The warrior turned to his twenty or so heavily armed companions, laughing, teeth flashing, saying something in his own language. Andrion did not need a translation. Such was the evil reputation of the Khazyari, he told himself acidly, that several hundred people allowed themselves to be bullied by a mere handful of warriors.
“How did they get here?” hissed Dana in his ear. “Surely Patros’s army stands athwart the Road from Iksandarun.”
“I wager that army stands there no longer,” Andrion growled. “And a small force like that could well follow the river bottom right past Azervinah.”
The chieftain turned and accepted the reins of the only white pony in the band. “Tribute,” he said again. “We shall collect it then.” He indicated a sun position just over a roof, late afternoon.
The crowd still stood petrified. “Go,” he shouted, and the people scattered like a startled flock of pigeons. The Khazyari retired to a nearby inn. The owner, to judge by his leather apron, stood in the doorway bobbing like a feeding duck; a toga’d individual who must have been the chief magistrate of the town shuffled downcast behind. A couple of warriors remained in the square, grooming and watering the horses, ignoring the quick scurryings of the townsfolk.
“That chieftain struts,” spat Andrion, “as if he owns this place.” Red streaks glanced across his vision and he blinked them away.
“At this moment he does,” Dana returned. And she frowned, puzzled. “Handsome demon, is he not? Do you suppose that if a Khazyari came to Sabazel for the rites, we should let him in?”
“Dana!” exclaimed Andrion, aghast.
She met his eye frankly. “There was a time when the Sardians seemed as evil to us. And as yet the Khazyari are only our enemies because they are yours.”
“Dana,” Andrion protested; but it was foolish to let her words hurt, especially now. He inhaled, calming himself. “We must report this to Nikander. They are too close, too bold.”
She nodded taut agreement. They turned. A hulking Khazyari warrior stood behind them, his felt-clad body like some great bear filling the alley. He jumped up and down with glee at having surprised them, burbling something in his own tongue.
“Damn,” said Dana, more annoyed than frightened. The breath went out of Andrion as surely as if the warrior had struck him in the pit of his stomach. He reached for his dagger; Dana fumbled exasperatedly at her skirt. Two bowmen looked over the edge of the roof above, arrows at the ready. “Damn,” Andrion said. And he thought, I am a fool.
With massive hands the warrior took Andrion and Dana each by the scruff of the neck and dragged them into the sun. The light was like a slap, bright and hot. The warrior stank of stale sweat.
The interior of the inn seemed dark, sweet and cool by contrast; a window admitted only one gold-dusted ray of sunlight. The Khazyari deposited his booty like squirming puppies before his chieftain.
Andrion thrust his chin out belligerently and then lowered it, biting his tongue to keep from speaking. His cloak was askew and Dana’s dress was smudged with whitewash from the wall they had leaned against; perhaps they would appear harmless enough. Meek, pretend to be meek, he told himself. But meekness was not a word Dana knew, and her body was as straight as ever.
The band of Khazyari, their spears and swords and arrows prominently displayed, dismembered some roasted chickens, tore off gobbets of bread, and slurped from tankards of ale. The innkeeper fluttered on the periphery of the group, holding a dripping pitcher; the magistrate, old, balding, eyes hollow with shock, knelt at the chieftain’s feet pleading for mercy.
He lounged in the midst of his warriors, his felt boots propped comfortably on another chair, his tunic open, revealing a silk shirt and a carved ivory plaque. His oddly small bow lay over the back of his chair, his long dagger lay along his hip. He held a cup of wine, and his tip-tilted eyes watched the crimson liquid swirl around the sides of the cup. His high cheekbones were the prows of ships, cleaving not the sea but the world itself.
“Stop your whining,” he said to the magistrate. “I give you my word that I shall harm no one, so long as you deliver the tribute I asked. I shall not even take any women from you; my men must remain alert, guarding against a counterattack.” He snickered into his cup.
The old man shut his mouth with a pop. His eyes rolled to the side, saw Andrion and Dana, stared. “So,” said the warrior. “You do not know these people.” He looked up. Andrion almost started back, so keen was the glance, sharp as a flaying knife. He forced his own gaze down, to where his heart had sunk into his boots. No, the enemy must not be this intelligent.
The magistrate glanced apologetically away. Not knowing what to say, he said the truth. “No, my lord. These are strangers. Merchants, I would say.”
“Merchants? Trade goods? Where are your supplies?”
Bolting for the door would do more harm than good. Andrion waved vaguely in the air, remembering at the last minute to make his hand limp instead of a balled fist. “Edge of town, out there.”
“Good. Then you, too, may pay tribute. And while you collect your goods . . .” The Khazyari’s black eyes turned to Dana.
She returned his look, never thinking to drop her gaze demurely; the green eyes locked with the black, curious, angry, hinting at challenge. The warrior smiled. “And what is your name, lovely?”
Gods, Andrion said to himself, writhing inside. Dana, he will think you are playing with him!
“Dana,” she replied evenly. “And yours?”
Pleased by her impudence, the chieftain smiled even more broadly. “Tembujin,” he said. “First odlok of the Khazyari.”
Gods, Andrion said to himself again. He must be a prince. Let me kill him, Harus, let me kill him. His breath quickened and he struggled to still it. He turned slightly, and the ray of sunlight found his necklace. He felt the heat against his throat as surely as he heard the Khazyari’s pleased intake of breath.
A strong if slender hand closed on the moon and star and yanked it from his throat. He staggered, spun back around. Tembujin held the necklace before him. “I know a woman,” he confided, “who might be pleased with such a pretty bauble.” And he tucked it inside his tunic.
You dirty it! Andrion wanted to scream. Take your filthy hands from my patrimony! His blood shrieked in his veins, and he clenched his teeth, clenched his eyes to keep from lunging for Tembujin’s throat. Cool, he told himself. Be calm, survive this humiliation, and you can have a gross of necklaces.
Dana’s lips thinned; she, of all people, knew what that necklace meant. But neither could she speak.
Tembujin lowered his feet and stood. He considered Dana’s hair, flaxen waves streaming down her back. She did not take her eyes from his face as he stroked the shimmering fall. “Blond,” he said bemusedly. “The women in this village are dark.” And he asked Andrion, from the corner of his mouth, “Your sister? You have something of the same look.”
“My wife,” said Andrion, not daring to unclench his teeth.
“Ah, good. It is so tiresome to break in new stock.”
Andrion glanced at Dana, her face suffused with mirth and resentment mingled. By the three ages of Ashtar, she thought Tembujin’s remark amusing! Something burst in his mind, and the sparks of it flew through his senses, burning away common sense. With an incoherent oath he leaped.
Tembujin, with a supercilious half smile, stepped aside. Andrion found himself confronting three greasy warriors. One seized him and pinned his arms behind him. One lay a dagger against his throat. Its cold sharpness cleared his head: Fool, fool, she is Sabazian and can care for herself. Fool, get yourself killed now and it ends, it all ends. The blade pressed against his pulse and a veil of shining star-stuff clouded his vision.
Somehow he saw Dana’s face freeze into carved alabaster, terror and rage mingled, and behind them a flicker of cunning. Somehow he heard the magistrate, still kneeling, dare to protest. “But these are not of your town,” Tembujin said blandly. “If I kill him, if I take her, I do not break my word.”
The blade was sharp. A drop of blood ran down his throat, past the ghost of the necklace on his tanned skin. Commend him when? Andrion thought. Humiliation, gods, burning humiliation; but I must live, for Bellasteros, for the Empire. “My lord,” he choked, “spare me, please.” For a moment he thought he would be ill, right here before them all, and viciously he swallowed the bile in his mouth.
“So,” Tembujin laughed to Dana. “He does not wish to die for you. Sensible man.” He turned and stroked her hair again, letting it run like spun gold through his fingers. Dana’s vitriolic glare ran like water from him, unnoticed. At last, too late, she dropped her eyes humbly.
“Let him go, my lord,” she purred, with only the slightest quaver in her voice. “He will bring you tribute while we . . . amuse ourselves.”
Tembujin’s brows rose. “You interest me, Dana.” And he leaned forward to kiss her, lightly, in blatant promise not so much to her as to Andrion. “Go to the room above and wait for me. I shall come presently, after I collect my tribute.” He turned. “And for this brash young cock . . .” He spoke an order in his own language.
The Khazyari’s scorn was a whiplash. Andrion bit his lip so hard he drew blood. Dana’s tight nod as she turned to the stairway was no comfort. Did she mean, never mind, I am accustomed to strange men using me? Did she mean, never mind, I will kill him with my own hands?
Andrion’s mind shattered into a thousand spinning shards. The room fluttered as he saw Dana’s determined mouth, Tembujin’s sneer, the magistrate’s sickly face. The floor vanished from beneath his feet, and the glare of sunlight seared his eyes. A mud puddle, surrounded by a flock of squawking chickens, came up underneath his head and struck him a glancing blow. Other blows landed on his ribs and stomach as the warrior kicked him. Stunned, he could not move, could not think.
Felt boots swaggered away. The shadows lengthened as the sun sank. The people of the town walked by with their burdens, paused, hurried fearfully on. The heir of the Empire lay in a dirty alley. Water birds screeched raucously overhead, taunting him. Bellastria, named for the greatest warrior of the age. Andrion, son of that warrior, clumsy beyond contempt, lowering his guard out of—damn, perhaps it was jealousy. They had not even taken away his dagger. The ultimate insult.
Andrion curled into a ball, shivering with rage and shame. Images of Solifrax’s gleaming blade danced through his mind, Solifrax lopping off Tembujin’s demonic head and parading it before his own warriors.
The bile rose again in his throat, and this time he spat. But I am neither a peasant nor a merchant, Andrion thought, but more a prince than he. I am the son of the falcon. I must live, and suffer the indignities of living. I must rescue Dana. He staggered to his feet.
There she was, as if called from his thought, peering out of an upper window. He waved, confidently, he hoped, and slipped around the corner.
* * * * *
Dana leaned against the shutter covering the window, her fists clenched at her sides. Between the slats she could see Andrion lying in the mud. Gods, he was so still; had they killed him? Then she would kill as many of them as she could, before they killed her.
He moved, curling into a ball like a wounded animal, suffering under the burden of his birth, Sabazel and Sardis and the Empire combined. She could not bear to watch him. She turned from the window and inspected the room. It was small and dusty, with whitewashed walls and plank floor. Planks taken from old ships, judging from the pungent smell of salt and weed. There was a basin, a bench, a sagging bed, a mouse chittering nervously in the corner.
The sun dipped into the west and long beams of light glanced through the shutters, rendering the shadowed room only an illusion. She glanced outside again. Andrion was staggering to his feet. Dana wrenched open the shutter and signed to him: I shall free myself, meet me later! He waved in stubborn bravado and disappeared around the corner. Dana sagged in relief against the shutter, trying for a few moments not to think, not to feel.
After a time she heard voices rising and falling, like the distant murmur of the sea. Ah, yes, the Khazyari collecting their booty from the townsfolk. Every now and then a yelp indicated that some hapless soul had not produced the proper quantity or quality of “tribute.”
Tembujin would be here soon. Dana gathered her wits and squared her shoulders. Easy as it would be to climb out the window, drop down to the ground, and sneak away, she could not leave without wiping that infuriatingly complacent smile from the Khazyari’s face. It would be simple enough to kill him; her dagger nestled, cold and hard, against her thigh. But something stirred, deep in her mind, like a breath of wind stirring the asphodel in Danica’s garden. No, he must not die.
She shook her head, but the insistent something—not a thought, an impression rather—would not fade. And she had learned to trust such impressions. Well, she told herself, so I must not kill him. She must not, after all, give his warriors an excuse to wreak havoc on Bellastria. She must not fight him; that would be a waste of strength, and might attract the others, and would end in her death, at the least.
That impulse of low cunning returned. Ah, she thought, he really is an attractive man, for a barbarian. Or would be, with a touch of humility. That sleek hair, like the lion’s cub on the plaque he wore. But no, this was the wrong time, and the wrong place, and his intent was most certainly not sacred but profane. I must not enjoy him, but get the best of him, she concluded.
A door crashed downstairs. Male voices bellowed. Footsteps sauntered up the stairs. Dana braced herself and greeted the opening door. “How went your collection?”
“A few silver coins. A glass vase or two. Some woman tried to give me a piglet.” Tembujin snorted. “I do not need a piglet.” He slammed the door behind him.
Pinfeathers! she thought. He has left his tunic downstairs, with the others, and Andrion’s necklace is in it. I should retrieve that for him; I owe him that, I think.
But Tembujin’s hands closed warm on her arms, pulling her toward the bed. She was as tall as he, she realized; his face, a cast bronze statue, touched hers and his breath fanned her cheek. At least this one did not stink. He might not even be of pure Khazyari blood; he was less broad, more supple and more subtle than the others.
She laughed, low and throaty. She set her hands against his shirt. “If I have no choice,” she murmured, “then I shall enjoy myself.”
A spark ignited, deep in his eyes. “You will smile for me?”
She did not try to deduce what he meant by that. “Of course, if you make me feel like smiling.”
“I shall.” His lips were against hers, demanding, devouring; his mouth tasted of honey and spices. For a moment Dana’s head spun. I cannot let this creature of darkness beguile me, she thought; your will. Mother, your strength! She returned his kiss, drawing him backward until she sat on the edge of the sagging mattress.
He braced his arms on either side of her and tossed his tail of hair, grinning. The sublime confidence of the man, Dana thought. If he is their prince, no wonder the Khazyari are victorious. And she wondered suddenly, just who is their god?
Tembujin’s stance was perfect. She smiled, letting him believe her smile was for him. She lifted his hand, twitched her skirt aside, set his fingertips against her thigh. Again his eyes sparked, tiny flames reflected again and again, prisms of light and shadow. She moved her leg up the inside of his. Ah, yes, he was nicely rampant. His hand plunged home.
Her hand jerked the dagger from its sheath. Her knee darted upward in a sudden thrust of her entire body. And struck, with a terrible crunch of bone against flesh. She winced even as she pushed him away.
Tembujin had no breath even to gasp, let alone to cry out. His eyes widened and glazed over, his mouth formed a circle of exquisite agony. He crumpled, and Dana was on him as he fell. She pulled the coverlet from the bed, slashin
g it into strips. By the time he recovered his breath and emitted a ragged exhalation, part gasp, part moan, she was already binding and gagging him.
His cheek lay against the floor, his body curled on its side. He swiveled his head upward, trying to look at her. For a moment his eyes were strangely hurt; then the hurt faded into incredulous affront.
She tickled him with the tip of the dagger, just at the angle of his jaw. “And you so intelligent. Have you never thought that women might not be playthings?”
He grunted indignantly.
The shutters crashed open. Thick sunlight flooded the room. Dana leaped to her feet, dagger at the ready, crouching. Tembujin glanced up.
Andrion clambered over the windowsill and landed, remarkably, on his feet. His hair was a burnished red in the light, his face dirty and pale beneath the dirt, but composed. He took in the situation at a glance. “Very good, Dana,” he said.
Tembujin rolled his eyes upward, amazed Andrion would risk himself for a woman.
Dana shuddered in relief and allowed herself a laugh. “I did not hurt him overmuch. Just where it was appropriate. If his warriors were to find him trussed like a sacrificial animal, now that would hurt him. The predator felled by its prey.”
Andrion paused, considering that delightful prospect. He bent down, lifted Tembujin’s tail of black hair, let it slide across the blade of his dagger. “Shall I take a trophy?”
Tembujin mumbled some Khazyari oath and turned his face away, disdain written in every line of his body.
Andrion let the hair fall. He sighed extravagantly. “But no. We do not want this . . . odlok to be demeaned before his troops. He must keep their charge, so as to lead them—” he leaned over, enunciating into Tembujin’s ear “—away from this town and back to their own sty.”
Tembujin’s shoulders twitched.
Dana realized what Andrion meant. She sheathed her dagger and bent again over the makeshift ropes, tightening this one, looping that one.
“You will be able to free yourself before long,” Andrion said. “Anticipate going back downstairs and listening to the lewd jokes of your comrades, who, like you, are sick enough to believe that rape is pleasurable. Anticipate remembering that you gave your word to preserve this town. Or is your word worth anything, barbarian?”
Winter King Page 13