it between his. “I am at your service.”
She looked up. As Lien watched, she visibly gathered herself and took a deep breath. “I cannot lose the fortress, Nilrem. I cannot.”
“Tradition will not allow you to rule, my child.” He patted her hand. Lien winced at the patronizing gesture.
“Tradition!” Staring up at her hurt his neck. “This is tradition.” Her long, elegant finger pointed at him. “A rose passed from one man to another. Secret symbols to tell one man that another is on his side. Well, I will not be deceived by it. Men may rule by might, but a woman may do just as well with her wits.”
“Whoa,” Lien said. “These roses are just jewelry. Nothing more. I’ve never met this Samoht.”
Her mouth opened, then closed. “One may serve a master even if one is too lowly to be permitted into his presence.”
“Perhaps he tells the truth, my child.” Nilrem hooked his hands together on his belly. “After all, we know little of the lands beyond the ice fields. Roses may have other meanings there.”
Lien mirrored the old man’s stance, linking his fingers and leaning back. It hurt his arm like hell, but he didn’t shift position. “Yeah. I’m from way over there. Where I’m from, roses are just a flower you give a girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend? You mean lover? One may not have a girl as a friend. This is nonsense you spin to distract me.” Ardra lifted her nose into the air. “You bear the rose emblem. It is enough for me.”
“Enough for what?” Lien asked mildly.
“Enough to believe in your treachery. Deceit. Licentiousness!”
“Licentiousness? What a great word. I always wanted some of that.” Suddenly his brain wasn’t working so well. Ardra grew large, then small, shrinking and growing again like Alice in Wonderland. He fainted.
“I like him,” Nilrem said as he hefted Lien’s booted feet onto the pallet and settled his head on a folded length of cloth. “He can find amusement even when he is in great pain. Lift his robe; he is bleeding somewhere.” Nilrem pointed to a few spots of red.
Ardra sighed and tried for dispassion as she drew the young man’s robe up his legs, stopping with discretion at his groin. “Does this man walk about naked? His legs are as brown as a field worker’s.” The thought caused an uncomfortable sensation in her belly. She ignored it.
“Here, Nilrem, this wound needs stitching.”
Blood soaked one of the cloths Nilrem had bound about the man’s thigh. Together, they removed the strips of cloth. She touched the needle to his skin, and his thigh muscle jumped. He clamped a hand over hers and sat up, eyes wild and wide awake.
Nilrem put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “She is helping you. Now sit back.”
The man held his hand over the robe bunched in his lap and watched her work.
“Why is your skin so brown in places, pale in others?” she asked. The wound was in the paler area of skin. He had dark hair on his thighs the same color as on his head. Never before had she seen such a color on a person.
“I like the sun,” he said, then moaned at the tug of the thread on the wound.
When she knotted the final stitch, he slumped to the side in another faint.
It unnerved her to touch a man so intimately, a man not her mate, so she tugged his robe down over his legs.
“He has the body of a warrior,” Nilrem said, poking the man’s belly. “Look at his arms and thighs.”
“As I said, Nilrem, he is a treacherous deceiver. He is one of Samoht’s guard, most likely, posing as a merchant or some such. It was most unwise of us to talk before him.”
“Nay. He has ancient symbols of goodness on his arm. Surely, Samoht would not allow such pagan markings on his guard. And where are his arm rings? Nay. I think he is what he claims, a simple man from beyond the ice fields—one who saved your life, do not forget.”
“With that mark on his arm, he cannot be so simple.” Ardra knelt at the man’s side. “Have you ever seen hair so dark? It reminds me of the rich brown dye my women make from winter thistle.”
“And that only grows in the rock crevasses out on the ice fields, does it not?”
She rubbed her fingers in the soft hair of Lien’s head. “Has he dyed his hair?”
Nilrem snorted. “Even that on his body?”
“Why would one do that? Who is he, Nilrem? He appeared from nowhere—”
“And saved your life.”
Nilrem could say what he wanted, but Lien would not bewitch her. She knew evil when she saw it, and evil was in the mark on this man’s arm and in the red of the roses. She drew off the braided leather belt she wore looped three times about her waist.
“This man could overpower many of my men.” She slid the soft leather belt through her fingers. “I have learned many skills from Tol. He taught me to rule, allowed me to take the reins of leadership, but this skill I learned from my women.” As Nilrem sputtered a protest, she trussed the man, hand and foot.
Chapter Four
Lien winced as the cart in which he lay bounced over another bump in the road, although calling this washboard nightmare a road was a joke. It was nothing more than a dirt path skirting the base of Hart Fell. Off in the distance lay a barren plain filled with rock and sand in ever-changing patterns of red, like the desert of Monument Valley in Arizona.
He focused his gaze on the lavender sky overhead. If his hands had not been bound, he’d pinch himself. From the incredible sky to the intriguing woman riding directly behind him, it was all just a bit unbelievable. Even the air smelled different.
He’d done it. Gone into the game. His calculations, only half believed, had been right. He had given himself a new name, and with it, a new identity. Okay, so he wasn’t the prosperous merchant he’d planned; he was a poor merchant. Still, he had only himself to feed. He had no responsibilities, no one depending on him.
An unaccustomed feeling coursed through him. A feeling of complete freedom.
His euphoria lasted until the next big bounce of the cart. At that moment, with his hands bound painfully behind him, freedom was just a concept.
He shifted and groaned. He immediately felt Ardra’s amber eyes on him. He glowered at her. She bit her lip and glanced away.
His arms and legs had gone to sleep. When they stopped, he’d be a complete cripple. He winced as he imagined being lifted from the cart t
o take a leak. His hands would be so useless he’d need someone to hold Mr. Happy.
How could he convince Ardra he was harmless? Maybe glaring wasn’t such a great idea. He’d try a little honey instead. But first he needed to bring her close enough for conversation.
He groaned aloud and bit on his lip. Through half-closed eyes he saw her maneuver her horse closer to the cart.
“You are in pain?” she asked.
Lien groaned louder as a wheel jounced into another rut. “A bit. I can’t feel my hands,” he said between gasps.
She trotted forward, and he heard her order the driver to halt.
Within moments she’d climbed lithely into the back of the cart to where he lay amid her bundles and boxes.
“Sit forward,” she ordered as if he were one of her minions.
To his intense embarrassment, he found he really couldn’t move.
Ardra knelt cautiously by his side. “I want to check your dressings. Nilrem,” she called to the wiseman, beckoning him near. “We must see to his wounds.”
Nilrem was assisted into the back of the cart by two of Ardra’s behemoth warriors. Lien tried not to blush as the two men stripped his robes off him, then dumped him on the floorboards of the wagon. He lay there like a trussed chicken on the lumpy mess of his wool robes.
“This is a pretty shabby way to treat someone who saved your life,” he said to Ardra while Nilrem draped a fur over his hips. “If these ropes were any tighter, I figure I’d lose the use of my arms. How do merchants without arms earn their living here?”
Her eyes widened, and she darted a look at Nilrem. He shrugged.
“Is this how you folks in Tolemac reward people?” he asked again. “By crippling them?”
She lifted a hand, and he fell silent. “I am sorry for your discomfort, but I do not know whom you serve. Until I do, I must be cautious. And I am Selaw, not Tolemac.”
“Selaw. Tolemac. You seem one and the same to me.”
Her head whipped up. Her eyes narrowed. He watched her fight for control, the muscles of her throat working. So, this woman didn’t much care for such a comparison. Good. He’d found a small chink in her armor.
Up close her skin was flawless. If he embraced her, would she be warm and willing or as cold as the ice on which she lived? Her hands certainly weren’t cold when she undid his dressings.
He blinked in disbelief. The wound in his shoulder looked as if it were a week old. It was pink and healthy, the skin smooth about the stitches which she gently picked out with the tip of her razor-edged dagger.
When she went to work on the stitches in his thigh, he saw that that wound too looked nearly healed. “You only keep stitches in for a few hours?” he asked through gritted teeth as her dagger worked its way up his thigh.
She lifted her gaze from her work to his face. Her eyes were not completely gold…or cold. They had flecks of deep amber and were rimmed with a darker, warmer shade.
“If I left them longer, the skin would heal over them,” she said matter-of-factly. She sheathed her dagger and then bound his wounds with clean cloths she dug from a leather pack by his feet.
“I think we should untie his hands, else you cannot tend his arm wound.” Nilrem took the pack of cloth from Ardra and sat on it. Lien noticed that although the wiseman didn’t smell great, his sandaled feet were clean, and so were his fingernails.
Nilrem gripped Ardra’s wrist. “Your men surround us, and I warrant this one cannot move a muscle after lying so long in this manner. Release him and treat the wound. As a healer, I humbly ask it of you.”
Lien felt hypnotized by Ardra as she studied his face. He tried to look harmless.
She drew her blade. “Roll over.”
He couldn’t obey. He was truly paralyzed. With a disconcerted look on her face, she and Nilrem turned him on his side, whereupon she slashed his bindings.
When they drew his arms forward, he could not stifle a real groan. Gently they placed his arms on the fur that covered his lap. Then Ardra bent over his wounded arm. She made a small hissing sound as she removed the bandage. This wound was still raw and ugly.
“Binding his arms has hindered the healing,” Nilrem said. He mixed more of the gray paste and Ardra smoothed it on, not with a stick this time but with her fingertips.
Her hands were warm. The muscles in his arm began to jump. She moved around until she could kneel comfortably, her thigh against his; then she began to gently chafe the circulation back into his hands. It was painful and arousing at the same time. He tried to concentrate on her and not the burning pins and needles in his fingers and palms, or the warmth of her leg against his.
Ardra shook her head over his condition. It sent her hair sliding across her shoulder to cascade down her arms. Interspersed in the mass of gold were tiny braids. Each was tied at the tip with gold thread and amber beads.
“I am sorry for this. I did not think ‘twould hinder the healing.” The thumbs she dug so enthusiastically into his palms each bore a silver ring with different knotwork patterns.
Her clothing was soft green wool. Encircling her waist was a length of common rope, and he realized she’d sacrificed her belt to bind him. She really must be afraid of him. In his world he figured she’d be one of those idle, rich women with plenty of time for her wardrobe and two-martini lunches.
Of course, women in his world didn’t carry knives. The hilt of Ardra’s dagger was silver and heavily engraved. The markings were similar to the knotwork he’d had tattooed on his snake instead of scales. The Shield the pattern was called. Small amber cabochons studded the blade’s hilt and adorned the leather sheath that dangled loosely from the rope belt.
If his arms weren’t lying in his lap like a pair of dead mackerels, he’d snatch the knife, hold it to her throat, and make an escape.
Sure. Where would he run? Besides, he could never hold a knife on a woman. He shifted uncomfortably on the lumpy wool robe and then groaned as arrows of pain shot up his arms.
“Lie still, young Lien. Else you will open your wound.” Nilrem patted his arm. “See, Mistress Ardra, I am touching this painted snake and it hasn’t bitten me,” he said and cackled.
Ardra remained on her knees, massaging Lien’s hands. As the pain waned, arousal surged through him. He jerked his hands away. “Enough. I’m fine.”
“As you please.” She rose and lifted a hand in the direction of her men. Immediately, a guard separated himself from the orderly rank and rode up to her. He dismounted and helped her from the cart like a loyal subject assisting a queen.
Then the man took something from his saddle. When he turned, Lien saw what it was. More rope.
But Ardra surprised him. “Ollach, clothe him and leave his hands free. He can go nowhere hobbled in such a manner.”
The guard did not argue. He assisted Nilrem to his horse, then jumped back into the cart and cast the fur aside. Lien immediately felt heat on his face. The man took so long to shake out the woolen robe, Lien snatched it and shrugged into it himself, despite the screaming pain in his shoulders.
When the soldier had resumed his position behind the cart, Lien finally looked up at Ardra. He wished she’d ride at the fore of her men. Her presence was unsettling, and he didn’t know why. He’d seen better-looking women, and her frosty manner didn’t exactly endear her to him. He liked his women smiling and…with a bit more meat on their bones.
He flexed his hands and rotated his wrists and shoulders to ease the stiffness. He couldn’t believe how the wounds on his shoulder and thigh had healed. What was in the gray powder? He’d love to take some back with him.
That thought led to the idea of going home. Every mile from the mountain might mean less chance of getting home. Of course, there was nothing at home anyway. Instead of dread over his position, he felt the return of the heady euphoria. Maybe there was something in the atmosphere.
“Hey, Nilrem. Where’re we going?”
The old man grimaced as his horse trotted up to the cart’s side.
“We are searching for Ralen, brother to Ardra’s lifemate.”
Lien rotated his shoulders. “Why’s she looking for this Ralen?”
The old man shot a quick glance at Ardra, but her attention was occupied by the guard who rode at her side. The man seemed to be a personal bodyguard. He was a typical Tolemac warrior—tall, blond, blue-eyed.
“Tol will die anon.” Nilrem spoke in a tone barely above a whisper. Lien had to strain to hear him.
“But ‘tis expected in one so old. He is close to three score and ten conjunctions. He will be sadly missed by men of reason, but we all must die in our time.”
So Mistress Ardra was a trophy wife. Or, from what he knew of the game, simply a pawn, given in marriage wherever it was politically expedient at the moment. He wondered who would get her next.
“Mistress Ardra hopes Ralen will prevent the usurpation of her lands upon Tol’s death.”
“She wants to lifemate with Ralen?” He used the game term for marriage.
“Nay. If I know Ardra, it is not a mate she seeks, merely a staunch supporter. As Tol’s brother, Ralen’s wishes will be considered over others’ in the fate of her people. Ardra’s son is not yet old enough to rule, you see, and a guardian must be chosen. Many will vie for the honor.”
So, she had a son. “Who’s after the chiefdom?” As he asked the question, he found he knew the answer from the game—the head councilor of Tolemac, of course.
“Samoht, the Tolemac high councilor.” Nilrem echoed his thoughts. “Samoht and his army are camped on Ardra’s border. She fears he will take her fortress upon Tol’s death. You have heard of the Fortress of Ravens, have you not?”
“Yes. It controls the mining of the ice.” Lien was not about to say how he knew about it. If not for the outbreaks of tension over the ice and who controlled it, there would be no war between Tolemac and the Selaw. And there would be no game.
That thought made him examine the men riding near the cart. These soldiers were playing no game; the swords and knives they carried were all too real. Now that he was broke, the primary defense he’d planned on—bribing himself out of trouble—was no longer an option. He needed a weapon. But not a sword. He wouldn’t know how to use it effectively.